I'm not sure what woke me up. It could have been an odd noise. Perhaps, it was the truck moving from the wind. It was probably the silence, now that I think of it. It was quiet. Way too quiet for a truck stop at night in Texas. Sure, it was an out of the way hole-in-the wall, but still there was room for twenty-five to thirty trucks on the pothole filled dirt lot. As anyone who drove trucks, for a living could tell you, these places were often trash infested, urine smelling, and loud places. Truckers did not like to get up at 2 a.m. and get dressed to walk into the store to take a piss. No way. They got up; picked up the milk jug or juice bottle they kept just for this purpose, and did their best to fill it to the rim. Then they would climb back into the bunk and try to block out the noise of idling trucks, refrigeration units running in the air cooled trailers, and any other number of miscellaneous noises, and drift back to sleep for a couple of hours before getting up early to get on the road again. In the morning, as part of their safety checks, they would invariably take that aforementioned pee-bottle, and put it out somewhere behind the trailer, instead of walking over and putting it in a trashcan, and leaving it there for future truckers to stumble over or smell. Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that there should have been noise. Reefer units are not quiet. Neither are twenty or thirty idling trucks. Nor the generators some of those trucks have for power while the truck is not turned on. As I lay there in the bunk, sweating in the stifling air, the first thing I noticed was the silence. I looked up at the little 12-volt fan that was set over my bunk that was supposed to be blowing across me in an attempt to keep me somewhat comfortable. It seemed to me as if it decided to go on strike, because it was not moving at all. I wondered if maybe I had finally killed the truck batteries, as I was prone to do when I spent too much time on the laptop and did not start the truck to recharge them before going to sleep. If it were not for the companies idle policy, I would just start the truck and let it run all night, with its blessed air conditioning keeping me cool and comfortable. But I had gotten into trouble more than once, letting the truck idle too long and thereby "wasting fuel". So, that left it up to the little 12-volt fan, which was loud enough by itself to wake the dead, to keep me cool enough to sleep. I groaned as I rolled out of the bunk to check the batteries. I reached over and picked up my cell phone to check the time, wondering if I could get a couple of hours of more sleep. Oddly, the face on the cell phone was dark. "Damn!" I said to myself. Did I forget to charge it too? "I must seriously be getting old," I mumbled. I was just 35 years old, but I have really bad short-term memory. I stabbed at the power button a few times with no results before giving up on it and setting it back on the shelf. I opened the privacy curtains and peeked out through the windshield to see what I could see. It was still dark and foggy. Foggy enough I could not see across the parking lot. "That's odd. I never knew it got foggy in Texas," I said to myself. As a truck driver, I spent a lot of my time alone, with only myself for company, so I tended to talk to myself more often than perhaps you would. It was more for having the noise rather than actually saying something. I moved through the curtains and sat in the driver's seat, which squeaked in protest as if it resented me waking IT up this early. I fumbled with the keys that I always left in the ignition switch so I would not lose them. I turned the key over, but nothing happened. Frowning, I turned the key again, and then once more for good measure. The truck was dead as a doornail, so to speak. It seems I had once again killed the batteries and my dispatcher was not going to be happy with me. Looking around, I noticed that it was really too quiet to be where I was. There was no sound of trucks running, any reefers, or generators running, nothing but silence. I looked out the window at the truck next to me. I could barely see it through the thick fog. It should have been idling if there were a driver in it. He would have been running his AC, as it was not a company truck like mine. Only company drivers were at the mercy of their companies whims on fuel management. Owner operators, who owned their own trucks, could waste as much fuel as they wanted in the name of comfort. They paid for it, so why not. I noticed that even though I could see the next truck over, I could not see any lights from other trucks. Every truck in the lot had to be sitting there dead. Nothing was stirring, not even a mouse, nosing around a pee-bottle. I chuckled at my own unspoken joke. Clearly, something was not right here. It would be all but impossible for every truck out there to have dead batteries, or so I thought. Also, there were no streetlights lighting the parking lot. There were no lights on in the truck stop store that should be open twenty-four hours a