Just a Senior Trip...

1:15 p.m.
"Five... four... three... two... one!" The last bell of the school year rang its final tone as every student in the building scrambled their way out and into the once desolate halls. Mali had been waiting for those last few minutes to go by for what had seemed like a few hours. She pushed and shoved her way through the fanatic teenage crowd.
One of her best friends, Cheyenne, grabbed hold of her arm and they braved the chaos together. "I think Abigail and Eve are outside!" Cheyenne shouted over the ever-growing clamor.
Finally reaching the slightly less populated parking lot, Mali and Cheyenne saw their two best friends, Abigail and Eve.
Eve was standing in the bed of Abigail’s red F-250 waving crazily while Abigail was sitting inside, blasting the music so loud that it could be heard over every single voice in the parking lot.
“Whoa Chey, I think we need to turn and go the other way!” Mali called jokingly.
“Oh my gosh, I know! We definitely don’t want to be seen with those losers!” Cheyenne jested as she turned around to walk the opposite direction.
“Yeah, yeah! You should have made that pact twelve years ago when we started hanging out!” Eve advised.
“Would you guys get in before I leave without you?” Abigail notified them suddenly as she lowered the volume on her stereo.
“Ah, she speaks!” Eve jumped down from the truck and opened the door for Mali and Cheyenne.
“Aw, thank you sir!” Cheyenne said with a laugh.
“No problem-o chick.”
1:45 p.m.
Abigail pulled into Mali’s driveway and Mali hopped out. “Hey guys, just call me when you are ready to go. Shoot for sometime around four, okay? Oh this is going to be the best senior trip anyone has ever taken!” Everyone whooped in harmony and Mali waved goodbye as she walked into her house.
4:17 p.m.
As the last bag was being packed into the trunk of Mali’s Grand Cherokee, Cheyenne’s father warned the girls to wear their seatbelts and to not pick up any hitchhikers. The girls rolled their eyes at the obvious notions. Cheyenne kissed her parents goodbye and with a farewell and a ‘call you soon’, she got in the car and Mali drove off. Once she rounded the corner, Mali hit the gas peddle and they all squealed with exhilaration.
“How ‘bout some tunes? Eve, do you have that one Metallica CD you were telling me ‘bout?” Mali said taking out the CD that was already in the stereo and placing it back in its case.
“Here you go, Mali, Mali!” Eve replied jokingly in the passenger seat.
“Guys, I have something to tell you...” Abigail said suddenly.
Everyone in the car became uneasily settled at the urgency and tone of her voice.
Mali came to a halt at an abandoned red light and all of the girls turned to look at the nearly pale Abigail.
“What is it?” Eve asked looking over her shoulder at Abigail.
Abigail hesitated with her words and her eyes seemed to swell with emotion. As she was about to open up her mouth to relay her message a car honked from behind them, notifying them of the now green light.
“What’s wrong?” Cheyenne implored easily. Eve and Mali had faces filled with the greatest worry.
Abigail tucked her top lip into her mouth and busted out laughing. “Man you guys are too easy! Here I thought I was the gullible one!”
Mali slouched in her seat while Eve and Cheyenne sighed. Cheyenne smacked Abigail on the knee and they began to wrestle in the back seat.
“Ha, no more freak jokes okay?” Eve recommended as the two in the back seat settled down.
“Okay fine, but I’m hungry.” Abigail confessed.
“Me too!” Cheyenne chirped up.
“Me three.” Eve informed.
“Wendy’s, here we come!” Mali sang as she turned into the Wendy’s parking lot.
5:32 p.m.
After the girls got a quick meal at Wendy’s they set off on their road trip once more.
“This is so awesome! No parents, just us and the open road.” Cheyenne exclaimed as she bobbed her head to the song on the radio.
“Yep, it’s going to be great.” Abigail predicted as she hopped up and down in her seat.
“Hey someone want to tell me how long I’m going to be on this road for?” Mali asked as she turned the stereo down.
Eve grabbed the map and buried her nose into it. “Um, looks like you’re going to be on this road for one long time.”
“Well, at least there’s beautiful scenery, right guys?” Sarcasm filled Mali’s voice as she stared out into the desolate desert and the coming nightfall.
