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Rated: E · Book · Action/Adventure · #1354938
An over the road trucker has a front row seat to witness the world change forever.
Wash Out
Chapter 1
Lost in the Vermont wilderness

“Snow…man I hate this stuff.” Tom said to no one, as he rolled his window down slightly to allow some fresh cold night air into the cab of his tractor trailer. He had been driving for the better part of a day through the slushy white stuff. And still it came down by the barrels. 

    Tom Willoby is a thirty year old over the road truck driver, who crisscrosses the country for a living. For twenty two years now he has loaded, unloaded, and met his deadlines on the wide open highways of these United States.

    He started out as a mere boy hauling livestock out of New Mexico. Then he eventually graduated up to produce. Hand picked and loaded by others. Which he was extremely glad of. He no longer had to deal with the hardships of making sure his load was fed and watered. Oranges never complained that they were hungry.

    Now he makes his living wild cat-ing. That’s the act of owning your own rig and calling your own shots. You tell them what you’ll carry and which way you’re heading. This suited Tom’s style much better. He never liked being told he wasn’t fast enough, or what he had to do at any certain time. Yes, this was the life for him, he thought as he kicked the radio on and gave the tuning knob a turn. He found nothing but static emmiting from it's speakers, and then turned it off without taking his eyes off the dark winding road before him.

    Tom was hauling two thousand, three hundred pounds of bedding this trip. He had stacks upon stacks of mattresses, strapped down and squeezed in the back of his rig so tight, he thought he wouldn’t be able to put a tooth pick between them, which he would soon prove himself to be wrong. His truck had been slip sliding its way down Interstate 95 west out of Maine, heading to Illinois. He started his recent journey by coming up from Florida, then through Virginia and made a drop off at a furniture store that was closed for the night. Then he swapped trailers and was off again heading to Maine. Once again, he dropped the trailer off in the yard after hours and picked up another, now he was in Vermont and supposed to be in Chicago by Eleven o’clock tomorrow night. It was starting to look like that may not happen. The road was closed three miles back and he was forced by state troopers to take Rt. 2 West. After a few unmarked winding roads he wasn’t exactly sure where he was now. He only knew that he had been missing the voice of another real live person since he hadn’t talked to anyone for days.

    The small two lane back road he was now on, was twisting though snow covered peaks and valleys. Evergreens and large leafless brown trees lined the road on both sides weighted down with snow.

    Tom was glad he had thought to put the chains on his tires at the last weigh station, before it started getting real bad. He knew there was no way he could climb some of these grades had it not been for that.

    The wipers were barely able to keep up with the snows bombardment, even at their highest setting. They were throwing the slush four feet off the left from the windshield every time they rose and fell again. He had his usual cigarette sticking from his mouth, puffing away like a condemned man awaiting the electric chair. His cap turned backwards on his head which read, ‘Lynyrd Skynyrd’, and a blue and white checkered flannel shirt and blue jeans.

    He squinted out the windshield trying his best to see beyond the headlights that were straining to cut though his darkened path. But they only revealed ten feet out into the darkness in front of him. He picked up his trusty CB radio and made sure it was set to channel nineteen, which was the trucker’s channel. Many were the nights that channel kept him awake and sane, talking through it to his ‘good buddies’.

