by Rick Hautala
“He’s laughing at you right now,” the GPS said.
“Really?” Mark’s grip on the steering wheel was so tight his wrists throbbed. “And how, exactly, do you know that? You’re just supposed to give me turn-by-turn directions. I don’t need any shi—”
“I told you back a ways to turn left, and you didn’t listen to me.”
“So you’re doing this to—what? To get even with me? For ignoring you?”
The GPS unit was silent, and Mark concentrated on driving even as the big rig bore down on his ass, swaying back and forth, jockeying for an opportunity to pass.
“I don’t need any crap from you…from you or…or anyone else,” Mark said.
Nothing but silence.
“You hear me?” Mark shouted.
“No need to lose your temper, but we both know how you resolve your disagreements with people, now, don’t we?”
“What the hell does that mean?” Mark asked, but he winced at the words, and the cold tingling in his wrists that moved up his arms.
The GPS was silent.
The road leveled out into a straightaway. Off to the left, through a break in the woods, Mark caught a view of a wide, smooth-flowing stream that laced out across a meadow in a wide curving arc that reflected the deep, blue sky. The painted lines on the road were broken, and up ahead Mark could see a rest stop. He considered yielding and allowing the semi pass, but the thought of giving in sat like a lump of cold oatmeal in his gut. As the road leveled out into the straightaway, Mark stepped down on the accelerator, smiling wickedly when he heard the blubbering roar of backfiring exhaust as the truck driver also accelerated his vehicle.
“Aw’right, wise guy,” Mark whispered, watching the truck swing heavily out into the passing lane. “Let’s see what you got.”
Tension blossomed in his stomach as he sped down the road, keeping his lead on the semi. Wind ripped through the opened windows, thumping loudly, sounding like huge fists were pummeling the car.
“How are you for gas?” the GPS asked, its sharp voice piercing Mark’s ears like an electric drill.
Mark glanced at his fuel gauge and saw that he had less than a quarter tank of gas.
“How’d you—”
“I guess you’ll have to stop at the next service station, huh?”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
A heavy concussion smacked the air inside the car when Mark passed a car heading in the opposite direction. It appeared to be moving much slower than he and the semi, almost as if it was standing still. The trees and shrubs along the roadside whisked by in a dreamy haze of green and brown.
“If you pull into this gas station, he’ll follow you.”
“And?”
“And…he’ll probably beat the shit out of you.”
Mark couldn’t deny the anxiety that twisted like a tangle of barbed wire in his stomach. He fixed his gaze on the GPS unit and said emphatically, “He’s the one’s causing trouble. Not me!”
“Uh-huh.”
The voice sounded colder now, accusing. A shiver ran up Mark’s spine as he imagined a confrontation with the truck driver. No doubt he was a beefy son-of-a-bitch who would wail on him with a tire iron or baseball bat. The exit for the gas station was rapidly approaching.
Mark had to decide.
Finally resolved, he slowed down and even snapped on his turn signal a couple of hundred yards away from the rest stop exit. His shoulders tensed as he waited to see what the truck would do. Mark hoped he would swing out to the left and pass him by, but after a tense moment or two, he heard a thundering rumble of backfiring exhaust as the truck slowed to pull over.
“Fuck,” Mark whispered.
“You’re screwed, man,” the GPS said. “When he catches up with you, he’s gonna kick your ass from here to tomorrow.”
“The hell he will.”
Mark smiled when he saw the fork in the road ahead with large painted signs, indicating that passenger vehicles should exit to the left, and trucks should go to the right.
“Suck on this,” Mark said as he slowed down and took the turn, but a lightning bolt of terror hit him when the truck driver, ignoring the signs, remained right there on his tail.
“Oh, boy. You’re a dead man now,” the GPS said.
“Will you please shut the fuck up?”
There weren’t many vehicles in the parking lot, but Mark slowed down to ten miles per hour in case a pedestrian darted out in front of him. Through the opened window, he could hear the semi as the driver rapidly downshifted, its air brakes gasping like a laboring beast as he slowed down.
Why isn’t there a cop around when you need one? Mark asked himself, looking around for a cruiser. He was certain—now—that the truck driver was going to stay on his tail no matter what.
“You’re fucked twelve ways to Sunday,” the GPS said, and this time Mark couldn’t ignore the almost gleeful note in the machine’s voice.
It’s a damned machine, he reminded himself. That’s all it is. If it really was talking to him, then someone at the factory must have messed with it, programming it to screw with him like this.
Mark slowed down, letting the truck close in on him, making as if he was going to pull into one of the vacant parking spots close to the front door of the convenience store. The truck rolled behind him silently now, blue exhaust spewing from its exhaust pipes and rising like smoke into the crisp morning sky.
“Aw’right, asshole,” Mark said as he squeezed the steering wheel and slammed the accelerator down hard. His tires screeched on the asphalt, sending up plumes of black smoke and gravel behind him. The smell of burning rubber filled the car, making Mark nauseous, but he let out a whoop of joy as he sped toward the entrance ramp leading back onto the highway. Glancing at his rearview mirror, he saw that the truck had come to a full stop.
