Chapter 1: The Long Drive

The road she is driving on is a long-forgotten interstate now rerouted. The kind where you're spending more time avoiding potholes than paying attention to where you're going. She checks her phone for the 500th time. There is still no cell service. She opens the map app to find it still doesn't have a GPS signal. The frowny face emoji it displays momentarily infuriates her. The old-school plastic-covered map takes up the entire passenger seat. 'Thanks, Mom,' she says internally.

Last time she stopped to pee. She had held the map as she squatted against a telephone pole. The map had shown her somewhere in the middle of the Nebraska sandhills. But the map also showed this was a major highway, but the state of the road says otherwise.

The miles of empty grassland with scattered run-down shacks leave her feeling empty and alone. She had felt a similar feeling on Route 66, but this had none of the charms. She drives past a turnoff, a little more than a pair of dirt paths the right distance apart to drive down. It was one of a handful in the last hour. She hasn't seen any sign of a person in over an hour. She is growing worried as the gas gauge dips lower.

Her car impatiently dings to indicate the tank is empty. 'shit shit shit shit shit,' she thinks. She rolls down the windows on her beat-up yellow 1995 Ford Taurus. Her brown hair was flapping in the wind. She wrestles with it. Swerving as she drives down the road. She gets it up into a bun, takes a moment to get situated again, relaxes, and sits back. "Yep, this is how it ends, not with a bang but an empty tank of gas," she says to no one. Then taps on the outside door panel nervously.

Like a literal sign from a benevolent god, a glowing 2-story-tall sign that says Jim Gas came over the horizon. She breathes a sigh of relief as she pulls into the gas station. The little bell chimes as she drives over the drive-over bell. Brilliant chrome with bright reds and whites is everywhere. She guessed it was from the 40s. Everything looks to be meticulously maintained. She blinks; what she is seeing does not match the image of flickering fluorescent lights and rust covering everything. She has a tingling sensation up her spine. "I have seen this horror movie," she says to herself. A tall man in his mid-twenties wearing striped overalls but without a spot of grease on them walks up to her window. She puts on her smile.

"What can I help you with?" the young man says as she looks his face over. He looks kind and a little like an athlete; he looks at her expectantly, and not a hair on his head is out of place. He looks to be all muscle. But he looks like the gas station is oddly perfect and lacking the hardness and scars of hard work.

"Well, miss?" he asks.

'Shit, I was staring,' she chastises herself. "Gas, please. Fill it all the way," she says.

He nods and starts to fill her car. She watches him from the mirror. He turns and smiles at her., 'He even has all his teeth,' she muses.

"Anything else?" he says. "Cold drink?"

"Just directions feel like I have been driving for days and not getting anywhere; all you see is endless boarded-up towns and empty gas stations. On top of that, there's no cell service out here, and my GPS quit working," she replies, exasperated.

His laugh is dry, like he has heard this same joke a thousand times.

He says, "Yeah, GPS never works here. It must be something the government is doing. How old is your map? I bet it is at least from the 90s," he leans closer to see.

She checks her map. In the tiny text at the bottom, it is dated 1992. You're right, the map is older than I am." She laughs. "How do I get back to where the GPS works?"

"Let me get you a new map," he says and grabs one from the store and spreads it across the hood of her car.

She gets out of her car feeling vulnerable, the dusky sky coloring everything orange. 'He better not be a predator,' she bends over the map with him. He smells like gasoline and fresh linen.

"You are here." He points. She can see the major highway route has been moved 120 miles to the north.

"This is the middle of nowhere," she mutters.

"You're going to want to go 2 hours east, and you can get back on the main highway."

He Looks up at the sky, seeing a disk-shaped object zip past. "But it's getting dark; you could spend the night here," he says with a grin.

He watches her smile fall and quickly adds, "At the motel down the road and head out in the morning. People have a habit of going missing on this road at night. The people at the ranch are a little strange, but the rooms are clean, and the bar is cheap. Tell them Josh Gas sent you," he says in seemingly one breath.

He mentally sighed to himself, 'Real smooth, dork; looks like another night of watching movies alone.'

"Your name is Josh Gas?" She looks at the distant sign with her eyebrows raised. 'Is this the part where he turns into a cannibal for rejecting him?' she fleetingly fears.

Josh perks up. "Yep, inherited it from my father, Tom, who inherited it from his father, Jim. We have worked here a long time." He grabs the windshield washer wand and washes her windshield. His muscles ripple under the jumpsuit. He soon finishes washing the windshield.

'What does he do, bench-pressing cars when it's slow?' She pictures him naked doing something mechanical to her engine. 'Car engine! Jeez, I'm a perv in my fantasies too. She and her longtime boyfriend have been fighting for weeks. Her sex drive has always been high, and it has been weeks since they have had sex. She looks him over again, and everything is starting to look like a good idea. She promises she will take care of her urge tonight before someone gets hurt. She jokingly hears her vibrator calling her name from the bottom of her bag.

The filler hose clicks and shuts off. He shakes the filler nozzle and puts it away before shutting her filler flap. 'He is so fluid,' she thinks. She can't tell if she should be concerned; she shrugs. "Anything else, miss?" he says.

She shakes her head, digs in her purse, and hands him her card. He heads back into the store; she watches him go, disappointed that she can't see his butt in the jumpsuit.

'You need to get this under control,' she grumbles to herself.

He returns with a receipt in hand. "Thanks, come again," Josh says.

"Uh, yeah, maybe," she says, flustered, and climbs into her car and drives away.