“Breaker, Break come on an talk to this old boy, this here’s Freebird looking to dig up some pass the time, anyone got a copy?”
There was Nothing but static.
“Breaker one nine, got to be some good old boy out there near Bean town who wants to holler.”
The radio crackled in the darkened cab. Over the C.B. Tom suddenly got a response.
“Go ahead Freebird, Coondog has some ears on.” Came the reply.
“Hey Coondog, old Freebird is fighting the white on route two heading west to the windy city. What is your twenty?”
“I’m double nickeling it out of Bangor on 95, almost to the cloverleaf heading south in my Bulldog. Got me a load of steel pipe and supposed to hit bean town on the backside.”
  Tom knew the man said he was in a Mack truck, picked up a load in Maine, and was supposed to go to Boston, then back on the same route.
“You getting any white on your tires over there? It’s almost a blizzard over here in Vermont.”
“Just little flurries here, not too bad yet. God help us though, looks like the weather is going to start getting real crazy. Are you bobtailing it?”
“No Coondog, I got a trailer full. But I am crawling; I doubt I see my big hole before morning.” Tom said, telling the man it was snowing so hard he probably wouldn’t be able to put his rig into high gear until he could see better.
“Well, I am going to back down Freebird, I am getting ready to pass a pickle park, and I got to go bad. I think I am not going to take any chances; I am going to overnight here and see what happens. I’ll catch you on the flip side, keep your tires turning partner, and watch out for that snow.”
“Ok Coondog, you take care and give me a holler later if you can, I may need you to call rescue for me if this keeps up.” Tom said, half jokingly but still wary of his situation.
“Will do, this is Coondog, over and out.”

    Tom hung the receiver back on its clip on the dashboard. It was good to hear another human voice, even if it was only for a minute. He was having a harder time holding his rig on the icy road with every complete rotation of the tires.
‘What chances was Coondog not going to take? Crazy weather?’ Tom thought. That made no sense but he soon shrugged it off and got his mind back on this deadly road he was winding through. The trailer kept fishtailing through the snow as it tried its best to follow his cab down the darkened winding deathtrap.

    After two more miles up the snow beaten path, the road totally disappeared. He now could only judge where he thought the road should be. He was calibrating as best he could, by the trees on both sides of his truck and trying to stay somewhat in the middle. He hadn’t passed a car since he turned onto this dark hellish trail

through the mountains, and was growing more nervous with every passing second.
  As Tom and his rig were rounding a wide spot in the next bend, his truck violently jerked to the left side of the road. Not the trailer, or the cab, the entire truck had moved across the road, from one side of it, completely to the other, As he was in the process of sliding he saw that the trees in his headlight beams were bending  over in the same direction with him. The trees that weren’t snapping, were throwing their snow and ice off of them in the opposite direction upon whipping back into their normal position. He gripped the wheel hoping the snow on the side of the road would stop him and not send him flying down the embankment. Where that led was too dark to see, and Tom was sure it was deeper than he cared to try to walk out of.


  As his truck came to a rest on the roadside, he pushed in the clutch and stared into the blowing snow through his windshield. He was still unsure of what just happened and didn’t want to stick around to find out. Tom sat there for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” he said out loud to himself. He didn’t see any damage done except there were now snapped off trees in his path and more snow that had been thrown onto it from the evergreens It was going to be tougher going now, than before.

He kicked the truck down to her granny gear and slowly pulled away picking his way through the dark snowy forest aiming for the clear spots in the road ahead.
  After a few more miles, the snow had won the battle with the trucks wipers. They had managed to build up a layer of ice and packed snow so tightly, that it wouldn’t allow them to clear it off the windshield. Tom was going to have to stop and dig it out from under them with his hands. He knew he had to pick the perfect spot to pull over, or he would be buried and not be able to get moving again.

  He needed to find a high spot on a hill somewhere, that way the weight of the truck would be in his favor. He could simply put it in gear once restarting his journey, and let it roll down the grade so he could be on his way again. He could barely make out a hill in the distance. He wasn’t that far from it and thought that would be his safest bet.

  As his rig fought to climb the grade, he pushed in on the clutch at the perfect spot, and let the truck roll to the very top. He stopped and set the brake while turning on his emergency flashers. Preparing as best he could for the cold, Rick put on his thick jacket and insulated gloves. He grabbed a flashlight his wife had gotten him last Christmas from under his seat. It was a spotlight with five million candle power. That baby would light up a path at midnight making it look like noon with its intense beam. He wanted to take a quick look at the trailer while he was outside, and make sure she had no snow or ice built up on her axles or rims too. If he had to be out in this weather, he wanted to do a thorough check on everything just once.

