“A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet.” 

— Patrick Rothfuss

    “Ow! Damnit!”

    Harley reached up with her left hand to rub her shoulder. 

    “Punch buggy yellow!” Chortled Bean.

    “I told you, don’t hit the driver!”

    “But that’s the game, Har.”

    “I’m gonna get cancer in my shoulder.” She rubbed the spot and then put her hand back at the ten position on the wheel.

    They were driving to see their grandma. It was supposed to take eight hours, but traffic outside of Flint Springs had brought the highway to a standstill. They were now three hours late. Harley Maddens, being the only member of the duo who could drive, was beginning to get frustrated. Bean, whose birth name was Beverly Rebecca, but who had been called Bean since she was an infant, had no license and no desire to get one. She had ‘ spatial issues, ’ she said, meaning that she was, according to Harley, a giant baby who had been spoiled her whole life and was now merely resting on the story she had been fed since she was old enough to listen.

    Bean was in early college, and she excelled at math and science even though she was just a teenager. School was all she did. She had no job, no industry at all, except to hang with her similarly socially awkward friends and talk endlessly about things that just didn’t matter to Harley.

    “How old are you?” Harley glanced in the rearview at Bean, who was sitting against the door with her legs stretched out.

    “I’m sixteen. You know that.”

    “Really?” 

    “Yes, really. Why?”

    “Because three hours ago, I told you not to sit like that. It isn’t safe.”

    “So?”

    “So, if I have to stop, you’ll be flung up here. Haven’t you ever seen the videos of the mannequins they film to show what a body can do in an accident?”

    “I trust your driving.” Bean looked back down at the fat AP chemistry book she was reading.

    “My driving isn’t at issue here. It’s other people you ought to be worried about.”

    “The statistics bear me out.”

    “What?”

    “The statistics. The likelihood of our being in an accident is slim. It would be slimmer if we had flown.”

    Harley frowned and cranked down on the steering wheel. No job, and yet, she expects to be catered to. When their grandma had taken ill, they had agreed to go to see her, but there was no money for plane tickets. They had to drive. She rolled her eyes.

    “I’m not getting into that with you again.”

    “Yeah, well ...” and then, Bean perked up. She sat up, reached forward, and punched Harley on the shoulder. “Punch buggy green,” she shouted, as a bright, venom-green Beetle passed them.

    Riverford was still about an hour and a half away when Harley finally pulled the car into a rest stop. Bean hopped out and went to the restroom. Harley stayed with the car. She walked around the old, beat-up Subaru to stretch her legs. When Bean came back and got into the back seat, Harley locked the doors and headed toward the restrooms.

    “Hey,” Bean said.

    “What?”

    “Bring back some peanut M&Ms.”

    Harley held her hand out. When no money was forthcoming, she turned and hustled toward the restroom. The days of catering to Bean were over. They could have food when they got to Grandma’s. She reached up and rubbed her shoulder. There would be a massive bruise there.

    When she came back, she noticed that her little sister had been rooting around in the back. Now, not only were several of her books piled about on the seat and floorboards, but also a small black case with the words “Bean’s Chemistry Set” printed neatly on orange masking tape on the side. What chemicals were in there, she couldn’t guess and didn’t want to know. Would they get loose and burn her seats, or chew into metal or fill the car with a sulfuric stench? She decided not to say anything. It wouldn’t do any good either way.

    Harley was so frustrated as they pulled out of the rest stop that she didn’t notice the classic Ford Bronco that followed them. She merged and settled into the slow lane, trying to keep the old Subby at around sixty-eight mph. Three car lengths behind the light blue Subaru, the Bronco moved in and closed the distance.

    Bean had finally dozed off when they were only thirty miles from their exit. In the silence and the bluish twilight of evening, Volkswagen Beetles couldn’t be seen, though Bean would doubtless have switched to ‘padiddle’, the game for pointing out cars with only one headlight with a punch to the shoulder.

    As she glanced into her rearview mirror, Harley noticed that the vehicle behind her only had one headlight. She had been so tired for this last part of their road trip that if she had noticed it before, she couldn’t remember. Now, though, she took note of how close behind them the vehicle was. There was no other traffic on the road. Why did they pass? She wondered if slowing down would get the one-eyed vehicle to pass her. She contemplated it, but eventually decided against it. She saw a sign for Riverford in the beams of her headlights. Fifteen miles.

