One Bad Night

by Jason Davis

  He tried to scan the cab again to see where the phone might have landed, but it was no use. He couldn’t see much past the bright on-board company computer. The damn thing was always an annoyance during the night. Even if he dimmed it to the lowest setting, it would still be too bright. The glow made it too hard to see anything on the other side of the cab. What if he did see it? Was he going to try and reach across the truck and grab it?

  “Do you know what they call this next hill?” The voice on the CB had lost some of the viciousness he had felt before. Maybe this guy had gotten all that crap out of his system.

  Was Rodney really just going to let it go if he did? How would he explain the damage to the trailer? He could come up with a story about how a car sideswiped him, but it was so dark in the mountains, there was no way he could identify them. He couldn't call it in because there was no cell reception, and he couldn’t send it in through the company computer because there was no safe place to pull over and type in a message.

  The lie didn’t sit well with him, but if it meant he lived, it was worth it.

  He was just grateful that he would see his wife and hold his daughter in his arms again, seeing their smiles.

  He grabbed the mic and keyed it. “Not a clue.”

  “Dead Man’s Drop.”

  Rodney gave a nervous laugh. “Really? Who calls it that?”

  “Locals. Unlike most the hills around here, this one doesn’t have a pull-off ramp. If you lose control, there is nowhere to go.”

  “Okay.”

  “You get to the bottom, there’s a nasty curve. If you come down too fast, over the edge you go. It’s a straight drop. That guardrail isn’t going to do much more than buckle and break when you hit it.”

  Rodney looked at his driver’s side mirror. He could see the tanker back there. He no longer had all the lights on, just the headlights, like a pair of eyes looking back at him, watching him.

  He took a deep breath. “That sounds bad.”

  “Yeah. It’s a rough way to go. Seeing yourself falling to your death, knowing there’s no way you can stop it.”

  Rodney tried to swallow down the large lump in his throat. He suddenly felt very parched, reaching for the thermos of coffee. He wasn’t sure what to say, but it sure as hell felt like there was an underlying threat there.

  “You ever have anyone ride with you, driver?”

  Rodney looked at the CB, then in his mirror. He neared the top of the hill and had to upshift before he grabbed the mic.

  “My wife’s been out with me a time or two. Sometimes we’d go out and use the truck to drive to some vacation getaway.”

  “You ever have any pets?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, well, when you have no family at home, it gets lonely. Sometimes a dog is all the family you got.”

  Rodney upshifted again, keeping an eye on his gauges, making sure the engine brake was on and keeping him from going too fast. He didn’t dare upshift another gear, and as the engine brake took hold, he let the semi glide down the hill, occasionally tapping the brake to keep it from going too fast.

  This was how it should be. It was still a long, tedious process, but there was no rush or fight with it. Not when you knew what you were doing. It was all just a matter of paying attention.

  He still kept a watchful eye on the tanker coming up behind him. It wasn’t charging, though. It stayed right behind him, steady. He wasn’t passing him, but he wasn’t slamming into him, either. It was almost like back in the day when drivers looked out for each other and ran in convoys to keep an eye on one another. That was back when the D.O.T would try to clamp down, and some places were out to get drivers for no reason. There had been a time when truck driving was like the Wild West. If you didn’t have a brother to watch your back, you could turn around and find a figurative knife stabbing you there.

  Rodney waited for the driver to say more, but the seconds ticked away. He finally grabbed his mic, wanting to keep the driver talking, keep him calm.

  “I can imagine.”

  “It’s sometimes not easy having a pet out here. They get rambunctious. Sometimes you have to keep the window down and just let them hang their head out. They like that, feeling the wind blowing their ears back. You can almost see them smile.”

  “Sounds like something really amazing.”

  “Yeah…”

  Light suddenly flooded around him, then came the angry roar of the tanker’s air horn. Rodney knew what was coming before he felt it. He heard the smashing and grinding of metal as he was slammed back against his seat. The truck suddenly became a missile racing down the side of the mountain.

  “His name was Sampson, you son of a-” His horn blew, muffling the rest. “His corpse is on my passenger seat. You ran me into that mountain and said you’re sorry. You’re going to be sorry.”

  Rodney fought with his own wheel as the truck tried to slip around him. The tanker pushed on his trailer, causing it to zigzag, the load swaying, making it nearly impossible for him to fight with it. When he turned left, the trailer tried to go right, the rear wanting to meet him on the left. If he gave in, he would jackknife, rolling both truck and trailer. So he would have to turn the truck back right in order to have the trailer push left, but the rear would still fight to meet him. Worse, he couldn’t hit the brake. If he did, the trailer would swing around and he’d be in an uncontrollable spin. He had to keep going faster, upshifting to dangerous speeds in an effort to do the only thing he could do to outrun the devil on his back.

