Night Shift Page 18

  The big truck's brakes hissed like dragon's breath, its front wheels locked, digging grooves into the gravel skin of the lot, and it stopped inches from jackknifing in. The bastard.

  The girl in the booth screamed. Both hands were clamped into her cheeks, dragging the flesh down, turning it into a witch's mask.

  Glass broke. I turned my head and saw that the trucker had squeezed his glass hard enough to break it. I don't think he knew it yet. Milk and a few drops of blood fell onto the counter.

  The black counterman was frozen by the radio, a dishcloth in hand, looking amazed. His teeth glittered. For a moment there was no sound but the buzzing Westclox and the rumbling of the Reo's engine as it returned to its fellows. Then the girl began to cry and it was all right--or at least better.

  My own car was around the side, also battered to junk. It was a 1971 Camaro and I had still been paying on it, but I didn't suppose that mattered now.

  There was no one in the trucks.

  The sun glittered and flashed on empty cabs. The wheels turned themselves. You couldn't think about it too much. You'd go insane if you thought about it too much. Like Snodgrass.

  Two hours passed. The sun began to go down. Outside, the trucks patrolled in slow circles and figure eights. Their parking lights and running lights had come on.

  I walked the length of the counter twice to get the kinks out of my legs and then sat in a booth by the long front window. It was a standard truck stop, close to the major thruway, a complete service facility out back, gas and diesel fuel both. The truckers came here for coffee and pie.

  "Mister?" The voice was hesitant.

  I looked around. It was the two kids from the Fury. The boy looked about nineteen. He had long hair and a beard that was just starting to take hold. His girl looked younger.

  "Yeah?"

  "What happened to you?"

  I shrugged. "I was coming up the interstate to Pelson," I said. "A truck came up behind me--I could see it in the mirror a long way off--really highballing. You could hear it a mile down the road. It whipped out around a VW Beetle and just snapped it off the road with the whiplash of the trailer, the way you'd snap a ball of paper off a table with your finger. I thought the truck would go, too. No driver could have held it with the trailer whipping that way. But it didn't go. The VW flopped over six or seven times and exploded. And the truck got the next one coming up the same way. It was coming up on me and I took the exit ramp in a hurry." I laughed but my heart wasn't in it. "Right into a truck stop, of all places. From the frying pan into the fire."

  The girl swallowed. "We saw a Greyhound going north in the southbound lane. It was . . . plowing . . . through cars. It exploded and burned but before it did . . . slaughter."

  A Greyhound bus. That was something new. And bad.

  Outside, all the headlights suddenly popped on in unison, bathing the lot in an eerie, depthless glare. Growling, they cruised back and forth. The headlights seemed to give them eyes, and in the growing gloom, the dark trailer boxes looked like the hunched, squared-off shoulders of prehistoric giants.

  The counterman said, "Is it safe to turn on the lights?" "Do it," I said, "and find out."

  He flipped the switches and a series of flyspecked globes overhead came on. At the same time a neon sign out front stuttered into life: "Conant's Truck Stop & Diner--Good Eats." Nothing happened. The trucks continued their patrol.

  "I can't understand it," the trucker said. He had gotten down from his stool and was walking around, his hand wrapped in a red engineer's bandanna. "I ain't had no problems with my rig. She's a good old girl. I pulled in here a little past one for a spaghetti dinner and this happens." He waved his arms and the bandanna flapped. "My own rig's out there right now, the one with the weak left taillight. Been driving her for six years. But if I stepped out that door--"

  "It's just starting," the counterman said. His eyes were hooded and obsidian. "It must be bad if that radio's gone. It's just starting."

  The girl had drained as pale as milk. "Never mind that," I said to the counterman. "Not yet."

  "What would do it?" The trucker was worrying. "Electrical storms in the atmosphere? Nuclear testing? What?" "Maybe they're mad," I said.

  Around seven o'clock I walked over to the counterman. "How are we fixed here? I mean, if we have to stay awhile?"

  His brow wrinkled. "Not so bad. Yest'y was delivery day. We got two-three hunnert hamburg patties, canned fruit and vegetables, dry cereal, aigs . . . no more milk than what's in the cooler, but the water's from the well. If we had to, the five of us cud get on for a month or more."

  The trucker came over and blinked at us. "I'm dead out of cigarettes. Now that cigarette machine . . ." "It ain't my machine," the counterman said. "No sir."

  The trucker had a steel pinch bar he'd gotten in the supply room out back. He went to work on the machine.

  The kid went down to where the jukebox glittered and flashed and plugged in a quarter. John Fogarty began to sing about being born on the bayou.

  I sat down and looked out the window. I saw something I didn't like right away. A Chevy light pickup had joined the patrol, like a Shetland pony amid Percherons. I watched it until it rolled impartially over the body of the girl from the Caddy and then I looked away.

  "We made them!" the girl cried out with sudden wretchedness. "They can't!"

  Her boy friend told her to hush. The trucker got the cigarette machine open and helped himself to six or eight packs of Viceroys. He put them in different pockets and then ripped one pack open. From the intent expression on his face, I wasn't sure if he was going to smoke them or eat them up.