10:25 p.m.
Mali’s eyes were getting heavy. Everyone else in the car was surprisingly enough asleep. She found this odd considering whenever she was with these three girls she hardly ever slept. Maybe they had gotten bored, all she knew was that she wasn’t going to last long. She hit the radio button and scanned the channels. She finally was able to pick up a station with old country music on it; it wasn’t the best thing ever but maybe the wretched sound would keep her awake. After about five minutes of the sound that country folk like to call music, the radio cut out and went to static.
“Oh come on!” She whimpered. She hit the CD button and was indulged to hear the loud boisterous music of Mudvayne. “Who put this in here? Oh well it’s all good, I really need to stay awake.” The CD reached its’ second song and cut out just like the radio had. “Are you serious? I know that doesn’t happen! This car is brand new, don’t tell me that the system is already broken!” She practically punched the off button on the stereo and slouched back into the drivers seat.
“I wonder where we are,” she thought. She snatched the map book from the ground on the passenger side and slowed the car down as she read it. She normally wouldn’t slow down on a highway but peculiarly her Jeep was the only thing on the road. All she could see was what was in front of her headlights. She stared at the rolling hills in front of her and her headlights blinked. She reached her left hand up to her eyes and rubbed them. Her headlights were still dimmed so it wasn’t her eyes. She checked her gage and it said her high beams were on. “Weird,” she sputtered. She glanced back down at her map.
“Flagstaff… umm… about, wait what was the last mile marker? 108, right, okay. Flagstaff is just under one hundred miles away!” Mali groaned to herself. “Why didn’t we just get a motel in Kingman or something? Heck why did we leave so late and not just wait till the morning? Oh well nothing we can do about it now…” Mali continued down the road at about 35 miles an hour. “Wait what’s this? There’s a dirt road at mile marker 109?” Mali raised her head and looked to her right and waited to see the road. She hit the gas a little more to speed up her sudden search for the dusty road. She finally thought she saw it when Eve stirred in her sleep and looked over at Mali.
Mali turned her gaze from the side of the road to Eve. “Hey Eve, whoa, good thing you woke up because I think I’m about to…”
Eve’s sudden cry broke her statement and Mali’s eyes met the road. Her foot moved from the gas to the brake and the tires screeched against the road. The Jeep started spinning and they wound up sideways with their rear and front ends pointed at the sides of the road.
“Holy…” Mali’s heart was beating faster than she had ever felt.
“What the heck is going on?” Cheyenne objected as she was thrown awake.
“What happened?” Abigail stammered as she removed the now strangling seatbelt.
“Oh my god…” Eve looked out Mali’s driver’s side window. “Look guys…”
The confused Cheyenne and Abigail turned to look in the same direction and Mali followed with the same. A semi truck was lying on its side filling the entire road and then some. Its’ headlights were still on and smoke was bellowing out from under the hood.
“You guys, where’s the driver?” Eve cautioned.
“Come on, get out.” Mali ordered and they all piled out of the car stretching their arms and legs. She ran over to the truck and stood at the side of it. Cheyenne moved to the front of it and tried to look into the front view window.
“It’s lying on its passenger side.” Abigail notified them as she came to stand by Cheyenne.
“I don’t see anything.” Mali and Eve joined Cheyenne and Abigail at the front of the truck.
“Hello?” Eve shouted at it, she then turned around and yelled into the forest. “Hello? Is anyone out there? We can help you!” Silence replied.
Mali crept closer to the windshield and looked in. The drivers’ seat had a bloody handprint strewn across it in an unmethodical manner. “Crap!”
“What is it? What do you see?” Cheyenne blurted with a vital tone.
“Come here! Oh gosh…” Mali said through heavy gasps.
The other three crowded around her. “Something’s wrong, let’s go.” Eve feared. “NOW!”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Abigail jetted across the highway to the Jeep, Cheyenne followed.
Eve took one last glance and bolted.
“Mali come on!” Abigail screeched as she reached the car.
Mali quickly reached for her right side zipper pocket on her carpenter pants and clumsily opened it. She pulled out a disposable camera and snapped a picture of the seat and the entire truck.
