After a few weeks at ‘The Slim Vacancy,’ Hector and I eventually muster the energy to abandon our bed for the next lucky arrival. We don’t get far before the desolate ‘Nevadan Unemployment Center’ spills off ahead and to the west of the interstate. It’s early evening by the time we reach it- hardly dark but late enough that it doesn’t make sense to go any further. We pick a likely cubicle and, seeing the clouds gather, I unpack the tarp. Rain has already begun to fall by the time I finished the makeshift roof and slump into the cement likeness of a spinning office chair.

‘The Nevadan State Government’s manifestation of an ‘Unemployment Center’ suggests a cruel sense of humor and a severe lack of budget oversight. Though preliminary sketches of the facility are penned with such brutalism that one can’t help but assume it’s design is in jest, the project’s real world manifestation in 2006 did away with the playful artsy pretense and settled on something wholly brutal. Though someone had taken great care to model the cement likenesses of office equipment in each cubicle, the ‘Center’ was, and is, little more than a parking lot of cement outhouses baking in the sun off the interstate.

A series of PSAs aired shortly after work on ‘The Nevada Unemployment Center’ completed and these outlined the project’s simple offer: sit in these cubicles for eight hours a day and receive minimum wage. Humanitarian-based criticisms of the program are well-documented and can be perused elsewhere but most focus on that initial wave of enthusiastic participants. People from all over the state swarmed the cubicles and it soon became a thing all its own: half ironic artist retreat and legitimate tent city. When checks arrived two weeks later, a second wave of ‘employees’ appeared and demanded their turn. Violence followed, enough violence that the plan faced termination and ‘The Unemployment Center,’ a cement slab in the middle of nowhere, had to be fenced-off and guarded- a grand new tax-payer expense.

Interest in ‘The Nevada Unemployment Center’ soon waned and, criticisms aside, the oddball program may well have stabilized had it not been for the final blow. Following a tip from a small-town lawyer named Ricky Handler, all those initial ‘employees’ found they now qualified for severance and a revised unemployment package. A bill arrived somewhere at the statehouse and the guards disappeared overnight. ‘The Nevada Unemployment Center’ was abandoned, spiritually and otherwise. It remains abandoned to this day.

‘The Nevada Unemployment Center’ makes for a poor living space. It’s miles from the nearest town and provides little protection from the elements. It makes for a poor skate park- a poor background for the movers and shakers of modern social media. Nothing thrives there but snakes and tumbleweeds. It serves no real purpose but research suggests that, of all Nevada’s novelties, ‘The Unemployment Center’ will stand longer than just about anything else. If an alien shoe should step on the earth long after the human flame has been extinguished, they will know something of humanity and it will be the cubicle floor-plan of the early millennial office.’

I worked in a video shop when I was a teenager and spent the night there twice. The first time I was snowed in- I made microwave popcorn for dinner and waited out the storm. The second time was for some event- some late-night movie showing for which I never received overtime. Spending the night in a cubicle of ‘The Nevadan Unemployment Center’ reminds me of that place. Too formal to be a home. To familiar to be a business. I knew that store like the back of my hand and I didn’t mind, so much, stretching out on the floor and watching the snow fall. I didn’t mind, so much, catching glimpses of the night sky from the parking lot during that event- the crisp, midnight air. It’s like that, again, when the rain comes down onto the tarp. It’s like that when the wind flicks between the cubicles, rushing past our little shelter. Lightning flashes across the sky and I tell Hector we ought to unplug the cement computer, just in case. He blinks his cloudy eyes and finds a corner to relieve himself in.

A letter finds me two weeks later- something that hardly ever happens. It’s from Nevada and I think, for just a moment, that it might be a check. It’s a warning for trespassing: a generic cease-and-desist as though that little satisfaction might tempt me to return to that little box and to try to live out my life there.

-traveler

‘Off I-11 and not but an hour’s drive from Boulder City, Nevada there stands ‘The Slim Vacancy’ and its signage. The building itself is squat and cozy, made private via frosted glass rather than blackout shades or tinting. A smell like smoke lingers outside and low conversations are sometimes heard within. The sign stretches high above the horizon, buzzing red at dusk.

The single-page website for ‘The Slim Vacancy’ details only the exclusivity of the establishment and spares no words for the business’ purpose. Membership is based on a first come, first serve basis and is limited to just six members at a time. A neon sign indicates the current membership status and, as one might suspect, it reads ‘no vacancy’ more often than not.

Interest in ‘The Slim Vacancy’ waxes and wanes. Following its re-discovery, small crowds will sometimes gather in the lot and wait for an unlikely vacancy to occur. Nobody will stop visitors pressing their noses to the windows or their ears to the walls and nobody will response to loud knocks or calls for emergency evacuations. It’s said that the wood with which ‘The Slim Vacancy’ is constructed will stand up to fires and axe-blades, that the glass will bend but not break. It’s said that vacancies occur with no fanfare and, occasionally, with little indication of what may have been the catalyst. Of the 12 recorded vacancies, only five involved someone stepping out the door.’

If Shitholes’ author couldn’t get inside ‘The Slim Vacancy,’ I don’t hold out much hope for Hector or myself so imagine my surprise when the sign appears in the distance ahead and indicates a vacancy. I press the upper bounds of the speed limit but there’s no other traffic to speak of and no vehicles in the lot when I arrive. Just like that, my excitement becomes suspicion.

I keep Hector close as we reconnoiter the building, not entirely convinced that we won’t have to make a run for the entrance as soon as another car pulls off the interstate. Lights are on inside and, though a shadow passes by the frosted glass, it is absolutely quiet.

