by Eric Miller
Ray dropped the transmission in gear and stepped on the accelerator. The motor wound up but she wasn’t moving. Bumping it out of gear she dropped it back in and tried again. A lot of motor, no movement.
“Shit.”
She knew what it was. Snow and ice around the brakes had frozen overnight, effectively seizing them up. She would have to crawl underneath with a hammer and smack the ice off. Then wind rocked the truck again.
“It’s going to be colder than a polar bear’s toenails.”
The toolbox under the front seat had the hammer and she pulled it out. She rechecked her empty coffee cup from last night with desperate hope that the coffee elves had visited while she was sleeping but it was still empty. Ray threw it on the floor and grabbed her flashlight. Taking a deep breath she shoved open the driver’s door and slid her feet out onto the snow.
“Fuck me,” she muttered as her bruised back reminded her of last night’s fall.
Ray slammed the door behind her. At least she would have a warm cab to crawl into when she finished. Stooping down at the side of her cab she aimed the light across the width of the truck at the backside of the front wheel on the passenger side. The snow was drifting up on one side of the tire and the inside of the wheel looked fairly packed. She pulled her stocking cap down against the gale wind and then tightened and tied her hood as well as she could.
Dropping flat on the ground, Ray scooted under the cab and up on her side facing the inside of the driver’s front tire. Even though her gloves were too light for this weather they would have to do. She could feel the cold in her fingers already. They were what she had and she didn’t have any extra money to buy a heavier pair. This was unusually cold weather so she would never use a better pair often enough for her to spend on them. She dug out any packed snow with her fingers. She could feel the wet and cold through to her skin. Ray grabbed the hammer and began to tap at the brake pads, chipping away at the layer of ice. When she was satisfied that she had knocked it all away she rolled up onto her other side facing the passenger side. In that direction the snow blasted her square in the face. She used one hand to shield her eyes and belly-crawled under the truck to the opposite wheel. Once she was at the tire it hid her face from a direct onslaught of the windblast.
It was now that she realized she’d left her flashlight at the other side. But the day was graying up and she could see well enough to tap these brakes and get back inside. She didn’t want to stay outside any longer than needed. Her hands were stiffening up. Ray just wanted to get this ordeal over with. She was lying on her left arm so she dug out the snow one-handed. Then she picked up the hammer and tapped the brake pads with the hammer when a strong gust slammed the truck. The truck creaked and began to shift on the icy ground. Before Ray could comprehend what was happening it slid about an inch and then sank down through the snow enough to pin her between the axle and the ground.
Despite how she struggled to free herself Ray was stuck on top of the icy ground on her left side with one arm pinned beneath her. Her free hand, cold and wet from the snow, was quickly becoming useless. She’d lost all the feeling in her left arm as it fell asleep with her body weight crushing down on it.
“Help! Help me!” she yelled.
Most of the trucks had their engines running to keep the heaters on and probably radios or phones. The wind sang and howled around the vehicles as if screaming a taunt to Ray to escape its icy clutches. There was no way anybody was going to hear her. Then her phone vibrated. Cullen! He was up and had started his barrage of calling her. The phone hummed in her pocket but she could only move her top arm from the elbow out from under the axle. It wasn’t enough to get to her pocket. She tried to twist and squirm but to no avail. Then the vibrations stopped.
“Help me! Somebody help!”
The wind snatched the words from her lips and spun them to the artic ground. Her squirming became tighter. It was as if the ground had reached up and grabbed her coat. But the thirty below wind chill gale had caused the sweat she had worked up to freeze her damp coat to the ground. Ray was packed against the truck axle on her one side and frozen to the earth on the other side. The one hand she could slightly move had become a club. It felt like a hunk of ice.
Then the phone buzzed again. Cullen was trying to reach her. He knew. She knew he knew. It was like a second sense or something. He must have felt she was in trouble and Ray shouted out to him.
“Cullen! Help me!”
If she could just figure it out she might be able to get the voice activation function to work. If she could bump it just right while it hummed in her pocket maybe… Then the vibrations stopped again. It had gone into her voice mail. He’d call back. She knew he would. If nothing else she knew he was a persistent son-of-a-bitch. He had to call. He would. As Ray attempted to wriggle around she realized she was freezing to the ground over a greater area of her body. Her movement was nearly stifled.
The wind whipped around the tire, changing directions and blasting snow in a hodgepodge of directions taking her breath completely away at times. By this time she had shouted herself hoarse. Although she had lost all track of time she knew she had been lying there for hours by now. Cullen’s calls had come and gone. The phone had buzzed and shaken in her pocket but she had been helpless to reach it.
Ray was in complete agony as her body began to shut down in different areas. Her clothes were frozen to her body encasing her in a numbing cocoon. She blinked at the snow and only one eye opened back up. The wind had frozen her other eye shut with her own moisture. Blinded in one eye her line of sight had become extremely limited. The phone vibrated again and slowly moved in her pocket. It had moved a little bit each time Cullen called. It would have moved further if she hadn’t had her voice mail picking up the call.