“I’ll bet he calls the cops and reports you,” the GPS said.
Mark glared at the GPS and said, “What the fuck do you know?”
“Oh, I know plenty,” the GPS said.
“I’ve got enough gas to make it to the next rest stop,” Mark said, but the truth was, he had no idea where that was.
“Next gas station in twenty-three point five miles,” the GPS unit said and then, after a slight pause, added, “But if you ask me, I don’t think you’ll make it.”
“Who asked you?”
Mark smiled grimly as he drove past a grove of red pine with a scattering of picnic tables before merging back onto the highway. There was no traffic in front or behind him, and his smile widened as he settled into the car seat, letting the steering wheel play loosely in his hands. It would take the eighteen-wheeler a long time to get back up to speed, and by then, Mark would be miles down the road. Just to be on the safe side, he figured he would take the first side road he saw, but he was now leery of leaving the main roads.
How could he trust his GPS unit?
Then again, he could always stop at the next gas station and pick up a map. Do it the old-fashioned way. He was in no real hurry to get to Florida, and now that it was behind him, he wondered why he had let that confrontation with the trucker get on his nerves so badly. He should have just let the fool pass when he first came up behind him. If he had, none of this would have happened.
For the time being, anyway, he was free and clear.
As he drove, he started whistling the old John Denver song “Take Me Home, County Roads.” The day was warming up fast, and the piney woods smell that filled the car was intoxicating.
All of that changed when a black and white police cruiser came up the road heading in the opposite direction. Its lights weren’t flashing, and its siren wasn’t sounding, but the cop was speeding as if he had a definite purpose.
“You bet’cha he called the Staties, all right,” the GPS said.
The suddenness of the mechanical voice broke the hypnotic road sounds, startling Mark who had all but forgotten that the damned thing had been talking to him.
“When this is all over,�
�� he said, “I intend to write a sternly worded letter to the company.”
That was a quote from some damned movie or other. At the moment, Mark couldn’t remember which one. Probably some dumb-ass flick Eileen had made him sit through. But Mark didn’t have time to ponder that for long. He tensed as he watched the police cruiser pass by. And then his stomach dropped when, in his side-view mirror, he saw the cruiser’s brake lights flicker. The police car pulled over to the side of the road and slowed. A second later, the emergency flashers came on, winking madly. Mark watched with steadily mounting horror as the cruiser cut across the median strip, bumping and bouncing in the grassy gully. Its tires spit up clumps of grass and roadside gravel. Then it started speeding up the road, heading in his direction.
“You’re fucked now,” the GPS said.
Mark glanced at his speedometer and saw that he was only doing about five miles per hour over the speed limit. He was tempted to speed up, but he’d never be able to outrun the cruiser; so he slowed down to a hair below the speed limit just in case the cop wasn’t after him. The skin on the back of his neck tightened as the cruiser rapidly closed the distance between them, its red lights flashing in his rearview mirror like razor slashes.
“Kind of makes your ball sack shrivel up, doesn’t it?”
Mark bit his lower lip and shook his head in frustration.
“Come on…Come on…” he whispered. “Just pass me by…Pass me by…” He narrowed his eyes as if in prayer, but the sudden sound of the siren—a short, single whoop—told him it was all over.
“Told you. You’re fucked.”
“Shut the Christ up!”
Mark released the tension in his arms and snapped on his right turn signal before pulling onto the shoulder of the road. The cruiser glided to a stop about twenty feet behind him, the front angled so it pointed back toward the highway. For what seemed entirely too long a time, Mark sat there, tense and staring at the patrolman, who remained in his cruiser. He held a radio microphone in one hand and was talking into it. Mark could see that the patrolman was wearing mirrored shades that—like his windshield—reflected a distorted silvery arc of the surrounding woods.
Mark waited patiently, trying his best to breathe evenly and swallow the sour, dry lump in his throat. His pulse was racing but, at last, the cruiser’s door opened, and the patrolman stepped out onto the roadside. He tilted his head back and adjusted his utility belt.
In Mark’s side-view, he looked to be better than six-feet tall. The window was already rolled down, so Mark just sat there, waiting. He looked up when the patrolman got to the window and leaned down to address him.
“Mornin’,” the trooper said with a thick, Southern accent, but before Mark responded, he took a step away from the car and waved his hand in front of his face.
“Good morning,” Mark managed to say, noting the pinched tone in his voice. He glanced at the GPS unit, ready for it to say something, but it remained silent. The display showed the icon representing Mark’s car, stopped by the side of the road.
“Y’all have any idea why I pulled you over?” the officer asked.
“None whatsoever,” Mark replied, suddenly conscious of how much he sounded like a Yankee. Was that going to work against him here?
“Could I see your license and registration, please? And proof of insurance.”
Mark’s hand was trembling almost out of control as he reached for the glove compartment and snapped it open. He took out the necessary papers and then hitched his hip to one side so he could fish his wallet out of his back pocket to get his license.
“You’re fucked now,” the GPS said, its robotic voice low and grating.
“You say something?” the patrolman asked as he waited patiently.
