![]() ![]() It was a 1971 Camaro and I had still been paying on it, but I didn't suppose that mattered now. My own car was around the side, also battered to junk. Then the girl began to cry and it was all right - or at least better. 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. The black counterman was frozen by the radio, a dishcloth in hand, looking amazed. Milk and a few drops of blood fell on to the counter. I turned my head and saw that the trucker had squeezed his glass hard enough to break it. Both hands were clamped into her cheeks, dragging the flesh down, turning it into a witch's mask. 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. For a moment he was silhouetted against the hot afternoon sky like a crippled scarecrow, and then he was gone into the drainage ditch. Instead it drove him up and out, the way a punter kicks a football. As things turned out, it would have been better if it had. Snodgrass screamed, the sound high and thin, nearly lost under the Reo's heavy diesel roar. One of the trucks gave way and the other charged down, huge front grill glittering savagely in the sun. He got his balance again, but it was too late. His feet tangled each other and he faltered and almost fell down. He couldn't have been any more than five or six running steps from the edge of the flat parking lot when he turned back to look, fear scrawled on his face. Two of the trucks lunged after him, smokestacks blowing diesel exhaust dark brown against the sky, huge rear wheels machine-gunning gravel up in sprays. He slammed out the door and then he was sprinting across the gravel towards the drainage ditch on the left. I was on the stool closest to the door and I got a handful of his shirt, but he tore loose. His eyes were wilder than ever, and his mouth hung loosely and he was blabbering: 'We gotta get outta here we gotta get-outta here we gotta get outta here -' The kid shouted and his girl friend screamed. He turned the table over getting up, smashing coffee cups and sending sugar in a wild spray. 'You oughta -' That was when Snodgrass bolted. 'You went too fast,' the trucker was protesting. You couldn't see the turnpike from the window and the phone was out. Across the road an old Ford station wagon had been slammed through the handrails. She was the worst, even though she was face down. She had hit running but never had a chance. ![]() She had jumped from the Caddy when she saw it wasn't going to make it. Halfway across the lot from it lay the body of a girl in a pink dress. Its owner stared out of the star-shattered windshield like a gutter fish. ![]() At the entrance to the truck stop's turnaround, there was a blasted Cadillac. It had been battered into senseless junk. The kids' Fury was lying ~n its roof at the end of long, looping skid marks in the loose crushed rock of the parking lot. Trailer trucks, interstate haulers with a lot of licence plates and CB whip antennas on the back. ![]() There were a couple of Macks, a Hemingway, and four or five Reos. Seven or eight heavy trucks were out there, engines rumbling in low, idling roars that sounded like big cats purring. He was looking through the diner-length picture window at the parking lot. He was an elderly black man with a smile of gold and he wasn't looking at the trucker. 'You might have missed something.' 'Hell,' the short-order cook said. 'You went too fast,' the trucker protested. He flipped it across the band and got nothing but static. The short-order cook shrugged and turned it on. 'Try the radio again,' the truck driver at the counter said. lie was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep. He had a tight little potbelly encased in a good suit that was getting a little shiny in the seat. The two kids who had come skidding into the parking lot in the old Fury were trying to talk to him, but his head was cocked as though he was hearing other voices. His eyes had got bigger, showing a lot of the whites, like a dog getting ready to fight. Different sites may have different approaches and designs for laying out the content, so occasionally you may need to explore further to get to the next chapter.TRUCKS The guy's name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy. You’ll need a web browser and an active Internet connection in order to read every chapter available on the author’s website. In this post, you’ll find 79 free general, modern fiction, short stories, and spiritual web series. ![]()
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