Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. My name's Ray and right now
I'm sitting in the driver's seat of a freight liner
needs pop in. Every time I shift my weight, you'll
hear the engine eyed length, the clatter in the doors.
This is for the record, in case something ever happens,
or in case I just need to convince myself later
that I didn't dream it. Sun's not quite up yet,
but there's just enough gray light spilling over the inter
state that you can spot just steaming off the mirrors.
I've been on the stretch since three a m. Somewhere
way out past mile MARKO one hundred thirty six rows
of fresh ass? What go on for miles the sort
of work only county money and federal indifference can buy.
Miss hovers above the bam, making the empty fields beyond
look deeper than they should like you could step out
of the cap and just keep falling. I've hauled everything
from produced propellants done Highway forty one, and every so
often you notice odd things that this IRA tire blowouts
aftermath cap has fuel tanks. A deer at the tree
line with its eyes canpowderablue when your high beans, but
this was different. Right before the sun broke the horizon,
there they were a set of tire tracks, deep and unmistakable,
slicing down the embankment from the shoulder with the fresh
blattop met a spill of red dirt. At first, my
brain tried to explain, must have been another howler, someone
in trouble, maybe a surface crew taking equipment to a workside.
Except these tracks went made by anything smaller than my own.
Rigged wind grooves pressed heavy and recent, the soil at
the edges still clumping with morning damp. I saw the
divots from dual axles, the wavy chatter of a loaded
trailer bouncing off you blacktop, My own foot hovered up
of the clutch, a line of sweat forming under my collar.
Despite the shell. There wasn't a break in the guard
rail that got me right off. No sign of an
exit or temporary ramp, no tire rubber, no marks scarring
the pavement where someone might have crushed the currents or
drifted by accident. Everything about it said a deliberate but
the road didn't offer any place to go. I parked
up behind the shoulder hazard lights clicking, then knees out
into the mist out Here, traffic's boss enough that silence
gets thick. No wind, the birds keep their distance, or
maybe just stay quiet. There wasn't a sound but the
ping of my engine cool and my boots crushing the
wet grass. I felt there shivering against my neck. Smelled
a reek of cigarettes that was mine, curling up faintly,
as if someone had been standing right where I was
minutes before. Then I noticed the cap not mine, a
Peter belt with out of state plates, sitting nose first
in the emergency lane of about twenty yards from where
the twin track vanished off the shoulder. All the windows
were rolled up. The cab door, when I gave it
a tug was locked from the inside. I rapped gently,
got no answer. The only response was the low hiss
of a Seabee radius still switched on. Inside. Leaning closer,
I could make out a hummostatic, then a voice feigned toiney,
repeating the beginnings of a sentence before being clipped off.
The scent of cigarettes was stronger here, bared with the
ghost of fast food coffee. I pressed my knuckles against
the warm glass, spotting an ashtry full of fresh butts,
a ham radio mike looped against the dash, and a
lubberc open to half finished route list. For a second,
I felt like I was breathing in someone else's air.
Everything was in place, the seats still sopped in body heat.
I could swear the echo of footsteps lingered in the
gravel behind me. No sign of struggle, nothing broken, no
glass in the ground. It looked like the driver had
rolled up, parked, said the brake, and simply left stepped
away without turning off the radio or locking the lock.
This sort of thing isn't unheard, but combined with the
tire tracks and the dirt tracks leading nowhere through its
softest butter with no exit anywhere in sight, the gut
level sense of wrongness kept piling up. I gabbed my
handhold and called it in. My voice kept catching, and
I had to force myself not to sound panicked. Eastbound
forty one mile one hundred thirty six. Found abandoned rake
cab lot, driver missing, no visible accident with left requesting
local law, possible medical. The words tasted sirer, lodging behind
my teeth. My thumb pressed the transmit button harder than
it should have watching my own exhaled billow inside the
cab glass. Something in my bones told me I was
sending out a message into a silence that had already
given its answer. By the time I slid back into
my seat, hand shaking worse than after a triple espresso.
The only thing left was that he be the last
scrap of connection to whoever had vanished, still sending out
its faint, broken warning. The truth is, this kind of
a nise doesn't come out of nowhere. Life on the
road gets you used to see weird stuff, and it's
easy to brush moments like these off as tricks of exhaustion, boredom,
or the aimless rolling dark. But leaving that truck behind,
knowing the driver could have been met or might still
be out there just beyond the age of sight, I
told myself I'd pay attention, just in case this was
the last time I stumbled across a set of tracks
running off the map. Routine's the only thing that keeps
you sane out here. When you drive across state lines
week after week, hopping time zones like it's nothing, you
start to measure life and rest stops and fuel receipts
instead of birthdays. Usually the day begins with a groan
of vinal seats and the ritual of checking tire pressure,
slashing cheap coffee into myself until it burns just enough
to shop my system awake. The radio is always low,
tuned to static or the same handful of old As
everyone passes along the route. On good runs, all scan
for voices ade hay, there trouble ahead or a breaker
one nine. Anyone must bound past Evanville just to remind
myself I'm not the only living soul on the ribbon
of blacked up. A lot of people don't understand what
I mean by a brotherhood of the road. It's not
some noble blue collar myth. It's the fact that at
ree m if you find yourself boxed in near a
way station and see another set of headlights flicked the
brites twice, you know that a friend guys like Mike
Peanut but Etretsky, Oh Shiligacirez, who once saved my ass
with a single warning when a dear eat half a
football field out in front of my load. We swap jokes.
He'd be amazed. What passes for conversation tall tales about
haunted diners, Bob threats about dot checks. Bertie is traded
over truck stop pancakes. There's gossip too, Maybe you've heard versions.
My cousin met a hitchiker who vanished from mile ninety eight,
or Tom Garrison, remember him, He just disappeared, left his
log book and everything. Always somebody of the body, always
a little tongue in cheek until it isn't. But for
most high was like this one, the infamous stretch of
forty one are more but survival than spookstores. You talk
about real hazards. Construction that never seems to finish, Cones
blinking for weeks on end, detos posted with angry arrows,
sending you double back and stead a forward the sections
known in the circuit. The guys call it that infinity
stripped cones by the mile, glaring halogens at all ayars,
concrete barriers that seem to shift overnight, and for all
locker planing. You get a sixth sense about which neck
crews do the work and which leave things half done.
Were a panel's loose or a sign doesn't match its post.
Guys keep mentalists of bad markers, avoiding them like you
would pot. All the size of a doghouse. I do
what must do, fois and Aya. I'll pop a caffeine pill,
wash it down with warm water, crack the window to
let a near so cold it bones. Sometimes I'll scan
the CV, just a catch of voice and make sure
I'm not alone with only the hum of the engine
and my own thoughts. Sometimes we laugh about their phantom lane,
a piece of black top that appears disappears, shows up
on GPS only after three in the morning. Silliness right.
Usually someone rolls their eyes, pinches the cigarette into the
ashtray and says, if you're seeing extra highways, time to
hang up the keys. And I'll admit, most of the
time it is just fatigue, skulking in the corners of
your eyes at the end of a ship parked at
one of the stubby pull offs they leaf for us
in the middle of nowhere. I fire up my TV watcher,
runs on spotty WiFi. Sown now to the laugh track.
Sometimes you feel something brewing under the skin of the night.
