Night Shift

The kid put his bucket down and collapsed into the girl's arms, shuddering.

My heart was thudding heavily in my chest and my calves felt like water. And speaking of water, we had brought back about a bucket and a quarter between us. It hardly seemed worth it.

'I want to block up that doorway,' I said to the counterman. 'What will do the trick?'

'Well -'

The trucker broke in: 'Why? One of those big trucks couldn't get a wheel in through there.'

'It's not the big trucks I'm worried about.'

The trucker began hunting for a smoke.

'We got some sheet sidin' out in the supply room,' the counterman said. 'Boss was gonna put up a shed to store butane gas.'

'We'll put them across and prop them with a couple of booths.'

'It'll help,' the trucker said.

It took about an hour and by the end we'd all got into the act, even the girl. It was fairly solid. Of course, fairly solid wasn't going to be good enough, not if something hit it at full speed. I think they all knew that.

There were still three booths ranged along the big glass picture window and I sat down in one of them. The clock behind the counter had stopped at 8.32, but it felt like ten. Outside the truck prowled and growled. Some left, hurrying off to unknown missions, and others came. There were three pickup trucks now, circling importantly amid their bigger brothers.

I was starting to doze, and instead of counting sheep I counted trucks. How many in the state, how many in America? Trailer trucks, pickup trucks, flatbeds, day-haulers, three-quarter-tons, army convoy trucks by the tens of thousands, and buses. Nightmare vision of a city-bus, two wheels in the gutter and two wheels on the pavement, roaring along and ploughing through screaming pedestrians like ninepins.

I shook it off and fell into a light, troubled sleep.

It must have been early morning when Snodgrass began to scream. A thin new moon had risen and was shining icily through a high scud of cloud. A new clattering note had been added, counterpointing the throaty, idling roar of the big rigs. I looked for it and saw a hay baler circling out by the darkened sign. The moonlight glanced off the sharp, turning spoke of its packer.

The scream came again, unmistakably from the drainage ditch: 'Help. . . meeeee .

'What was that?' It was the girl. In the shadows her eyes were wide and she looked horribly frightened.

'Nothing,' I said.

'Help. . . meeeee .

'He's alive,' she whispered. 'Oh, God. Alive.'

I didn't have to see him. I could imagine it all too well. Snodgrass lying half in and half out of the drainage ditch, back and legs broken, carefully-pressed suit caked with mud, white, gasping face turned up to the indifferent moon...

'I don't hear anything,' I said. 'Do you?'

She looked at me. 'How can you? How?'

'Now if you woke him up,' I said, jerking a thumb at the kid, 'he might hear something. He might go out there. Would you like that?'

Her face began to twitch and pull as if stitched by invisible needles. 'Nothing,' she whispered. 'Nothing out there.'

She went back to her boy friend and pressed her head against his chest. His arms came up around her in his sleep. No one else woke up. Snodgrass cried and wept and screamed for a long time, and then he stopped.

Dawn.

Another truck had arrived, this one a flatbed with a giant rack for hauling cars. It was joined by a bulldozer. That scared me.

The trucker came over and twitched my arm. 'Come on back,' he whispered excitedly. The others were still sleeping. 'Come look at this.'

I followed him back to the supply room. About ten trucks were patrolling out there. At first I didn't see anything new.

'See?' he said, and pointed. 'Right there.'

Then I saw. One of the pickups was stopped dead. It was sitting there like a lump, all the menace gone out of it.

'Out of gas?'

'That's right, buddy. And they can't pump their own.

We got it knocked. All we have to do is wait.' He smiled and fumbled for a cigarette.

It was about nine o'clock and I was eating a piece of yesterday's pie for breakfast when the air horn began -long, rolling blasts that rattled your skull. We went over to the windows and looked out. The trucks were sitting still, idling. One trailer truck, a huge Reo with a red cab, had pulled up almost to the narrow verge of grass between the restaurant and parking lot. At this distance the square grill was huge and murderous. The tyres would stand to a man's chest cavity.

The horn began to blare again; hard, hungry blasts that travelled off in straight, flat lines and echoed back. There was a pattern. Shorts and longs in some kind of rhythm.

'That's Morse!' the kid, Jerry, suddenly exclaimed.

The trucker looked at him. 'How would you know?'

The kid went a little red. 'I learned it in the Boy Scouts.'

'You?' the trucker said. 'You? Wow.' He shook his head.

'Never mind,' I said. 'Do you remember enough to -'

'Sure, Let me listen. Got a pencil?'