A RAMP TO TUCUMCARI—YOU'D NEVER REALLY HEARD OF FREEWAYS. Highways clear to Florida. You'd never been anywhere else. Before.
Freeways in New Mexico were long, desolate stretches of open air: ruddish hues of sand, rock, sky. Vegetation. Everything vivid and vibrant. The Old West.
I'd count call boxes; I'd study maps at rest stops, desert nothingness abound. Wild, I remember thinking. Everything was so open and empty, abandoned: cacti, bright colors, a dry cold descending, miles of patchy ground distending your horizon. It was South of the Border, but... real, as real as you could feel so far, in crudely scaled teepees, patterns, red dirt, dilapidated roadside shacks slanting off Route 54. I didn't see much of anybody; I'd ghosted through New Mexico.
Darkness set in swiftly. Nobody had passed you in a while. No Exits—for as long as you could remember—gunning it to Albuquerque.
My headlights faint. My windshield foggy.
Dirt Nasty sputtering.
It was always a hazy, fractured hour I found myself in disarray; deteriorating, collapsing in on you. Cycles.
Paranoia about your gas tank, a red glow, a needle dangerously close to E. Being stranded in Nowhere, New Mexico.
Radio didn't help. Fizzing.
No reception in Roswell, I'd tried to joke. No signal in Area 51? Aliens? Have you seen Signs? No. Wait. Have you seen The Hills Have Eyes?
My head hurt. Dizziness wracked a ragged cough from my throat, knocked my elbow, and I pivoted, drifting; a dented sign led you up a winding strip of dirt-sand road; a post off a bend, an arrow pointing at a logo for a Pilot. Everything caked and cloudy, dusky. Clay. New Mexico a kiln. Dirt Nasty kicked up a gravelly growl. Rocks clanging off your undercarriage, pinging off your side mirror: OBJECTS | CLOSER | APPEAR. Fragments.
Endlessly, you kept going. Roads breaking up and breaking down, rinding into a vast bleakness, unraveling a quiet sky. I'd hit No-Man's Land—aware of being terrifyingly alone; only you and a dusty drift, disappearing.
Beep.
E. E. E.
Sweat had begun to slick your armpits, mat the back of your neck, behind your earlobes. Feverish, I'd felt. Delirious. Always. They want you to believe you'd been night-tripping in New Mexico. Odometer told you 30+ miles had blown by. No Pilot. Gas. I didn't know if I could turn around, could reach Route 54 again, reach anything close enough. I'd lost it, never found it: a Pilot I'm not sure ever existed.
How many before you?
Alone. Lost.
Keep going. Don't stop.
It wasn't New England wilderness. It was New Mexico wasteland, barren, fallow; silhouettes of misplaced shanties winding up foreground, unlit, gaping window-holes, decay slumping in on itself. Uncharted Territory. Very... Nuketown-esque again, as if a bomb had dropped, forcing a hasty displacement.
Where did they go? Where do you go?
Fear itched down my spine icily. Everything foreboding and foreign: you really, really, really need to stop, find your (bare) footing, right yourself.
Nobody knows. Nobody exists.
When I pulled off at an eerily lonely pump, I left Dirt Nasty idling. I couldn't guarantee it would start up again. I opened my door. I stretched up, gazing upwards at an inky sky, a spattering of silvery glints. Homesickness struck sharply, aggressively.
Everything so open.
It almost hurt. Inhaling in New Mexico. Rural. Dusty. Antlers hung above a makeshift canopy; a sheet of metal jutted out, draping a severe darkness over a doorway. COLD BEER. Bold. Black. Everything else crumbling, sun-weathered siding, signs, discolored, rusty streaks—a creaking, chipped hut caving in, swaying...
Lights blinked in a cloudy window: OPEN.
Classic.
No longer in a void from a Wes Craven film, but a Ti West film, you'd see it in a few years, an infamously Texas fable in New Mexico. Cannibals. Rapists?
I could feel somebody watching you.
When I shuffled up, I looked away, around, for somebody, anybody, but I'd gone Wrong Turn. An muddy Jeep angling away. A faded, illegible sign (old prices for gas?) above Dirt Nasty. An abandoned pump shell sitting silently.
Ding!
A bell chimed overhead, and I nearly jumped, realizing I'd pushed into it blindly. Dust fluttered down, greying vagueness. My eyes adjusted to—
"Nice Civic."
I almost screamed bloody fucking murder at him.
He was a dusky, dreary-dark silhouette birthed from Chihuahuan. It wasn't delusion, sleeplessness; I saw him. Even when I look back, I can't quite remember him, but I saw him: doused grey grime from an old, broken shelf, boxing you in, close to your only exit, leering for Dirt Nasty.
No.
I'd left it...
"Thanks," I croaked. His posture didn't relax. "Do you..."
Uh... what was I trying to ask? If I could find fuel before I broke down? Where was I?
"Do you know where I am?" I asked quietly. Don't trust anybody.
Boots scuffing. "Nah, I don't know."
Nobody did. Wasteland.
"I need a lift," he murmured darkly. Imperishable.
His hands in his dirty pockets; baked, cracked flesh, and dried lips, parched, split bloody brown—reminded you of John Darnielle again. Meth. Come on in, we haven't slept for weeks, drink some of this... Color in Your Cheeks.
You weren't in Texas anymore.
"Gas?" I looked away, begging for somebody else, anybody else. Nobody would help you. Nobody knows where you are. Remember?
"Last of it. Here." He passed by, brushed by, a push-pull pulse of icy air. I shivered. Moonlight cut in a silver sliver, slashing up a 5 gallon jug. Red. Its spout elongated. His fingers curling. Blurry. He nodded. "I've been waiting for somebody to show up for a while."
Oh. Okay. I nodded, left brusquely.
His footsteps didn't follow, echoing. But when I slowed by Dirt Nasty, I heard him ask closely, a whisper in your ear, "Where are you going?"
"West."
I had been before I detoured. Heading for California. It all culminated a California Dream; romanticized recklessness for a West Coast.
You'd never seen it.
"Me, too," he said, pausing. "Mesa."
"Arizona?"
