7 True Road Trip Horror Stories | "The Map Led Us Somewhere That Didn’t Exist" 😱 That Make Every Shortcut Feel Like a Trap

Hello everyone and welcome back to horror stories. I know many of you use these episodes to fall asleep so before you drift off, I'd love it if you could leave a comment letting me know where you're listening from around the world. Also don't forget to like and subscribe if you're enjoying the episodes. On that October afternoon in 2018, the interstate seemed to run on forever in front of us. Across rural Nebraska, there was little to interrupt the sameness except endless cornfields and an occasional barn. I was behind the wheel of our minivan with my wife Claire sitting next to me. Our two children, 14-year-old Lucas and Sophia, who had just celebrated her 11th birthday, were in the back, absorbed in their devices. We were traveling from Chicago to Denver to see Claire's parents, something we had done dozens of times. On this particular trip, though, we had chosen a more scenic path along a few smaller highways rather than following a 80 from beginning to end. That year had been especially exhausting for me as an IT consultant and Claire figured a couple of additional hours on the road might help us unwind. Maybe we could look at something other than concrete dividers and 18 wheelers for a change. The kids grumbled about it initially. But after we told them they could choose the music and that we would stop at any strange roadside attractions they wanted to visit, they warmed up to the plan. At roughly four that afternoon, the low-fuel light switched on just as we were driving through a town named Milbrook. A weathered green sign listed its population as 847. The whole place seemed to have stopped in 1975 and then been allowed to gradually fall apart. Along the main street, boarded windows outnumbered operating businesses. Rust ran down the water tower in streaks that resembled abstract artwork, and the town had that peculiar stillness that makes you instinctively speak more quietly. Its only gas station was an aging Philip 66, complete with analogue pumps that looked as though nobody had modernized them since the Clinton years. While I put gas in the van, Claire brought the kids into the store to visit the restroom and buy a few snacks. The man working there was painfully thin with yellow-stained fingernails and a John Deere hat sitting low in his forehead. He never spoke. He simply remained behind the cash register, watching us the whole time, tracking everything we did with pale, watery eyes that hardly appeared to blink. We pulled back onto the road at about 4.30. I remember Claire joking that we had probably been more customers than that man had seen all week. Lucas and Sophia were already bickering over who got to choose the next song when I first noticed the pickup behind us. It was following about three car lengths back. An old battered Ford F-150, likely a model from the early 2000s, with a muddy brown exterior that might have been its actual paint color or simply years of accumulated grime. At first it did not strike me as unusual. We had just left a small town with one main road out. Of course another driver might be heading in the same direction. Ten miles later, however, I turned on to state route 38 instead of staying on the road toward the interstate. The pickup made the turn with us. Claire was looking at something on her phone and the kids had gone back to staring at their screens. I kept glancing into the rear view mirror, trying to convince myself I was imagining a problem. Twenty minutes went by, then thirty. The truck remained at precisely the same distance, either closing the gap nor dropping farther behind. To see what would happen I accelerated to around 75. The Ford increased its speed too. When I slowed to 55 it did the same. I switched lanes when there was no reason to, and at one point lifted my foot off the accelerator to let the van coast. None of it made a difference. That pickup held its position flawlessly, as if some unseen rope were keeping our vehicles tied together. The sun had begun sinking toward the horizon, washing the landscape in a sickly orange light. Finally I gave Claire a small nudge and told her quietly to look behind us without making it obvious. She turned around as though she were checking on the children, then faced me again wearing an expression I had never seen before. It was not quite terror yet. It was that sudden razor sharp awareness you feel when your mind registers danger before you have fully understood what is happening. Our road was becoming more remote with every mile. We had not passed another car in at least 15 minutes and the farmhouses were growing increasingly scarce, with longer empty stretches between them. Claire tried using the GPS on her phone to locate the closest town. Maybe there was a restaurant ahead or some other public place where we could pull over. But we had entered a dead zone. There was no service at all. That was when the pickup stopped merely following us and made its first threatening move. With no warning it shot forward until it was practically touching our rear bumper, perhaps two feet away and switched on its high beams. Light flooded the van as if we had driven into a stadium. Lucas let out a startled cry from the back and asked what was going on. The truck's grill swallowed the entire view in my mirror, a huge slab of corroded metal surrounded by harsh white glare. My heart pounded as I pushed down on the gas, bringing us up to 80, then 85. I would ordinarily never have driven that fast with my family beside me, especially along narrow country roads with no shoulder and drainage ditches bordering both sides. For maybe 30 seconds the pickup retreated. It was just enough time for me to hope the ordeal was finished. Perhaps they had only wanted to scare us and it finally had enough. Then it charged tortoise again, its engine snarling like a rabbit creature. This time as it closed in, I heard a small knock. Metal meeting metal, it had given our rear bumper a light nudge. Sophia began to cry. Claire had her hand clamped around the door handles so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. In a voice that was deliberately steady she told me to keep going. Just drive. Do not pull over. We would reach help soon, but I knew she was calculating the same things I was. We had perhaps a quarter of a tank remaining. Our phones had no reception. Neither of us knew how far away the next town might be, and the daylight was disappearing minute by minute. The trees flanking the road were beginning to resemble walls squeezing toward us. Every dark shape looked as though it could conceal another vehicle ready to trap us. Then I noticed something that made every muscle in my body tighten. Roughly half a mile up the road, another vehicle was parked off to the side with its hazard lights blinking. As we approached I realized it was a second pickup, either black or dark blue. Someone was standing next to it. The instant we drove past I checked my side mirror. The person climbed back into the truck and its hazard lights went dark. Seconds later it merged onto the road behind the brown Ford. Now two vehicles were following us, moving together with perfect coordination. Claire noticed the second truck too. We immediately began digging through the glove compartment, searching for anything we could defend ourselves with. All she came up with were our insurance documents at an ice scraper. I accelerated to 90, silently begging that no deer would cross our path, and that none of our tires would fail. Meanwhile Lucas kept asking whether we should dial 911. He did not understand that. This far out in the middle of nowhere, our phones were nothing more than costly bricks. The pickups began alternating their attacks. The brown Ford would race up behind us with its high beams blazing, then ease away so the darker truck could move into its spot. It felt like they were participating in some twisted game of tag, with our minivan as the reward. Eventually, the dark pickup moved into the lane for oncoming traffic and began inching forward alongside us. Through its window I could see the man driving. He was heavy set with a thick beard and a baseball cap. He stared directly at us, his face completely empty, as though our family were merely a group of deer he had decided to hunt. Claire screamed for the children to get onto the floor. I snapped the steering wheel to the left, leaving him to choose between hitting our van and dropping back. He backed off. We're doing so though, he leaned on the horn for a full ten seconds. The blast carried across the deserted farmland like a battle cry. Just as I started thinking there was no way out of this, a sign appeared ahead. Rushmore five miles. I knew nothing about Rushmore, but five miles meant there would be buildings, people, possibly a police station or at least a place with other people around where those maniacs might finally leave us alone. By then the needle on the spedometer was hanging near 95. Our aging minivan trembled as though it were about to shake itself to pieces, and the repeated changes in speed had made the brakes start to smell as if they were burning. The trucks behind us had abandoned their routine of taking turns. Now they drove a breast, occupying the road from one side to the other. Together, their headlights filled our van with so much glare that it felt like we were trapped inside a brilliant white box. Lucas was huddled on the floor immediately behind my seat. I could hear him murmuring the same thing again and again. It took a moment before I understood. He was repeating the brown pick-ups license plate, trying to commit it to memory in case we needed to give it to someone afterward. Those last five miles seemed to last 50. On every bend I was convinced we were going to roll over. Whenever the road straightened, the pick-ups accelerated tortoise again, coming close enough for the roar of their engines to drown out our own. At last, finally, lights appeared in the distance. There was a little group of buildings, a glowing dairy queen sign that looked like a promise of rescue, and better than anything else, a brightly illuminated Texaco station. Without putting on my turn signal I hauled the wheel sharply to the right, our tires shrieked as the vans lit into the station's parking lot. People were there, a family was filling up at the pumps. Two teenagers lingered near the entrance, witnesses. With the pick-ups reduced their speed as they went past. For an awful moment I thought they might turn into the lot after us. Instead they continued west and vanished into the night. Before they disappeared, however, the passenger in the brown Ford aimed his hand at us through the window, shaping his fingers into a gun. We remained in that Texaco lot for 20 minutes, every one of us shaking. Eventually, Claire got a strong enough signal to reach 9-1-1. The dispatcher recorded our details and told us she would have a patrol car look around the area. Still her voice made it clear to me that there was little they could do without evidence of an actual assault or damage to our van, beyond that small tap on the bumper. While we were waiting I went into the store and spoke to the clerk, a kid who could not have