    After a time, she noticed that one bright headlight seemed somewhat closer. She tapped the plus button on her cruise control a few times. It was dark now, and the highway was mostly empty. Maybe if she sped up, this tailgater behind her would hang back. She glanced at the speedometer. She was going just shy of seventy. The light in the rearview was even brighter now. Had they put on their brights, she wondered?

    The light sheared across her vision from the rearview and her side mirror. She tapped the speed up again to seventy-two. The light in the mirror stayed perfectly equidistant. Just a little too close for her comfort. She turned her head and glanced back into the back seat. Bean was totally asleep and completely unaware of the situation.

    Harley’s mind raced. What if this were some school kids out for a joyride and looking to mess with older drivers? She had heard of that before. Or, maybe ... she took a long, deep breath ... maybe she was just imagining things. Maybe it was just some old guy who didn’t know he had one lamp out and had hit the high beams to help him see better. Older folks had bad night vision. Maybe it was just that her beams were brighter, and he liked being able to see.

    That thought—that she might be helping—calmed her down a bit, and she let out her breath. Then she hunkered down so that the beam of light wasn’t blinding her.

    The bright, LED flash of blue lights in her rearview mirror snapped Harley out of her reveries. Her heart thundered suddenly, wondering if she was about to be pulled over. She slowed down to get back under the limit. State Troopers were the worst, she knew. No chance at a warning, and she couldn’t afford a ticket. 

    She could just make out the whine of a siren growing at the edges of her hearing. The sound and the lights set her teeth on edge. As she slowed, the vehicle behind her also slowed and moved back. She passed a sign that said RIVERFORD 8. 

    The state police cruiser pulled right up behind the vehicle behind her, and she watched with flooding relief as that vehicle slowed and pulled over. She tapped the cruise control again and settled in, enjoying the lack of bright light in her mirrors. Bean snorted in her sleep and went quiet again.

    RIVERFORD 2. The sign flashed green and white in her headlights. Almost there. She was tired ... no, exhausted. The worry about her grandmother, the frustration with Bean’s antics, the descending dark, and the padiddled car behind her had cranked up her tension quite a bit. She took a few deep breaths and then rotated her head without taking her eyes off the road. They would be there, soon. 

    When she saw the light coming up behind her, she assumed it was just another car, but as it grew in her rearview, she saw with shock that it had only one headlight. There was no sign of a police car. It hadn’t been long enough for them to have been given a ticket. Her heart sank. As the bright light regained its former close position behind her, she noticed lights flashing ahead. Bright orange signs had been set up, and there were barrels and cones by the Riverford exit. She wondered what had happened. A flashing sign with an arrow made of lightbulbs indicated that the right lane and the exit were closed, and she flipped her turn signal on and moved into the left lane. The vehicle behind her followed suit.

    Another sign by the Riverford exit flashed a message in lights: Riverford Exit detoured to Fulton Street Exit 145. 4 MILES.

    Stress washed through her. She was so tired and so close, and now they had closed the exit. The light behind her got brighter. She could see the gleam of the metal grill in the mirror. She could hear the roar of the motor seething. The entire cabin of her car was daylight bright.

    Bean sat up. “What’s going on? Are we close?”

    Harley had her teeth clenched together so tightly that she felt her jaws throbbing. “Lay back down and be quiet. Please.” To her surprise, Bean did as she was told. 

    The bump, when it happened, was not a surprise. She wondered if it was going to happen and guessed that it was coming. It wasn’t even a bump, but just the lightest tap, and it sent her car fishtailing hard, and she nearly lost control, but somehow remembered to turn into the swerve and regained control after a jarring moment. Books went skittering across the seats and floorboards. Harley’s hands were clasped at ten and two, her arms locked, her teeth clenched. She glanced back into the bright headlight beam and realized instantly that it was a mistake. Garish purple blotches filled her eyes and disoriented her for a moment, when another bump happened.