  Another record came on the juke. It was eight o'clock. At eight-thirty the power went off.

  When the lights went, the girl screamed, a cry that stopped suddenly, as if her boy friend had put his hand over her mouth. The jukebox died with a deepening, unwinding sound.

  "What the Christ!" the trucker said. "Counterman!" I called. "You got any candles?" "I think so. Wait . . . yeah. Here's a few."

  I got up and took them. We lit them and started placing them around. "Be careful," I said. "If we burn the place down there's the devil to pay."

  He chuckled morosely. "You know it."

  When we were done placing the candles, the kid and his girl were huddled together and the trucker was by the back door, watching six more heavy trucks weaving in and out between the concrete fuel islands. "This changes things, doesn't it?" I said.

  "Damn right, if the power's gone for good." "How bad?"

  "Hamburg'll go over in three days. Rest of the meat and aigs'll go by about as quick. The cans will be okay, an' the dry stuff. But that ain't the worst. We ain't gonna have no water without the pump."

  "How long?"

  "Without no water? A week."

  "Fill every empty jug you've got. Fill them till you can't draw anything but air. Where are the toilets? There's good water in the tanks."

  "Employees' res'room is in the back. But you have to go outside to get to the lady's and gent's." "Across to the service building?" I wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

  "No. Out the side door an' up a ways." "Give me a couple of buckets."

  He found two galvanized pails. The kid strolled up. "What are you doing?"

  "We have to have water. All we can get." "Give me a bucket then."

  I handed him one.

  "Jerry!" the girl cried. "You--"

  He looked at her and she didn't say anything else, but she picked up a napkin and began to tear at the corners. The trucker was smoking another cigarette and grinning at the floor. He didn't speak up.

  We walked over to the side door where I'd come in that afternoon and stood there for a second, watching the shadows wax and wane as the trucks went back and forth.

  "Now?" the kid said. His arm brushed mine and the muscles were jumping and humming like wires. If anyone bumped him he'd go straight up to heaven.

  "Relax," I said.

  He smiled a little. It was a s
ick smile, but better than none. "Okay."

  We slipped out.

  The night air had cooled. Crickets chirred in the grass, and frogs thumped and croaked in the drainage ditch. Out here the rumble of the trucks was louder, more menacing, the sound of beasts. From inside it was a movie. Out here it was real, you could get killed.

  We slid along the tiled outer wall. A slight overhang gave us some shadow. My Camaro was huddled against the cyclone fence across from us, and faint light from the roadside sign glinted on broken metal and puddles of gas and oil.

  "You take the lady's," I whispered. "Fill your bucket from the toilet tank and wait."

  Steady diesel rumblings. It was tricky; you thought they were coming, but it was only echoes bouncing off the building's odd corners. It was only twenty feet, but it seemed much farther.

  He opened the lady's-room door and went in. I went past and then I was inside the gent's. I could feel my muscles loosen and a breath whistled out of me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, strained white face with dark eyes.

  I got the porcelain tank cover off and dunked the bucket full. I poured a little back to keep from sloshing and went to the door. "Hey?"

  "Yeah," he breathed. "You ready?" "Yeah."

  We went out again. We got maybe six steps before lights blared in our faces. It had crept up, big wheels barely turning on the gravel. It had been lying in wait and now it leaped at us, electric headlamps glowing in savage circles, the huge chrome grill seeming to snarl.

  The kid froze, his face stamped with horror, his eyes blank, the pupils dilated down to pinpricks. I gave him a hard shove, spilling half his water.

  "Go!"

  The thunder of that diesel engine rose to a shriek. I reached over the kid's shoulder to yank the door open, but before I could it was shoved from inside. The kid lunged in and I dodged after him. I looked back to see the truck--a big cab-over Peterbilt--kiss off the tiled outside wall, peeling away jagged hunks of tile. There was an ear-grinding squealing noise, like gigantic fingers scraping a blackboard. Then the right mudguard and the corners of the grill smashed into the still-open door, sending glass in a crystal spray and snapping the door's steel-gauge hinges like tissue paper. The door flew into the night like something out of a Dali painting and the truck accelerated toward the front parking lot, its exhaust racketing like machine-gun fire. It had a disappointed, angry sound.

  The kid put his bucket down and collapsed into the girl's arms, shuddering.

  My heart was thudding heavily in my chest and my calves felt like water. And speaking of water, we had brought back about a bucket and a quarter between us. It hardly seemed worth it.

  "I want to block up that doorway," I said to the counterman. "What will do the trick?" "Well--"

  The trucker broke in: "Why? One of those big trucks couldn't get a wheel in through there." "It's not the big trucks I'm worried about."

  The trucker began hunting for a smoke.

  "We got some sheet sidin' out in the supply room," the counterman said. "Boss was gonna put up a shed to store butane gas."

  "We'll put them across and prop them with a couple of booths." "It'll help," the trucker said.