been more than 19. I asked whether he had heard of two pickup trucks in the area bothering people passing through. This expression changed in a way that answered the question before he said a word. He knew precisely whom I meant. According to him, people around there referred to them as the highway hunters. They were two local men who had spent years doing this, choosing vehicles without of state plates coming from Milbrook and chasing them until the drivers wrecked, exhausted their fuel or managed to reach town. No one could establish proof. The men made a point of avoiding any real damage. They simply frightened people for their own entertainment. A state trooper arrived an hour later. His name was Officer Reeves. He wrote down our account, but what he told us essentially backed up everything the clerk had said. Unless we had footage from a dash cam or substantial damage to the vehicle, the case amounted to our testimony against theirs. Even the plate number Lucas had worked so hard to remember did not help. Trace back to a pickup reported stolen three years earlier. Reeves offered to lead us to the closest motel. He recommended spending the night there and getting back on the road after sunrise, preferably along another route. We followed his advice exactly. We hardly slept. And when dawn arrived, we left, staying on the interstate for the entire remaining drive to Denver. The police never contacted us with anything further. Since we were back home though, I started looking into it myself. Online I discovered three other accounts of almost the same experience, written by people who had stopped at Millbrook. All three incidents had happened within the previous two years. Each described that same brown pickup and the same organized campaign of intimidation on the road. Obviously we never traveled that route again. Even now if I notice a pickup in my rear view mirror maintaining the same distance behind me for more than a few miles, my heartbeat speeds up and my hands clamped tighter around the steering wheel. Story 2. That weekend in Sedona was exactly the break I had needed after spending months working over time at the hospital. I'm a pediatric nurse in Phoenix. And the combination of exhausting shifts and the constant emotional strain of caring for sick children had left me desperate for two days of hiking and shutting everything else out. I headed home late Sunday afternoon sometime around 430. I remember deciding that highway 87 would let me avoid the traffic I would encounter on the interstate, even now that choice haunts me. My aging Subaru Outback had been producing an odd rattling noise for several weeks. I had continually delayed bringing it to a mechanic because honestly, when was I supposed to find the time. The air conditioner was running full blast, a true crime podcast played over the speakers, and I was feeling fairly content with life. As I drove I was working out what meals I would prepare ahead of time for the coming week. Then about 40 miles north of pack, the engine abruptly shut down. I was on a stretch of highway surrounded by nothing but desert and occasional juniper trees. There was no dramatic sputter, and no warning light had appeared before it happened. Everything simply went silent, apart from the noise of the tires as I rolled onto the shoulder and came to a stop. I turned the key perhaps 20 times. Every attempt rewarded me with the same feeble clicking sound and nothing more. In the corner of my phone screen the words "no service appeared," given where I was that was hardly unexpected. Still actually seeing them made my chest tighten more than I would have imagined. The sun was already descending toward the horizon, covering the landscape in that fierce orange glow that makes the desert seem gorgeous and threatening all at once. I lifted the hood despite having no real idea what to inspect. I looked for steam, smoke, anything obviously wrong, but as someone with as little mechanical knowledge as I had, everything seemed ordinary. In both directions the highway was deserted. Heat continued rising from the pavement, creating wavering distortions that made the distant road look fluid and unreliable. For approximately 20 minutes not one vehicle went by. I checked my phone repeatedly and wandered in little circles around the Subaru, hoping to find even a single bar of reception. There was nothing. Then a vehicle finally appeared. A white van was coming up from the south. It was an older model with a windowless rear compartment, the sort contractors often drive. A rush of relief swept over me. I moved closer to the roadway and raised both arms, waving them above my head. The van reduced its speed and stopped about 30 feet in front of my car. Two men stepped out, and almost immediately something tightened deep in my stomach. The driver looked to be in his 50s. He was thin but wiry with a faded diamond-backed cap and jeans that appeared not to have been washed for weeks. His passenger was younger, perhaps in his early 30s, heavy-set with an uneven beard. There was a strange restless energy about him. He kept transferring his weight from one foot to the other. Both wore matching navy work shirts, but neither shirt displayed a business logo. For some reason that detail stood out to me. The older man smiled. It was a smile full of teeth and completely lacking warmth, as though he had studied instructions on how to do it without understanding what it was supposed to mean. Having car trouble, he called already approaching me. His voice was rough and scratchy the way a long-time smokers might be. Throughout his approach he kept his right hand tucked inside his pocket. The younger man remained near the van, but he watched me with such concentrated attention that I wanted to retreat toward my car. "Yeah, just quit on me," I answered, trying to sound calm and ordinary. "I've already called DA. They should get here soon." The lies slipped out before I even considered it. Some basic survival instinct in my mind had already taken over. The older man's grin widened. He looked back at his companion who gave a brief abrasive laugh. "That's funny," the older one said, taking out his phone and holding it up toward me. There isn't any reception for miles around here. We're on this road all the time for work. The closest tower is back in pack. My mouth went completely dry. He was correct and every one of us knew it. At last, the younger man spoke. His voice was higher pitch than I had anticipated. We could take you to Pine. There's a gas station with a phone up there. Something about his delivery and about the way both men stood waiting for me to respond. Made it feel as though a trap were drawing shut around me. That's very nice of you, I said, managing another little step back toward the Subaru. But my boyfriend's already coming. He left Phoenix about an hour ago. He ought to arrive any minute. It was another fabrication. I tried to make it convincing by looking down the highway as if I expected a familiar car to appear. The older man's face remained unchanged. He merely tipped his head a little, like a dog reacting to an unfamiliar noise. Phoenix is two hours from here. He said deliberately, as though he were teaching a child something simple. If he started an hour ago, you've got at least another hour to wait. Darkness comes fast out here. A woman shouldn't be by herself. It isn't safe. Meanwhile, the younger man had begun walking. He was not heading straight toward me. Instead, he was tracing a seemingly casual curve that, if he continued, would position him between me and the car. I noticed that he now held something in his right hand. I could not identify it. It might have been a set of keys or some kind of tool. Whatever it was, the way he gripped it made my breaths turn shallow. Every instinct I had developed from years in the city, along with everything I remembered from the self-defense classes I took in college, was shouting that I needed to get away from these men. "Really, I'm okay with waiting," I told them, speaking more loudly now. I hoped another vehicle might arrive and interrupt this unbearable encounter. But the highway stayed empty, and the quiet after I spoke seemed to go on endlessly. Eventually, the older man lifted his shoulders in a shrug, instead of returning to the van, however, he stepped toward my Subaru and looked through the driver's window as though he were inspecting something inside. Subaru, he remarked to his companion rather than to me. Probably an alternator problem. We've got tools in our van. We could check it out. The younger man broke into a grin. It was such a strange reaction to an offer of help that a chill ran through my entire body, despite the heat around us. "No, thank you. Seriously, please leave," I said. "This time I could hear the fear escaping into my voice. The older man rose from the window and stared at me for a long moment. Something in his face changed as if a mask had started to slide away." "All right, then," he replied softly. Somehow that quiet response frightened me more than anger would have. Without saying anything else, they both returned to the van, climbed inside and drove north. A curve in the highway soon hid them from view. I remained standing there for perhaps 30 seconds. My legs trembling, before I hurried into my car and locked every door. My fingers stumbled over the ignition as I tried again, desperate enough to pray that the engine would miraculously turn over. Still nothing happened. The sun had dropped farther. I guess there was about an hour of daylight remaining and the air was already beginning to cool. I watched both mirrors searching for movement for any vehicle coming toward me. Roughly ten minutes later, the white van reappeared from the north, moving slowly along the southbound lane. It passed my Subaru at perhaps 20 miles an hour. Through the windshield, I could see both men staring at me. They did not pull over. They simply continued south until I could no longer see them. But I was certain they would return. A pattern was taking shape. I collected my water bottle, my phone charger, however useless it was at that moment, and my wallet stuffing all three into my purse. If I needed to flee, if abandoning the car became my only option, I wanted to be prepared. The land on either side of the road was uneven and difficult, covered in low shrubs, stones, and scattered cacti. Around a hundred yards from the highway, though, a grouping of bigger rocks looked as if it might give me somewhere to hide. Five minutes later, as predictably as a clock, the van came back from the south. This time, it stopped across the highway directly opposite my car. The engine stayed running. I could make out the driver's shape behind the windshield. He sat perfectly still watching. The younger man climbed out, walked around to the rear, and opened the van's back doors. He began doing something beyond my line of sight. Metal clattered across the empty road, making my skin crawl. It sounded like tools being shifted around, like something heavy being dragged. He shut the rear doors and returned to his seat. Once again, they headed north. They did not go far this time. About a quarter of a mile ahead, their brake lights lit up. They turned onto a dirt-access road I had not noticed