    This time, Harley was unable to keep control, and her car swerved off the road and skidded onto the grass-grown shoulder, roostertailing dirt and clumps of turf in a swerving arc. The car rocked precariously up on two wheels before slamming down. Dirt clods rained down on the windscreen. Bean had wailed and then was silenced as her awkward position in the back seat smashed her first against the ceiling and then onto the floor. A voice in Harley’s head was trying to say ‘I told you so’ to her silent sister, but when Bean failed to pop up, her heart sank. She wrenched herself around in the front seat to try to take off her seatbelt. Her whole being flooded with a profound need to get to her sister. She fought down the slick panic rising in her chest and focused on taking a deep breath.

    It was then that she realized that she couldn’t breathe. Her eyes widened with the realization, and she opened her mouth to try to suck in the needed oxygen. The panic won in that moment. It rose and swelled over her. Then, in a ratcheting gasp that burned her throat and shattered the edges of her consciousness, she sobbed in lungfuls of the air she so desperately needed. With the air returning, the need to check on Bean came back with animal clarity.

    She unclicked her seatbelt and was crawling over the seat to help Bean when her door was wrenched open and she felt two strong hands grasp her legs just above her ankles. At first, she couldn’t understand what was happening. Grunting with fury, she lunged toward the back seat to get to her sister, who she could now see was huddled in a heap on the back floorboards, covered in books and her banana-yellow suitcase. The hands grasped harder and yanked, pulling Harley down the seat and partially out of the driver's door. She clawed at the seat and headrest, but then felt herself twisted. It was then, in the garish light of one bright headlight, that Harley clocked who it was that was pulling her from the car. The tailgater.

    The dark form was strong. Its hands were like steel claws, squeezing down into her flesh. The figure was clad in black clothes and a hoodie pulled over a baseball cap. She could see the face. It looked like ... an actor? The actor who was in that movie set on the train. Then she realized that it was actually a mask. Again, her stupefied mind wanted to guess the actor, but she shook herself free of the urge.     “NO!” Her scream cracked out of her in a wail of fear and dread. She could feel the heat of her car, hear the ticking of metal contracting, and smell the scent of gas exhaust. There was something else, too. Horrible body odor. Her own? No, it was the figure’s stench. She screamed again as the shadowy figure pulled her closer and closer. He was incredibly strong, though, and she could only think to fight and kick and try to get away. 

    The figure pulled her up to her feet, though, and she suddenly knew that, somehow, her ankles had been bound. The form stooped and flipped her almost effortlessly over its shoulder. The stench was unbearable. She coughed and gagged as it swept into her nostrils. Then, she felt it turn and set off toward the truck.

    When Bean woke, she felt searing, blinding pain in her thigh exploding with every beat of her heart. She gasped and tried to grab at her leg, but her hands were prevented by some heavy object. “Unnggh,” she cried as her fingers swept about to determine what it was. It was then that she realized that she was squeezing her eyes shut and opened them. Her suitcase. Bright yellow and full of clothes, books, and other things she felt were necessary, was lying directly on her left thigh and across most of the bottom half of her body. She tried to get leverage to lift it off, but found that she was twisted in her seatbelt, which was pulling her up against the weight of the suitcase.

    Scrabbling up onto the seat, she found the click release and pushed it, but to no avail. She wriggled around to her left, swinging both arms up to the seat and getting a better grasp of the mechanism.     Centering both thumbs on the button, she jammed them down, and the seatbelt released with a hard, metallic click. She felt the belt slither along her back, and a second later, her butt hit the floorboard. She grunted with the pain as the suitcase settled against her leg, but it was less intense now. She adjusted herself, by increments, gasping with the bright pulses of agony in her leg, and managed to push her suitcase off her. She expected to see blood or mangled bone poking through the skin and muscle of her thigh, but instead, her leg looked fine in the gloom. She bent it toward herself and then straightened it again. It wasn’t broken. Now, she thought, to get out of here and find Harley.

    Harley had swooned. The stench, the pressure of the figure’s shoulder in her abdomen were too much. Now she was awake and in the backseat ... of her car? No. Not her car. Her consciousness came and then faded into muzziness. Then awareness burst forward with painful flash. Its truck. The figure’s truck. She was in the back seat of that hellish cyclops machine. She sat forward as best she could, her hands bound in front of her, a tight gag in her mouth, but she attempted to look out of the vehicle. The figure wasn’t there. The driver’s seat was empty. Twangy easy listening country was playing softly on the dashboard radio. As her vision cleared, she saw the figure moving in and out of the light of his truck’s single headlight toward her car and toward ... oh God. Oh no. 

