The Long Haul
Anthony Jacobs
Copyright 2016 Anthony Jacobs
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters,
and settings are fictitious.
Any resemblance to actual events,
names, locales, organizations,
or persons living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
The Long Haul
By Anthony Jacobs
The road seems to stretch on endlessly before me as I stare out the windshield of my eighteen-wheeler. The constant drone of the big 3408 Caterpillar diesel engine under the hood sounds like a lullaby to me, and after having driven for eight hours already, my tired eyes start to droop inexorably as I roll down a particularly desolate stretch of desert highway somewhere in the middle of New Mexico.
I desperately look around for anything interesting to break up the monotony of the desert, but all I see is sand, rocks, and hills. I’ve made this trip a thousand times, and it never seems to get any easier.
I pick up the mic on my CB radio and practically beg anyone to talk to me. A few minutes later, a girl who calls herself “Foxy Roxy” answers, and we flirt with each other for a while. She has a sexy voice, but I’ve learned that voices can be deceptive. I imagine a scantily dressed girl behind the wheel of a big rig, and instantly she transforms in my mind to a five hundred pound gorilla. I shake my head, trying to clear it and frantically trying to get the scantily dressed model back, but my fantasy is already ruined.
When I was a teenager, my best friend Joey had a CB romance with a girl. After talking to her for a couple of weeks, he finally got up the courage to meet her. Joey had driven me to her trailer so I could see this “beauty,” but she had turned out to be a beast. As we pulled up outside her trailer, I noticed that the trailer actually moved as she walked across it to the door. She had to duck and turn sideways to make it through the door of the trailer, and as she approached our car, my friend had tried to start the car, but was unsuccessful. She had leaned on the car windows so and I felt the car go down a few inches on the driver’s side. She had asked my friend if his name was Joey, and he standard, ”nnno, mmmy nnname is George!” just then, the car started and my friend Joey and I had driven off spinning tires and slinging gravel. I looked back and the woman was standing there with a puzzled look on her face. The next day, Julie had thrown away his CB radio.
Now here I was, flirting with what was probably a very similar woman on my CD. “ I’ll probably never meet her anyway, so what difference does it make what she looks like?” I said to myself, but secretly I hoped that I wasn’t talking to a six hundred pound goliath with a plate of chicken lying on the bed next to her.
After a few more minutes, she was out of range and I lost her. I put on a CD, and listened to some of my favorite music. I liked the hair bands of the 1980’s, and listening to them usually kept me awake while I drove. Today however it wasn’t long before I started to nod off again. Most of the trucker’s I knew used caffeine pills to keep them awake, but they just made me jumpy and upset my stomach.
As I was starting to nod off, suddenly I saw a car stopped halfway into the road. I swerved to avoid it cursing at the moron who had parked in the middle of the road. My truck fishtailed a bit, and I skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the roadway about a hundred yards from the car.
I hopped out of the cab and was hit by the smell of burning rubber and overheated brake pads. I grabbed my flashlight and tire thumper, and walked around my rig checking the tires to make sure that none were flat, and inspecting my brake lines for leaks. After assuring myself that everything was in working order, I headed back to the car, which was still parked in the road behind my truck.
The beam of my flashlight played over the windshield of the car, revealing a reddish tint to the glass. As I approached the car, I could see that there were people in the vehicle, at least there seemed to be a driver and a passenger in the front seat. When I shined my flashlight through the driver’s side window, I noticed that every surface of the interior of the car was covered with blood. Blood was pooling on the seats, and dripping from the headliner.
I tapped on the window and got no response. I tried the door handle, and the door opened. The stench of blood and death hit me so hard, I nearly threw up. The man and woman in the car we’re definitely dead, and it looked as if their throats had been slit deeply. Both of them had startled, almost desperate looks on their faces, as if they had been caught completely by surprise when they were attacked.
I ran back to my truck and tried to call the police on my cell phone, but got no signal. I knew that I was in the middle of the desert, but I thought that I might be able to reach one of the many cell phone towers that lined the highway. Next, I tried to raise someone on my CB, but nobody answered. I only heard silence on every channel. Once, I thought I heard someone respond to my call, but I was mistaken.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that whoever did this could be lurking nearby, waiting for another victim. I reached for my tire Thumper again (which I had tossed behind my seat), but it wasn’t there. I heard a sound behind me, and then a crack and then everything went dark.
I woke up with a throbbing pain in my head. Everything was blurry at first, but when things came back into focus, I discovered that I was still behind the wheel of my rig. I looked at my reflection in the mirror, and saw the blood running down my forehead come across my right cheek, and down onto my shirt. “why the hell does this always happen when I wear a white shirt?” I asked myself. I quickly searched my truck only to discover that I was alone.