earlier, and the van disappeared behind a low rise. They were remaining nearby, waiting until it was completely dark. I felt absolutely certain that once the last of the sunlight vanished, they would come back. And on that visit, they would do more than pass my car. Something my father had told me as a teenager kept repeating in my mind. Never allow someone to take you to another location. Whatever happens, fight or run, but do not get into their vehicle. The following 20 minutes felt longer than any others I had ever lived through. I stayed in the car with my phone clutched in my hand, raising it every so often in another useless attempt to get reception. My eyes kept returning to the dirt road where the van had disappeared. Then finally, something miraculous happened. In the distance, a semi-truck appeared traveling south. I threw myself out of the Subaru and ran into the highway, waving both arms frantically. The truck's air horn roared as its driver braked and stopped just beyond my car. A woman climbed down from the cab. She appeared to be in her 40s or a Peter-built cap and looked worried. "Honey, what's the matter?" she asked. The sight of another woman nearly made me collapse with relief. I poured out the whole story at once. The car breaking down, the two men, the van repeatedly circling back. Her face became stern the instant she understood. "Grab your things. You're leaving with me," she said, right now. As I reached into the car from my purse, I spotted the white van emerging from the dirt road and speeding toward us. The truck driver noticed it as well. "Move," she shouted. I ran to the semi and scrambled into the cab as fast as my body would let me. Before I had even shut the door, she was speaking into her CB broadcasting on Channel 19. She told anyone who could hear her that there was a situation at Milemarker 267. The van stopped behind my abandoned Subaru. Both men got out and stood in the highway looking at us. As the truck driver began pulling away, I watched them in the side mirror. They made no attempt to follow. They simply stood there, staring until a bend took them out of sight. "You're lucky I happened to come by," the driver told me. Her name was Catherine. From her, I learned that this section of Highway 87 had her notorious reputation. "Those men matched the descriptions people have reported before," she explained. But they know what they're doing. They avoid anything that would get them arrested. They just frighten women until they're panicked enough to make a mistake. Catherine took me all the way to a truck stop in Camp Ferry, where my phone finally had reception and there were bright lights and people all around us. While I waited for my roommate to pick me up, she stayed by my side. She bought me a coffee and made certain I called the highway patrol and reported the entire incident. They recorded what I told them. But without a plate number or an actual crime having occurred, they said their options were limited. My roommate Ashley arrived at around 10 that night. The following morning we returned from my car, bringing her brother and one of his friends. Both were big men who worked in construction. The Subaru was still where I had left it and appeared untouched. But the driver's door was unlocked, even though I was positive I had locked it before running to Catherine's truck. Nothing had been taken. Yet someone had searched through everything in the glove compartment. Documents lay spread across the passenger seat. The registration, the one listing my home address, rested on top of the other papers. It looked deliberately positioned, like someone had left me a message. With a jump start and a little tinkering Ashley's brother got the engine running, the problem turned out to be nothing more than a loose battery cable. Had I understood what to check, it could have been repaired in two minutes. We traveled home together in a convoy. Throughout the drive I kept looking in my mirrors, bracing myself for the white van to come into view again. It never appeared. Still for weeks afterward the sight of any white van sent my pulse racing. I took a different route to work, changed the times I came and went, and even stayed with Ashley for a while. I could not stop imagining that those men had seen my address and knew exactly where I lived. About three months after it happened, I was picking up coffee before a shift when a conversation between two women at the neighboring table caught my attention. One of them was explaining that her sister's vehicle had broken down on Highway 87. Two men in a white van had kept circling her until a state trooper happened to pass. The description was identical. The methods were identical. It had happened on the very same stretch of road. According to the woman, her sister had been so deeply shaken that she refused to drive by herself anymore. I introduced myself and told them what had happened to me. Through that conversation I discovered there were more of us. An entire unofficial network of women had endured the same experience with men who appeared to be the very same pair. Together we submitted a report to the state police, providing dates, times, and detailed accounts of what the men looked like. The last update I heard was that patrols along that section of Highway had been increased. As far as I know, however, the men were never apprehended. I occasionally still use that road when I go to Sedona, but I always have someone with me. I never make the trip in the late afternoon, and I make sure my phone has a full charge and that I bring a portable backup battery. The desert is breathtaking, but it is empty too. Within that emptiness are people waiting for women like me to have their cars fail. People who understand precisely how far they can go before their behavior crosses into a crime. People who know that fear alone can serve as a weapon, even when they never put a hand on you. Story 3 Last April I was transporting a shipment of furniture from Portland to Albuquerque. It was the kind of trip where staying awake was a bigger challenge. than dealing with the traffic. By then, I had spent roughly six years driving commercially, usually along routes across the western states, and being alone out there had never particularly bothered me. If anything, I liked it better than crowded interstates. My wife Amy worried whenever I used secondary routes to cut time off a delivery. She always told me that bypassing the major highways was an invitation to trouble. On that particular Tuesday, along route 191 somewhere in eastern Utah, I discovered how right she was. The road between Monticello and Blanding feels deserted even at the busiest time of year. In April though, it might as well be forgotten altogether. Over the previous two hours I had seen perhaps three other vehicles. Since leaving the interstate, the only sound coming from my CB had been static. The sun was sinking, turning the red rock formations copper and rust colored, when I noticed a man about a quarter of a mile ahead. He stood beside a battered Ford Ranger with its hood raised, swinging both arms over his head as though he were trying to attract a rescue helicopter. His movements had a desperate quality, but something about them also seemed exaggerated, almost like a performance. His flannel shirt appeared unusually clean for somebody who had been stranded for very long, and his jeans still showed sharp creases. Even the pickup seemed off. The dust coating it looked manufactured, as if someone had scattered dirt over the body instead of actually driving it through dusty terrain. Still, after encountering enough people genuinely in trouble on those roads, you learn not to abandon somebody who needs help. There is no cell reception for miles around, and the temperature can plunge quickly after sunset. I shifted down and began guiding my rig onto the shoulder, gravel crackling beneath all 18 wheels. Just as I was applying the air breaks, something moving in the passenger side mirror drew my eye. A second man stepped out of the juniper trees approximately 30 feet behind my trailer. He walked at a slow measured pace that instantly set every warning bell in my head ringing. He was larger than the man beside the Ford and wore a dark hoodie despite the warmth of the evening. In his right hand was something long, the fading sunlight glinted off the metal. It was a tire iron the four-way type truckers use. He was not rushing. He advanced steadily and deliberately with the confidence of someone who knew precisely what he intended to do. The man near the ranger continued waving, but he had begun jogging toward my cab. His face looked different now. From farther away, I had read his expression as desperation. Up close, it resembled anticipation. His lips moved as if he were calling something out, but the idling engine kept me from hearing the words. In an instant, I understood the situation. Two men, one approaching from behind and cutting off one way out, the other closing in on my driver's door. My rig was angled into enough of a jackknife that reversing would cost seconds I could not afford to lose. Root 191 lay empty ahead of me and behind me. In the last of the daylight, there was not a single set of approaching headlights. They could hardly have chosen a better location. They had probably spent hours concealed among those trees, waiting for a suitable victim to appear. A driver traveling alone, somebody willing to stop and offer assistance, somebody who might disappear without anyone noticing for days. My dispatcher was not expecting me to check in until the following morning. Amy meanwhile believed I was traveling on a 7 anyway. The man in the hoodie had closed to perhaps 20 feet from my trailer. The one wearing flannel had reached the fuel tank, continuing his grateful stranded driver routine even though both of us understood that the act was finished. Before I could consciously decide what to do, training an instinct took over. I released the brakes and ram the truck into gear, ignoring the transmission's grinding objection. The man in flannel sprang back as the rig lurched ahead. His imitation of concern finally disappeared, replaced by a cold calculating look. In my driver's side mirror, I saw the hooded man start running. He had lifted the tire iron as though he intended to break my tail lights or do something worse. But a fully loaded semi cannot gather speed the way a car can. Covering those first 50 feet felt like trying to move through molasses with two predators bearing down on me. I demanded more from the engine than I should have and it bellowed as black smoke stream from the exhaust stacks. As I move past him the man in flannel reached from my door handle. His hand struck the metal with an audible slap before his grips slipped away. For that brief instant I saw his face clearly. Whether beaten perhaps 40 years old with pale blue eyes that seemed utterly devoid of anything human. The speedometer rose with maddening slowness, 20, 30, 35. Both men began shrinking in my mirrors but they refused to quit immediately. They chased the truck for a full hundred yards or so before finally stopping in the roadway. Then another detail appeared in my chest tightened all over again. A white van was emerging from a dirt access road