Attention the hes standing up on your arm when you
see a stretch of cones that don't seem to match
yesterday's map, But you force yourself to focus on the
mundane log your irows wash up in a tile bathroom
that smells of AMMONIAIR call home to a forice mail
if you have one left worth calling discomfort in numbers, receipts, tickets,
irows of service, lane's cut and paved, every detail accounted for.
I used to think that was enough, that numbers and
routines would form a shield against anything weird creeping out
at the edge of the lamp light. Truth is, no
matter how practical you are, no matter how hard you
try to laugh off the chill, clutching your roobs at
hot IROs the roads, always hunting for ways to slip
past your guard. That night, after I saw the tracks,
a lay though with can laughter echoing off the window,
I must have watched six episodes in a row, barely
taken in the plot, just waiting for my mind to
slip from static to sleep. But my eyes kept drifting
to the side view mirror and the dog lem beyond
the cones, like I was waiting for a pattern to
snap into view, some logic in the way the highways
twist routes, half remembered, layin, split and vanish. That was
the last good sleep I had for a long while
old school truck stops a kind bill before the chainstows
rolled in. I tracked all the drifters, too proud or
too tired to faint. Big city JOm Quay, glass lick
with finger prints, baking, that taste of last week's coffee.
It's the best place for news that despatchers never tell you.
Next morning, elbows perched on the sticky linoleum counter, I
overheard two drivers talking in the next booth. Kept their
voices low, like maybe saying it out loud would make
it stick. You see that thing about Freeborn's truck upon
one hundred forty four. One asked, callous hand trembling over
a mug, YEA left it locked up neat. The other replied,
no forced entries, he'd be still going. Keys inside. Their
eyes darted briefly my way. I lifted my mug, feigning
interest in fade to jump packet beside my toast. I
finished breakfast quickly, too aware of my tongue, my hands,
my pulse. I stepped out into the bracing air and
thumbed up in my tablet. They're soothing and patterns. I
marked out all the last known locations where I'd heard
about new disappearances, scrolling through incident reports and local news blogs,
truck of forms mostly designed for talking about pay scales
and DoD harassments. It didn't take much to notice a pattern.
All these phantom rigs, similar times at past midnight, always
within sight of huge stretches of construction, but never in town.
Check ins at nearby truck stops time stamped after the fact,
My edge logs ending mid sentence. One even had a
fuel with seat registered miles past where the rick was discovered.
I began aligning depends on the digital map. Each incident
followed a path roughly parallel threding through the parts of
the highway still under work, and when I checked satellite
imagery from months apart, something old stood out. At every
site somewhere along the stretch was unopened, never driven. Fifth
lane cordoned by barrels or cones, painted like it was
meant for traffic, but never used. Curiosity is an itch
that get under the skin. At first, I told myself
it was just interest, a hobby to keep my brain
busy between shifts. I started keeping notes in my seat
back ledger, drawing arrows whenever I spotted barriers. For a
fifth flane or a temporary closure on a night with
empty traffic and no visible crews. Driving became a little different.
After at I found myself checking construction sites for signs
of activity, crushed soda cans, cigarette butts, the scrape of
steel boots over concrete. Sometimes i'd slow lighting head let's
crawl over the aggregate, daring the cunes to move. Most
time nothing happened. But one night I passed close works
on Coonstact in a hapazard line, not a single machine inside,
where a sign should have read work ahead of marriage left,
someone scrolled and no exit, and faded spray paint on
the reverse. In my log I wrote keep track fifth
lanes unused. Always at night I pressed my pin a
little too hard, left a dent on the next page.
A week later I realized I'd lost truck of whom
I was writing the record for caffeine and Habit masked
the weariness, but nothing dulled the edge of a knees.
The more I stared at the maps and re seats,
the less sense the hire was made. Nothing lined up
between the paperwork and the pavement beneath my wheels. That
next run, I kept my recorder running testing one two,
rough forty one through one hundred forty lay enclosures, fifth
lanes sealed, no active crew inside, all clear. The glow
from my dashboard bathed the cabin pale blue light as
darkness pressed in closer outside. I kept watching the road
for the subtle hints, but mostly I waited for the
moment the patterm I reveal itself. I couldn't have known
it was about to get a whole lot weirder. Crossing
state lines at midnight and the third Thursday in March,
rain drumming the paint off the low slung cones, I
switched the sea beach to Channel nineteen for the usual
night time talk. At first, nothing but static. Then a
sudden hiss broke the silence of panet voice highe and quivering,
spun out and burst between feedback squalls. Mile marker won
four four repeat, don't turn, don't you see it left?
It's not The voice bled out, overlapping its salve, a
reversal like someone had hit rewind on the tape. For
a moment I thought it was garbled to broadcasts, some
joker running a loop. But then another voice, deeper, familiar,
cut through trailing off into raraged metallic echoes. I realized
I was cold. It was my own, garbled but unmistakable.
I slamed on the brake, I scanning for points of reference.
The GBS showed my location as clear smack dab on
wrout forty one, not a single detro poster. Yet there
was the glow of orange lights up ahead and an
arisign set against a medium that didn't match my memory
of the route. I gripped the wheel chest height, irrestraining
for any real sight out side of the slap of
a wiper, the rattle of trailer chains, a voice that
wasn't minor composed of static. Instead, I got the hollow
hush of a world with too much background removed, and
then it was gone, transmission snap to silence, the orange
lights dimming behind an odd haze, like someone rolling back
the world an inch at a time. Memory can be treacherous,
but in the following days I started comparing stores on
the late night net channels, Guys who had lost a
rig in a fog bank, Others who mentioned traffic pilots
who simply drifted off radio with no trace but the
echo of their last signal. I asked around the flying
j twenty miles up the interstate. There's a driver named
Hemi double crunk cells, who's been running this rut longer
than I burned a license. We bumped into each other,
swapping out our thermosis. I asked, careful, what's your take
on these fifth lanes, all the closures? He squinted, a
voice lowered just above a growl. You see a fifth
lane open, doesn't mean you're meant to use it. He
spat a stream of tobacco into the gravel. If the
cones are there, leave him. If they're gone, drive on by.
Never seen a crew working those, and you weren't neither.
Something in the skin around his eyes a bruise, looked
like Heath stayed awake too many nights, seeing things worth forgetting.
He tapped the gage on his glove box twice, a
superstition or a nervous tick, before heading off without another word.
I spent hours back in my cat screening bright in
the dark, reviewing dash of feeds from drivers who vanish
courtesy of a despatcher who owed me a favor. Again
and again, the same glitchy flicker, roadway lights stretching too far,
angles warped to digital timestems, jumping backward and forward by minutes,
sometimes even IROs. Always in the missing frames, a flash
of alternate pavement, another set of reflectors running parallel, not
marked by any official sign. The more I compared notes,
the greater the compulsion to dick. I dug up permit records,
notes on construction crew scheduled along the rats, pulling up
Google street view archos to compare what showed up to
what was supposed to be there. At every phantom lane sight.
The details were off, suindly, spelled wrong. All CAP's warnings
posted in styles I'd never seen on a real construction site.
No heavy equipment, just neatly a line, barriers and warning
arrows that pointed a little too sharply off road. No
permit matched, no official recortied to the closures. When I
pressed the county clerk, she stammered something vague company five
handles the Royal Expansion, Except the company didn't exist in
the state business database. The investigation ate up more of
my life. I cataloged these irregularities, the warts on age,
the missing logs, the time slits, and the dash footage.
Sleep didn't come easy. I drifted toward the edge of
the fringe, pressing play again and again, looking for anything
I missed. The fifth lane was no longer rumored to me.