Bean.

    The girl was limping. Her hair tousled. Her sky-blue sweater torn. As she hobbled toward the truck, she held up her hand across her face to diminish the bright beam. Harley thought maybe her sister’s arm was broken. She noted that her sweater was twisted with her arm tucked up behind her back.

    Harley wanted to yell out, to warn Bean not to come toward the truck, but the gag prevented her. The figure had disappeared, but now it was back, standing just to the side of the truck, looking over the open door at Bean. Harley felt her heart sink. The figure was huge, strong, and terrible. Bean barely weighed ninety pounds.

    The figure stepped around the door and stopped again. Harley watched as a moment of perplexity seemed to wash over it. She whimpered, and it turned its head partially in her direction. She understood that she was trying to decide what to do, that Bean was not part of the plan. As it started to move toward the girl, Harley screamed, and the figure stopped again, hesitating. Then it was in motion, going toward Bean. Harley screamed again through the gag, wriggling in her bonds, slamming back and forth against the seat so that the truck rocked. She screamed until her throat burned. The figure in the hoodie didn’t stop moving until it stood in front of Bean, completely blocking her from view. Tears streamed down Harley’s face. Bean, she thought. Oh God, no. Not Bean. She squeezed her eyes shut and screamed in helpless rage.

    The shriek, when it came, was, she thought, Bean’s howl of agony and terror. Her eyes snapped open in time to see the figure juttering, arms reaching up, scrabbling at its mask. The huge figure slammed back into the grill of its truck, and it finally managed to pull the hat and hood off, and then rip off something else, thin, like smoking gauze, and flung it away. There was another deep, guttural scream, and Harley sat forward, eyes wide, straining to see, terrified to look. From the side as it turned its head, Harley could see that it had a face, in fact, was a man, but that part of that face was smoking or melting off. Another primal scream, and then the figure fell out of sight. Bean was standing there in the high beam light, her face red, but not with fear, but what Harley recognized as rage. 

    What felt like years later, Harley lay bound in a thick blue blanket on a gurney just behind an open ambulance. Bean was sitting wrapped in her own blanket in the open doorway. A policeman in plain clothes was writing something down in a notebook. 

    Then he came over to Harley.

    “She’s your sister.”

    “Yes,” Harley said. 

    “She is quite a brave young person.”

    “She is.”

    “Do you know what happened to you tonight?”

    “I’m not sure, no.”

    The officer, whose nametag said C. Brewster, began to unfold a tale that made Harley’s head hurt. A police officer in a traffic cruiser had been shot to death in his car several miles back. When he failed to answer his radio, more police were dispatched to find him. They have location sensors on the cars, now, so it was easy to find where he was. Judging by the dashboard computer, the officer had pulled over a man called Henry Wayne Bishop. Bishop was wanted in connection with several missing persons cases, one of which had turned out to be a murder.

    Police pursued the direction of Bishop’s tire tracks and eventually came upon the scene where Harley was now. They approached and were flagged down by a skinny girl in a sky blue sweater. What they found amazed them. In front of the truck with one headlight out lay a huge man in a black jumpsuit with a hood. His face was half melted off, but they could tell that it was Bishop. 

    Based on her own explanation, after Harley was bound and in the truck, Bean woke, got herself out of the back seat, and went rummaging through the car. She found her chemistry kit and pulled out a bottle of sulfuric acid she used for her experiments. When she was close enough, she flung it in Bishop’s face and burned him severely. After he collapsed, police arrived.

    They loaded Harley into the ambulance, and Bean jumped in with her and the paramedic. The ambulance jostled over the rough grass and then got onto the highway and drove slowly toward town and the hospital.

    “You saved my life,” Harley said, tears streaming down her face. She reached for her sister’s hand. Bean took it.

    “No, science did. I was reading a science book before I went to sleep.”

    “I’m sorry about yelling at you all the time.”

    Ah, it’s alright,” Bean said, leaning in to her sister’s embrace. “We got a serial killer kidnapper tonight.” She smiled. “I don’t think I’m ever playing padiddle or punch buggy again,” Bean said.

    “You never know,” Harley replied with a smile.

    The paramedic said, “I used to have a Volkswagen Beetle.”

    The girls looked at each other, grinned, and said together, “Punch Buggy!”