18 Wheels of Horror

by Eric Miller

  Gary settled back into the seat, closed his eyes, and drifted away.

  He wasn’t sure what woke him up—the eerie, piercing, hypnotic sound of the tires singing that was just barely audible over the music, or the sudden change in the truck’s ride as it left the highway and rumbled over the rough shoulder. Maybe it was both at the same time, but whatever it was, Gary snapped awake in an instant and looked around.

  It was still dark outside, and the Freightliner was still doing at least 70 down the road. Or more accurately, off the road, he saw in a horrified instant. They had drifted out of their lane and were onto the shoulder. Gary’s eyes whipped to the other side of the cab to see Phil fast asleep in the driver’s seat.

  He started to yell and jump to grab the wheel, but then he froze when he looked past his partner’s sleeping form and out the driver’s side window of the truck. A woman floated there, outside in the night air and somehow pacing the speeding rig, black hair floating gently around her achingly gorgeous face in defiance of the rushing wind. Her mouth was open and Gary knew in an instant that the strange sound was coming from her.

  She was the one singing.

  Not the tires.

  Gary willed himself to move, to try and reach across the cab and grab the wheel, and as he did so the woman saw him. Shock flooded her face, and then anger, and Gary could somehow read her enraged thoughts.

  You should be asleep!

  But he wasn’t. As he lunged for the wheel the cord to his headphones pulled out of the player. The music stopped, and the full force of her terrible song hit him like a sonic sledgehammer. Gary could feel his consciousness slipping away, the song pulling him to sleep like it had obviously done to Phil. But he was already in motion, and a fierce desire to right the truck—to save his friend—coursed through his veins and he shook off the sleepiness.

  The woman screeched as the song lost its grip on him, her pretty face turning hideous and evil in an instant. Then she flew straight up out of sight, her dirty white dress fluttering as she disappeared from the window frame.

  Gary grabbed the wheel a moment later, tearing his gaze from the side window and back to the windshield. The whole encounter had taken only a second, but it was enough for the speeding truck to go further off the road. He pulled the wheel as hard as he could, fighting Phil’s sleeping grip and the soft dirt of the shoulder, and the truck started to come around. He got the driver’s side wheel back on the pavement and the trailer was just starting to follow, but just as it did the road fell away into a culvert. It was the kind of water channel drivers passed over a thousand times on the road and barely even noticed. But tonight was a different story.

  The passenger tires slammed into the ditch at the same instant the guardrail ripped into the nose of the truck like a huge machete. The tractor bounced in the air as it hit the far side of the culvert, and the trailer followed, both tilting dangerously as the whole rig started to roll over. Gary lost his grip on the steering wheel. Phil stayed put, still asleep and firmly belted to his seat. Then the truck came back to earth with a grinding crash. Gary’s head cracked into the windshield and he blacked out.

  ***

  The first thing Gary felt was the cold ground under his body, then pounding pain ripped into his head. He groaned and forced his eyes to stay shut while he willed the world to stop spinning. A few moments later it did and he risked a look around.

  He saw the stars first, the gleaming ribbon of the Milky Way stretched out above him in the sky.

  The sky? He thought. How did I get outside?

  He twisted around and saw that he was lying on the pavement. He had been thrown clear of the truck. His left arm was twisted under him, numb and possibly broken. Blood smeared his face from a cut on his forehead. The earbuds were still in his ears, as forgotten as the cord that dangled from them.

  We wrecked. Oh God, we wrecked. Phil…?

  He tried to look around for his co-driver, but couldn’t see him from where he lay. Doing his best to avoid his left arm, he rolled over and struggled to his feet. The world spun again, and he almost vomited, but he fought for control of himself and the dizziness subsided. By the light of the moon and an inexplicably still-shining headlight he could see the wreckage of the rig scattered across the road. It was a spectacular mix of shattered truck, leaking fluids, underbrush, and the hundreds of boxes of auto parts that had spilled out of the ruptured trailer. There was no sign of Phil, so Gary limped closer to find him.

