I leaned forward in my seat and tried to blink away the moment of sleep that overtook me. The road stretched on for about a hundred feet before being swallowed in a thick layer of fog. I would have rolled down a window, but the rain pouring outside would soak me to the bone in seconds. Besides, I couldn’t be more than nine or ten miles from the stop by now. The Pacific Ocean crashed against the rocks to my left, the cold gray of the Oregon coast as imposing as ever.
Just a little bit longer, then I can rest.
The howling of the storm and the pattering of the rain constantly seemed to lull me to sleep, and I took another swig of coffee. It was cold, the truck stop I had bought it from just five hours earlier seemed like a lifetime ago. Taking this job was not my first choice, and now more than ever I regret it.
How long have I been awake now? Sixteen hours?
Getting paid by the mile doesn’t inspire the safest driving practices, but just a last push and I can sleep for a few hours. I tried to remember when my life went downhill, but it’s hard to pin down to just one incident. Between dropping out of college, the divorce, and the accident, my head was racing with a jumble of failures and tragedies. That was all driven from my mind when I heard a strange noise.
The sound was distinct against the cacophony of the furious Pacific Northwest. It was somewhere between a gunshot and a clap but amplified to the volume of a Metallica concert. I glanced towards the sea where it originated but saw nothing other than fog and the foaming swells. I continued driving, but turned off the radio, wondering if auditory hallucinations could be a side effect of sleep loss. I glanced over to my GPS, just eight miles to go.
Come on Jeremy, you can’t be cracking up now. Just a little bit longer.
After a minute of listening closely, I turned the radio back up and pushed a little bit harder on the gas. Faintly, against the blaring country music, I could hear the sound continuing, repeatedly every few seconds. Half delirious and in full denial, I told myself that it was just thunder, even though I had seen no lightning. I even dared to chuckle at my own stupidity. A full-grown man quivering in his boots from a little thunder. God, if Melissa could see me now. Once this job is over, I am moving back to Arizona. At this point, I was sick of staring at the cold, grey waters.
All at once, the relative peace of my truck’s cabin was literally shattered. Glass and rain whipped in my face, as I was left gasping and trying desperately to regain control of the rig. Before I knew it, I felt the truck start to jackknife and was able to slow to a somewhat controlled stop. At that moment I realized the sound of the rain, waves, and booming thunder stopped. I was confused for a second, as rain continued to pool around my feet, but then I felt the slow warm trickle escaping my ears.
I sat, groaning in pain and fumbling with my cell phone, when I felt a shadow passing over my head. I leaned out the window and looked up, and saw an incredibly slow-moving, low plane silhouetted overhead.
What the hell was that?
The thoughts of some invasion or terrorist attack swarmed my mind, until something happened that made my jaw go slack, and my brain go numb. Numb with an immense, gripping primordial kind of dread. The kind of feeling I imagined a deer must feel when a hunter is lining up his killing shot. With a sensation like hurricane-force wind, the silhouetted shape’s wings flapped, in a slow decisive motion. The resulting boom nearly forced the truck off the cliff on my driver’s side, and I felt my hat whip away into the storm. Then with a flash of lightning, the massive being was gone.
I was in a daze when the highway patrolman came across my wrecked rig, apparently, I had been out of it for a few hours. The rest of the day was a blur, from the ambulance to the hospital, and finally the dirt-cheap motel I rented a room from. The medics who checked me out when I arrived in Newport confirmed my suspicions, my eardrums had been obliterated by some immense burst of pressure. The truck was totaled, and the whole delivery was trashed. But that barely bothered me anymore. The job sucked anyways. I couldn’t get over the doctor’s confused face when he finally walked in to talk to me in the hospital room. He said it couldn’t possibly have been caused by thunder. When I asked why, he glanced at me with a befuddled expression and said,
“I’m not sure how thunder could have done it, considering it’s been clear skies all day.”