“Now Mali!” Cheyenne yelled with fear.
Mali sprinted over to her car and got in. She plunged her keys in and quickly sped off in the opposite direction and back down the highway she had already driven down. She slightly looked over to her left as she sped down the road. She didn’t see anything but then again it was very dark and she was doing well over 100 miles per hour. As Mali reached the top of a hill she slammed on the brakes and none of the other girls needed to ask why. A semi truck was lying skewed across the highway in the same manner as before, maybe because it was the exact same truck.
“What are we going to do now?” Abigail questioned shaking wildly. Cheyenne grabbed her and they both sat together with wide and confused eyes.
“I got an idea, there is an unpaved road at mile marker 109. Maybe we can get out that way.” Mali informed her friends of her discovery of the road. She pulled out her camera and snapped a picture. She flipped a u-turn and they slowly drove by the left side of the road. “Do you see anything guys?”
“There!” Abigail shouted as a dirt cutoff came into view.
Mali pulled out her camera, took a picture, and then she pulled into the road and hit the gas. ”Keep your eyes open.”
The girls fell silent as they watched the road. Cheyenne turned to look out the rear window and when the dirt from the road became still once more on the ground she saw the thing standing in the road.
“Camera! Camera!” Mali tossed it to her and Cheyenne turned to take a picture. “It’s gone.”
“No its not.” Eve turned to look out the windshield and a man with yellow eyes and a dead man, most likely the truck driver, sprawled in his left hand stood before the cars’ headlights. Crimson blood dripped in a way that showed it had been given no mercy and the girls were now fully aware that this was no dream.
The man turned his head to a slightly down angle and smirked at the girls in the car. Cheyenne snapped a photo and Mali pushed on the gas pedal. He jumped up just before the car would have pummeled him and he vanished from their sight.
“Where the heck did it go?” Eve shouted leaning forward onto the dashboard trying to see where it went.
“LET’S LEAVE!” Cheyenne pleaded, as she too looked around for the, whatever it was.
“Ghosts don’t exist!” Abigail shouted at the top of her lungs.
“What are you talking about Abigail? Who said it was a ghost? It’s just some freak that’s going to try to kill us if we don’t leave!” Cheyenne shrieked as her overwhelming concern of death filled her mind.
Mali was unsure as to why she was still letting her car sit there while there was something haunting them.
“THEY DON’T EXIST!” Abigail’s voice was rising with each and every word and yet the girls sat there, wondering what in the world they should do. Each one of them was sure that if they were to travel just a few more miles down the road, the ghastly man would soon enough reappear without them being able to do anything. And so, Mali just sat there.
“JUST GO! We have a chance if we are going sixty miles per hour!” Cheyenne warned.
Eve was unusually quiet. Mali looked at her; shaking her head she hit the gas pedal with her foot.
“Ghosts don’t exist!” Abigail yelled out once again.
Mali yielded, in hopes to get her to shut up for maybe five seconds, and soon found it to be a mistake. The bloodless man pulled open the rear passenger side door with his feeble fingers and pulled Abigail up by the throat by some inconceivable force that gave him more strength than he should just deserve. “Yes, little missy, they do!”
The girls screamed and Cheyenne and Eve went to pull on Abigail’s’ legs but their hands went right through her body and onto the seat. The man pulled Abigail out of the car and still holding onto her throat he lowered his head to hers and kissed her lips. Her clothes fell lifelessly to the floor and Abigail was no more.
“Go Mali!” Cheyenne wailed. The door slammed shut on the Jeep as Mali hit the gas and the three girls were left with a sudden feeling that none of them were going to get out alive. As tears overwhelmed their faces death stood before them.
“Kill the thing, Mali!” She once again found herself plunging her foot into the gas pedal. The last thing Mali thought was, “Ghosts do not exist, but death does…” As the Jeep plummeted forward death overtook them and they all fell to non-existence.
7:42 p.m.
Three days later Mali’s Jeep was found on an old unpaved road in Arizona, mile marker 109. Inside contained luggage, fast food wrappers, CD’s, clothes, and a disposable camera with half the film dangling out…