  As he got closer he saw one of Phil’s rattlesnake-skinned boots sticking out from behind a battered box. Gary moved as fast as he could around the box and saw his partner lying on the pavement, bruised and bloody.

  Phil wasn’t alone.

  The woman was there too, squatting above Phil’s unconscious body. As Gary watched in stunned silence, she leaned over and stuck out an impossibly long tongue and licked a rivulet of blood off of Phil’s cheek. She shuddered in ecstasy as she swallowed the fluid. Then she opened her mouth wide, revealing rows of jagged razor fangs, and leaned in to bite Phil on the neck.

  “HEY!” Gary screamed. It was all he could think to do.

  The woman’s eyes snapped up to see him standing there, and she snarled at him. She stood up, seeming to flow to her feet rather than stand, and rushed toward Gary.

  He stumbled backwards, mind reeling. “Leave him alone. Leave us both alone.”

  She answered him by singing. The eerie song she had been singing before the crash lilted through the night air, and Gary instantly felt drowsy. He kept backing away from her, and she followed like a stalking panther.

  Tired, he thought. So tired. I should just go to sleep like Phil did. Everything will be all right if I can just get a nap…

  His eyes stayed closed longer each time he shut them, and the woman was closer each time he opened them back up. Still walking backwards, he tripped over a box and fell on his back. Pain shot through his injured arm, and the sleepiness disappeared. He opened his eyes and saw the woman looming over him, claw-tipped hands reaching for his face.

  He scrambled for a weapon as she closed in, and his good right hand closed on a tire iron laying on the road. Strength flowed into him from somewhere, through the elemental metal and rushing up his arm and into his brain.

  “Shut up, bitch!” he snarled, and swung the tire iron as hard as he could.

  It smashed her across the mouth with a meaty thunk. She rolled away, the song once more turning into an angry screech. Gary forced himself to his feet and limped after her. As he walked, his hand fumbled at his belt.

  He cornered her against the trailer. She opened her bloody mouth to sing again, and again the strange warbling pierced the night. But Gary just smiled at her this time instead of going to sleep. She gave him a confused look, and he pointed to his waist. The woman craned her head, trying to understand what she was seeing. Gary tapped the iPod on his belt, now plugged back in. Loud music blasted his ears from the earbuds and drowned out the Siren’s song just as it had in the truck.

  “Sorry. I can’t hear you. Got my Waylon cranked a little too loud. Dude can sing circles around that crap you’re putting out.”

  Her song turned into another screech as she understood. Then she hissed at Gary and bared her fangs. She launched herself at him and in an instant was on him. Fangs gnashing, claws scrapping, Gary was driven back by the furious assault. But he struck back with the tire iron, beating the woman again and again. They fell to the ground in a snarling embrace, rolling across the pavement and battering each other relentlessly. As he rolled on top, Gary stabbed at the woman, putting all his weight on the iron bar and driving it into her stomach. It punched through, and her scream drowned everything else out.

  She threw him off in a violent convulsion and stood up. Black gore oozed down the front of her dress. She pulled the tire iron out and it clattered to the pavement. She staggered, almost falling. Then she gave Gary one last hateful glare and whooshed up into the air and disappeared.

  Gary tensed up for a
moment, expecting another attack, but nothing happened. He cautiously turned down the volume and took his ear buds out. The soft sound of crickets chirping floated through the night air. Convinced she was gone, he hurried over to Phil.

  He saw that Phil was breathing, and apart from minor cuts and bruises seemed to be all right. Gary shook him gently.

  “Phil. Wake up, man. Wake up.”

  Phil’s eyelids fluttered then opened. “What…? What happened…?” he mumbled.

  “We wrecked. Went off the side of the road.”

  “Oh no,” Phil groaned. “I was just about to a million miles.”

