Frightliner Read online

  Frightliner

  By Colleen Drippe' and Karina Fabian

  First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2011 Colleen Drippe' and Karina Fabian

  Cover Design by David Dodd

  Part of the Cover Image provided by:

  http://treeclimber-stock.deviantart.com/

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  FRIGHTLINER

  The Friday night Reba walked out on Daniel, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and stars were scattered about like fat, yellow jewels, fighting with the nearly full moon for dominance over the blackness. It was the new pickup that did it. She’d worked overtime at the hospital—weeks and weeks of it—to make the down payment on a new trailer. And then he’d gone out and bought a new Chevy pickup! It was the last straw.

  “I didn’t sign on that thing,” she told him as she packed. “You can pay for it yourself.”

  “No problem, Babe,” he answered right back. But she knew he was bluffing. He didn’t really think she’d stay away for good. They’d only been married two years and mostly they still liked each other pretty much.

  And, she told herself, as she drove off in her beat-up Honda, he was probably right. She might come back. But not right off.

  She stopped at a diner and called her sister in El Paso. Told Melanie she was on her way, invited herself for the weekend. She didn’t want to give up her job as an aide. Not for Daniel’s sake.

  It was some drive from Roswell, where she had lived these past two years, and she was too mad to check the gas tank. She was thinking about the things she'd packed—more than one weekend’s worth—and what Daniel was doing right now—probably drinking and driving around in the new pickup. Maybe he’d get a DUI. She thought about that, and smiled a fierce little smile. Then, about six miles from Carlsbad, she ran out of gas.

  She said a word her mother wouldn’t have liked, and coasted the car to the side of the road. She checked her cell phone, found it dead, too, and said a few more words. She’d have to wait for a cop or something, she guessed, and reached back to make sure all the doors were locked.

  But no cop came. The moon shone steady and without concern and. The constellations moved on their busy way across the sky, but only a couple of cars went by and nobody stopped. She wasn’t sure she wanted them to.

  She was just resolving to get a car charger for her cell phone as soon as she got to her sister’s when a semi pulled up behind her. Weird. She hadn’t seen the lights in her mirror, hadn’t heard a thing. But it had lights. She saw them for a moment before they were turned off.

  Her father had been a truck driver and she had no illusions about knights of the road stuff. He had beaten her mom, cussed at the neighbors and finally jackknifed a semi in the middle of Atlanta, killing himself and doing in a load of chickens along with a sports car and part of a street sign.

  Still, maybe this guy would be okay. After all, he worked for a company and he would want to keep his job. He wouldn’t try anything funny—or if he did, it would be the sort of funny stuff she could handle. In fact, she thought, maybe a bit of funny stuff was just what she needed. She waited for her rescuer to get out of the truck.

  Nothing happened. The semi sat there, seemingly parked for the night, lights off, black against the radiant sky, like a big rectangle cut out of the world.

  She grew more and more impatient. If only someone else would drive along! But no one did and she was growing downright chilly in her shorts and belly shirt. It’d been hot earlier that day and she’d been—well, that didn’t much matter now. At least Daniel’d gotten a hint of what he’d be missing out on. Tentatively, she opened her door, wincing as the dome light came on. Surely the driver could see it from the truck. He would know that someone was in the car.

  Of course that was why he had not come out to check on her, she thought with a surge of relief. He probably thought it was an abandoned car. She stepped out onto the gravel, hearing for the first time how loud the crickets sang. She smelled the strong scent of the cooling air. Too early for snow. Still too warm, anyway, though she cursed herself for not thinking to put on jeans before making her big exit. She peered at the cab, but nothing moved.

  “Hello!” she called, moving closer. She could not make out a logo on the truck. It was dark, dark paint. She had an impression that the shape was—not wrong exactly, but not usual. It was an older model, she decided. An old truck.

  She reached the door.

  “Anyone there?” she called, hesitating to step up and look inside. What if something had happened to the driver? What if he were dead? What if she opened the door and a body spilled out onto the road?

  But that was silly. He had just pulled up. Probably he was rummaging around in his berth for some tools.

  But what if he was dead? What if she took hold of the door and—and what if he was right there, watching her?

  She had almost decided to go back to her own car. But the thought of the semi parked behind her, silently cutting its chunk from the sky, was in some strange way even more frightening than opening the door. She reached up for the handle and pulled herself up level with the window.

  The handle turned in her hand.

  It was then she knew she had done the wrong thing. If only someone else had come.— She prayed for someone else. A cop. Even a car full of good old boys. Anyone.

  The crickets fairly screamed their shrill and mindless song, the scent of the Russian knapweed was overpowering. But it wasn’t strong enough to hide another smell, a dark, earthy smell. A smell of death mellowed by long usage.

  The door opened.

  Reba froze, clutching the handle, balancing there with the driver’s seat in front of her. She tried to speak, to call, but nothing would come out. She hung there, thinking of death, while the night passed and the stars moved and the moon looked in over her shoulder. Finally, she climbed into the truck.