day. It was as if I were sitting in a bubble, my own little world. Being a practical man, I took note of all these details, and decided to go back to bed. I would deal with all this strange stuff in the morning, when I could see. As I crawled back into the bunk, I thought to myself, "Finally, a peaceful few hours I could sleep." And I did just that. When I woke this time, the sunlight was shining through the privacy curtains. I wondered if I had overslept, but then I remembered the battery was dead on the cell phone, so the alarm would not go off and wake me. "Just great, now there is another reason for my dispatcher to be pissed at me," I thought. I slowly rolled out of the bunk and stood up. The bunks in those trucks were not the most comfortable. They usually consisted of a four or five inch thick mattress, about three feet wide. They would usually do the job of providing a place for a tired trucker to sleep, but that was about it. It certainly was not the Ritz. I reached up to the top of the sleeper, stretching my arms and back, before looking for my clothes. As usual, they were balled up on the floor where I threw them the night before. I did take the time to look for clean underwear, but otherwise put on the same thing I had the day before. I did not get to wash clothes often, and there was just not that much room for storage on the truck, so I didn’t usually bring much. Having dressed, I opened the privacy curtains and the bright sunshine slanting through my front windshield immediately blinded me. Squinting my eyes, I went forward to sit in the driver's seat with its usual squeal of protest from overworked springs. Remembering the events during the night, I tried the ignition key again - nothing. There were no lights, no telltale buzz of low air pressure, nothing. I don’t know what made me think that it would be any different from last night. My bladder chose this time to remind me that I had other morning duties to take care of. Yawning, I opened the door and climbed down from the big International truck. I looked across the lot to the store, and decided I did not want to take the time to walk there, so I walked around the end of the trailer and took care of my business. I looked around and made sure I was not flashing my unmentionables to every trucker in the lot. It's a guy thing I guess. You know, like when you go to the restroom and stand at one of those wall urinals, and you are sure every man in there is looking at your penis and wondering if you are bigger than he is. You are so sure of it, that you lean way into the urinal trying your best to hide it while at the same time, not drowning yourself in your own piss as it splatters off the back. Yea, you guys know what I am talking about. Don't deny it. Anyway, I finished my business and zip back up. As I turned to walk to the front of the truck, I noticed something odd at the back of the trailer next to me. It's was a hat, lying on the ground. It wasn’t just any hat, but one of those, "10 gallon" cowboy hats. Now, it's not that unusual to see stuff laying on the ground behind a trailer in a truck stop. I have already mentioned how careful truckers are with their pee bottles, but this was different. The hat appeared to be new; it was still clean. Now most truckers love their hats, and that type of hat was not cheap. I would think someone would notice if his prized hat went missing. I walked over, picked it up, and looked it over. Not being an expert in cowboy hats, I could tell it was black and was made of wool. It had some white trim on it that ran around the hat and into some type of decoration on the front. Being the nice guy that I am, I thought I would take it up to the tractor and leave it on the drivers step. I went to take a step and promptly tripped over something. I cursed my clumsiness and looked down to see what I tripped over. Have you ever heard of those associative studies? It is where you look at 3-D patterns and try to pick out what the object in the pattern is? You really have to relax your focus and take in the whole picture to see what is actually in the pattern. However, if you really focus on it, the only thing you can see are little dots or whatever makes up the body of the pattern. Well, I was not quite completely sure of what I was looking at. It looked like the cowboy who had lost his hat, lost his toupee also. It was a clump of hair, sticking up a couple of inches out of the ground. It reminded me somewhat of road kill. Road kill that had been run over hundreds of times and ground into the pavement where there was just hair left, and nothing more. I don't care how much of a nice guy I am, I am NOT going to pick up his toupee. Nope, not me. It was then I started seeing other "inconsistencies". The trailer looked a little odd. It was too low to the ground, and the doors were beat up a little more than usual. The metal almost looked warped. It looked like something heavy had been attached to the bottom of the trailer and it had bent and warped the metal from trying to hold it up. It was not much, just a few wrinkles