  “Sorry, partner, but you’re gonna have to start your safe-driving counter all over again.”

  Phil pulled himself to a sitting position. He saw Gary clearly for the first time, the hobbled arm, the scratches and bloody clothes. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry, Gary. I really am. I fell asleep at the wheel and could have killed us both.”

  Gary gave Phil a curious look. “Asleep? You don’t remember the woman?”

  “What woman?”

  The image of the screeching Siren flashed into Gary’s mind for an instant, and he wondered how much he should tell. Or how much Phil would believe. And for that matter, how much he himself even believed. He did bump his head on the windshield pretty hard; maybe the whole thing was a hallucination? Finally he shook his head. “You didn’t fall asleep, Phil. Some crazy woman ran out into the road and you swerved to miss her. Saved her life.”

  “I did…?”

  “You did.”

  A dim memory came to Phil. “I kinda remember her. Black hair, white dress?”

  “That’s her. She was gone when I woke up. Maybe the cops will find her out in the desert somewhere.”

  Phil nodded. “Gonna be a helluva accident report on this one. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get fired.”

  “Relax, Phil. That’s what they pay a billion dollars a year in insurance for. They’ll have us in a new rig in no time.”

  “Us…?”

  Gary smiled. “Yeah, us. While I might find your taste in radio programs questionable, at least you don’t listen to rock and roll. The next co-driver they put me with might. So I think I’ll ask the office if they can make our arrangement permanent.”

  “I’d be fine with that,” Phil smiled back. “And I agree with you, by the way. The stuff that passes for music these days is pretty unbelievable.”

  Gary looked up into the night sky, where the woman had disappeared. “Yeah,” he said. “They sure don’t sing them like they used to.”

  Half man. Half machine. All Bigfoot. Shane Bitterling was raised around truckers and race drivers, but learned nothing about either. Driven by his hatred of basketball and humidity, he was forced to move from Indiana to Los Angeles and become a screenwriter. With seventeen—and counting—produced movies under his belt, including Beneath Loch Ness, Desperate Escape and the very successful Reel Evil, he still cries oil for the ones that didn’t get made. His not-so-short story They Go in Threes appeared in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated horror anthology Hell Comes To Hollywood. His screenplays for Kill Everything, Red Rain, and Black Sunrise are currently in development. A true hillbilly at heart, he dedicates this story to Uncle Jay Moondoggie and the Star City Streak, both of whom have left a legacy of rubber around this great land.

  WHISTLIN’ BY

  Shane Bitterling

  AS THE GRAVEYARD RACED PAST the passenger window of the truck, Hayward Lawson’s forehead tapped the steering wheel. He was as close to blacking out as he had ever been. His glassy eyes stared blankly at the Ding-Dong wrappers that whirled around his work boots. Pulsating veins popped out on his forehead and neck like Indian burial mounds ready to cut loose with avenging war cries. His final breath escaped his pursed lips in a slow sputter as his semi truck drifted into the opposing lane. A growing strand of spittle pattered to the beat of the wheels hitting the highway’s median caution strip. Pah-dup-Pah-dup-Pahdupahdupahdup. But he wouldn’t give in and take a breath. Not here. Not this trucker. No oncoming cars in sight, so odds on a lonely death were high.

  The pungent odor from the open bottle of smelling salts duct taped to the center of the wheel wormed its way into Hayward’s nostrils. The stinging vapor made his dead fish eyes flutter to life. He jolted upright with a snort, sucked the spittle rope back into his mouth, and punctuated his rebirth with a meaningful but understated, “Dang.”

  Hayward jerked the wheel and the eighteen wheeler eased back into the correct lane. He snapped his eyes open and shut to get the ocular juices flowing and knock out the dryness. Then worked his nose back and forth as he sniffled out the smelling salts and running snot. He looked into the passenger side rearview where the last of the tombstones receded into the distance. Hayward sucked in the stale air of the cab, clicked his fingers, and pulled the cord that operated the air horn twice in victory.