It was a pattern, and it was drawing me closer
every night. Out at the edge of a little gas
station by the cross roads, I waited. I was for
a contact I only knew as Maddock's ended up with
a riding minilla envelope left on my dashboard and stead
no note, just a battered, flashed drive inside on the
casing in s much sharp eye was a single warning,
don't ask, just watch and stay awake. Act At the
cap that night, under a rain streak canopy of sodium lights,
I slotted the drive into my laptop. The file was
raw dashfootage sixty three minutes a highway, all shot from
chest level in a free eight the time stump mashed
the night rig vanished up at the one hundred forty
four exit. For the first twenty minutes, uneventful highway hiss,
the regular thump of lane markers, occasional sight of rain,
and the passenger window a closure head, four range cones,
blinking arrow worning to merge right. Only as the truck
rolled closer the lane ahead did and narrow. Instead, a
brief flicker, subtle, almost dintifactured another smooth, blapt up lane
peeling away to the left, unmarked with just the shimmer
of reflective paint and a row of solop out post lights.
The truck didn't so much turn as drift. The wheel
twitches like a magnet's pulling it off course. The camera lurches,
headlights illuminating stretches of incomplete highway, and behind a quick
shutter of the lens, the lane seems to open up wide,
as if cut into nothing but rolling dust, barriers, scattered
arrow boards blinking in impossible patterns, cones making a pentagram
in the dark. Across the footage, the warning sign flickers,
replaced by half lits solo. It's men invests, faceless, moving
behind unfinished rails. The engine refs, the view snapped sideways,
and the screen freezes on road strouds vanishing under a
slab of half port concrete. The last sound is not metallic,
not quite human, as sharp fizzling screen before the camera
drops to the truck floor, showing only dash lights jittering,
then turtle black. The time stump hopped forward for thirty
two jumps five forty four, a full Iyo gune with
no interval. I sat there staring at my reflection in
the monitor, wide eyed, slack jawed, unable to reconcile what
I just watched With twenty years of real world experience.
The caffeine pills in my pocket felt like pebbles, suddenly
useless against the tide crawling up my spine. Every joky story,
every room a half left off at the diner had
a foundation. Every phantom lane was of real physical thing
therein not there at the same time, a parallelogram of unreality,
of laid onto the world and had hunted the roads
were men and women ran their lives, unnoticed by any
authority who might care enough to stop it. After that
obsession hummed under every thought, I started marking my logs
with more detail, noting off kilter cones, misnumbered exits. Anytime
a lane closure looked wrong, I slowed, scanned the barricades,
checked for those impossible parallelo gruns shining at night. By
this stage, I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was
out there and the Fifth Flame wasn't just passively feeding
on circumstance. It was actively selecting its moments waiting for
the right driver, the right fatigue, the right space between worlds.
On a gray ski deper morning, with low clouds pressed
to the ground and the wind picking at the back
of my ears, I left the rig park beside ear
closed workside at dawn. No crew, no trucks, just a
row of cones, one not flat though lay enclosed sign
and distobed, but a slip of tire shining through the clay.
I walked slowly, boots crunching over patches of scattered gravel.
The smells were ordinary, sun warmed asphalt, petroleum, the tang
of old insulation. But then all details snapped into folks
about a heart at tucked a side, a sign, a
new invest half bury near a fold up chair, duncan
cup still worn to the touch atop a pylon. Peepers
drifted at the edge of the cleared area. I gathered
them with trembling hands. Handterton locks. Stamped tickets for fuel
and gatorade, receipts from out of state shops. The times
were wrong again. Meals paid for ten minutes after sum
rise when the sun was barely up. Stamps with county
names that didn't line up with any county in state.
I stood awhile, listening, straining for any hintless place had
real workers, any ordinary rhythm of day labors prepping for
the morning's poor Now then just the wind, a distant
engine on the main road, and the shrill of a
single crow hiding out of sight. It was too much
for coincidence. I drove out east, stopping at a tiny
station with a single crack pump. There was a flagger
at front, old jack of all trades in a faded vest,
warming his hands over a cigarette stub. Fooks say to
ones who last on, these crews know the stores better
than any one. I offered him a coffee, made awkward
talk about the endless closures, asked out, tried about the
crews working the fifth lane. He stared, then looked away
at tight grin, cracking his sun scuff face. You ever
noticed a teacher with no paste ups, no paper trail,
he said, keeping his gazelow some projects. You run him
until the Feds show up. Then you keep your mouth shut,
act like you are never there. Sometimes they'll pay you
to forget. Sometimes you forget for free. I pressed him,
but he wouldn't give up details. Signs changed crew switched.
If you want to sleep, stop asking. He made it
sound like advice, not threat. But the facts in my
hands grew heavier. State databases showed no construction permants for
half the lane closures. The company names printed in the
warning signs appeared nowhere else. The numbers routed through dead ends,
lines that always went to an answering machine, looping the
saints static at the end. Over weeks, I thumped back
through news clippings and old stable ports, every phantom lay
and incident lined, but a never completed segment. The permits
ended half processed. The auditors signatures mismatched, contract a names
gapped in the ledges like someone had raised them during
a blackout. Even on the satellite maps, lines of new
paving curled up to nowhere, sometimes marked as future junction
that never materialized. It started looking like someone, maybe a
lot of Summons, was using these half visible closures, slipping
vehicles in and out under cover of construction, erasing paperworkers needed.
I mapped at all out, connecting each disappearance, each vake enclosure,
onto a single stay headline. What emerged was a ship
more rather than coincidence, a pattern, a pathway under construction, that,
if completed, would run counter to officially stated projects. It
hinted at a new road, threading just under the skin
of the one we all knew, never quite seen whole.
The fall struck. Maybe at the in a ghost story
at all. Maybe it's a system blurred at the edges,
sometimes human, sometimes something older, something built to swallow up mistakes, debts,
or worse. I couldn't tell if that was better or
worse than the alternatives. I always thought my instincts were
pretty good, but by this point any sense of self
preservation I was buried under the knee to know when
the next message came. A US be dropped in a
tier restroom, wrapped in a torn knapkin that need over
a caution, I went back to the cap, dawn light
barely gold at the horizon, and plugged it in half,
expecting nothing. The file opened with a jolt night footage.
This time it was real time, no addits. A big
rig calls along the clothes zone mile one hundred forty
when there's the same glow of fresh cone barriers in
the distance, Only this time the dashboard reflects a set
of row stripes diverging sharply off the main line. As
the headlights swing, a lane opens that isn't visible to
the naked eye, framing cylinders of falk and mutal blue
gray work lights. The truck's wheel books left For just
a second, you see the alternate lane stretch out, empty
and silent. Then shadowy figures all in motion, never quite
down at the edge behind the cones, faces hidden by
safety helmets in glare. Suddenly something yanks at the lens
before it goes down. Bright flashes pulse across the windshield,
distorting everything into a pinched, colorless blur. The video ends
in a gray white wash, like a TV channel blinking out.
When I blinked, the after images from my eyes, the
blue glow from my dash almost out to look out.
That's when I knew I was going to chase the
fifth Flinn until I caught it, or until it swallowed
me up to there's a line you cross when they
need to understand up weighs your sense of survival. I'd
reached it and maybe passed it loneger. That night, I
stared at my rig, tapped my notebook on the dash,
and made one last voice memo. If you find this
remembered the pattern isn't just in the roads, It's in
the spaces behind the paperwork. Nobody checks the lives. They forget.