roughly half a mile beyond the place where they had laid their trap. Until then a group of boulders had concealed it completely. Its headlight switched on and it began moving toward me. Not in a rush, just with steady deliberate purpose. These men had worked out an entire operation. One to lure someone in. One to provide the force. A vehicle ready for pursuit. How often had they used it? How many drivers had failed to notice the second man soon enough to escape? I took hold of the CB microphone with one hand and changed gears with the other, searching through channels and calling for anybody who might be listening. All I received in return was silence and static. The van kept closing the gap. My truck was struggling to gain momentum under 40,000 pounds of furniture while they steadily ate up the distance between us. They understood exactly how this worked. They had probably figured out how long a loaded semi would need to reach highway speed after a complete stop. My phone lay in the cup holder as useful as a brick with no reception. Blanding the closest town ahead was still 12 miles away. The last town I had left behind was more than 20 miles back. For the next 10 minutes there would be nothing but me, those men, and a strip of empty pavement through the desert. When the van drew nearer I could distinguish two shapes behind its windshield. They seemed patient without any sense of urgency as if they were confident I had no escape. Then a lesson from my first days as a driver came back to me. An old trucker named Frank had taught it to me at a truck stop in Nevada. When your vehicle is heavy and theirs is light, make the weight work for you. I waited for the road to bend. A head was a gradual curve to the right with a steep drop along the left side. By that point the van was perhaps three car lengths behind. Hanging close to my rear is though its occupants were waiting for me to tire out or slip up. As we entered the bend I abruptly hauled the wheel left and then corrected to the right, making the trailer swing into a controlled fish tail. 40,000 pounds of furniture swept outward like an enormous steel lash. The van's driver noticed what was happening but had no clear way out. There was a guardrail to his right and my trailer swinging toward his left. He stomped on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel, the tires shrieking over the pavement. The van turned sideways, slid toward the shoulder and over corrected. It spun all the way around before stopping pointed in the opposite direction, surrounded by tire smoke and dust. I kept going without waiting to find out whether they could recover. The semi was finally building speed. 50 then 60. I pushed that diesel engine harder than I ever had before. In the mirrors I could see the van attempting to turn back around its headlight sweeping over the desert like search lights. By then though I had opened up enough space. More than that I had made it clear that catching me would not be easy. Apparently they decided continuing was not worth it. After another mile, the headlight stopped gaining on me. Then they began dwindling into the darkness at my back. A adrenaline had my entire body trembling. Even with the air conditioner running at full blast, my shirt was saturated with sweat. Every few seconds I looked in the mirrors, certain those lights would come hurtling toward me again. They never did. Even so I refused to reduce my speed until blendings first lights appeared in the distance. At last, signs of civilization were cutting through the dark, offering something that felt like safety. I pulled into the first brightly lit gas station just off the main street. It was one of those large truck stops with surveillance cameras mounted at every corner. When I climbed out of the cab, my knees nearly folded beneath me as the adrenaline crash caught up with me. My cell phone still had no reception, so I used the payphone to call 911 and described everything that had happened. About half an hour later a state trooper arrived. He was a younger man named Officer Bell. He recorded my statement but initially seemed doubtful. That changed after he made several calls over the radio and learned that during the previous three months, two other truckers had reported similar encounters along the same section of road. Neither of them had escaped as cleanly as I had. One driver's tires had been slashed after he pulled over. He had only just managed to get away on foot. The other driver's rig was discovered abandon two days after his encounter. There was blood on the driver's seat and the man himself was still missing. That night Bell arranged to search, with officers from the county sheriff's department providing backup. They located the place I had described. There were fresh tire impressions along the shoulder, tracks in the dirt where the hooded man had come out of the trees, and even discarded cigarettes in the area where they had waited. Naturally, the Ford Ranger was no longer there. Most likely it had never had anything wrong with it to begin with. But what they discovered next still chills me. About 50 feet from the highway farther into the trees, someone had dug a shallow pit and covered it with branches. Inside it were three wallets, a pair of truckers' long books in a wedding ring. After that discovery, the FBI became involved, and the case became a federal investigation. A week later, Bell phoned to tell me the two men fitting the descriptions I had provided had been arrested at a Colorado motel. They were driving a white van bearing Utah plates. The third man, the one who had driven the van when they came after me, was still at large the last time I heard anything. I eventually delivered the furniture to Albuquerque two days behind schedule. Every time I put my hands on the wheel, they still trembled. I told my dispatcher that mechanical trouble had delayed me. At that point I could not make myself explain what had actually happened. Amy realized something was wrong as soon as I came through our front door. She told me I looked as though I had grown five years older in a single week. That night I finally told her the entire story. I held her close while she cried, and she made me promise I would never use those remote roots again. For about six months I honored that promise. I stayed on the interstates even when doing so extended my trips by hours, but in trucking margins and delivery deadlines matter, and eventually I returned to using smaller roads. Different roads though. Never route 191. Never that section between Monticello and Blanding. I put in a dash cam with both Ford and rear-facing views. These days I also keep a loaded.38 in the pocket of my door, with everything legal and properly permitted. There are nights when I still dream of those washed out blue eyes and that unhurried figure coming out of the trees. I think about the driver who vanished and wonder whether his family ever learned what happened to him. Mostly though I keep driving. I pay attention, and on a deserted road I never ever pull over for anyone. Story 4. Interstate 15 runs through stretches of California that feel almost completely empty. That was where my girlfriend Megan and I ended up around midnight one night in August, three years ago. We had been together for roughly eight months, and this was meant to be our first proper vacation as a couple. We had planned a week in San Diego, nothing elaborate, just some days at the beach and plenty of good meals. I was 27 at the time and worked as a warehouse supervisor in Baker's field. My shifts were long enough that by most weekends I was worn out. Megan taught third grade at an elementary school nearby. She had spent months organizing the trip, noting places on maps and saving restaurants on her phone. To escape the traffic and the punishing desert temperatures, we decided to travel overnight. We would trade places behind the wheel every couple of hours, and we figured, get there in the morning feeling rested. When we worked it out over Chinese takeout of my apartment two weeks before we left, it sounded like an ideal arrangement. For a while, everything went according to plan. Then we reached the section beyond Victorville where the gaps between exits start getting longer. Megan had fallen asleep beside me with her head against the passenger window. I was struggling to remain alert, flipping between radio stations that seemed to dissolve into static one after another. The dashboard read 1247 AM when I spotted what I believed was our exit. A worn green sign briefly flashed in the headlights. Our GPS had stopped speaking about 20 minutes earlier. That should have alerted me that something was wrong, but I assumed it was working out a new route or doing something equally harmless. I turned onto the ramp, expecting signs pointing to a gas station, or at least something to confirm that we were going the right way. Instead, the ramp bent abruptly and delivered us onto a thin two-lane road. There were no streetlights, no signs. Nothing except fractured pavement vanishing into the night. The temperature display in my fort explorer still showed 89 degrees outside. The air conditioner was straining to keep up, filling the cabin with a steady mechanical drone that ordinarily made me sleepy. For perhaps three minutes, I followed that road at around 35 miles an hour. Even using my high beams, I could not see more than 50 feet in front of us. Patches and cracks covered the uneven asphalt, causing the explorer to bounce and rock from side to side. I repeatedly looked in the rear view mirror, hoping the interstate's lights would still be visible behind us. All I saw was darkness. Finally, I decided to stop and wake Megan so we could work out where the hell we had gone. I found a slightly broader section of shoulder, really nothing more than dirt mixed with gravel and shifted into park. As soon as I switched on the dome light, Megan began stirring. She stretched and sleepily asked whether we had reached a rest stop. I explained that I thought I had chosen the wrong exit and wanted to check the GPS. She picked up her phone from the cup holder. I watched her expression change when she discovered there was no reception, not even a single bar. My own phone showed exactly the same thing. No service in the place where the carrier's name should have been. We spent maybe 30 seconds sitting there and trying both phones. Then something appeared in my side mirror. A vehicle had stopped behind us about 40 feet away right in the roadway. What made it strange was that its headlights were off. I could distinguish its outline only because our tail lights through a faint red glow toward it. Megan had not seen it. She was occupied with her phone, attempting to open the offline maps. I watched the vehicle in the mirror and waited for it to drive around us. It stayed exactly where it was. Its engine was running. I could hear the idle, a deep rumble that sounded unusually loud for an ordinary car. The weight seemed to last a minute. Although it was probably closer to 15 seconds. I shifted back into drive and eased onto the road. Thinking the other driver would either overtake us or let us get farther ahead. But the moment we moved, they moved too. They held the same 40 foot gap and still did not turn on