  “Daniel,” she whimpered. She was ready to forgive the new pickup, but it was too late. Something moved in the back and she turned in the driver’s seat and saw a pale face, caught in the moonlight, eyes gleaming. She had an impression of lank hair, and a grizzled beard. Then two hands reached up to take her shoulders and she saw the mouth open.

  She screamed at last, drowning the noise of the crickets, drowning the beating of her heart, the wrenching sounds of her dislocating joints as something drank its fill, savaging its prey, ripping.—

  When she knew she was dying, she ceased to scream. For one awful moment, she looked into eternity and then, remembering some scraps of childhood religion, she tried to pray. With a final snarling rip, the thing tore out her throat and cast her body out onto the road.

  ~ * ~

  Jay Carlson’s head bobbed back and forth and he tapped the wheel of his 1997 Kenworth W900L as he cruised south on NM Highway 285. He was singing to some upbeat country song he didn’t really know the words to, just making them up as he went along. Nothing was going to break his mood. He’d been lucky this run—light traffic, no holdups—so he’d treated himself to a detour to R
oswell, staying overnight there and checking out the museum before heading on his way. He was glad he'd stopped. The gift shop had been almost as much fun as the museum. He grinned at the acrobatic alien perched on his dashboard, swaying with the bumps in the road.

  Suddenly, a loud blaring, like a tortured water buffalo, followed by a whoosh! that shook even his fully loaded rig, jarred him out of his happy daydream. “Jerk!’ he yelled at the taillights of the aged 18-wheeler that had just passed him. “What’s your hurry?”

  For a moment, he considered increasing his own speed; any Smokeys in the area would no doubt get old leadfoot first, giving him time to slow to legal speed, but he decided against it. Sometimes, troopers here worked in pairs, and the chance of a delay and a ticket wasn’t worth the time he might save. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to catch up with the truck. For some reason, the thought of seeing it again made him shudder.

  He didn’t have much time to dwell on it. Here came more trouble—maybe a mile ahead, emergency vehicles were parked along the shoulder, their lights flashing. Traffic on both sides was stopped as a tow-truck backed up to an old Honda. Jay slowed to a stop, taking the opportunity to check things out without rubbernecking as a couple of guys in faded jeans attached chains to the Honda’s front axle. The ambulance had its lights off, and as he watched, the attendants lifted a gurney up onto the street behind the ambulance’s open doors. A woman lay on it. He could tell it by her ample figure, but her face was covered by the sheet. Jay shook his head sadly. Funny, though. The Honda looked shabby, but not battered.

  A knock on his driver’s side door interrupted his thoughts, and he opened it. “Hey, Dale,” he greeted his friend. “Long time no see. What’s going on here?”

  Officer Dale Keun smiled slightly in greeting, but his eyes looked tired and the smile faded quickly. “Murder.” He didn’t seem to want to say any more, so Jay changed the subject.

  “Wow. Uh, say, did you happen to catch that hunk of junk that flew by earlier?”

  “What hunk of junk?”

  “Oh, come on. He flew by me—must have been doing 90. It was—“ He stopped as he realized that he couldn’t even remember the color of the truck. “It was just a couple of miles back,” he finished lamely.

  “I must have missed him. I was, um.” He grimaced and looked away, but Jay didn’t need him to explain. Dale was still looking a little green.

  Jay whistled. “That bad?”

  “Worse. I won’t be sleeping well for a while. Listen, there’s a real sicko out there, and it’s possible he’s targeting people alone on the road. You pull in for the night, you find a nice crowded truck stop, or better yet, spring for a hotel, got it?”

  Jay’s thoughts flashed back to that creepy truck. “Hey, I’m always careful. I’ve got no illusions of being a tough guy.”

  "Good."

  ~ * ~

  Seemed like a lot of people had crowded into the barbecue place—Long Pig or something like that. Jay hadn't looked too close at the sign. As long as it wasn't a chain, he didn't care. All he wanted was an excuse to sit down and maybe pretend he was hungry. And in a way he was—hungry for other people, that is. Food was another matter after what he had seen and heard that morning. Dale hadn’t given any details, but the radio was full of them: a vivid description of the murdered girl, how the person who’d found her had had to be sedated, guesses that the murderer was southbound… Jay kept waiting for his strange truck to be mentioned, although he couldn't figure out why. Yep, it was company more than food he wanted. And if he was not mistaken, these other people felt the same way.

  The girl who took his order looked like something from the menu herself. You could tell she'd been living on fried baloney and cornbread with plenty of butter. She waddled over to his table and gave him a big, gap-toothed smile. "What'll it be, hon?"

  No beer, he decided regretfully. You didn't do that when you were driving a semi. He ordered a Coke and a barbecue sandwich. He could take the food along, he guessed. But he kept remembering his friend's face as Dale had told him about the murder.

  "Sure ‘nuff," the waitress said, giving him a porcine simper. Her short-skirted uniform strained over her mighty hams and Jay looked away. Things were becoming surreal.

  He thought he recognized a couple of people he had seen standing by the road— ambulance watchers. A lady in sunglasses kept telling her friend how awful it was as she ate French fries with plenty of ketchup. At the next table, a bearded black man looked back at Jay soberly. He was obviously listening to the conversation at his back.