    He opened the door of the big truck and was instantly met by howling winds that bit at his face as it passed. Snow was hitting his skin and felt like bb’s from an air rifle attacking every piece of his exposed flesh. He squinted his eyes into the wind and shut the door of the cab. Then he climbed up on the step hold in the fender and using his hand, he grabbed the ice and snow from under the wipers pulling it loose. He then threw it on the ground beside him. He cleared one side then jumped down and moved to the other to complete his mission. After he had gotten the windshield in tip top shape he pulled the flashlight from his back pocket and walked to the rear of the truck. He kicked on the mega light and knelt down looking under the trailer for any ice or snow that was trying to stow away under it. 

    He moved half way under the trailer and cleared some built up snow and ice from the trucks axle where it had been trying to hide and grow bigger. After clearing it, Tom moved around to the back of the rig and knelt there with his brilliant light. When the light passed the trees he saw the extent of the damage that almost swamped him earlier. Trees were lying on their sides throughout the forest around him. Then he suddenly thought he heard a noise in the distance but with the winter winds howling in his ear he couldn’t pinpoint it, nor did he know exactly what it was. He got up and moved to the back of the truck, still listening to the low rumbling sound.

    Tom shined his light back up the road from the direction he had come moments before; there was nothing except his quickly disappearing tire tracks in the snow. He then cut the light hoping it would make his ears sharper to detect exactly what it was he was straining to hear. But that didn’t help; he did notice however, that the ground below his feet began to tremble.  He quickly peered around the rig facing the direction he was heading. Looking as best he could through the swirling winds and snow, he noticed a distant light that was bouncing from the trees to the sky and then back, disappearing intermittently. It was as if a searchlight was being flashed wildly in every direction through the jet black, snow covered wilderness. He kicked his light on and as it came to life he pointed it toward the light show to his front.

    At that moment he saw the giant noise maker and gulped hard in disbelief. It was a wall of water jumping over the next hill and filling the valley in front of him in an instant, set on a crash course for him and his beloved truck.  He thought it looked alive and serpent like the way it crawled over the mountain in front of him and rushed toward him from the blackened distance, gobbling up everything in it path. Being pushed in the front of it were trees as big as skyscrapers he had seen in New York City. There was a car mixed in among other debris that still had its headlights on, and sending its bizarre light show in every direction. Tom knew he wouldn’t have time to make it to the cab of the rig before he would be hit. He hurriedly jumped on the back rail of the trailer and pulled the door open on one side. He then dove into the back of the truck and laid on top the mattresses that were tightly stacked there on their sides. He started digging his way in between two that were near the middle and after forcing them apart was now buried like a ground squirrel nestled for the winter in its borough.

    He waited quietly in disbelief as his heart pounded under his flannel shirt. What was this amount of water doing in the wilderness of Vermont, he wondered. It wasn’t the season for flash floods this early. And this amount of water would have to…, it hit him.

  The entire truck was violently picked up and joined the sickening thrill ride. He was being shoved into the trees to his right. He could hear them screaming out into the night as they cracked and speared the sides of the trailers walls. It seemed the wind and water joined into an evil chorus of earth shattering noise. He thought he could hear every sound bounce off the valley and echo as the mountains around him seemed to laugh at his puny rig being raped by the wave. Suddenly he heard an enormous crash and was now falling into another valley somewhere close by. He was being pushed up this one and down another quickly tossing and spinning him wildly through the cold dark woods. He now had no idea where he was or where this black snake of water was taking him. He tried to move higher out of his borough, to kick his light on and see what was happening. Just as he was about to raise his head clear from the soft cushion of his den, he was hit by something that slammed him back down into the bottom of the trailer floor, everything in his small, cold, wet world went black, and his mind joined along. 

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