Posted here to keep the forum turning over.
It doesn't even need to be a Fenspace story, you probably could replace Jet and Ford with anyone.
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"This is one back from the Race to 400. If you don't know what that was, it was when myself, Ford and the Highway Star went up against Ben Rhode's Lunatic Fringe at Bonneville. We filmed a lot of it, so most of the interesting stuff's on the internet…but that's not everything. Because most of it was boring. And other things, well....
We arrived in San Diego, and promptly got delayed by customs and immigration for a few hours, then spend another few hours getting the bike released. I go off to buy a truck to haul all our gear while Ford's dealing with the paperwork. Having a TSAB stamp on the bike doesn't mean a thing to San Diego Port. Now, what Ford thinks of as a truck-and-trailer and what I think of as a truck-and-trailer were two completely different things. And while our budget might've bought a decent enough F-150 and a simple two-axle tow-trailer, what I bought was a smoking old Peterbuilt good for the scrapheap. The frame was being held together by paint and rust alone.
It broke down twice on the drive out of California. Which meant driving straight through the night to make it up to Bonneville on time. It didn't help that we had to cross the top of Arizona before turning North to Bonneville in Utah. Our truck wasn't allowed in Nevada because of all the leaded fuel we had in the trailer.
It was getting well beyond midnight local time and the Peterbuilt seemed to be behaving itself at long last. Ford had dozed off and I was driving it. The radio was on and, despite it being cold and dark outside, it was still warm and cozy in the cab.
Until I start hearing something scratching behind the cab. It's like claws or something. A big fat rat wiggling it's way out from a rust-hole somewhere. I glance in the mirror beside me, to see a shadow dart back behind the cab.
I have just enough time to wonder if I really saw it before there's this big rush of escaping air, and all the truck's brakes lock solid on.
She just looks at me and says "What'd you do?"
"Wasn't me," I say. "It lost air pressure."
Fucking piece of shit truck.
Both of us get out, and sure enough we see one of the lines between cab and trailer has come loose. Only, it hadn't come loose. It'd been cut, right in the middle - like someone had come up to it with a knife.
The obvious answer is a sharp stone or something thrown up by the wheel, even though they were both. We're both two tired to car.
Ford ties the remains off so the actual tractor will still have air, while I head back towards the end of the trailer to pull the locked air-brakes off.
And it's dark back there. It feels like I walk forever, like I could've walked to Mars. Ford's back in the cab and she might as well be on another planet, while I'm passing by feeble orange running lights. The stars are hiding themselves behind the clouds, a thick blanket closing down over the desert. The darkness seems to swallow the truck's own lights, pushing me in towards the trailer.
It's unnerving. It feels like I'm being watched, from somewhere beyond the red-glow of the trailer's back lights. It feels almost like we're islanded in a closed off sea of darkness, the universe ending only meters from the truck. It'd a profound, cloaking black, like staring into the bottom of the ocean.
Swallowing a sense of Claustrophobia, I crawl under the trailer, pushing back against the brakes before locking them off. It's hot under there, hot and dry. A smell begins to prickle inside my nose, one that sets my heart racing and has my skin crawling.
And I have no skin to crawl.
It's a reminder of a screaming death. It carries an echo of terror, of horror, of shameless pity and what amounted to a mercy killing. It carries tears to me eyes even as I fight back against it
It's the smell of burned body. I can pick it out immediately, even though I wish I couldn't. It's a dry, acrid smell - worse than scorched pork and hair - that seems to crawl down the back of my throat and suck all the moisture right out of my body and it's just hanging in the still night air, mingling with warm rubber tyres and hot metal.
I was under the truck, on my hands and knees, unable to move, paralysed in the moment. I can feel the heat from the flames on my face and all I can think about is that I don't want to die like that too, that inside my armour I might live long enough to feel my face melt off before I start to roast. All I could do was ball up and hope it passed over…
The truck's horn blows deep and loud and it shocks me right out of it. If not that then the wallop of my head hitting steel. Even for me, that hurt.
It's then that I realised I'd long finished what I was doing. The brake-parts were sitting in the road. And in my chest, my heart was racing, a shot of adrenaline fizzing through my veins. I scrambled out from underneath, scratching up my knees and palms.
Out in the still night air, the darkness pressed in, taking the breath from my throat. I could feel something lingering over my shoulder before it vanished. It felt more like a rat skittering away, just outside the reach of my senses. The fog of fear began to ease, leaving a faint nausea in the pit of my stomach and powder-dry taste on my mouth.
Even as I jogged back to the cab, I began to write it off.
I still near rip the door open to get inside. When I drop into the driver's seat Ford asks me what kept me.