The route was fixed in my mind. I took it slow,
easing through the familiar construction zone, sights and sounds edged
like glass in the darcas, rain fell in a fine
spray caught in the halogen archs of working lights. Solely
for miles, there was no real work being done, no machinery,
no chatter, just the endless march of orange cones weaving
patterns that didn't match the fleckors strolled into the shoulder.
The landscape seemed to twist as I drove lanes, multiplying
barriers flickering at the edge of my head lights. Road
signs swaped, numbers, sometimes blurring out entirely before refocusing into
words I couldn't quite pass. My hands cramped and the
wheel knuckles pale, as the dastboard clocklutch from two thirty
eight back to two nineteen, then forward again. I saw
it then at the periphery, a lane splitting off from
the main road, untouched, smooth, gleaming slightly in the harsh
light of my high beams. Though no official marker pointed
that way, signs with corporate logos accompany five route expansion
in progress stood at crooked angles, the company name phasing
in and out, as if half meant to be seen.
Ad I came up to the split must Hee Bee
exploded with sound, hundreds of voices all overlapping drivers I'd known,
voices I'd only heard in passing, and my own ray.
Don't take it steir right if you see the fifth lana.
The sound built of fever, a wall of pleading morning
corbold warnings echoing through the fog. For a moment, every
inch of the truck scene to vibrate, radio lights strobing
between static, and fragments of all conversations from all the
rubb so never driven, I gripped the wheel, willing myself
to keep straight. Without warning the lane I was unseen
to dissolve. For an instant, I lost sight of everything
but the alternate road, blue tinted lamps and half built exits,
arking off into the mist with riggs parked, empty, eyeling
in the distance like rows of steel tombs in a graveyard.
My foot hammered the brake, tire shrieked, slowing the rig
just before the ghost Laine could claim me completely. Forcing
the door opened, I stumbled out into the cold fog,
looking at my boots. Up here the illusion thickened. The
world beyond the cones felt non existent, eroded to nothing.
My breath hung in front of my face, and behind
it I heard voices, men and women, weaving, calls for
help that seen to feed before I could locate them.
Footsteps came from the darkness, too regular, too synchronized. The
c bee still on repeated a new warning, Ray, don't leave,
tell them. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught a flicker
of movement at the edge, shapes wearing workfasts, arms raised
as if to beckon, faces too smooth to be entirely human.
I bolted for the cap, every sent screaming. In the mirrors.
I caught sight of myself, face white, foreshaking as I
slammed the door, shoving the stick into reverse, searching desperately
for my own tire tracks. The world snapped back in incurrents.
Headlights picked up rots in the dirt leads and grew
still glistening with dew. Far down the row, official construction
lights began to warm normal reel, the kind that throw
yellow halos instead of weird shifting beams. Back up beep sounded,
A familiar human profanity told me an actual work crews
finally setting up, I jerked the wheel, barely missing a barrel,
lurching onto the paved shoulder, just as the sun burned
off the lost fringe of mist. When I finally stopped shaking,
I realized my hands still gripped the recorder, pressing record,
voice trembling and too loud in my ears. Night Run
forty one construction zone. Do not take the fifth flin
unless you want to end up like them. I'd come
back alive, or at least I was out, but I
didn't know what that meant any more, not with the
memory of empty caps, looping signals, faded tracts still achy
in my bones. Rationality, reason, ordinary explanations. They all felt
as thin and substantial as the early morning fog. And
I knew the Fifth flamee wasn't done with me, not
by a long shot. But as I eased away from
that Jim construction patch, clutching the steering wheels so tightly
my wrist act, it hit me how silent it had become.
The seabe was dead, calm, nobody chatting, no routine check
ins were cussing about way stations, and the usual crackle
of some far off truck out was missing. My own
breath sounded over a loud in the small cab. The
engine's rumble was the only anchor left. I checked my
mirrors compulsively, glancing over my shoulder every few hundred yards,
as if those half seen figures and knee n vest
might material lies right there on the shoulder, arms raised
in mourning or welcome, I couldn't say. Each time, the
landscape behind a dressett cones where I remembered none, and
mile marker IDEs where I'd just passed, showing up again
in the same reflected blow. A part of me thought
maybe the world out there beyond the glass was mollified
by my scape, indulging me this little pocket of normality
until it decided to close its hand for good. Even
though the crew bustle in at the next stretch looked
like ordinary men with stubby beard and union stickers on
their helmets, I felt reluctant to slow down again. Something
between embarrassment and shame made me push the throttle just
a hair harder. If any of those workers all my
face did see more than fatigue. They'd see the ghost
of whatever I'd nearly joined. I caught myself whispering account
of every sign and every passing mile mark of almost
an unconscious ritual, my voice gruff and low, trying to
recall every detail in case some detailed blood or faded
out of existence. With the hazards still blinking, I guided
the rigant to the shoulder, a good half mile away
from the crew, packed up my little VOS recorder, and
only them risked along, shuddering breath. If I'd believed in
kosis or visions before, I would have prayed right then.
But all I had was the cold logical tangle of
a real experience. It was a ghost, and it wasn't
a dream. Something engineered, or may be, something that had
learned to slaught itself right alongside human engineering, was hungry
out there, waiting for drivers. Too tired, too pained by memory,
too curious to stick to familiar blucked up. Watching the
sun rise from a safe distance, I replayed my voice
memo in the cab. My voice was higher than I remembered, raw,
increased at the edges. For a brief stretch of road,
I thought about pulling off entirely and leaving the rig
at the next well let truck stop, just walking away.
Maybe that was what all those vanished drivers had tried.
Maybe it made no difference whether he stayed or ran.
Traffic picked up soon after the morning. Crowds streaming east
had lights fading under the indifferent blue sky. They seemed
to bliviest to the history hiding beneath last night's miss
tracks like mine, all spotless and logoed forre It had
passed the old construction barriers, as if nothing could possibly
happen other than another long day's haul. I drove on,
following the familiar curve of highway out of the construction zone,
my eyes stinging with fatigue, but fixing the lines. I
wasn't thinking of breakfast or of my next checkin. I
was only thinking of the tire tracks in the dirt,
the feeding flicker of alternate blat up, the voices, some mine,
some not that I almost couldn't bear to remember. Part
of me wished I was back at my haunts. Save
from the striplet by gerashchnee on over a crack for
my cocounter, swapping jokes and gripes with Henry and Sheila
but the old comfort of the brotherhood felt distant. Now
I crossed the line between driver and witness without ever
meaning to. I could pretend, for a few hours, maybe
that nothing had changed, that all I needed was to
count signs log iyos and avoid the open and mark
lane at all costs. But the truth was obvious as
the dawn washing over the trucks behind. Some patterns, once
seen never fade, and something in me already knew I
be tracing that fifth lane shadow for as long as
the road stretched, for as long as men and machines
kept rolling in the lines between the real and the
impossible kept blurring just out of sight. When I finally
parked for the day, the CAB's stank of sweat and
antfree's hands trembling as I tried unsuccessfully to thread a
call for on the sea bead, just to hear another
human voice. Every muscle from neck to toes felt bricked
up and stuff. I washed down half a thermis of
waxy burnt coffee, staring at the glass at a dawn
too clean. The highway behind me was just another barely
visible scar between fields, but the image of a fifth
flane gleaming empty, separate from a stream of sane well
de pinned itself inside my skull, voices seemed to hang
in the periphery, even with the sea bee off. Half
the warnings in my own chopped accent, the rest and
the plaintive familiar droll of other loss drivers that feeling stuck,
didn't drift away, didn't get softer, not even after I
filled my lockpoo con thumb messages into a despatch app
from the safety of a busy truck stop. There at
the buzz of strangers, scene flat disconnected, cracked blue nion
clatter for Megali Friar's the hollow cufs of a diesel
starting two lanes over. Each sound snapped me back to details,
to life, to now, But under it, something else kept humming,
the thought I could have been one more missing face
tacked with thumbtacks and old Scotch shaped to the bulletin
board by terrestrioms. I fumble with my voice or corridor
thunder new memo. I meant to say safety update, something routine. Instead,
my voice came out raw, a confession, the close call,
the weirdness of the lane away, My own voice and
other driver seemed to tangle across there, reaching back through
time a forward from somewhere. I barely escaped. Each word
made my throat burn, but I got it down. I
told myself maybe I'd play it for another driver, prove
I wasn't losing my mind. The morning drifted on in
a limbo or engine noise and truck stop noise, cap
scanning the lot for familiar faces. After a half I
was stirring through smeared glass. I caught sight of SHIELDA
good jairs outside, armed deep in her tool chest and
normal sight. One of the best mechanics in the circuit
most days, more likely to lend you a crober than sympathy.