Then she heard a snatch of conversation, human voices, and close. Cocking her head ever so slightly and looking out the corner of her good eye she could see the legs of two people standing beside her cab. Snow swirled and danced about them. They were facing each other engaged in conversation.
“Help.”
Ray shouted out but her voice was weak and couldn’t travel past the sound of her own truck’s motor. She wasn’t even sure she had said anything as she could no longer hear it herself. The wind laughed at her. It chattered her teeth and numbed her mind. She wanted to kick her legs against the truck to get their attention but she couldn’t move her legs. She couldn’t reach down and pick up the fallen hammer to slam it against the metal above her. All of her struggles were internal now. Her mind, which had worked frantically for the first few hours, was slowing, stumbling. Her body was stilled. A cigarette butt bounced on the ground, snatched up by the air and carried past her. The two men walked on past the back of her trailer toward the warm interior of the truck stop. Rachel cried and it froze to her face, making a zigzag track down her cheeks. She was afraid her other eye would soon be blinded shut. She was getting tired. So tired.
***
She slowly woke. She’d been dreaming of the potbellied stove in the shed behind her trailer. All her tools had been laid out and a warm fire glowed through the grate on the stove’s door. She was home and she was warm. It terrified her to awaken to what should have been the dream from what should have been reality. The phone hummed again. That was what had awakened her. Cullen. He hadn’t been in her dream. It hummed again and shifted in her pocket.
Had she passed out so long that it was night again? Everything was black. Her brain took a moment to realize her other eye had frozen shut. It was okay. There was no feeling to it. Time was meaningless now. She was so sleepy. Surprisingly she was warming up also. It was just the way she had felt in front of that stove. That was lucky. It must be having the tire block some of the wind. Maybe it was her frozen clothes blocking the air.
Rachel had always been lucky. Her father said she had inherited that from her mother along with independence. Cullen called it something else. Wherever she had gotten it from it was working now. She was tired
and warm enough to fall asleep. Her mind shut down and Ray slipped back into her warm dream.
The cell phone in her pocket hummed again. It vibrated itself out of her coat pocket and fell out on the ice. Her voice mail picked up the call.
Along the way to way to becoming a successful writer, John Palisano used to work for his uncle’s towing company and loved that time in his life. He’s also related to the Klipsch family of Saint Louis, who run a large trucking company. A ride along in a big rig as a kid inspired a lot of what happens in Happy Joe’s Rest Stop. Take from that what you will. John’s fiction and non-fiction has been published extensively, including the horror novels Nerves and Dust of the Dead. He has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award multiple times. Check out more at www.johnpalisano.com.
HAPPY JOE’S REST STOP
John Palisano
“AFTER YOU.” The man in the white cowboy hat stepped aside and smiled with his mouth closed. The smell of cooking hot dogs came through the doorway. Greg was hungry, and one of those Big‘Uns sounded perfect. He’d get right to it, probably round it up with a big sweet tea and some chips. His Papa would be right behind him, once he finished filling up. His dad was going to have to park the rig just outside the stop on account of all the truck parking spaces having already been filled.
Greg was more worried about getting a drink and a snack than his dad’s long walk inside. “Thank you,” he said. The man smelled funny, kind of like a wet dog that’d recently been flea dipped.
He hurried past and found himself right in the middle of the frenzy unique to a Happy Joe’s. The shop was not set up all in a line, like most stores. Instead, there were several stations all around where people could do a variety of things, including checking out. You didn’t have to wait for someone to take your money. Some people happily filled their own sodas. Others topped hot dogs. Some shopped for magazines. Greg stopped for a moment at the magazine rack and pretended he was checking out the monster truck magazines, but his eyes really lingered on the fashion magazines with the pretty, half-naked girls on them.
“Mister Fisher, your stall is ready.” That was the PA, and the voice of a lady with a Southern Accent. Greg thought it was slightly strange to hear one, because they were in Nevada. It felt right, though, because there were Happy Joe’s all through the southern United States. Greg just figured she’d probably been transferred from another location.
He made a beeline for the hot dog station. Dad would be along soon enough, he knew. Of course he would. Where else would he go? Greg looked around the shop and made his way first to the drink stations where, unbeknownst to him, his father had been only minutes before. His father always told him to get the drinks first and then grab any food or snacks he wanted. “That way,” he’d said, “if you get to the bottom of your drink while you’re grabbing other stuff, you can go back for a refill.”
Once he found a medium cup, Greg went to the middle of the machine. There was a big guy with a long grey beard filling one of those monstrous jugs the size of a two-liter. “Be out of your way in a sec,” the fellow said.
“No problem,” Greg said. “Of course. I’m probably going to get some root beer, anyway. I don’t like diet stuff.”
The guy gruffed, finished, and stuck a lid on his drink. Then he was off. Greg noticed he was wearing a T-shirt with an eagle cartoon on the front. He always liked how the guys and gals on his dad’s routes always seemed to love the country. It made Greg feel like they were all together, and working for the same goals.
He found his root beer and filled his cup.
