Run to the Gas Station

The desert changes after midnight. During the day it looks dead and empty. There is only heat shimmer, dust, and miles of parched earth beneath a white sky. At night it becomes something else entirely. The rocks turn into crouching figures. Joshua trees twist into shapes that look almost human in the moonlight. Every dry wash and ravine becomes a hiding place.

I stumble downhill through loose scree. My legs ache from running. Sweat and dust cling to my skin beneath the denim overalls, now stiff with dirt. My curls hang damp around my face. Every breath scrapes my throat raw. Somewhere behind me, something clatters against stone.

I stop instantly. My pulse hammers so hard I can hear it in my ears. The moon hangs over the desert like a dead eye, painting everything silver-blue. Wind drags across the canyon walls in long hollow sighs. I listen for footsteps, voices, or any sign that somebody else is out there with me in the dark.

At first I hear nothing except the wind dragging across the rocks and the sound of my own breathing, but the feeling never leaves. It clings to me with every step, crawling across the back of my neck like invisible fingers. Somebody is watching me. I cannot prove it.

I never see anyone. But deep down, beneath the exhaustion and fear, I know I am not alone out here. That awful certainty that somebody is out there watching me from the rocks raises my hackles. I start walking again, faster this time, gravel crunching under my bare feet while I try not to look back.

I still cannot shake the feeling that I have not actually escaped anything. Something moves just beyond the edge of sight, pacing me between the boulders. A low whistle drifts through the darkness somewhere behind me, thin and sharp enough to cut straight through the wind. I stop walking instantly.

Every muscle in my body locks tight while my eyes sweep across the rocks and ravines surrounding the road. The sound is wrong for the empty wasteland stretching out beneath the moonlight. Wind does not whistle like that. Wind does not sound amused.

Then laughter rolls softly across the canyon walls. I cannot tell how far away it is. The desert twists sound into something unnatural at night, throwing echoes in every direction until distance stops meaning anything. It could be a hundred yards behind me or half a mile out in the rocks.

All I know is that somebody laughed, and the moment the sound fades, the entire desert somehow feels even quieter than before. I start walking again without looking back, but now every step feels hunted. The sound echoes strangely out here. It bounces off the canyon walls until it becomes impossible to tell where it comes from.

“Hello?” I shout before I can stop myself, my voice cracking as it echoes out across the rocks. The sound carries farther than I want it to, bouncing through the desert like a flare shot into the night. The silence that follows feels immediate and unnatural, as if the entire wasteland pauses to listen.

I stand frozen in the middle of the road, gripping the flashlight so tightly my knuckles ache, while my pulse pounds in my ears hard enough to drown out the wind. Then another sound cuts through the darkness somewhere off to my left. A metallic clank rings out against the stone like somebody just bumped into an old pipe or kicked a rusted piece of scrap.

I turn sharply toward it, my eyes flicking wildly across stone walls, dry brush, and rusted junk half-buried in the sand, an old oil drum, a broken refrigerator door, and bleached animal bones. For one terrible second I think I see movement duck behind a ridge. I keep moving.

The terrain gradually flattens beneath my feet until the rocky slopes give way to hard-packed dirt. Then I see cracked asphalt cutting through the desert like a black scar beneath the moonlight. It is civilization, proof I have not been wandering in circles all night. Relief hits me so hard my knees nearly buckle.

I follow the road south because south feels right. Because it slopes downhill. Because standing still means thinking too much. The noises follow me.

Sometimes I hear footsteps matching my pace from somewhere beyond the shoulder of the road. Sometimes rocks shift in the darkness beside me. Once I hear breathing close enough that I spin around. I find nothing waiting for me except empty desert and moonlit stone.

No figures stand in the road. There is no movement between the rocks. No glowing eyes stare back at me from the darkness. The wind hisses across dry brush and broken earth while the silence presses tighter around me with every mile. Nothing is ever there, nothing I can actually see, but the fear keeps growing anyway.

The farther I walk, the stranger the roadside becomes. I start noticing things scattered beside the cracked asphalt like breadcrumbs left behind by a lunatic. Old shoes lay half-buried in the dust. Rotting animal carcasses have been picked clean by scavengers. Wooden crosses are hammered crookedly into the hard desert dirt.

Some look ancient enough to have been standing out there for decades. Others seem newer, fresh enough that the wood still looks pale beneath the moonlight. One of the crosses stops me cold. Small handprints are smeared across the wood in faded red paint, tiny palms and fingers pressed into the shape of a warning.

I stand there staring at them while the desert wind whistles softly through the rocks around me, and suddenly the entire wasteland feels wrong in a way I cannot fully explain. I start walking faster, until I finally see the gas station rising out of the darkness ahead of me.

At first it looks like another trick of exhaustion shimmering against the horizon, but then the moonlight reflects weakly off the dusty windows, pale against the black desert surrounding them. Relief hits me so hard my knees almost buckle beneath me.

After hours alone out there with nothing but moonlight and fear, the sight of that run-down station feels less like civilization and more like salvation. Its shape feels lonely, crouched beside the road with dead pumps out front and flickering fluorescent lights glowing weakly through dusty windows.

The station looks abandoned from a distance, but the OPEN sign still glows red in the window. I stand at the roadside staring at it while the desert wind hisses around me. Behind me, somewhere out in the darkness beyond the road, I hear one final whistle drift across the rocks. I dash toward the shelter of the gas station.