I grabbed my look book, headed out, forced myself to
act like everything was still normal. She glanced stop eyes narrowly, bray,
you look like you hit a ear and it got
up to punch you back. I shrugged, tried to sound casual.
Bad run last night. You ever run a split lane
end up somewhere you shouldn't be. Her smile faded. She
looked past me, toward the empty stretched down by the berm.
You seeing the fifth again? My skin prickled. I hadn't
said fifth, not out loud. You ever known anyone who
went looking and made it all the way back. Nope,
But I know people who tried, and you don't see
them at these stops any more. You need sleep, layers
of it, every word grounded me, help me move, fingers
clenching the mug, burning tongue, hard seat. But as I
shook my head, She'll put a hand on my shoulder,
just once. And that was all the comfort I needed,
always getting. After that brief exchange, I prowled the lots,
eyes opened for anything out of the ordinary. I didn't
even bother hiding it, and out checked. Eyes watched for
anyone fiddling with their plates, scoured the ground for trash
that didn't belong to the morning crowd, every bit of normalcy,
the clang from a drop fratchet, the scia, a waf
of you and the kicks fell like an anchor, back
to a life that nearly split into last night. Before
heading out for my next run, I saw a new
set of missing posters and the bulletin Boar, Tom Garrison,
Freebon and two other names I half recognized, new tape
glinting over dog eid photos. I checked the dates recent
within days. Their faces all had that up late, not
enough rests. Thinking about Bill's look stopped me cold. These
weren't legends, but men night seen, or at least could have.
Didn't matter how cried it or busy, a place got
something in the way. Those posters multiplied in a way
everyone seemed to look away after glancing at them. Made
clear that the rude out here was fracturing the ordinary world,
and something that looked like it was suddenly closer than
I wanted them to be. I tried to nap, couldn't.
Every time I shin depped onto my chest, A reel
of flickering lights and silent empty trucks rolled through my brain.
The scenter staale of smoke and rainsoaked assfot followed me
through shallow sleep. Instead, I plugged in old Dashkam logs,
rewinding every file from the last six months, late runs,
gas stops, reflection of cones in the mirrors I watched
with as of some one nearly a tuned once, I
swore I saw a split, a brief shimmer where the
reflection didn't match the world outside. A hint of a
lane pointed nowhere, but I blinked and it was gone.
I clung to habit, checked the oil, topped up the coolant,
rode out every possible regularity ID logged since that first day,
dates names, fake company numbers, sparty permits. Even tried to
call the local state patrol post, but got nothing but
polite thank you, we'll look into it, no follow up.
It hit me how near and visible I become one
truck in a thousand one voice, mumbling strange details nobody
wanted to hear. It was almost mean before I finally
forced myself back on to the road. Gravel crunched under
my wheels as I pulled away out on the interstate,
under clean blue sky and the shifting thread about whether
I could almost convince myself that what happened was just
a trick of tired eyes. Almost, But at the first
constructions and I passed, the cones sat silent, same odd spacing,
same off brand reflected stickers, same sense that if I
look away for even a second, the fifth lane might
peel itself open once more and further out. I recognized
the truth that would haunt everyone on this stretch, even
if they never admitted it allow. I was already lost,
whether or not the fifth flane found me again. Panic
for me always had behind business. I spent the next
days or was it a single stretched out day, throwing
myself at the log books and digging for patents. The
arch to root at wart i'd seen grew stronger than
any self preservation. New paperwork came in, all my form,
load numbers and bill of lading details, some flagged with
HASNAT codes that made me pause. The longer I looked,
the more inconsistencies emerged. The brief comfort of the truck
stopped turn brittle fast word got around. Some one saw
me pacing at midnight, face pale as a tailbite, mouth
moving in silent math. I had a few whispers, nothing
louder than the scrape of fork against plate. But the
weight of attention prickled at my neck. Even as I
played off the rumors, I dug deeper, logging into old networks,
coss referencing routes against dot warnings, news articles, dispatch your bulletins,
incidents of a fountom lane disappearance, despite every few months,
always shadowing loads marked company hold federal clearance, always when
the yacht was then non workers, never in daylight. A
patent came into focus, more on settling than any minnet
camphire tale. Every fifth lane event overlapped with shipments described
in only the Vegas terms on mark crates, hot shot
has mat or relocated assets. These entries never fit the
paperwork with the manifest, but always match with drivers who
had gone missing or had never been contacted again. The
nightmare wasn't just that the lane existed. It was that
the lane existed in service to some one or something,
a system that didn't care who had chewed up, only
that as business, whatever it was got done. I found
trace notes from a highway patrolma named Goodlot missing from
his bee two summers ago. In a tucked away country report.
He scribbled next to a map Vickles turning off into
nowhere marked as Federal O closure Some things ron Crusae
don't ask. That was enough to hollow mea. The stories
about ghost roads or hungry high was lost, all their
dark charm. Phantom lane was until when used by men
as much as by whatever darkness squatted under the myers,
anything where any one could vanish and it would look
like nothing had ever happened. The receipts, the logs, the
memories would all evaporate under a paperwork fog only a
handful of people even new to look for. That night,
as rain battered my windshields, some were past one hundred
fifty two, A new voice blared out over the seabe.
It didn't belong to anyone. I recognized a flat mountain
axe and a tone freding in ray the sea, watching
don't look at the mile markers. After midnight, the radio
hiss then cut to silence. I drove the rest of
my shift with the radio off, mirrors folded in hart hammering,
even when roadwork crews flickered by in the stuttering dusk.