their lights. Megan raised her head when she felt us picking up speed and asked why I was going so fast. Without noticing I had accelerated to about 50 miles an hour. She turned to look behind us and finally saw the dim shape following in the glow from our tail lights. "Why don't they have their lights on?" she asked. I told her I had no idea. But we needed to get back to the interstate. The road continued winding through broad sweeping curves that kept us from seeing what they farther ahead. Whenever I accelerated the vehicle behind us accelerated. I reduced our speed to around 30 to test what they would do. They slowed down as well. The distance never changed. By then Megan was holding the door handle with white knuckles. She told me to keep going that sooner or later we would find something. Yet the roads seemed endless. There were no side streets, no buildings. Not even a damn marker telling us what mile we were on. We could hear only our engine, the air conditioner running hard and the unbroken rumble of the vehicle at our backs. Then it suddenly gained speed. In just a few seconds the space between us shrank to perhaps 10 feet. Its front bumper seemed almost against our rear one and Megan began shouting for me to accelerate. I pressed the gas to the floor. The explorer climbed to 70 miles an hour along that narrow, unlit road and I was entering the bends much faster than I should have. The other vehicle dropped back briefly then lunged forward again. This time there was a knock. They had actually made contact with us. The impact was not strong enough to spin us out, but it jolted the explorer ahead. Megan was nearly panicking. She shouted that we had to turn off somewhere anywhere at all. But there was nowhere to turn. Just a seemingly endless ribbon of broken pavement lined with desert brush and the occasional Joshua tree flashing into view under our headlights. During one of my constant mirror checks I spotted something else that made my chest constrict. Farther behind the first vehicle there was another faint set of lights. Another vehicle barely distinguishable in the dark. Its headlights were off as well. The first vehicle began weaving slightly from side to side as though its driver were looking for a way to draw alongside us. There was not enough room to pass safely. I doubted that keeping anyone safe was part of their plan. Then Megan noticed a dirt road ahead on the right. It was scarcely visible, no more than an opening in the scrub. She screamed for me to take it. I hauled the steering wheel around. The explorer's tires skatered across loose dirt as we swung onto the track. For a second I was certain we would overturn. Somehow the vehicle remained up right. It's rear end whipping wildly until I regained control. Behind us the first vehicle missed the turn. It's break shrieked as the driver attempted to stop. That mistake bought us perhaps ten seconds and I used every one of them. I drove the explorer as hard as I could along a dirt road even rougher than the paved one. The suspension was being hammered and stones rang against the underside of the vehicle. None of that mattered to me. Megan had turned in her seat to watch the road behind us. She told me they had made it onto the dirt track and were approaching fast. About a quarter of a mile later the road divided. I took the left branch without considering it, simply hoping to make our movements harder to predict. Almost immediately the track narrowed until it was closer to a trail than a road. Brush scraped along both sides of the explorer. Deep ruts and rocks forced me down to around 25 miles an hour. Going any faster could have wrecked the car. That was when Megan seized my arm and pointed in front of us. There was a building ahead, some old structure possibly an abandoned gas station. In the darkness I could not tell for sure, but there were clearly walls and one side appeared to have a roof that had caved in. I drove around to the back of it, immediately switched off the headlights and shut down the engine. We stayed motionless and total darkness, breathing heavily and listening. At first all I heard was the cooling engine ticking in my own pulse thundering in my ears, then another sound reached us. Approaching engines becoming louder. They had followed us onto the trail. Through an opening in the damaged wall I watched the beams of light sweep over the desert. Now they had turned on their headlights, probably because they needed them on such a difficult track. The first vehicle moved slowly past the building, creeping along as though its occupants were searching. It was an older Chevrolet suburban, dark in color, with mud plastered over its license plates. The windows were tinted, preventing me from seeing the driver. It stopped about 50 yards beyond where we were concealed. Then I heard doors opening. Megan clenched my hands so tightly that I thought my fingers might break. Male voices drifted toward us, but we could not understand what they were saying. The second vehicle arrived, a pickup whose plates were also smeared with mud. More doors opened. By then I could identify at least four separate voices. They began moving apart, sending flashlight beams into the darkness in several directions. One beam passed over the building sheltering us, and we both ducked, even though we were already out of view. The voices drew nearer. Eventually I could pick out words. They were arguing about whether we had kept following the trail or turned around and gone back. Then Megan did something I will always remember. She reached behind her seat for her purse and took out a small can of bear spray. She carried it everywhere, a habit she had picked up growing up in Montana. Whispering, she told me that if they discovered us, she would use the spray. If I had to, I should drive straight through them. Both of us were terrified, but having even that much of a plan made the fear a little more manageable. Footsteps were nearing our hiding place when one of the men suddenly called out. He said something about fresh tire tracks going the other way toward the fork. Several confused voices answered. Then we heard them running back to their vehicles. The engines came to life again. We listened as they turned around and drove back in the direction they had come from. For probably another five minutes neither of us moved. We did not dare speak, even in a whisper. When I eventually restarted the explorer, I left the headlights off an inch forward, relying on moonlight to follow the trail. Megan occasionally switched on her phone's flashlight, using only brief flashes to check that we were not about to plunge off a cliff or into something equally bad. We followed the trail for what seemed like hours, though it was likely only 20 minutes. Another fork appeared. This time I noticed power lines following the branch on the right. Power lines had to lead toward people. We took that branch. My nerves were completely afraid. Every shadow resembled a vehicle lying in wait for another ambush. Megan continued looking behind us, but there was nothing there. Only vacant darkness. Finally, wonderfully, the trail met a proper paved road with a yellow line down its middle. I still had no clue where we were, but it was a real road and at that moment nothing else mattered. I chose to turn right at random. After perhaps ten minutes of driving lights appeared ahead, a gas station that stayed open 24 hours. One of those truck stops with a canopy fluttered in bright fluorescent light. No gas station had ever made me happier. We turned into the lot and parked directly outside the entrance in the most brightly illuminated spot. For a minute we remained in the car both shaking as the adrenaline began to drain away. Inside, while Megan went to the restroom, I asked the attendant where we had ended up. We were near a town called Helendale, a place I had never heard of, approximately 40 miles from where we were supposed to be. The clerk was an older man with a beard turning gray. He told me that other people had come in from that area looking just as shaken. Apparently, some sort of criminal activity was operating out there. He did not know precisely what had involved. Maybe drugs were being manufactured, or perhaps it was human trafficking. Whatever it was, the people who lived nearby knew better than to use those backroads once it was dark. He said we had been lucky. Some travelers who chose that wrong exit were never seen afterward. There was no humor in his voice. He meant it. We contacted the police from the station. They told us that without plate numbers or more useful descriptions, there was not much they could do. They recorded our report over the phone and said patrols in the area would be increased. We completed the drive to San Diego in full daylight, keeping to major highways and choosing only crowded rest stops whenever we needed to stop. We did have our vacation. We tried to make the most of the beaches and the restaurants. But throughout that entire week, neither of us slept properly. Even today, three years afterward, I avoid driving after dark whenever I have a choice, and I have never again turned onto an exit I did not recognize. Story 5 Driving home to Oklahoma from my sister's house in Missouri should have meant nothing more than eight uneventful hours on the highway. Since she had relocated there for a teaching position, I had traveled that road at least 12 times. By then I knew it by heart. All the exits, the worthwhile rest areas and even the gas stations with the best kept bathrooms. It was late February of 2022 on one of those strange days when the weather seemed unable to choose between winter and spring. I left her place at about seven in the morning, hoping to get ahead of the weekend traffic. I remember being in a good mood, even relaxed with a thermosful of her homemade coffee, and a selection of true crime podcasts lined up for the drive. My sister Janet had just announced that she was expecting a baby. During the first hour I thought about possible names and wondered what sort of ant I would become. The fun one or the dependable one. Roughly two hours after leaving somewhere close to the state line, I stopped at a rest area. The coffee had already made a bathroom break necessary. Only a few cars and trucks were spread across the nearly empty lot, which seemed perfectly normal for a Sunday morning. A black Tahu stood several spaces from my car, its motor still running. The windows were tinted so heavily that I could not see a thing inside. What drew my attention was the frame around its license plate. A strange holographic eagle decorated it, shimmering and shifting colors as I passed. When I left the restroom a man was standing beside the vending machines. He was tall and thin, dressed in a faded denim jacket bearing patches I could not identify from that distance. He balanced almost all his weight on one leg in an odd pose that reminded me of a flamingo. His hair was an unnatural copper color, the kind that looked like the result of a homemade die job in a motel bathroom. For perhaps half a second we looked at each other. He knotted briefly then turned back to the machine and continued inserting quarters with exaggerated patience. At the time I gave it little thought. You meet every sort of person