  It took about an hour and by the end we'd all gotten into the act, even the girl. It was fairly solid. Of course, fairly solid wasn't going to be good enough, not if something hit it at full speed. I think they all knew that.

  There were still three booths ranged along the big glass picture window and I sat down in one of them. The clock behind the counter had stopped at 8:32, but it felt like ten. Outside the trucks prowled and growled. Some left, hurrying off to unknown missions, and others came. There were three pickup trucks now, circling importantly amid their bigger brothers.

  I was starting to doze, and instead of counting sheep I counted trucks. How many in the state, how many in America? Trailer trucks, pickup trucks, flatbeds, day-haulers, three-quarter-tons, army convoy trucks by the tens of thousands, and buses. Nightmare vision of a city bus, two wheels in the gutter and two wheels on the pavement roaring along and plowing through screaming pedestrians like ninepins.

  I shook it off and fell into a light, troubled sleep.

  It must have been early morning when Snodgrass began to scream. A thin new moon had risen and was shining icily through a high scud of cloud. A new clattering note had been added, counterpointing the throaty, idling roar of the big rigs. I looked for it and saw a hay baler circling out by the darkened sign. The moonlight glanced off the sharp, turning spokes of its packer.

  The scream came again, unmistakably from the drainage ditch: "Help . . . meeeee . . ."

  "What was that?" It was the girl. In the shadows her eyes were wide and she looked horribly frightened. "Nothing," I said.

  "Help . . . meeeee . . ."

  "He's alive," she whispered. "Oh, God. Alive."

  I didn't have to see him. I could imagine it all too well. Snodgrass lying half in and half out of the drainage ditch, back and legs broken, carefully-pressed suit caked with mud, white, gasping face turned up to the indifferent moon . . .

  "I don't hear anything," I said. "Do you?" She looked at me. "How can you? How?"

  "Now if you woke him up," I said, jerking a thumb at the kid, "he might hear something. He might go out there. Would you like that?"

  Her face began to twitch and pull as if stitched by invisible needles. "Nothing," she whispered. "Nothing out there." She went back to her boy friend and pressed her head against his chest. His arms came up around her in his sleep. No one else woke up. Snodgrass cried and wept and screamed for a long time, and then he stopped.

  Dawn.

  Another truck had arrived, this one a flatbed with a giant rack for hauling cars. It was joined by a bulldozer. That scared me.

  The trucker came over and twitched my arm. "Come on back," he whispered excitedly. The others were still sleeping. "Come look at this."

  I followed him back to the supply room. About ten trucks were patrolling out there. At first I didn't see anything new. "See?" he said, and pointed. "Right there."

  Then I saw. One of the pickups was stopped dead. It was sitting there like a lump, all of the menace gone out of it. "Out of gas?"

  "That's right, buddy. And they can't pump their own. We got it knocked. All we have to do is wait." He smiled and fumbled for a cigarette.

  It was about nine o'clock and I was eating a piece of yesterday's pie for breakfast when the air horn began--long, rolling blasts that rattled your skull. We went over to the windows and looked out. The trucks were sitting still, idling. One trailer truck, a huge Reo with a red cab, had pulled up almost to the narrow verge of grass between the restaurant and the parking lot. At this distance the square grill was huge and murderous. The tires would stand to a man's chest cavity.

  The horn began to blare again; hard, hungry blasts that traveled off in straight, flat lines and echoed back. There was a pattern. Shorts and longs in some kind of rhythm.

  "That's Morse!" the kid, Jerry, suddenly exclaimed. The trucker looked at him. "How would you know?"

  The kid went a little red. "I learned it in the Boy Scouts." "You?" the trucker said. "You? Wow." He shook his head. "Never mind," I said. "Do you remember enough to--" "Sure. Let me listen. Got a pencil?"

  The counterman gave him one, and the kid began to write letters on a napkin. After a while he stopped. "It's just saying 'Attention' over and over again. Wait."

  We waited. The air horn beat its longs and shorts into the still morning air. Then the pattern changed and the kid started to write again. We hung over his shoulders and watched the message form. "Someone must pump fuel. Someone will not be harmed. All fuel must be pumped. This shall be done now. Now someone will pump fuel."

  The air blasts kept up, but the kid stopped writing. "It's just repeating 'Attention' again," he said.

  The truck repeated its message again and again. I didn't like the look of the words, printed on the napkin in block style. They looked machinelike, ruthless. There woul
d be no compromise with those words. You did or you didn't.

  "Well," the kid said, "what do we do?"

  "Nothing," the trucker said. His face was excited and working. "All we have to do is wait. They must all be low on fuel. One of the little ones out back has already stopped. All we have to do--"

  The air horn stopped. The truck backed up and joined its fellows. They waited in a semicircle, headlights pointed in toward us.

  "There's a bulldozer out there," I said.

  Jerry looked at me. "You think they'll rip the place down?" "Yes."

  He looked at the counterman. "They couldn't do that, could they?" The counterman shrugged.

  "We oughta vote," the trucker said. "No blackmail, damn it. All we gotta do is wait." He had repeated it three times now, like a charm.

  "Okay," I said. "Vote."