But the message was clear as that one mine had begun,
tracking my progress with as much focus as I tracked
the rout of the fifth lane. Sleep all but abandoned
me after that, dreams recommencing into reels of headlights splitting roads,
of phantom signs blooming and vanishing with every mile. Eating
became roe of a thing to do with hands that
wouldn't stop shaking each run. After dark, I started seeing
things out at the edge, construction lights that multiplied their globe,
following me for impossible stretches of road where it crews
on the periphery always bent over, something hidden, never lifting
their faces. The fifth lane became less legend more presents
a constant baz under my sculp, anarch rhythm thumping at
my temble's. Other driver's voices are sometimes my own, sang
out warnings in the static. Don't take the deta ray,
don't mark the surveyor's lines, don't answer when they call
your name on the construction channel. The father I drove,
the clearer, the voices became as if some future version
of myself and dozens of others trapped beside were sending
back a warning each one. Increasingly frantic fatigue began warping
the boundaries between real and imagined. I'd lose thirty minutes
watching headlights fizzle and refocus in the mirrors. On two runs,
I caught sight of a shadowy conway, a line of
rigs with no markings, hazard lights flashing out of sequence,
always detering just ahead of me into what should have
been a close works, only for the whole area to
go dark a beat later. I cattle ogged every incident
with manic precision, photographed unusual barriers, sent them by encrypted
message to a handful of trusted friends. Reviewed every minute
of dak and footage. Photos came back warped. Sometimes a
second lane faded out of view. Sometimes cones arranged in
unfamiliar geometric patterns. One image Paul that random from a
corrupted sty cart showed a worker whose vest bled into
the air behind him, arms out, as if signaling a
turn that would never comple I started looking for this source,
comparing dates, traffic grewroute plans, Google Earth images of where
the fifth flane appeared earlist a path in slowly trickled out,
suggesting the oldest in never finished section lay far east
past mile one hundred sixty eight, under three different layers
of abandon approupe trumps raised from official memory decade ago.
If I was right, every new layer of construction simply
covered up the bones of the original road, leaping a
fifth flinn, further under folding the repetitions ever tighter monsters
or men. It didn't matter. Something had hollowed out of
space in the wet concrete where logic couldn't reach. Those
days bled together asleep was just a blink broken by
engine noise, flashes of distant lightning outlining the never completed lanes.
I rashankafen, trying to bloff my way to sanity, wondering
if every passing truck might be the last I'd see
outside the world the fifth Flane offered. Every corner of
the cab now felt watched by something more patient than
I'd ever known, content to weep for the right moment
to reel me in completely. My mind frayed, but the
need to see the heart of it, the place where
the fifth Flame began, or maybe where it ended, it
became all that kept me moving. The last day before
the storm, I called re e every map stacked across
the dash, traced with Meffinger, the sequence of impossible closures,
identifying the oldest a closed to no exit stretch just
past a shuttered wrist area, three miles of black out
lane visible only on overlays, never present when you actually
drove by. I loaded my cab that afternoon, flares, battery lanterns,
extra tapes and batteries, printeds of every regular pyramit, physical
maps in place of my phoness, unreliable guidance. For the
first time since this all began, I planned ahead. If
the fifth lane opened again, I wasn't going in by mistake.
I was going and watching on with every sense and
every record I could muster. That night, the air grew
heavy with pre storm humidity. Even the other driver scene subdued,
honkered in their vehicles with windows up, as if the
world itself was battening down. By midnight, thunderheads loomed huge
and gray on the horizon, blue white flashes illuminating the
broken lines of abandoned earthwork. When bent the last miles
of grass along the shoulder, shaking candy wrappers and cigarette
butts from the ditches, Static crawled up my forearms. As
I set my work place in the calf, lay every
radio and tape a corder out on the dashboard, taped
coordinates to the windshield. Moments after the clock flick from
twelve seven to an unreadable scramble of digits, the first
volley of rain arrived hard enough to face headlights into
useless white orbs. Trucks up ahead drifted right down, shrifting
into a stop le blinking out in the midst My
hands switted and the wheel knuckles dug and tight. As
I followed the route, I prepared east to the shadowed
rest area, to their close section with its own secret geometry.
As I approached barriers, trembled cone scattering in their natural patterns.
Yellow whiterer signed, spinning on the axis as if carded
by invisible hands. Flares had placed earlier, guttered, then snuffed
out as is swallowed from below. My phone ping a
GPS glitching map out, stuttering the screen cot between several
past locations and none I recognized, then a bidden the
lane appeared just a hint of first a subtle gleam
in hammered rain, bending away from the real highway signs
updated with impossible speed, deed left Company five, all in
blockyfont that pulsed with the rhythm of the storm. Every
instrument in the cabin haywar clocks jumped backward in ten
second chunks. Even the unlogg dashboard needle flickered, moving from
me too f with no fuel input. My the dasham
set to record automatically ify bridges if caught in a stroke,
leaping thirty seconds of footage with every new drop of rain.
The seabee hiss then spilled forth a cacophony of sound,
first the whimpering of lost drivers, then my own warnings layered.
It hop each more desperate than the last. It's not
a Laine turn around, ray, don't follow the fifth don't have,
followed by bursts of static in the hot, metallic time
of panic writing, each syllable lightning split the horizon, showing
the unearthly split of the reel and not reel. Ahead,
a line of rigs park nose to tail, rolling forward
without any one in the calves, white glove hands on
the wheels, or none at all. Rows of empty truck
sailed down the open fifth lane, hazard lights in perfect time.
This oil procession two measure too silent to belong in
this world. The moment harm stretched and sharpened by the
thunder outside and the mechanical drumming within. Another chance to
join the ritual or break it. If I dared, hot bucking,
I chose action, shoving the clutch, easing forward, a jeunned
record on the last working tape, and shot into the
opening lane, with every light burning inside. Time twisted, the
landscape bled and doubled, lanes forked, then folded back on themselves.
My own calf flickered with Phountism's drivers in faded uniforms,
hunched over steering wheels, their mouse forming silent words that
echoed in my head before I could recognize them. I
gripped the dash, repeating name, rat number, license plate, anything
to stitch myself to the real ray Monarch forty one
eastbound three J seven is forty four, not lost, not
lost It. At the line's end, the world pinched to gray,
blinding corridor. Torrents of blue light hurt my eyes, sodium
moreklight's towering over a colossal never completed overpast, tops whippen
in the gale. Beyond them, men in government black suits
and badges carved of pure all he gleam herded lines
of drivers forward, issuing silent orders he felt instead of herd,
and marked trucks rolled behind the cargo invisible pahumming like
a hornet and an oil drum. I staggered from the
cap every sensation came, and dunsidn muffled vision doubled in
front of me. Under the main arch of the overpass
loomed a figure badge clipped to a kneon vest that
glowed so fiercely outchon the floodlights. His face ran like wax,
flickering in and out of existence, first double chint, then gone,
then wholly edgeless. In his hand a clipboard with my
namerit and over and over. Half the letters blurred into nothing.
He spoke, and his voice sizzled in my mind, while
my ears rhing. We was static. You've seen what you
weren't meant to see. Forget or help maintain? These roads
don't pay themselves. Maintenance is eternal. Where you join or
ye leave? Decide right now. The impossibility of the moment
broke something loose in me. I shouted my name, hammered
the dash with my fists, held the last working tape
of the windshield, fragmentedly a reality. As I've battered the
side glass, open lightning detonated above, slicing the world, open
water pouring through every seam, overpast, shuddering tops, tearing loose
to reveal an abissel black behind everything convulsed. Blue white
oks skated across the trucks, engines dying with a sickly
whine as the overpass collapsed into hissing fog. Instinct drove
me no clear thought, just animal panic. I slid back
into the driver's seat, slowned the truck into reverse, trace
my own tire tracks by blind faith, and burned out
head light until the fifth flame blurred, then umraveled into
blank empty field under the unblinking orange Hallagans sunrise again,
and I found myself crawling down state, wraped forty one,
hands sticky with sweat and blood, wrist burning clean rain
was to rust the gutters outside. My GPS flickered back
to normal. The police scanner chirped Mundane's milk speedos, a
jack naft two canvas north, all the ordinary hustle of
a world that would never permit what I just witnessed,
the fifth lane gun from every log and every local
cops record. At the first major stop, a handful of
drivers mild around a parking lot, judiously ignoring the faded posters,
voices worry with the morning hush. I tried to speak,
but the words caught in my trow. Who would believe
what I'd seen? But A printed my logs anyway, left
every map a memo, and about a brown envelope marked
only at escugerez in case ray my hand shri Kuala
sealed it. One or two old drivers met my eyes,
no nods, but the camaraderie of the haunted lingered between us.