I walked around the truck to make sure everything was in working order, and the killer wasn’t hiding and waiting for a second chance to kill me. After checking the temperature of the trailer, I checked the lock, and all seemed normal. I was hauling beef in a refrigerated trailer or “reefer,” as it was called, and if the temperature wasn’t right, I would lose my load.
I climbed back into the driver’s seat, and started the truck up. I put the truck in gear and the truck lurched forward, as if it too was anxious to leave this area behind. As I drove by, I imagined the dead couple staring at me with those lifeless eyes. I shuddered and punched the gas pedal. Out of respect for the dead, I had to report this crime as soon as possible. When I came to a truck stop at the next town, I pulled up to the gas pumps and went into the station. I asked for a pay phone, and was directed to a dilapidated phone next to the dingiest bathroom I had seen in months. The fluorescent bulb overhead flickered and went out just as I reached out to dial 911.
I dialed the number in the dark and told the 911 operator that I wanted to report a crime. After being put on hold for several minutes, I finally talked to the operator. I explained to the operator that I had found a car on Highway 57 with two dead bodies in it, and gave the approximate location of the car.
I hung up the phone before the operator could ask for my name, and walked back to my truck. I got the feeling that I was being followed, and so I ducked behind another truck. I doubled back and crawled under the trailer on the other side of the truck, and waited.
A half an hour later, I was driving Northbound on the highway again. My forehead was bead
ed with sweat. It was a cold, clammy sweat, like the kind of sweat you get when something terrifies you to the core, but you never really know what it is. Could the killer still be after me? I thought to myself. Just to be sure, I glanced behind me into the sleeper to make sure there was nobody there. The sleeper was empty.
I drove on into the night, trying to put as much distance between myself and the murder scene as possible. I knew that I would have to stop soon, or I would be violating several laws which regulated the trucking business.
I found a rest stop on the highway about a hundred miles from the truck stop I had made the phone call from. I pulled in and crawled into the sleeper. Soon I was asleep.
That night, I had nightmares all night. I dreamed that someone was chasing me, and no matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t outrun him. As I ran, I could hear the echo of footsteps behind me, gaining on me. When I turned to see who it was, there was nobody there.
I woke up in a cold sweat. It was still early, and the sun had not yet come up. I stumbled out of my truck, and made my way across the parking lot to the restroom. I washed myself the best I could and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I looked tired. Dark circles ringed my eyes, and my cheeks look sunken and I noticed more wrinkles than I had ever seen in the past. My white shirt was a mess. Blood stained the shirt so badly that I thought it would never come clean. I changed shirts, and threw the white one away. A second later, I changed my mind, and dug it out of the trash. It might come in handy as a rag, even if the stains never came out.
I inspected my trailer again and climbed back into my rig. I was hungry, so I set my sights on a nearby diner. I loved the smells and looks of diners, especially the ones with the pedestal stools and the stainless steel walls like you used to see in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Those diners has style that today’s restaurants don’t have.
After about an hour, I came across a diner on the outskirts of town. I pulled in and sat at the counter. After gulping down breakfast like a starving wolf, I got ready to pay, when I heard a news report on the television which was mounted on the wall of the diner. The reporter was talking about an abandoned car which the police had determined was the scene of a grisly murder. According to the reporter, the bodies were missing.
In a separate report, a truck driver identified as Wayne Williams had been found dead in a truck stop bathroom on Highway 57. According to the news reporter, Mr. Williams had been bludgeoned to death. The hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up, and my stomach started to feel queasy. I realized that the two bodies in the car had disappeared, and that someone had been murdered in the bathroom I had been standing next to last night. No wonder I had felt like someone was following me!
The thought made me paranoid, and I started looking around at the other customers, trying to figure out if someone was watching me or acting suspiciously. There was a large woman at the end of the counter who occasionally glanced in my direction, but she was eyeing me like a T-bone steak, not like someone who wanted to kill or frame me.
A man sat in the corner looking nervously around, but never seeming to pay any attention to me. His eyes darted from the waitress, to the cash register, to the door, and back. As I paid my bill, the man ran out the door, nearly running down a couple who were trying to enter the diner. “Excuse me,” the woman said to him as he brushed past them on his way out the door.
“Damn!” Shouted the woman at the cash register, “that bastard stiffed us!” apparently, the nervous man had done what she called a “dine-and-dash,” which meant that he had run out without paying his bill. “That’s the third time this week,” she said. I asked her if it was the same guy , and she said “no, but they’re all the same. They come in here and order a big breakfast , look nervously around, then when I’m distracted, they run out.”
I paid my bill and walked out the door. The glare of the sunlight blinded me temporarily, and I pulled my cap down lower to block the glare. Once my eyes adjusted to the glare, I looked around and saw someone crossing the parking lot near my truck. It looked from a distance is if this was the man in the diner who had skipped out on his bill. I was furious! “That SOB had better not steal from me,” I muttered to myself.