I tell her that I got a little hung up but I still don't want to hang around. It's a relief that the big Detroit Diesel engine manages to start on the first try, for the first time, even if it's only running on eleven cylinders, one turbo and some of it's own piston rings.
I just dump out of there trailing thick clouds of soot, while Ford's insisting that something's spooked me.
I admit it's a minor panic.
Which is right when the same rat- scratching starts all over again behind us. It makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle. I check both mirrors and see nothing but a flickering shadow that's gone before I'm even certain it was there.
Maybe it was just paranoia.
Ford's half awake beside me, looking in the passenger mirror.
"Something came off the back of the truck." she says, and I look at her for an explanation.
"I just saw something bounce off the road into the desert. A red-reflector or something." She shrugs her shoulders. No big deal. Nothing unsafe.
And that's when things start to make sense. Loose truck part for the scratching. A one-in-a-million bounce from a Stone-chip for the air-line, or the same loose part flapping around. Hot brake dust mingles with fatigue and a lack of tea to cause a mild flashback.
All in my stupid head.
I actually start laughing. She tells me to shut up because some people still require sleep.
We make it to Bonneville on time and it's not even worth a 'no-shit-there-I-was', just another pain-in-the-arse episode from a jallopy-truck. It isn't until I think to check for what fell off that I'm given pause for thought.
I compare mental images to be certain and sure enough, everything's that's supposed to be attached is still fitted. No missing reflectors… nothing. All I find are some scratch marks in the dirt behind the cab that could've been made by Ford fixing the air-hose.
There's a logical explanation for it all…enough to make me feel foolish… but thinking about that night still makes me shiver a little inside.
The morning we were due to drive back to SD to ship the bike home a car was found abandoned on the same road by a State Trooper. It was a complete Marie Celeste. Someone had stopped to change a flat tyre and instead just walked off somewhere, leaving their tools on the road, along with the spare tyre. The car's ignition was still on, though the battery had drained.
They just vanished. The four-state search turned up nothing. Swallowed by the desert night.
And I still have to wonder how exactly a stone managed to not only make it up between the trailer and cab, but fly in at just the right angle to cut a heavy-duty air-line clean through. If it was a loose part that cut the line, why was nothing missing?
And then, what exactly did Ford see coming off the back of the truck?
---------
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
It doesn't even need to be a Fenspace story, you probably could replace Jet and Ford with anyone.
------------
"This is one back from the Race to 400. If you don't know what that was, it was when myself, Ford and the Highway Star went up against Ben Rhode's Lunatic Fringe at Bonneville. We filmed a lot of it, so most of the interesting stuff's on the internet…but that's not everything. Because most of it was boring. And other things, well....
We arrived in San Diego, and promptly got delayed by customs and immigration for a few hours, then spend another few hours getting the bike released. I go off to buy a truck to haul all our gear while Ford's dealing with the paperwork. Having a TSAB stamp on the bike doesn't mean a thing to San Diego Port. Now, what Ford thinks of as a truck-and-trailer and what I think of as a truck-and-trailer were two completely different things. And while our budget might've bought a decent enough F-150 and a simple two-axle tow-trailer, what I bought was a smoking old Peterbuilt good for the scrapheap. The frame was being held together by paint and rust alone.
It broke down twice on the drive out of California. Which meant driving straight through the night to make it up to Bonneville on time. It didn't help that we had to cross the top of Arizona before turning North to Bonneville in Utah. Our truck wasn't allowed in Nevada because of all the leaded fuel we had in the trailer.
It was getting well beyond midnight local time and the Peterbuilt seemed to be behaving itself at long last. Ford had dozed off and I was driving it. The radio was on and, despite it being cold and dark outside, it was still warm and cozy in the cab.
Until I start hearing something scratching behind the cab. It's like claws or something. A big fat rat wiggling it's way out from a rust-hole somewhere. I glance in the mirror beside me, to see a shadow dart back behind the cab.
I have just enough time to wonder if I really saw it before there's this big rush of escaping air, and all the truck's brakes lock solid on.
She just looks at me and says "What'd you do?"
"Wasn't me," I say. "It lost air pressure."
Fucking piece of shit truck.
Both of us get out, and sure enough we see one of the lines between cab and trailer has come loose. Only, it hadn't come loose. It'd been cut, right in the middle - like someone had come up to it with a knife.
The obvious answer is a sharp stone or something thrown up by the wheel, even though they were both. We're both two tired to car.
Ford ties the remains off so the actual tractor will still have air, while I head back towards the end of the trailer to pull the locked air-brakes off.