“Nothing at all,” Mark said as he handed the papers to the officer, who scanned them with an expressionless face. Mark studied his own reflection in the policeman’s mirrored shades, noticing how small and pitiful he looked. After a long, tense moment in which Mark hardly dared to breathe, the patrolman grunted and walked away.
Mark watched as he sat back inside the cruiser and used the radio again, obviously checking to see if there were any outstanding warrants on him. He wiped the sweat from his face with the flat of his hand and tried not to breathe the fetid air in the motionless car. Now that he was stopped, he realized how bad it was and told himself he would have to do something about it soon.
After what seemed like forever, the patrolman, still unsmiling, got out of the cruiser and walked back to Mark’s car. His mirrored shades reflected the graveled roadside.
“You got a problem with your headlights,” the officer said.
“I’ve got ’em on,” Mark said, perhaps a bit defensively as he glanced at the switch to confirm they were on. “I know we’re supposed to keep ’em on for this stretch of road.”
“Your left light’s burned out,” the patrolman said, nodding to indicate the front of the car.
“Really? Son of a gun,” Mark said, trying hard not to let his relief show.
Maybe the truck driver hadn’t reported him after all. Maybe this was just a routine stop.
“You’re from Maine, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where you headed?”
“Florida,” Mark said, terribly aware of the tightness in his voice. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. “Going down to visit my…uh, my brother in—ahh, Melbourne. I—umm, you see, my wife and I split up, and I…I’m thinking of moving down south with my son to—you know, to get away from it all. Start over.”
“I’m going to have to write you a warning,” the patrolman said, indicating that he had zero interest in Mark’s personal problems. “You’ll want to have that headlight attended to as soon as you can…especially if you intend to drive at night in these parts.”
“I will. For sure. Yes, sir. First chance I get.”
“Wait here,” the trooper said.
Mark realized he’d been talking too fast, and he couldn’t catch his breath as he watched the patrolman walk back to his cruiser still holding his license and registration. After getting back into the cruiser, he set about writing something on a clipboard.
“You haven’t fooled him, you know,” the GPS said, its voice so soft and low and grating.
Still staring into the rearview, Mark hissed it to silence, but it didn’t do any good.
“You don’t think he’s on to you? For fuck’s sake! He knows all about you. He knows what you did. He’s fucking with you.”
Mark wanted to deny this, but his tongue was frozen to the roof of his mouth as he waited for the patrolman to return with his license and registration and the written warning. He tried not to think that, just like the truck driver, this cop was screwing with him. Both of them were busting his balls because they enjoyed watching him squirm.
“You’ll never get away with it,” the GPS said. “He knows. Everyone knows. Every car that’s passed you by since you left Maine…every driver and every passenger knows exactly what you did.”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” Mark said, his voice strangled as he stared into the rearview mirror, trying to look perfectly normal.
After what seemed like an hour but was really less than five minutes, the cruiser door opened again, and the patrolman sauntered back to Mark’s car. He didn’t smile when he handed the papers and the warning to Mark through the open window.
“I noticed you got a problem with your rear tire, too,” the policeman said.
“A problem?” Mark’s voice was an octave higher than normal.
“Looks like you’ve lost a lot of air. It’s almost flat. Do you have a spare?”
Mark swallowed hard and nodded but was unable to speak.
“You might want to change it now. I’ll stay behind you with my lights on so you’ll be safe.”
“I think I can make it—”
“I can’t let you drive off with your tire in that condition, sir.”
The officer leaned closer to th
e window, his shades reflecting the inside of Mark’s car like a kaleidoscope. Mark’s heart was pounding high and fast in his throat when he looked at the GPS unit. His ears started buzzing as he waited for it to say something that the patrolman would hear.
“If you don’t do that right now, sir, I’ll have to call a wrecker to come and remove your car from the highway.”
Seeing no way out of this, Mark reached under the dashboard and popped the latch to release the trunk. The sudden snapping sound was like a kick to the gut, and Mark’s left hand was greasy with sweat that slipped on the handle when he opened the driver’s door.
“You’re fucked for sure now,” the GPS said, but its metallic voice was so low Mark could barely hear it. He knew the patrolman hadn’t.
His legs felt like they were stuffed with straw as he walked to the back of the car. A sudden concussion slammed the air when an eighteen-wheeler—the eighteen-wheeler—sped by followed by a long, trailing blast of its air horn.
Mark smiled wanly, convinced now that the GPS had been right.
This cop did know!
So did the truck driver!
Everyone knew!
“All I have is one of them donut spare tires,” Mark said, glancing at the expressionless face of the patrolman. The curvature of his mirror shades reflected the roadside and Mark and his car. “It ain’t much.”
“It’ll get you to the next town. The exit’s less than six miles from here. You can buy a new tire there.”
Mark nodded but still was unable to move to the car trunk. He couldn’t open it, not with this cop standing here; but he also couldn’t avoid it or talk his way out of it. A sudden high-pitched buzzing filled his head like he’d stepped on a beehive. It took him a paralyzed moment to realize that it was the GPS unit, talking in the car. He couldn’t make out anything it was saying, but the patrolman cocked his head to one side and listened. His expression remained perfectly fixed as the voice of the GPS filled Mark’s head.