Walking away, I glimpsed my own face, ghosting back from
polish chrome line emptied up ice bruce from sleeplessness, and
certain for a moment whether I was the one who
escaped for just another survivor inside an old warning broadcast
sleeping forever on static air. The compressor rattled down in
my cab. I took one final voice lock, a rash,
desperate message. But if you hear this, never trust Eatu's
market company, five or any pattern of cones trusted into
five pointer ships. Don't listen for voices after midnight, don't it?
The tip cut to my own voice, warped and echoing
warnings in the language barely my own, before collapsing into
pure static mourning again. A patch of fresh tie tracked
carved across the newest spell of clay in the dawn,
curling away past the edge of mark pavement into open,
abandoned earth. No cones, no signs, only the faint chemical
with of a safety vesse, once bright, now sun bleached.
The fifth lane waits for the next driver, as ready
as ever, until the road claims another. The fifth lane
waits for the next driver, as ready as ever, until
the road claims another. I never got used to a
way to send cloon cheat nicotine burnt wiring, that chemical
tan like anta freeze left toulawn in hot steel. Every
new morning after the flavor stuck under the skin of
my tongue. In moments between routes, when the world felt
briefly real, I tried to hang on to the simple rituals,
punching a number into the fuel pump, feeling coarse diesels
spell across my gloves, washing with gritty gris up at
the edge of some ow post basin. None of it
could scrub out the memory of that luminous fog, the
hollowness in the cabs, the evil geometry of cones warped
into patterns you couldn't un see. Back in trucks, stopped daylight.
My voice barely worked. Each word I said was a test,
half expecting to hear a static. She'll have always blunt
all business cornered me before noon. You look quired, Monarch.
You need to sleep. She pourshed a cup of soup
at me. I sit, hoping for comfort, and felt only
pimprikes were swept down my back as I tried to
describe the storm, the impossible split in the road, the
way headlights blowed into the wrong horizon, Her jaw locked tight,
and for once she just listened, not joking or dismissing,
or even frowning. When I finished, she laid a callous
palm on my shoulder, her eyes searching my face for
something lost. Neither of us said the obvious thing. No
one else would believe it, yet she didn't tell me
to let it go either. Maybe some people look for proof.
The rest just now still. Sleep turned ugly, even with
the rig double locked and tuch tight under the well
lit eve, I work at intervals, hands cootching, the sheets
strove hot, with the urg tl warnings I no longer remembered.
So time past two a m I found myself at
the window, watching the periodic, restless movement of taillights on
the service ramp. Somewhere down the lot, a light flickered
through torn rain, then went out, But the shape it
left behind, a wedge of blue white against absolute ducas,
reminded me far too much of what waghed past the cones.
Empty sleepless wires became routine. Each dusk I circled the lot,
staring at the photo wall. The collection grew silently. More
names tapped up over wrinkles and moisture stains, a change
in tide of absences a couple faces. I knew the
rest just that same stubborn gaze, strong jawed or tired,
or squinting against an unseen glare. No chemra could record.
The bulletin board always seemed to add a new one
after storms. The dates, never more than a date, were
too old. No one ever explained why drives through sunlight
didn't fix much. The memory changed every run. I'd find
myself staring at the road for two lawn. I was
watering from focusing too hard on any blip of alternate pavement,
any shift in signage, any slightly wrong reflection, trickling at
the margins the normal woework. Guys in batter gear drilling,
chain smoking became comforting only up to a point, certain
zones untouched, since the storm still bore marks of deters
raised more efficiently than any crew could have managed. Once
passing a regular patch, I sold that familiar gap between cones,
the line too straight, branded, not with the lane closes,
but simply five stenciled in black spray paint on a
mud splotted barrel. My stomach clench. I sped up without
even intending to When I finally dared to sift through
the locks at lef foot, sheela map's notes tapes I
did in the far corner of an empty diner, the
kind that closes only for health code vlisions, not holidays.
She joined me behind the bat of counter, running her
eyes over the print outs and shaking her head, lips
pressed into a single bloodless line. I've heard stores for years,
she said, but this that fits, did all fits. She
counted out incidents, tapping the print outs for each. You
notice nobody goes missing in the day, where if they do,
it's always the ones working off clock, cleaning up messus
to the rest freight just to her voice cut short,
like she couldn't bear to say vanished. I nodded and
spread out my new notes I've begun overlaying fresh data.
Flagged manifests. Company credentials there showed up only on jobs
connected to Company five, or at times contracts that used
no real name at all, only code strings or federal
routing digits. The shipments always carried and marked containers, no
clear manifest, never anything traceable to real cargo brokers. That week,
my nurse fraid until even daylight felt alien. Twice I
caught email bounce's return informs as no record or not
recognized authority, routed in governmentees but empty of real denial,
just to dead end at the border of an official explanation.
I tried to trace the real origin of the company,
driving to a listed regional office half a state north.
The address led to a torn down gas station, all
pumps ground under grass, a mail bookscaping with rainwater, and
traded junk mail. Every step made it clear that the
disappearances lined up with a schedule not written for human eyes.
Checking the next set of manifests, I hunted for overlap.
Three more rigs missing, all on the same hasmet run
carrying nothing but sealed containers from authorized storage loaded at midnight,
all meant for a special delivery direct hand if only
such direct handoffs never hit state inspection locks. No trace
after mile marker one hundred fifty five free except for
the growing legend of phantom closures and a handful of
battered receipts showing time stamps that were set and medable
except for the frozen ire always two seven a m.
A new link emerged somewhere between the storm and now.
Some one was using a phenomenon. Someone was making people
and machines disappear, covering it up with paperwork, sidestepping oversight,
with the promise of federal clearance, hiding abductions inside something inexplicable.
Didn't sleep that night either. I spent eight straight I
was trolling highway patrol feeds, local news tips out a
few underground forums where drivers traded stores about ghost routs.
The digital lucks blinked and looped. Somewhere near dawn, A
fresh message appeared in one of the forums from a
user whose location paints are known rout sea five short
tense letters. They're moving again. If you look for mile
markers after midnight, they'll look back. Stop drawing. They'll chart
your route for you. I sat there inhaling cold air,
staring hard at the street lights, frattering through the windows.
Nobody else looked up. That's how I've always starts, denying
a truth until it eats through every barrier you've built,
then comes for you. The first gap. I already knew
I was past the point of easy exit, a dead
sprint for proof overage accents. The following dusk, I left
the endo state for two eyes to track a shipment.
I shouldn't have found no manifest, no legal booking, but
Clear's words carved and pinned on a top. See if
I've freyed no stop. The highway was cut up by closures,
arrow boards pointing curls into the dock. Half the cone
scattered like an unfinished warning storm. Clods built up overhead,
making the ordinary light too flat, too cold. As I
rolled into the closure zone, why seb crackled, first nothing
but distortion, then a voice. I had fought so long
it felt like my own gun, unfamiliar, Ray, don't take
the next eacher, my markers lying no answer When I
tried to reply. Reception dived for the next ten miles,
but I'd seen enough to know something invisible was tracking,
not just the routes, but the choices, the small moments.
