I had an experience earlier this year.
I hate driving. I know that sounds weird. My dad was one of those who hated to stop on road trips. He always wanted to make “good time” whatever that means. My brother wound up the same way. But me? After 2-3 hours I have to stop, stretch my legs, get out of the car, just be “not driving” for a few minutes.
Despite that I liked to drive at night. There’s something about it that makes driving less stressful to me.
Earlier this year I was driving back from spending a weekend camping. I had broke camp about 5 in the evening. The sun was already low in the sky by the time I had piled everything into my trunk and left the campground. I turned onto the 2 lane state highway that led to the state park and started the long drive home, a drive that would mostly take me through a lot of nothing. I turned on the radio, lit a cigarette, and let the miles start melting away.I was about an hour into my trip when I first saw it. The sun was just starting to dip below the horizon when I first noticed the lights in my rear view mirror. Emergency lights. Way behind me, but coming up fast.
I moved over in my lane, as close to the shoulder as I could get without going off the road, and slowed down to give the emergency vehicle space. There were no other cars nearby and plenty of room so I didn’t really have to, but I’ve always had a habit of being really safe around emergency vehicles.
But I quickly noticed something was off. The lights weren’t red or orange or blue but a weird green. At first I thought maybe they were blue police lights against the sunset giving them a weird color or some other trick of the light but no, they were green.
And as the vehicle got closer I could hear the siren. And the siren wasn’t like any I had ever heard. It was.. like a warble. It sounded, I dunno, like a duck call maybe or… you ever had one of those plastic tube toys that you spun around your head to make that weird alien hollow whistling sound? Sort of like that but louder and deeper.
The vehicle got closer. It was a truck. A big truck, Ford F-350 or F-450 Super Duty size give or take. One of those vehicles that sits right in the middle of “Really Big Pickup” and “Really Small Commercial Truck.” I watched it as it passed, taking in as much as I could as it blew past me. It was white. It wasn’t dirty, like it wasn’t caked with mud or anything like, but the white paint was dull and had no shine. Crew cab. The weird green colored lightbar was over the cab. High visibility decals, alternative stripes of bright yellow and red, had been applied to several points on the truck. The bed was one of those square beds where both sides of the bed were these huge built-in toolboxes. A ladder, a stack of orange road cones, one of those big workplace water coolers, all visible in the bed as it passed. Everything about it at first glance was just a normal utility or work truck. But things just seemed off to me. Things I wouldn’t realize until later.
As soon as the truck got past me I pulled back off the shoulder and accelerated backup to highway speed. The truck was booking it and already pulling way ahead of me. Soon it disappeared over the horizon.
I had been driving along for a few minutes when a thought occurred to me. I didn’t know what kind of truck that had been. It was a big commercial truck, but the make or model hadn’t been obvious. I wasn’t like a truck nut, but I was at least vaguely aware of the common truck brands. It didn’t have the distinct front-end design of a Ram or Ford nor any type of branding on the grill, something I thought all trucks had these days.
I mentally shrugged it off. Probably a body kit on a well-known brand’s body. I was overthinking it, I told myself.
The last bits of sunlight faded from the sky as another hour or two droned on. Up ahead a 24 hour gas station appeared. I was still good on gas but good a time as any to stop, grab a cup of coffee, stretch my legs. I pulled into the gas station, used the bathroom, got a big cup of coffee and a pack of jerky, and was just about to walk to the counter to pay for it when the interior of the gas station was bathed in a moving green light.
I looked outside and sure enough, out in the parking lot, was the truck. It wasn’t at the pumps or in one of the spots, but just off to the side, near but not at the little coin-op station where you can put air in your tires or vacuum out your car. Its headlights were on, as was the weird light bar.
The lights over the gas pumps gave me an okay look at the front of the truck. Definitely not a model I recognized. I mean it looked like any other work truck you’d ever see, huge grill, big square headlights, but it didn’t look like any SPECIFIC truck you’d ever seen. No logo, no branding, none of the obvious styling cues that automakers put on their vehicles.
I guess I stared for a bit because the tired, dour looking guy behind the counter cleared his throat. I walked over and paid for my purchase and walked out into the parking lot.