  “Dang right,” he said as the purple color left his face and settled on his normal hue of pasty. “Y’know?”

  He glanced around the cab, nodded his head, and smirked to nobody. Lord only knew if his gestures came from the fact that he’d cheated death again and was proud of it or if he refused ownership of a colossal act of stupidity. But Hayward wasn’t stupid. Hayward was superstitious.

  He had been that way since he was riding on training wheels. It was his mother who hammered wives’ tales and “gonna getcha’s” into him from the moment he greeted planet earth. Mother wasn’t always on the money, but she had been right enough to warrant that he pay attention and keep the cautious flag waving. Most people leave their strange beliefs behind when they cut the apron strings, maybe holding onto one or two for nostalgia sake or the odd peccadillo. But not Hayward. He held onto all of them as Gospel, gathering more as the years rolled on. Don’t walk under a ladder. That’s just good sense. He kept an acorn in the windowsill to keep the lightning out. It works. Bite the heel of your shoes and they won’t give you a blister. Never put a hat on a bed. A cricket in the house is a sign of good luck, much to his sleepless wife’s dismay. Hairy women make great lovers, which is why he asked that sleepless wife out on a first date. There wasn’t much practical use for most of them, but he kept them in his mental file for when they might be needed.

  But there was one that Hayward faced on a daily basis. And it was a whopper that kept him constantly on edge. Cemeteries were some of the biggest obstacles on his road trips. There was one or more every few miles on the Midwestern backroads and two-lane highways. Most of those little burgs barely had a working stop light, but they always had a graveyard on one end of town or the other. If you blinked, you would miss many, populated only by a single family or three. But as you neared a bigger town, or what passed as a city in these parts, the cemeteries sometimes sprawled for miles. Hayward often thought that more people were underground in these rural areas than above it. And some bastards were on the wrong side of the dirt entirely.

  Big or small, they posed a danger. Hayward was of the firm belief that if you breathed in while passing one, an evil spirit might get sucked up your nose or worse, swallowed into your gullet where it could cause serious digestive embarrassment on a good day. Full on soul displacement and hellish torment on a bad one. Now, a hat on the bed was bad luck, but nothing a series of walking backwards and eating a banana from the bottom up couldn’t cure. But demonic possession was an entirely different animal and Hayward didn’t have the remedies or personal contacts with any particular parish that could help with such a thing. He’d checked.

  So Hayward passed every cemetery with respect and the same risk avoidance measures. He would stiffen in his seat, his eyes would go wide, and a small sweat would bead. He would exhale all of the air from his lungs, then suck it all back in at the exact moment his front bumper would cross the cemetery border. He’d hold the air deep down in the bottom of his lungs until the rear of his trailer passed the other boundary. Some areas had
so many cemeteries, Hayward would gasp and blow so hard and quick, he’d hyperventilate and have to pull over and breathe in a paper bag. He practiced holding his breath in preparation for the bigger ones, but a life of cheap beer, fast food, and sitting for hours on end only allowed so much lung capacity. The most exercise he got was from bouncing over potholes. He didn’t know what his breath gobbling record was, but he began to feel the burn in his lungs at just over a minute. He’d heard of people holding their breath for over five minutes, but that couldn’t be right. Nobody trained harder than he did. When he began to feel the burn, his temples would pound until his eyes began to bug. Air would escape from his lips in farting sputters. He figured about a minute and half was when he would start coughing and wheezing. That was more than enough to get him by. And if his drills failed him on any given day, his right foot had a mind of its own and would jab the pedal down. Better to get a speeding ticket than a trip to an exorcist.

  Although he tried to avoid certain areas entirely, sometimes he just couldn’t. Mainly, the places with the flesh-eating ghouls people didn’t like to talk about, but he was obsessed with. He knew how to fix their wagon. Meat. And lots of it.