A few minutes later, I was driving north away from the diner panting like a dog. My shirt was soaked with sweat, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had no idea how I got there. The last thing I remembered, was seeing the stranger lurking around my truck. I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road, and tried to collect my thoughts. I look down at my hands, and they were shaking uncontrollably. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and my head was throbbing.
I hopped out of my truck, and walked back to my trailer. As I unlocked the doors to the trailer, I noticed that there seemed to be a smear of blood on the lock. I wiped it off with a rag, and swung the doors open. The cold air hit my face like a winter wind. The desert air was like an oven, and this cold air felt heavenly. The smell of meat usually made me hungry, but there was something a little off about the smell this time.
I climbed up into the trailer and checked the sides of beef hanging from hooks suspended from the top of the trailer. Each was covered in plastic, and they gently swayed from the recent movement of the truck. I went down the row and counted them carefully, making sure that none were missing. I looked at my manifest, and it listed twenty sides of beef, but when I counted them I found that there were twenty-three. I stepped between the rows beef and inspected each one. There were twenty sides of beef swinging from their hooks, but I realized to my horror, that the bodies of three people hung from meat hooks suspended from the roof of the trailer. The hooks pierced the bodies of each person under their chin. I recognized the bodies as the two-car victims and the man who ran out of the diner. All of the bodies had been covered in plastic, and hung like sides of beef.
“How the hell did this happen?” I said to myself as I choked back the vomit that was rising in my throat. I ran to the back of the trailer, and regurgitated my breakfast all over the ground outside the trailer.
My head was spinning as I closed the trailer doors and relocked them. How had the killer done this right under my nose without me seeing it? How had he (or she) been able to unlock the trailer without a key? Why did I have gaps in my memory? How had the killer been able to follow me without detection? I thoroughly searched my truck looking for anywhere someone could hide. I was alone in the desert, miles from anyone and anywhere. Suddenly, the world began to spin and I lost consciousness.
Joe climbed into the truck and sat behind the big steering wheel. He checked the gauges and looked at himself in the mirror. “Damn that was close,” he said to his reflection. “Another second or two, and he would have discovered the truth.” Joe had taken drastic measures after realizing that his cover was about to be blown. “That was a close call,” he said to himself. “If that idiot knew that I existed, he might try to get rid of me, but the only way he’ll ever get rid of me, is if he kills himself and that just won’t do.”
Joe looked at the dark circles around his eyes, and the wrinkles all over his face and said to himself, “I’ll have to do something about my looks. I look like an old fart. I wish he would take better care of his body, after all, we both have to live with it.”
Joe chuckled to himself as he jammed the truck into gear and released the brake. Freedom at last! He had the feeling that this new chapter of his life was going to be exhilarating! At last, for the first time in his life, he had freedom. He hated playing second fiddle to his other half.
The prospect of searching for new victims and harvesting their bodies thrilled him so much, his skin began to tingle. He began to whistle to himself as the truck gained the speed and the motor purred happily. As long as he was smart and careful, Joe thought, he would never be caught. After all he never stayed anywhere more than a few hours at a time, and chose different routes to avoid developing a pattern that the cops could figure out.
People don’t realize that most murders go unsolved. Everyday People all acro
ss this country disappear and are never found. Many of these victims are transients or have no known families, so their disappearances often go unreported.
Joe figured that he could keep this up for another 10 years, at least without getting caught. Maybe he’d go up North and try his luck in the Pacific Northwest. He heard that it was scenic and had large forests. “First things first,” he chided himself, “I’ve got to find a quiet spot to butcher the bodies.”
It simply wouldn’t do to get caught with recognizable bodies hanging in his truck. Once butchered, the meat would look like pork, and wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion.
Joe steered the truck down a lonely dirt road leading off into the desert. After driving a couple of miles down the road, he pulled over and set to his ghastly task. He separated the meat from the bone and buried the rest in a hole. Then he wrapped the meat in butcher paper and put it back on the truck.
As he hopped back into the cab of the truck, he wondered how much money he could get for the extra meat. Once he delivered his scheduled load, he would return home and make sausage out of the extra meat. These he would sell to a meat market in another town. He chuckled to himself as he thought that he would be sure to put “The best man made sausages on the planet” on the box before delivering it to the meat market, because they were, after all, “man made” (and woman made as well).
About the Author
Anthony Jacobs is a retired police officer and father of four wonderful kids, whose dream is to move to the country and live surrounded by nature and all kinds of animals. He loves to write and tell stories that entertain others, specially his wife and kids. He started writing many, many years ago. Most of his writing occurs during the calm hours of the night. Now, he is expanding those stories for your enjoyment.
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Thank you,
Anthony Jacobs
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