  They were going downhill, which made it easy to go faster than safety permitted. It worked. His truck started to straighten, his speed starting to build. He didn’t dare look down at the speedometer, riding the accelerator instead. The engine screamed at him, not liking the higher RPMs. He was already going faster than the speed limiter on his truck allowed. If he weren’t going downhill, he would have maxed out at sixty-five, no matter how hard he pounded on the throttle. There was just no more speed for him to give.

  But the tanker truck was heavier. Even if it had a limiter, which he didn’t think it did, it had mass on its side, and Rodney could see the approaching lights in his side mirror. It was coming again.

  He saw a yellow road sign on the right, but he couldn’t look at it. He was fixated on those headlights glaring at him. They came up behind him, crashing into his rear bumper.

  It didn’t matter if he saw it or not. The other driver had already told him what was coming, and if he kept trying to outrun him, there was no way he was going to make it. He was sure to end up flying off the cliff, becoming a pancake on the ground below.

  What could he do? If he slowed, the maniac would just continue to push him, making him spin and slide until he jackknifed, rolling off the cliff in a mangled mass of metal. If he sped up, he wouldn’t even see the curve. He would just break through the guardrail like it was paper.

  There was no good option.

  He wanted to just let his head fall to the steering wheel. Fighting was useless anyway. Why not just relax his shoulders, pound the wheel with his forehead, and let the tears pour down? He was never going to see his wife and child again.

  And maybe he deserved it. If he had killed the man’s dog, took away his only companion, maybe this was his punishment. He definitely shouldn’t be behind the wheel. Not tonight, maybe never again. It was obvious he was too much of a danger on the road.

  Screw it.

  It was a long shot. No, the idea had no way of working. It was sure to kill them both, but it didn’t matter. It was something that, deep down, he always wanted to try. Some days, he thought about doing it just to see what would happen. It was like his last day bucket list kind of idea, like trying to drive a semi through a fast food drive-thru. Something so ludicrous that he knew he would never do it, no matter how much he’d like to try.

  But now was the time.

  He pulled on the lever toward the center of his dash. The handle was well-worn so that only a couple letters marked what
it was for. ‘T L AK’, and even those were barely visible. It didn’t matter. He knew what it was for.

  Air hissed, sounding like it exploded out from under his dash. He never knew why it sounded like there was air escaping from under there, even when there might be an air leak somewhere else, but it did, and it now rushed to escape from the trailer brakes. He barely had a chance to look in his mirror before he felt the heavy jolt pushing him into his seat belt. He felt the sting in his shoulder as it cut in, his body mass becoming heavy as the force pulling him back became stronger. The lever wanted to jump out of his hand, but he held firm, keeping it low.

  Smoke now surrounded him. The truck slowed to the sound of squealing metal and screeching rubber. Then he heard the scream of an air horn and saw the tanker fly past him. He was quickly slowing, the tanker just beginning to slam on his brakes. Rodney didn’t have time to watch him as he fought for control of his own truck, although as it were his back brakes doing most the work, he didn’t have the wheel fighting against him.

  He downshifted and the engine brake whined, slowing the truck. He let off the lever and pumped his brake. Now that the lever wasn’t pulled, all the brakes in the truck worked, not just the rear most trailer brakes.

  He looked in his mirror, thankful to see that the trailer was still there, smoke billowing out from under the tires. Then he saw the flames.

  “Crap!” he cursed, quickly letting off the brakes, the truck lunging forward. His brakes had caught fire, and his back tires would catch soon, as well.

  He had to stop. He had been slowing, the trailer brake had slowed him considerably, but he was still going downhill. His only option was to keep braking, hoping the trailer brakes would hold for just a little longer.

  His lungs burned. He hadn’t noticed he had started to hold his breath as he gently applied more pressure, easing it down to fifteen miles per hour. He quickly downshifted, the engine roaring as its brake bogged down in such a low gear. He eased down the air brakes again, keeping an eye on the driver’s side mirror, praying that the flames didn’t climb too high.

  The truck eased to a stop. He had gotten it as far to the side of the road as possible, his hazards blinking on the canyon wall to his right. He didn’t wait for the truck to settle as he quickly released the air brakes and jumped out, grabbing the fire extinguisher from his side compartment.

  He could hear the screeching of the hot brakes as they didn’t want to hold the truck. He ran up the steep road, fumbling with the extinguisher, never having used one before. He hoped he had it right as he extended the little hose and tried to find the base of the fire to aim at.

  It didn’t take long for him to realize it wasn’t going to work. The fire continued to build and wrap around the tires. When the rubber started to melt, Rodney he was sure one of them would blow at any minute. He was too close to them, and he winced with every pop, sure that he was about to get hit by flying debris.