  It had taken an hour to get the traffic moving again and a lot of vehicles had backed up on the road. The highway patrol had called in some special investigators and they kept taking pictures and scraping blood off the highway until Jay was ready to tear out what hair he had left. After listening to the news with a horrified fascination, he’d managed to switch the station; what he found wasn't much better. Some oldie country station that kept playing stuff like Ghost Riders In the Sky. He wasn't ready to start driving again, though he'd be glad enough to get away from this place.

  His order had come and he was sipping the Coke when the young guy came in. He looked like a refugee from a war or something. And when he ordered a beer, Jay knew right away he'd already had enough. He was, he told everyone at large, looking for the man who killed his wife. He had just been to identify the body. He drew an interested crowd right away.

  Jay glanced at the black man who shook his head slightly. "They gonna run him in if he does any drivin' after this," the man said and Jay nodded.

  "They might run him in even if he doesn't do any driving," he said. Then, "Were you stuck in the traffic too?"

  The other man shook his head. "I live up the road," he said. "Just came in to meet a guy about sellin' some steers."

  "But you heard about the murder I guess," Jay said. "They're saying her throat was all tore out—that she looked like a piece of meat."

  "Yeah, I heard that. I heard that before."

  Jay gave the man a sharp look. "What do you mean? Are you saying it's happened before?"

  "I heard something before," the other man said. "Friend of mine—my cousin, in fact—told me about a murder down near El Paso. It was a few months back and they didn't make so much fuss over it. I guess there was reasons."

  Jay digested this. He didn't quite believe this guy, he decided. At the other end of the room, things were getting lively. If that other guy really was the victim's husband, he might have shown more decency. The guy was very drunk. "I'm gonna park out there tonight," he vowed. "I got me a shotgun in the truck and the first bastard pulls up had better have a good reason for doin' it!"

  "Uh oh," Jay said. "Sounds like someone's going to get his head blown off."

  "If he don't shoot hisself by accident," the other man said. "But lead won't hurt that semi—"

  For one vertiginous moment Jay seemed to see again the truck that passed him on the road just before he came onto the accident scene. He shook his head. "What semi?" he demanded.

  Deep brown eyes met his own. "You know," the other man whispered. "I seen it on you that you knew."

  Jay sat back, shaking. "I don't know what you mean," he said hoarsely. "What are you talking about?"

  "You saw that truck. You just ask if anyone else saw it—you just ask!"

  Jay gaped at him. "Black," he said. "Or maybe not. Maybe no color at all. It was speeding. I told the patrolman but he hadn't seen it. It would have gone right by him! Right by where they had the road blocked off!"

  The black man nodded. "I reckon she saw it too," he said.

  For a long moment, Jay just sat there. "You're crazy," he said at last. "You're as drunk as that guy up front yelling!"

  The other man continued to watch him. "Leroy Bartlett," he said, extending one hand. "And I'm not drunk."

  After a moment, Jay took the proffered hand. "Jay Carlson," he said. "And no, I guess you're not."

  The drunk husband was finally convinc
ed to sit quietly and drink his beer. Feeling the man’s bleary and suspicious eyes on him, Jay got his sandwich to go and paid his tab quickly. He was afraid the guy might decide not to wait at the side of the road after all, but pick out some poor sap to shoot right now. But maybe things were okay—the huge waitress had leaned over the counter and was talking to the husband in sympathetic tones. Drunk and grieving as he was, he was still managing to stay pretty focused on the opening of her shirt. Jay tried not to grimace as he passed by.

  Once he was well away from the restaurant, Jay got on the CB and managed to get a hold of Dale, who was still on duty and kept a CB in his patrol car. He used it to keep track of Smokey reports that might give his position away. Jay told him about the guy in the restaurant. The drunk husband, that is; he didn’t even want to think about the other guy. Gave him the creeps as bad as that weird truck.

  “Great,” Dale hissed in exasperation, static giving his voice a funny squelch. “That’s the last thing we need. Thanks, Jay. I’ll check up on him.”

  There wasn’t much traffic on the CB, so he turned on the radio. Big mistake. The local station was fielding calls about the murder. Somebody—that Leroy fellah, maybe—had called in to warn people about a mysterious old semi, which had stirred some ire among the legitimate truckers who lived in the area. In an attempt to diffuse the time bomb he’d started, the DJ pulled out a song called “Truck Driving Vampire.” It was a catchy tune and would have been funny, in other circumstances. As it was, Jay snapped off the radio, wishing he’d sprung to have the CD player fixed before he’d left.

  Then there was nothing but the road and his thoughts. He reached for the sandwich, but the mangled beef in the rusty red sauce made his stomach lurch, and he tossed it out the window, littering laws be damned. In fact, he’d have welcomed a cop right then, even if it cost him a fine. He hadn’t seen another car for over an hour. Taking Interstate 10 into San Antonio, then I-35 to Laredo was beginning to sound like a good idea, even if it did add to his drive time. He’d lost a lot of time in New Mexico, but nonetheless would welcome the noise and distraction of heavy traffic.