My car was parked right in front of the store and the truck was close but not like right on top of me, but still I felt a little off. Not scared or nervous exactly, I just didn’t like being around this thing out in the open like this. The windows of the truck were tinted enough so that I couldn’t see inside, but someone had to be in it. The truck hadn’t been there when I pulled into the gas station and nobody had gone into the store, so whoever was in the truck was still there. The green light bar spun, casting strange shadows all over the gas station.
There were no door handles. It hit me all at once. It was a big crew cab work truck, four doors, but there were no door handles. The doors were smooth, like an exotic sports car that hides the door handles in odd places to not mess up the lines of the car. But this was a work truck. Work trucks always have big chunky door handles you can handle with gloves on and stuff like that.
Okay this was starting to get weird. Now that I noticed it things about the truck started jumping out at me.
There were no side mirrors. A truck this size should have huge mirrors that stuck way out to see around the big boxy utility bed. But nothing.
The tires had no branding or logos on them. No Goodyear or Michelin or Continental.
No exhaust of any kind.
But none of that was the weirdest.
There was no sound. I assume the vehicle was running, sitting there for so long running those lights, and with a hood that big surely it had some massive V8 or giant diesel that I’d hear rumbling but nothing. It was silent. The compressor on the big freezer case outside the gas station that held the bags of ice was making more sound.
Had it been making any sound when it blew past me on the road earlier? Had I heard an engine then? I couldn’t remember, the siren had been so loud I don’t think I had noticed.
Finally, I got in my car and cranked it. I sat there for a minute or so, watching the truck in my mirrors. Nobody ever got in or out.
I pulled back on the road. I sipped my coffee as I drove and tried to put the truck out of my mind. Another 4 hours or so and I would be home.
The green lights appeared ahead of me about 30 minutes down the road.
No. I had left that truck back at the gas station and it hadn’t passed me. I had seen a few other cars, not many at this time of night, but surely, I hadn’t missed that giant truck even without its weird green light bar.
But there it was, a few hundred yards down the road, pulled off to the side. Its hazard lights were also on this time. All the doors were shut and even in the darkness of the night I didn’t think there was anyone nearby.
I briefly wondered if it was the same truck. Maybe this was the local roadside assistance truck or utility truck style.
In the bed the ladder and cones and water cooler were all in the same spot. It was the same truck.
I sped up a little, putting the truck behind me as quickly as I felt safe doing.
That had spooked me. I don’t know how the truck got ahead of me like that. I mean I guess it could have taken another route but I was on the main highway, it just didn’t make sense that it had outrun me on back country roads to get ahead of me.
I drove. Another hour and a half melted away. I encountered a few other cars. Once I thought the truck was behind me, but it turned out to be a normal work truck from the local electric company. Mostly I had the highway to myself. I passed through a couple of small towns.
Two hours down, two more until I got home. I relaxed a little. I should have known better.
I encountered the truck one more time. Just outside a little town. I took this route a lot and knew the cops liked to sit by the side of the road right after the speed limit dropped down to 35.
I made sure I slowed it down to 35 when I saw the sign and glanced over to the empty parking lot of a closed BBQ joint that the cops like to park in.
The truck was there. The truck. Lights off. It could have been mistaken for an empty or abandoned vehicle. But it was the truck.
I drove slowly past it, as if I was afraid of waking it. As if I was tiptoeing past a monster.
I was almost past it when it turned its lights on. That sickly green lightbar. I almost drove off the road. I kept going, the horrible image of the truck pulling out to follow me, to chase me, to run me off the road.
The truck didn’t move. It just sat there in the empty parking lot of a long-closed BBQ restaurant in a tiny dying factory town on a lonely stretch of highway in rural America.
I drove on, watching the truck fade away in my rear view. Soon I could only see the green lights. Soon even they faded away as I got further and further away.
I never saw the truck again. For about a week, maybe a month there was part of my brain always looking for it, jumping a little every time I saw a power company or telecom truck or whatever out of the corner of my eye.
I mean… I guess I just saw a weird model of truck a few times. That’s what I want to think most of the time. Sometimes I feel silly even treating this like a thing. But if you had seen this thing, you’d know how easy that is to say but hard to believe.
This thing was wrong. It was off. I’m not saying it was some kind of ghost truck or a monster in truck form or anything like that. And it never did anything aggressive, but it was just so… off putting. It was SOMETHING that wasn’t just a truck.
I hope I don’t see it again. If you see it… I can’t tell you what to do but I’d keep my distance.