at rest stops. Years earlier I had learned that a stranger's appearance on the road was no reason to jump to conclusions. About an hour afterward I pulled into a love's truck stop for snacks and to refill my tank. That same black Tahu entered shortly after I did. It was not immediately behind me, but it was close enough that I spotted the eagle frame flashing in the sunlight again. This time whoever was driving remained inside. Still as I headed into the store I had the uncomfortable sense that I was being watched. I bought pretzels in a diet coke, telling myself that plenty of people traveled the same highways on Sundays. Maybe the true crime shows were simply making me suspicious of everything. The cashier was a young guy with braces. His name tag read Dustin. He talked about the weather as he scanned my purchases, but my eyes kept straying to the parking lot beyond the window. The Tahu had not moved. It was positioned so its driver could watch both the entrance and my vehicle. My battered Toyota Camry suddenly looked much too exposed. On my way back I deliberately stared toward the Tahu, hoping to make out someone behind the glass. Looking into those windows was like looking into a dark mirror. I even pretended to inspect something in my trunk, delaying my departure in the hope that they would leave first. They did not. The engine continued to idle. Eventually I climbed into the camera and drove away. In the rear-view mirror I watched the Tahoe wait approximately thirty seconds before pulling out after me. On the highway it remained three or four vehicles back. Whenever I moved over to pass a slower driver though, it changed lanes as well. Keeping that same deliberate separation. The podcasts were still playing but I no longer heard what anyone was saying. I watched the black shape in the mirror instead, trying to remember its grill, the headlight that looked slightly weaker than the other, and the little orange parking permit attached to the windshield's lower left corner. The third encounter happened at a rest stop near Venita. That was when my instincts began insisting that something was badly wrong. I purposely chose an exit I ordinarily never used. A small one with only a gas station and a McDonald's. If they came off the highway there too, I would no longer be able to call it chance. For five full minutes I stayed in the McDonald's lock with the engine running, watching the exit ramp in my mirror. No Tahoe appeared. Relief swept over me. I actually laughed at myself, imagining telling Janet about it later and the two of us making fun of my runaway imagination. Then I went inside McDonald's to use the bathroom and saw the copper haired man again. He occupied a booth in the corner with a cup of coffee and nothing to eat. His denim jacket lay folded on the seat next to him. Underneath he wore a white t-shirt marked across the chest with what might have been Burns or Old Stains. He held the coffee cup using only the tips of his fingers as though it were fragile or dangerous. Our eyes met once more. This time there was no nod and he did not turn away. He simply studied me with a completely blank expression as if he were recording every detail of my face. I nearly ran into the restroom. Inside a lock stall I called Janet with fingers that would not stop shaking. She did not pick up. I assumed she was at her Sunday faculty meeting. I left a message making an effort to sound ordinary. I only said I was stopping for a break and would get home later than I had planned. When I emerged the man had disappeared. His cup remained on the table still filled with coffee. Steam curled above it, suggesting he had left only moments before. Through the window I saw the Tahoe beside my camera. It was parked so tightly against it that reaching my driver's door would require me to squeeze between the vehicles. There were dozens of empty spaces elsewhere in that lot. Choosing the one beside mine was intentional. They were communicating something and I was beginning to understand it with frightening clarity. I turned sideways to reach my door, pressing my back against the camera while struggling with the keys. That was when the odor reached me. A dense chemical smell drifted from the Tahoe, like industrial cleaning solution mixed with something metallic. On its dashboard lay a parking stub from a place named Beckman storage facility dated the previous day. Through a narrow opening in the tinted windows, I could make out what appeared to be rolls of plastic sheeting across the back seat. My mind kept searching for harmless reasons for everything I saw. My body, however, had already descended into outright panic. I got inside and immediately locked every door. My heart was beating so fiercely that I could hear it. I drove out quickly. The tires giving a little squeal. Unconcerned about what anyone might think. Back on the highway, I was traveling at least 20 miles an hour above the posted limit. Within minutes, the Tahoe was behind me again, holding its familiar, carefully measured distance. A terrible realization grew clearer. They were not simply attempting to catch up with me. They were putting pressure on me, pushing me toward a particular place or outcome. I began calculating my situation. It was around two in the afternoon. There was still full daylight and plenty of highway traffic. But I was approaching a section I knew well, where exits became scarce and the towns grew smaller. My phone currently had three bars. In about 40 miles near Turner County, it would lose reception entirely in the dead zone everybody complained about. Going home was out of the question. They would follow and learn where I lived. Continuing indefinitely was impossible, too. Eventually I would have to buy more fuel and the gauge was already below half. Diling 911 felt absurd. How would I explain it? A vehicle was following me, but not closely. An unsettling stranger had appeared at the same rest stops. Neither had actually broken a law yet. They had only left me profoundly, desperately frightened. Then I recalled something my father had told me years before when I first began driving by myself. If you suspect somebody is following you, make four right turns, or four left ones, drive a complete circle. If they remain behind you afterward, you have your answer. The next exit led to a tiny town, barely a dot on the map. I took it anyway, listening to my turn signal tick like a timer counting down. The Tahoe took the exit, too. At the stop sign beneath the ramp I turned right. It turned right. I made another right beside the closed sonic drive in. It followed again. At the bordered up Methodist Church I turned right once more. Still there, the fourth right brought me around to the original stop sign. The Tahoe stayed behind me, now only one car length away, with no apparent interest in hiding what it was doing. That was when I finally got a clear view of the driver. He had lowered his window. It was not the man with copper-colored hair. This man was older, with a gray beard cut into an exact square, and sunglasses whose lenses reflected my car. He raised a hand, pointed at me, and then indicated the roadside. He seemed to be ordering me to pull over. The movement was composed almost courteous. Somehow that was far more terrifying than an angry shout or an obvious threat would have been. I accelerated hard onto the highway again. The speedometer reached 90 as I darted through traffic like somebody out of her mind. Other motorists sounding their horns. For a few precious minutes the Tahoe vanished from my mirrors. I swung onto the next exit without using my signal The last second maneuver nearly sent me into the guardrail. It brought me into yet another tiny town, with a main street consisting of little more than three empty blocks. But there was a police station, a small brick building with a single patrol car outside. I entered the parking lot so quickly that my tires screeched, jumped out, and ran to the entrance. I tugged at the door. Locked. It was Sunday. Of course the station was locked on a Sunday. An emergency contact number had been taped to the door. As I began entering it on my phone a familiar engine reached my ears. The Tahoe passed the station slowly. It did not stop. It simply rolled along as though its occupants were admiring the town. Through the windshield I could now distinguish two people in the front seats. The gray bearded driver and a smaller passenger wearing what appeared to be a medical mask. The disposable white paper type. Most of the health precautions had ended months earlier. While I stood in the police station lot they drove around the block repeatedly. Three passes altogether. Each one was slower than the previous one. On their third circuit the passenger lowered the window and raised a piece of cardboard. Written on it in heavy black marker was my sister's address. Not merely the street name. Her actual house number two. They displayed it long enough for me to read it without any doubt. Janet's address. They knew where I had come from, where I had been, whom I had visited, my knees nearly buckled. I braced myself against the patrol car to keep from falling, and that was when I realized its door was unlocked. In fact it stood slightly a jar as though the officer had stepped away only briefly. I acted without thinking, out of nothing but instinct and desperation. I pulled the door open, threw myself inside, slammed it, and pressed the lock button. The radio was within reach, its handset hanging from a hook. I had no idea how to operate it correctly, but I snatched it up and began pushing buttons. I shouted into it that I needed help, that people were following me, and that I was inside a patrol car at the Wakita police station. The Tahoe had come to a stop in the middle of the street. Both people from the front seats were outside now, standing on opposite sides of the vehicle as though deciding their next move. Then the copper-haired man stepped out of the rear seat. There had been three people involved from the start. He held something resembling an altered tire iron, with the duct tape wound around one end. Wearing the same vacant expression I had seen at the rest stops, he began approaching the police car. At that moment, the radio came alive with a crackle. A dispatcher asked me to repeat my location and said officers were already coming. I was to remain inside and keep the doors locked. The three strangers heard the transmission as well. It was loud enough to reach them. For a long moment, the exchange looks. The bearded driver said something to the others. then all three returned to the Tahoe, I don't know. raid pace, as if they had absolutely no reason to rush. They left slowly turning left where the main street ended. I stayed in the patrol car trembling so violently that my teeth knocked together and watched until they disappeared. The dispatcher continued speaking to me, asking questions I could scarcely understand through the panic. Two police cars arrived within eight minutes, waiting inside that car, flinching whenever another vehicle passed, it had felt like hours. The officers handled everything professionally, although they initially seemed doubtful. Then they checked the Tahoe's plates using the information I had given them. The