  The extinguisher emptied and he heard air hissing out, the small canister having nothing more. He was done.

  He backed away from the trailer, the flames following him, chasing after him. They would continue to chase him until he got to the front, then they would consume his truck. Well, the company’s truck, and he wasn’t too sure he cared enough about the company to care about the truck. Things would be a lot worse, though, if the cab caught fire.

  Crap. He rushed towards the front and started lowering the landing gear. It crunched as one side hit the uneven ground, and he didn’t try to force the other. He leaned under the trailer and pulled the fifth wheel handle, then ran to the front, pulling on the air lines to get them free.

  When the rig pulled out from under it, there was a loud crash as the trailer dropped the rest of the way to the ground. He continued on, getting a little distance between himself and the trailer. He went about fifty feet before he stopped the truck and started looking for the cell phone, keeping an eye out for the tanker truck. He wasn’t sure if the driver was going to come back. As his trailer was now ablaze, a beacon for anyone nearby, it wouldn’t be hard for the other driver to find him, and with the smoke trapped in the valley, Rodney wouldn’t see him until it was too late.

  He grabbed his phone from the floorboard, glad to see it still had a charge, frustrated when he saw the “no signal” icon in the upper right corner. Didn’t matter. The phone would get signal somewhere. He had to try to contact authorities, which might mean leaving the scene until he could call.

  He was exiting the truck when the first tire blew. It was a loud explosion that echoed in the canyon. Then the next tire, followed by another. He wasn’t sure when the fourth tire blew as a loud rumbling started to overshadow the sound. He had no idea what it was, but the echo was all around him. It sounded like the grating of stone, heavy masses of rock colliding.

  Then he saw the first of the small rocks land on the trailer, pinging off the metal ceiling like hail in a strong fall storm.

  He looked up, knowing it was impossible to see anything through the smoke, but he felt it when the ground around him started trembling. There were loud cracking sounds that he was sure came from above him.

  He didn’t have time to secure anything. If he went back, he could be caught in the oncoming avalanche.

  His life had never involved much physical activity. It had become worse once he started driving a truck, spending most his time either driving or sleeping in the back. Exercise was not a part of his daily routine, and as he tried to run down the road, he felt that mistake catching up to him. His lungs quickly burned with the demand for more air. With the smoke around him and the running, it was getting harder and harder to get any. He saw stars in the smoke and not the sky. His legs felt like they should be hurting, but he couldn’t tell because his knees were filled with so much pain, everything else could communicate with him later about how much they hated him.

  When the first big rock fell, he didn’t look back. After the third rock, he chanced a quick look over his shoulder, thankful he had gone far enough that his truck was only a shape in the smoke and he couldn’t see any of the destruction.

  When the haze lifted, he looked around at the dark interstate. The glowing fire behind him lit the night in such an odd way, he could see a little bit in front of him, seeing the curve. He hadn’t realized just how close to it he had been. Had he not slammed on the trailer brake when he did, he would have flown straight through the guardrail.

  Like the tanker truck did.

  Rodney looked at the stretch of missing guardrail, wide enough for a semi. He walked to it slowly, mesmerized. The driver had wanted to kill Rodney so much, his own life hadn’t mattered. And for what? Because of an accident? Because Rodney had accidentally slammed him against the wall? It wasn’t like he had done it on purpose, and the guy was partly to blame. He had blared his horn at him, making him look. Sure, if Rodney hadn’t been so tired, he probably wouldn’t have drifted over while looking, but still. The guy shouldn’t have…

  Rodney remembered that the driver had told him something right before that last attack. He had been telling him a story, something about a companion. Rodney knew the road out there could get lonely. Even with his daily phone calls with his wife, he still felt the loneliness. There were nights when he sat in his bunk and all he wanted to do was hold her, feel her warmth beside him.

  How would it be out on the road if there were no one waiting at home for him? He couldn’t imagine it.

  So, if all a person had in the world was their dog… If someone took that away from him, how would he handle it? Well, he doubted he would go homicidal, but could he really be sure of that?

  He stared out into the darkness.

  He wasn’t sure about a lot of things. A man was dead, and it was partly his fault. Where did he go from here? The moment he called the authorities, he could end up in jail for vehicular manslaughter. Thirty years in jail, if he remembered correctly, although that was different from state to state. If he walked away, there was chance his truck would be lo
st in the fire and avalanche. He could try and make a clean break, go back to see his wife and daughter, but would he be able to look them in the eye?

  No, not after all this.

  He stared at that endless darkness below him. The nothingness was so inviting, he felt like he could lose himself in it. What would be left of his life? What was going to happen now? He took another step forward and sat down on the edge, debating if he should walk, wait, or just push himself over.