And it's dark back there. It feels like I walk forever, like I could've walked to Mars. Ford's back in the cab and she might as well be on another planet, while I'm passing by feeble orange running lights. The stars are hiding themselves behind the clouds, a thick blanket closing down over the desert. The darkness seems to swallow the truck's own lights, pushing me in towards the trailer.
It's unnerving. It feels like I'm being watched, from somewhere beyond the red-glow of the trailer's back lights. It feels almost like we're islanded in a closed off sea of darkness, the universe ending only meters from the truck. It'd a profound, cloaking black, like staring into the bottom of the ocean.
Swallowing a sense of Claustrophobia, I crawl under the trailer, pushing back against the brakes before locking them off. It's hot under there, hot and dry. A smell begins to prickle inside my nose, one that sets my heart racing and has my skin crawling.
And I have no skin to crawl.
It's a reminder of a screaming death. It carries an echo of terror, of horror, of shameless pity and what amounted to a mercy killing. It carries tears to me eyes even as I fight back against it
It's the smell of burned body. I can pick it out immediately, even though I wish I couldn't. It's a dry, acrid smell - worse than scorched pork and hair - that seems to crawl down the back of my throat and suck all the moisture right out of my body and it's just hanging in the still night air, mingling with warm rubber tyres and hot metal.
I was under the truck, on my hands and knees, unable to move, paralysed in the moment. I can feel the heat from the flames on my face and all I can think about is that I don't want to die like that too, that inside my armour I might live long enough to feel my face melt off before I start to roast. All I could do was ball up and hope it passed over…
The truck's horn blows deep and loud and it shocks me right out of it. If not that then the wallop of my head hitting steel. Even for me, that hurt.
It's then that I realised I'd long finished what I was doing. The brake-parts were sitting in the road. And in my chest, my heart was racing, a shot of adrenaline fizzing through my veins. I scrambled out from underneath, scratching up my knees and palms.
Out in the still night air, the darkness pressed in, taking the breath from my throat. I could feel something lingering over my shoulder before it vanished. It felt more like a rat skittering away, just outside the reach of my senses. The fog of fear began to ease, leaving a faint nausea in the pit of my stomach and powder-dry taste on my mouth.
Even as I jogged back to the cab, I began to write it off.
I still near rip the door open to get inside. When I drop into the driver's seat Ford asks me what kept me.
I tell her that I got a little hung up but I still don't want to hang around. It's a relief that the big Detroit Diesel engine manages to start on the first try, for the first time, even if it's only running on eleven cylinders, one turbo and some of it's own piston rings.
I just dump out of there trailing thick clouds of soot, while Ford's insisting that something's spooked me.
I admit it's a minor panic.
Which is right when the same rat- scratching starts all over again behind us. It makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle. I check both mirrors and see nothing but a flickering shadow that's gone before I'm even certain it was there.
Maybe it was just paranoia.
Ford's half awake beside me, looking in the passenger mirror.
"Something came off the back of the truck." she says, and I look at her for an explanation.
"I just saw something bounce off the road into the desert. A red-reflector or something." She shrugs her shoulders. No big deal. Nothing unsafe.
And that's when things start to make sense. Loose truck part for the scratching. A one-in-a-million bounce from a Stone-chip for the air-line, or the same loose part flapping around. Hot brake dust mingles with fatigue and a lack of tea to cause a mild flashback.
All in my stupid head.
I actually start laughing. She tells me to shut up because some people still require sleep.
We make it to Bonneville on time and it's not even worth a 'no-shit-there-I-was', just another pain-in-the-arse episode from a jallopy-truck. It isn't until I think to check for what fell off that I'm given pause for thought.
I compare mental images to be certain and sure enough, everything's that's supposed to be attached is still fitted. No missing reflectors… nothing. All I find are some scratch marks in the dirt behind the cab that could've been made by Ford fixing the air-hose.
There's a logical explanation for it all…enough to make me feel foolish… but thinking about that night still makes me shiver a little inside.
The morning we were due to drive back to SD to ship the bike home a car was found abandoned on the same road by a State Trooper. It was a complete Marie Celeste. Someone had stopped to change a flat tyre and instead just walked off somewhere, leaving their tools on the road, along with the spare tyre. The car's ignition was still on, though the battery had drained.
They just vanished. The four-state search turned up nothing. Swallowed by the desert night.
And I still have to wonder how exactly a stone managed to not only make it up between the trailer and cab, but fly in at just the right angle to cut a heavy-duty air-line clean through. If it was a loose part that cut the line, why was nothing missing?
And then, what exactly did Ford see coming off the back of the truck?
---------
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