registration led to an LLC that no longer operated and an address that was false. They recorded my statement and brought in state troopers. One officer traveled behind me all the way to the Oklahoma border, while another went ahead of me. The Tahoe and its three occupants were never located during that search. Two weeks afterward though, a detective phoned. Investigators had discovered the vehicle in a field near Joplin. It had been abandoned and burned completely, and it bore stolen Kansas plates. Within the black and wreckage they recovered zip ties, a role of duct tape and blood traces that match nobody in their system. The detective told me I had been fortunate. From what they could tell, these people were experienced professionals, possibly human traffickers, possibly something even worse. He believed using the police radio had probably kept me alive. Once they heard it, they knew officers would arrive too soon for them to take me and escape without being caught. I never traveled that route alone again. Three months later Janet returned to Oklahoma. She told me the move was because of her husband's work. I knew what had really prompted it. Neither of us ever discussed what might have happened if I had not found that station. If the patrol car had been locked, if the radio had failed, the detective contacted me a few more times with supposed updates that offered little new information. More dead ends, more leads that had gone cold. Black SUVs are still everywhere I look. I still monitor my mirrors compulsively. Rest stops still make my chest constrict. As I ask myself whether they selected me at random or had been observing me before that day even began. In some ways, not knowing feels almost worse than the terror it self did. But I survived. I am sitting here writing this. Some people never get that chance. If you are reading this in ever sense that someone is following you, do not brush it aside. Do not concern yourself with whether you appear paranoid. Go into your instincts, get to a safe place and draw attention, make noise as much noise as you can. That may be the one thing that keeps you alive. Story 6 The semester was over and I was making the long drive from my college in Virginia to my parents' home in Georgia. It was May 2017. I remember feeling relieved that my junior year had finally ended, but that relief came mixed with the exhaustion of finals week. For days I had sacrificed sleep to study for exams. Now behind the wheel of my battered 2003 Nissan Altia, that decision was catching up with me. The Nissan had belonged to my grandfather before he died. With its dulling silver paint and split dashboard, it certainly was not much to look at. But it had always been dependable. I was 21 stubborn as hell, and certain I could finish the entire 14 hour trip without spending a night anywhere along the way. My mother had pleaded with me to spread the journey over two days. All I wanted though was to get home, fall into the bed I had slept in as a kid, and forget organic chemistry existed for at least three months. By the time I reached somewhere near the border between North Carolina and South Carolina, I had been driving nonstop for 12 hours. My eyes stung and I repeatedly caught myself wandering toward the shoulder's rumble strips. At 2 in the morning there was almost nobody on the highway, except an occasional 18 wheeler roaring past. The unchanging road had begun to put me into a trance. I knew that if I did not stop soon, I could end up as another statistic. Then a blue sign appeared, announcing a rest area two miles ahead. When I turned in the place seemed entirely vacant, the truck spaces were empty. No families were outside walking dogs. There was only a little brick building, vending machines shining behind its windows, and a handful of street lights spreading orange patches over cracked pavement. I parked close to the building, though not directly beneath a lamp. I lowered the windows a little for ventilation, tip my seat back, and set an alarm on my phone for a 20 minute nap. Perhaps five minutes after shutting my eyes, I heard a vehicle enter the lot. Its engine had a recognizable rattle, as though something under the hood had worked loose. As it swung into the parking area, its headlights passed across my windshield. I left my eyes closed. Probably another exhausted driver, I told myself. But I listened as it stopped four or five spaces away. The engine went quiet, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing. Through a narrow gap beneath my eyelids I watched someone step out. A tall lean man, apparently wearing a dark jacket, even though the night was warm. He lit a cigarette and rested against his vehicle, a burgundy sedan that looked well past its best years. The cigarettes and burned orange in the darkness. Every so often I heard him cough. Something about his behavior unsettled me. He was not going into the restroom or walking around to loosen his legs. He was simply smoking and looking toward my car. I tried to dismiss the discomfort tightening my chest. Maybe I was imagining things. He was probably taking a break just as I was. Perhaps he needed to build up the courage to enter those questionable rest stop bathrooms, which always smell like industrial cleaner and desperation. But after finishing the cigarette he tossed it onto the asphalt and stayed where he was. He nother climbed back into the sedan or walked toward the building. In the weak light his shape was difficult to distinguish, but I could tell you remain turned toward me. The sensible part of my mind insisted I was making too much of it. Everyone knows a lack of sleep can make you paranoid. Even so I shifted a little and reached toward the keys in the ignition, just to be prepared. Then he began walking. He did not head for the restroom and he did not return to his car. He came straight toward mine. His shoes struck the pavement slowly and deliberately, and beneath his breath he hums something without a discernible tune. Every instinct told me to start the engine and get out. Yet I hesitated in that strange place between worrying that I would look irrational and understanding that something was truly wrong. He stopped beside the driver's door. I continued acting as though I was asleep, keeping my eyes nearly shut. From my lashes I saw him bend down and look into the window. His face hovered just inches from the glass. Sigarette smokes slipped through the opening I had left for fresh air. He looked to be in his mid-forties with a weathered face, deeply set eyes and stubble that seemed untouched for days. His breathing misted the window while he examined the interior. Then he did something that made my entire body stiffen. He pulled the door handle. At first it was a light tug as if he were checking whether the door would open. Thank God I had remembered to lock it when I parked. When the first attempt failed, he began pulling more forcefully, twice, three times. The car rocked a little under the strain. Then he brought his mouth close to the gap above the window and whispered my name. Brandon, he said slowly, stretching it out as though we had known one another forever. Brandon come on, open the door. I had never encountered this man in my life. My student identification was inside my wallet in my pocket. It was not sitting somewhere he could see. The school parking permit displayed only a permit number, not my name. There was no possible reason a complete stranger at a deserted rest stop should have known who I was. My heart beat so violently that I thought he might hear it. I held my keys ready to force them into the ignition. Or I could move his hand struck the window startling me. I know you're not a sleep Brandon, he said raising his voice. Your mother asked me to check on you. She's concerned. Just open the door a little so we can talk. The claim was so transparently false that it felt insulting. My mother did not even know which roads I had chosen for the drive home. She certainly would not have arranged for some suspicious stranger to track me down at two in the morning. He continued talking becoming increasingly irritated. He said he had traveled all that distance to help, accused me of being rude, and insisted he only wanted to confirm that I was all right. His hand remained against the window. The fingers split over the glass like a starfish. I could see grime packed beneath his nails. Finally, I abandoned the act and reached for the ignition. My hand shook badly enough that I needed two attempts to get the key in. The engine started at once. Thank God that old Nissan was still reliable. I shifted into drive. The man stepped sharply away from the door, but he did not seem startled. She was grinning. It was a broad smile with far too many teeth showing. As I moved, he called after me. See you soon, Brandon, say hello to your sister Haley for me. That was what made me slam the accelerator down and race out of the launt my tires shrieking over the pavement. My sister's name. He knew that, too. Haley was in Tennessee spending the summer working as a counselor at a camp. There was no reason in the world for this man to know anything about her. I rejoined the highway at 90 miles an hour, checking the rear view mirror over and over. For around 10 minutes, the road behind me was nothing but darkness. Then a lone headlight appeared far back. Apparently the other one had burned out. The sedan with the rattling engine was behind me, matching my pace regardless of how fast I went. I reached for my phone and tried dialing 911, dividing my attention between the roadway and the mirror. The operator picked up after the second ring. I practically yelled as I explained a stranger at a rest area knew my name, had tried to get into my car, and was now following me south on Interstate 95. She wanted my precise location. The mile markers were passing too quickly for me to read them. She told me to leave the highway at the next exit with lights and people. Somewhere witnesses would be around. According to the sign I had just passed that exit was eight miles away, eight miles with that lunatic following me. I pushed the Nissan up to a hundred. The entire vehicle shuttered from the effort. The burgundy car remained behind me, losing ground occasionally and gaining it again, but never disappearing. When the exit sign finally came into view, relief almost brought me to tears. Just beyond the ramp was a group of gas stations and fast food restaurants. I entered the curve much too quickly. The tires screaming and drove directly into a shell station fluttered with fluorescent light. Two cars were at the pumps and a tanker truck stood to one side. I stopped directly outside the store's glass entrance in the brightest area, where the security cameras could capture whatever happened. The sedan had taken the exit with me. In my mirror I watched it creep through the station's parking lot. It stopped about 50 feet away near the air pump and continued idling. Behind the windshield the man silhouette sat still, watching me. I rushed into the shop and nearly sent an energy drink display toppling before reaching the counter. The employee was perhaps 19 with stretched ear piercings and a nametag reading quarry. He initially looked at me as though I had lost my mind. I told him I