Drive was chased an omaly with intent. It wasn't enough
for the road to split. You had to want to
see the split coming. You had to look for it.
With every long night, my nerves unreveled. Sometimes I'd spot
an empty flat bed idling at a ramp, engine running
hazard lights, flirting silent moss at the rain, and I'd
think about stop to check the cap for signs of life.
Most times I kept rolling after the first warning, I
didn't dare linger anywhere I wasn't already known, wasn't already real.
Inside the cab, the boundaries between real and possible slip further.
The mirrors kept showing the wrong number of trucks twice.
The headlights behind me s were of left driving for
a non existent lane, then phased out of view as
if blinked away. The sensation of pursuit deepened. Alike, some wmature,
patient and unseen followed me through every unlit patch, mapping
my decisions. Mapps criscrossed my dash. Each knew an notation
rendered in a hanna cruchetkut with every day, again and again,
the lion circled to stretched near my ele one hundred
sixty each always flag, always race, the oldest and finished section,
now laid with so much asphalts and misdirection that history
had worn out, tracing its own memory. Did I plan
my final attempt? Or did it plan me? The days
lost their shape, The eye was folded in on themselves.
Every nap gave way to fratle visions, cones making shapes
in the dark, men invest calling my name, while my
lip shaped a warning on a dozen altern at airwives.
When the sky finally darkened into true night, thunder rolling,
distant and mean, I knew it was time. I doubled
my equipment, double recorders, flours in every pocket, physical maps,
not a whisper of digital reliance. The storm would cover
me is krim over the world, blank enough to mask
any trace of where I go if the lane chose
to open once more. I pulled up just before midnight,
a pit for me in my stomach as the roads
emptied and the noise of the rig pressed tight against
his silence, so thick it made my ears ring. With
each mile, the clouds lowered, lighting pin wheeling over fields
drowned and shadow at Rout one hundred sixty eight, the
realness of the moments so intense it made me nossus
sparriers toppled, as if a wind gusted up only from me.
I followed the cones with my high beams, ignoring every
muscle in my forearms, screaming to reverse course. Each sign
on the deeter shivered and glitched, flipping between close a
route five in no entry. Arrow boards rotated with the wind,
lights strobing seamlessly into an alien code. My GPS flickered
through every state I'd ever driven, spinning coordinates from east
to west, and finally flat lining at blank coordinates. Then,
as the rainfall punched in off the field, the fifth
lay manifested with greater violence than ever before. No radual shifted,
just a sudden impossible blacktop opening to the left, wet
and gleaming like a ton slate from between teeth beyond
work hites burned, the steady blue fire, casting trip a
shadows over the rig's head. The seabe spewed chorus of
panic voices my own layered countless times, plus a keening
of men and women too exhausted to say anything, but don't.
Some voices called me by every nickname might ever had, Monarch,
ray boy, under Man one or two, even in a
tone I remembered from my own father decades before. None
sounded like they made it out. I realized, finally and
fully there was no way up beforeward, with every art
fact and every lot burning to memory, I aimed dead
center for the impossible lane tires bit new black top.
The world shifted, the outside gun soft as a dream.
Inside time blinked out in spasms, dash forward, freezing on
two seven radio, warping music into white noise, shrieks though
wind shield painted with rain that fell up and sideways.
The fifth flame proper felt endless at first, a space
with no horizon. The blue lights arched overhead, illuminating not warp,
but column after column of abandoned cabs. All I nose forward,
hazard blinks time to the pulsing in my ear, drums
between them, shadow workers, invests and masks waved me forward.
A signal, cryptic patterns with battered flashlights, A trio of
men in suits real or illusion I couldn't tell, stood
against a span of unfinished overpass, shielded from the elements,
faces pixelated beyond memory. I slowed to a crawl, recording
over every available track. Were sighting cord in its time, names,
words that reminded me of flesh and weather in years
I thought could anchor me. The men invests motion more urgently,
Engines idled inside trucks that couldn't run, one of mine,
I was sure from three years back. A bottle cap
and an old sticker left in a nook of the dashboard,
visible for only a blink before it was swallowed by
the fog. At last, the overpass loomed on foot, now walking,
now running through water that never quite wet. I faced
the figure awaiting, where the concrete arched up into the sky.
The badge on his vest flared like a warning flare,
or a sun caught in a rainstorm. His clipboordlisted drivers
by for us and lost names, each one fading as
he flipped pages. I tried to read my own, but
the letters scrambled, shuffling into nothing. He spoke without moving,
lips of voice both inside me and var off electric cold.
You want to know most don't, I swallowed. They are
crackling in my LUNs. He lifted his hand, palm up,
offering what might have been a key, or might have
been a clip of raw exposed fell. I tried, one
lost time to speak, what is this for? His answer
was potskull pot benediction. The world runs on what's in
the dark? Do you drive it? Every night? His face
cycled through ages, old down blank, Take the record or
join the others? Maintenance is forever. In that instant, lighting
shatowed the horizon, blowing out the overpass in a white
flash and silencing every engine, every hidden voice, every possible
past and future road. I ran toward my cab, clutching
the offered record of cold metallic weightless inside. The dash
lit up in a spiral of signals and old sea
beat traffic names ran across the display mine. All the
missing looped endlessly and flickering amber. I jammed the truck
inter gear, screaming coordinates into a dozen recorders at once.
The world outside poles with blue white fire on under
disturbing lights, as spotted the ghosts, drivers moving backward against time,
waving as they faded, engines, whispering last mile secrets into
the humid storm lit duck. It all collapsed in a rush.
Fog boiled up, every color leaching out from the world,
but red and white and black. My rats snapped back
into existence. Mile marker one hundred forty one, traffic growing past,
and the honest, unenchanted on the fifth flane erased itself
mid breath as old stains barely visible were concrete met grass.
Every trace of the ordeal vanished. The rig was battered
but intact. All radios were set, recorders dead, their record
heavy in my pocket, now just an ordinary key fob
mark C five sliquid condensation. No one at the truck
stop commented in the new dent with a shadowed glas.
The only acknowledgment a battered the thrums of coffee left
on my fender, still warm from a driver pal As
Jrawk who didn't sign the note, saw the lights. Glad
you made it, it read in blocky pen. Walking away,
I felt the reflex begin, checking for cuns, for stencils,
five marks for lay enclosures that didn't quite match the plan.
But the world had set its lines in you. Somewhere
a despatch of radio called alrd I'd never heard, and
the ordinary traffic resumed in the mirrors. I climbed back
into the cab, My reflection blurred shadows of ves passing
through my shoulders, as if I were now part of
the living mystery, witness and warning Hafya half not That's
all there is. At dawn, fresh tied trucks cave away
from the pavement into wild grass ten yards wide like
a ghost rode. No map will ever claim the A
taste faintly of ash and ozun. For a beat, I
catch my own warning tone, recorded, replayed, echoing into the
static of the morning, and I realize the story cycles again.
Any driver could be next as the fifth lane and
spools at the edge of memory a map. Only one
message remains. Don't trust the deeter, no matter how familiar
it claims to be, and that is the end. Thank
you for listening, and I will see you in the
next one.