in the metal. So, I walked around to look higher up the side of the trailer, and didn’t see anything else. Whatever it was had affected just the end of the trailer. The trailer next to it though, that is a different story. It also showed the same warping effect, but it came further up the length of the trailer by a few inches. It was also apparent that whatever had affected it had done so to a greater extent. The metal was even more deformed and the trailer sat lower to the ground. I walked to the rear of the trailer again and looked at the one next to it, same thing, just worse. The rear of the next trailer actually sat a full 8 inches lower, and the warping was worse. The pattern repeated on all the trailers in that edge of the parking lot, all of them showing damage further along the length of the trailer, the damage on each one greater. A few trailers over they were actually pressed to the ground. I looked a bit closer, and had to shake my head, as I really had to wonder if I was losing it. The trailers actually seemed to be melding with the ground. By that I mean, it looked like the trailers had been pressed into the ground by something very heavy, but where the trailer and the ground met, there was no obvious displacement of earth. It seemed like the metal of the trailer had just changed into the ground that it was touching. Do you remember the emotional problems I mentioned earlier? One of those problems is that I have locked down my emotions. Not all of them mind you, but some of them. I can feel anger pretty well. I can feel love, though maybe not the way others feel it. In fact, I have been told that I am a rather cold person at times. When people think I should be having some kind of emotional reaction, I tend to leave them blinking, waiting, for me to do something. But it never comes. Some people say that is being "even keeled". Others say it is a major psychological problem and that I should go to a therapist. What it boils down to, is that I do not react to things like other people. Nothing much scares me. I do get cautious, but not like being cautious while driving on wet roads. More like cautious not to make any noise while sneaking up on someone. I do get a reaction when I am stupid and do something that almost gets me killed. Where most people would poop their pants and turn white with fear that they almost died, my heart beats harder in my chest, my breathing quickens, and then I think "Damn that was fun". Maybe that makes me emotionally disturbed, I don't know. I do not really care either. I am what I am, who I am. The point of that is that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I should have been feeling something other than curiosity. I should have been feeling apprehensive, or scared, or nervous, or something other than what I was feeling. I was standing in a truck stop parking lot, looking at a bunch of trailers that look like they tried to melt into the ground. The blending of metal and earth appeared seamless, but should not have been possible by any physical law that I knew of. It was simply not possible. Yet, here it was, staring me in the face and all I could feel was - curious. Ok, back to the practical stuff. It looked like something, I don't know what, came through the parking lot at an angle to the lot. Some wave of energy, or gravity anomaly, or something else, came through and affected all those trailers. In this world of sci-fi movies and books, it was relatively easy to accept that something like that had happened. Of course, that did not get me any closer to understanding it, but the proof was right in front of me. While I stood there and stared at the scene of mechanical carnage, I had a nagging feeling that something was missing. I could not quite put my finger on it. So, I looked around some more to see what else I could find it. After a minute or two of scouting, it came to me. There were no cars or trucks going by on the nearby interstate. There were no trucks idling in the lot. Most importantly, there were no people. I could not hear any talking, or moving around from anyone. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any people at all. The lot was completely empty of human presence. This time of morning, there should have been trucks pulling in and out of the lot, truckers running into the store for breakfast, others getting fuel before getting on the road. In short, it should have been a mad house. But there was not one person in sight - I was alone. Now, to be honest, THAT made me a little nervous. Don't get me wrong, at heart I am a loner. I grew up as a loner, not having many friends in my life that I could remember. I did not mind being alone. I was told it had something to do with me being an "unbound child”. However, this was different. There were supposed to be people there. Physical presences, even if I did not want to interact with them. But there was nobody, except for me. I had to wonder where they all were. Okay, now this was getting kind of spooky. Continues... |
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