was being followed, had already contacted the police, and needed to remain inside until they arrived. His board expression vanished immediately. He looked toward the burgundy car. "Is that the guy?" he asked. I nodded. He grabbed the store phone and summoned his manager from the back. A massive man named Bill emerged probably 300 pounds in looking like a former football player. He took up a position at the entrance, crossed his arms, and stared directly at the sedan. We waited that way for roughly 15 minutes. Then a state trooper entered the lot with his lights flashing. The instant the blue lights appeared, the sedan's engine revved with that familiar rattle. It tore out of the parking lot and headed toward the highway. The trooper attempted to go after it, but by the time he had turned his vehicle around the sedan, it vanished. I gave a statement and described every detail I remembered about the stranger in his car. The officer checked my plates and driver's license. He even contacted my mother to confirm my identity. She became hysterical when she learned what had happened. Repeatedly asking how that man could have known our names. The trooper could not explain it. He proposed that perhaps the stranger had spotted a piece of mail or another item bearing my name inside the car. But I knew there had been nothing like that. Apart from empty water bottles and a phone charger, the interior was clean. For the next 50 miles, the officer stayed behind me to ensure the sedan did not return. I completed the journey home after daylight arrived, so charged with adrenaline and gas station coffee that sleeping no longer seemed possible. Three days later, came the part that truly disturbed me. I was home and finally beginning to settle down. I had started convincing myself that the man was simply some unstable stranger, who might have heard my name somewhere. When Haley called from camp, she sounded shaken and bewildered. Why she wanted to know, had I given a man her work telephone number. Someone had apparently contacted the camp's main office, claimed to be a friend of the family, and specifically requested Haley. He told them there was a family emergency. Following the camp's procedures, the director refused to connect him without confirming his identity. The caller became angry. He used my name and said I had instructed him to call. He knew the cabin Haley had been assigned to. He knew she was teaching archery that summer. Because the caller sounded unstable, the director had recorded the conversation. When Haley listened to it, she did not recognize the voice. Neither did I when she held her phone near the recording so I could hear it. But the faint, tuneless humming behind the words was unmistakable. It was the same man. Now a stranger had learned things about my family that could not simply be pulled from social media. Haley's camp position had never been posted online. In fact, she had deliberately avoided drawing attention to herself because of the camp's rules concerning counselors and their internet presence. We never learned his identity or how he knew so much about us. I made police reports in several states. That fall I used a different route to return to college and even move to another apartment. My parents had a security system installed. Haley came home from camp early. Two weeks later the detective handling the investigation located the burgundy sedan in a South Carolina Wal-Mart parking lot, where it had been abandoned. It had been reported stolen in Maryland a month before the night I encountered it. Its owner had no ties to me or anyone in my family. Inside were maps with assorted routes to colleges marked in highlighter. Fans of student identification cards from different schools. And notebooks containing names, addresses and private details about seemingly random people. Thankfully my ID was not one of the cards. My name did appear in the notebooks though. So did Haley's. Our parents address was recorded there, along with my spring class schedule and even the make and model of the Nissan. Nothing explained why he wanted that information or how he had acquired it. The detective believed he had spent years doing this, trailing college students and studying their lives. Yet there had never been reports that he had physically harmed anyone. He only frightened them. Only made certain they understood he was watching. He was never caught. Even now there are times when I check my mirrors far more often than necessary. I no longer pull into rest areas at all. I would rather keep going on an almost empty tank until I reach an actual exit with other people nearby. What stays with me is the absence of answers, not knowing who he was, not knowing why he selected me, not knowing whether he is still somewhere out there, committing another person's life to memory. Story 7. I had spent hours driving that night, taking remote country roads to shorten the trip to a job interview scheduled for the following morning. My aging sedan was no longer particularly suited to lengthy journeys. Still, I thought that if I maintained an even speed and avoided straining it, I would get there without any problems. Out there, the radio could scarcely find a station. So most of the drive had passed in your silence. There was only the engine steady drone and an occasional rush of air slipping through the deteriorating seals around the windows. When the temperature gauge on the dashboard began inching toward the red zone, I was surrounded by absolutely nothing. No service stations, no homes, not so much as a distant light along the horizon. I guided the car onto the gravel shoulder, in the stillness the stones crackling beneath the tires sounded disturbingly loud. The instant I raised the hood, steam escaped with a hiss, twisting upward and pale ghost-like spirals before dissolving into the chilly night air. I lacked both the equipment and the mechanical experience to deal with whatever had failed, so I phoned for a tone. The dispatcher warned me that a truck would need at least an hour to reach me. I could live with that weight. At least I could until headlights appeared behind me in the rear-view mirror. They belonged to an holder pickup with a square boxy body. Its paint had faded so badly that I could not identify what color it had originally been. Other than simply driving past, it reduced its speed to a crawl as it drew level with my car. I looked over, anticipating a concerned motorist offering assistance. But the inside of the cab was completely dark. No face was visible, not even the outline of a person. Nothing at all. The pickup continued past me and traveled farther along the road. Its rear lights dwindling into the darkness. I tried to brush off the encounter. See the driver was merely curious or being careful. A few minutes afterward, the same pickup returned. On this pass, it did not come all the way by me. It stopped roughly a hundred yards away and sat with its motor idling, then its headlights went out entirely. All I could hear was the distant uneven throb of its engine and the shrill singing of crickets hidden in the tall grass. I repeatedly glanced at the dark shape occupying the road, feeling my chest draw tighter with every second. Then I noticed something moving. Somewhere between my car and the park truck, the grass rustled slowly and purposefully. I frozen, listened. It did not sound like stocks moving randomly in the wind. There was a pattern to it, like someone's footsteps pushing and dragging through the grass. Occasionally the movement would stop, then resume a few seconds afterward, a little nearer each time. My phone seemed impossibly heavy in my hand, as though it weighed a hundred pounds. I opened its flashlight app but left the light off. Revealing the precise spot where I was standing was the last thing I wanted to do. Instead I rested against the car door and tried to follow the noise by listening. The dispatcher's earlier words kept circling through my mind, about an hour. I could not tell how long it had been since I called. It already seemed like an eternity. My eyes moved back and forth between the pickups black outline and the shifting grass. Without warning the truck's engine stopped, the silence settled so heavily that my ears almost seemed to ring. I swallowed trying to keep myself from picturing somebody crouched out there, observing me. When a faint shape first emerged from the grass, my mind struggled to understand what I was seeing. A person was advancing in a low posture, almost as though they were attempting to remain beneath my line of sight. Every now and then something near their hand flashed metallicly in the light cast by my hazard signals. My muscles tightened. Reaching behind me, I opened the trunk only far enough to retrieve the tire iron I stored inside, then shut it with as little sound as possible. The stranger continued approaching, moving slowly but without hesitation. At approximately 30 feet away, they stopped along the edge of the shoulder, with part of their body still obscured by darkness. I could distinguish a cap pull down low and a jacket hanging loosely from their frame. For a while, neither of us moved. We faced each other in that silent confrontation, illuminated only by the repetitive useless blinking of my hazard lights. A coyote called somewhere in the distance. The noise appeared to break whatever spell it held the stranger still. They advanced one step, my heartbeat hammered inside my ears. Tightening my hold on the tire iron I made myself speak in a low steady voice and ordered them to stop where they were. No response came. They tipped their head slightly instead, as though assessing something and then looked toward the pickup farther down the road. That was when it struck me that there must be more than one of them. I looked rapidly from the person beside the grass to the truck's large silent shape, wondering whether another person was sitting inside waiting. Still watching the stranger, I retreated toward the driver's seat. I slipped into the sedan without turning my back on them and pressed the button to lock the doors. The locks clunk sounded much louder than it should have in that stillness. The person remained motionless, but I could feel their focus fixed on me. My hazard signals continued their maddening cycle, exposing the figure for half a second before letting the darkness consume them again. Then two headlights suddenly swept over the road from the other direction. A vehicle was coming toward us. The tow truck, the stranger snapped their head toward the approaching lights, then vanished into the grass without making a sound. By the time the tow truck stopped behind my car, nothing nearby was moving. The pickup that had remained down the road, watching, had disappeared as well. I explained what had happened to the tow truck driver. He only looked doubtful. Folks get curious out here sometimes, he said. Perhaps he was right. But while we secured my sedan onto the flatbed, I kept searching the dark borders of the grass, almost expecting the stranger to step out again. They never returned. To this day, I have no explanation for that person's approach or the pickup's repeated visits. I only know that if my car fails on a dark road another time, I will not spend the weight by myself.