That’s when the lights went.
Not only the lights—the whole place seemed to just turn off. The people turned off, too. Everyone froze for a moment. Greg thought maybe he was having some kind of episode, that maybe it was him. A moment later, he saw people moving. I bet they all just froze from the shock of losing all their light, he thought.
One fellow in a cap that read “This Flag Don’t Run” looked around and made eye contact with Greg. He nodded slightly. They were both thinking it was only a temporary thing and the power would go back on any second, and they’d be back to the Big’Uns and the 64-ouncers, and then be on their way.
“Welcome.” The voice was soft, but because it was so quiet, everyone could hear it. Greg turned and saw the man in the white cowboy hat from the door, only he wasn’t standing; his feet were a good two feet off the floor.
Greg looked toward the front door hoping he’d see his dad, but all he saw were plumes of black smoke completely covering the glass.
Something exploded outside. Everything shook. There was little he could do other than stand his ground.
There was a brief moment of silence before everything returned to normal. Turning around, Greg saw everyone looking every which way, trying to figure out what had happened. The man in white was out of sight. The music still played. He heard fizzing; a man at the soda station had kept his cup under the nozzle too long. Soda ran over the cup and fizzed into the main drain.
What was the bang? What had happened? Maybe a rig had hit the side of the building? Maybe it was an earthquake. He wasn’t sure, but Greg knew he’d have to find his dad as soon as possible. This was way not cool. Not cool at all.
A second larger boom rocked the rest stop.
Greg crashed into a display of audiobooks and barely kept himself upright. Others weren’t so lucky. He spotted the guy with the eagle shirt and grey beard lying flat on his belly, his giant drink spreading across the floor in front of him.
What in hell was happening? Earthquakes? What else could happen so fast?
Terrorists. That had to be it. They were under attack. They’d hit the heartland. Why Happy Joe’s? They were in the middle of the desert with no one famous or notable—no one powerful enough to justify such an event. Could one of the truckers have been transporting something or someone no one knew about? He supposed it was possible.
“Dad?” he said, making his way through Happy Joe’s. There were people lying all over the place. Most were trying to sit up and recover. Greg didn’t see his dad amongst them, though. He wasn’t even sure if his dad had made it inside. He made to step toward the window, but there was a boom so loud he instinctively covered his ears with his hands.
“Dad!”
Nothing.
The rest stop jolted, and Greg swore it went up instead of back and forth, as if a whale had head-butted it from below.
Where the hell is Dad? Why am I in here all by myself?
None of the other adults even looked his way. He was surprised. Didn’t they notice a kid standing there alone? Well, he reasoned, he was big for his age. He was almost thirteen, but most people thought he was almost eighteen. He’d gotten what his mama’d called his father’s “football figure,” and by that she meant he was big boned, strong, and hearty. He didn’t look soft one bit. Still didn’t mean he wasn’t worried about his dad. Or himself. Why wouldn’t he be? It sounded like the world was falling apart just outside Happy Joe’s.
He spotted that fellow—the one he swore had hovered—the Man in White. He stood near the front of the store, still sporting that big grin across his face. Greg knew there was something wrong with the guy. Who’d be smiling during what was going on all around them? What the heck? None of it made any sense.
Greg made his way to the front of the store, toward the man in white. When he neared the front, the Man in White said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I think my dad’s out there.” Greg pointed to the window.
“Son?” said the Man in White. “I don’t think anything’s out there right now.”
The Man in White was right: The area outside the rest stop seemed to have vanished, replaced by pure inky black.
“What the…?” Greg said. “Where’s…?”
The Man in White shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “It was here a few minutes ago.” He hadn’t lost his smile the entire time.
“You don’t seem…concerned,” Greg said
.
The Man in White said, “Should I be?” He laughed and gestured toward the darkness outside. “This is what I wanted.”
“What is it?” Greg asked.
“Nothing and everything,” the Man in White said.
Glowing orbs the size of baseballs hovered near the window. On each, wing-like things fanned from four of their sides, matching their phosphorescent bodies. Their tips looked sharp. One came toward the glass and dragged its razor tip downward, making a scraping sound.
Greg stood back. “My father’s out there,” he said.
The Man in White said, “He’s probably gone now. Left under a parade of the Isogul.”
“Iso-what? What did you call them? Is that what those things are outside?” Greg said. “Where’d they come from?”
The Man in White said, “It’s all magic, my boy.”
“My dad,” Greg said. “He’s out there with those things.” He thought, who talks like that? My boy? Is he from England or something?
“Do you want to go out there with them?” he said.
Greg said, “No.”
“That’s good,” said the Man in White. “Because they’re coming inside.”
Without further prompting, one of the Isogul put its colorful wings against the glass and moved it in an S-shaped pattern. Other Isoguls followed suit.
“What the hell are those things?” a man next to Greg said. “What’s going on? Where’d the world go?”
“We better move,” Greg said. “If the glass breaks, they’ll be in here. On us.”
People stared at him.
“Come on,” he said. “We need to find places to hide.”