Several minutes tick by. I dither out front and tell myself that sometimes good things happen. Sometimes a man and his rabbit get lucky.

A squeal of tires breaks the spell. A car has swerved down the exit and aimed itself at ‘The Slim Vacancy.’ I scoop Hector from the ground, grab the bag from the bike and dash toward the building. I knock but get no answer. The door swings opens when I try the knob.

The growing engine noise is entirely blotted out by the door behind me. The inside of ‘The Slim Vacancy’ is stiflingly warm and it smells, nostalgically, of old cigarettes. A man’s head appears from a doorway. He’s leaned back in a wooden chair.

“Come on in,” he says.

‘The Slim Vacancy’ is a house, it turns out. A house with six small bedrooms. The man and two women are seated in a den, playing Graycards on an old pool table and drinking. The fridge is stocked with big-box staples and a dryer churns laundry near the back.

“Basement’s chock full’a stuff that won’t go bad,” the man, Brent, tells me, “And the owner comes around once in a while to replace things.”

Brent is a failed DJ. The women are sisters who claim to be ‘on the run.’ I ask about the Graycards and they say they found them on a shelf with several iterations of Monopoly. I ask about the owner and they all struggle to describe the person they’ve seen countless times.

“So what’s special about this place?” I ask.

“It’s free.”

The front door slams open and two more women hesitate on the threshold. I see the speeding car cooling off outside- their car. Like me, they seem thrown by the ease at which they’ve scored entry. The taller of the two steps forward.

“Is it… safe?”

I look around and shrug. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Brent confirms, “Sure. We’ll deal you in.”

At maximum capacity, ‘The Slim Vacancy’ seals itself off. Hannah, who has been inside for nearly a year, shows us a screen situated in the hallway closet that monitors several external cameras. On them, we see that the sign now indicates ‘no vacancy.’ The rest of the tour is simple. The three of us take bedrooms, all of which are more or less the same. Brent explains a complicated tap in one of the bathrooms and they all take turns confirming that ‘The Slim Vacancy’ is basically a comfortable place to squat as long as there’s a spot open.

“I was here a few years ago,” Brent recalls, “Vibe was different, then. A real party house. This guy, Devon, decides he’s going to make a beer run because he’s had enough of the house stuff and, just a minute after he’s gone, a guy named Arnie pulls of the road and takes his place.”

“Why’d you leave the first time?”

“Arnie was a real drag.”

The three long-term residents have already eaten but they offer us some cold pizza and a round of drinks. After a muted ‘cheers’ the six of us head off to bed. The room is comfortable and quiet. Hector falls asleep in his kennel and I doze off a little while later.

Sun filters through the frosted glass in the morning and the smell of frying bacon creeps under the door. I rest, for a while, and as soon as I consider that this is the sort of place that grows on a person- the sort of place that threatens my travel- a silhouette passes outside and a wild possessiveness clenches my chest. Leaving means giving up my spot and I’m not ready to spurn luck so soon.

Brent is tapping at the monitor when I peer out of the room. He’s got an apron on and a spatula in his hand and he looks relieved to see me.

“Would you watch this for a moment?” he asks, “I gotta flip the pork.”

A man is pacing outside. He stops and looks up- waves in the general direction of the camera. It occurs to me that he’s been inside before.

“That’s Arnie,” Brent says, back from the kitchen, “Lucky you three showed up when you did or we’d be stuck with him again.”

“I don’t plan on staying long,” I warn him, “I’ve got some work to do.”

“Tell you what, buddy. You wait Arnie out a week and I’ll cook you and your rabbit a week’s worth of breakfasts. Whatever you’re doin,’ it can’t be so urgent you didn’t keep you from spending the night on the fly.”

Hector, still clumsy with sleep, hops from the bedroom and a comfortable lethargy stirs in my chest.

“One week,” I tell him, “And if Arnie’s still here after that, it’s your tough luck.”

-traveler

Hector’s willingness to engage in travel is admirable for a blind, naked rabbit, so it’s difficult to be frustrated when I discover he’s adverse to climbing uphill for more than a few moments at a time. The check-up Hector received early in our acquaintance suggested he’s enjoying the upper-middle age of a rabbit’s lifespan. He seems healthy enough but the hardships of his life have been weathered with stoicism alone. The creature is entirely unwilling to explore the more athletic forms of endurance this late in life and a certain world-weariness may have something to do with it.

All to say that I climb Bagger Hill with Hector strapped to my chest, looking like an alien parasite in a modified baby sling. If it were a day hike I might have considered leaving him behind in the kennel, strapped to the bike and covered against wind, rain, and predators. Hector is quiet, by default, and the trailhead is well enough off the beaten path that I doubt anybody would have been in a position to steal him or to question his abandonment. Sources say the trail to ‘The Y2Kave’ takes at least two days- and that’s quickly paced. I, like Hector, have slowed down, some. I plan for three days and pack for four. Toss a rabbit’s weight on top and you have a slow hike indeed.

‘It’s common enough to find oneself nostalgic for the simpler sort of apocalypse that Y2K embodied. Imagine humanity’s unraveling, not at the hands of some insidious nuclear power or by means of plotting and coups, but as a result of simple short-sidedness in the creation of its digital calendar systems. Imagine the collective grimace- the flashing double-zeroes on screens across the globe as planes fell from the sky and microwaves silenced and the streetlamps all went out. Imagine it happened at midnight- a great wave of darkness opposite the sun, revelers frozen with their champagne. Awake, as one might be during a plague. Surprised, as one might be by an atomic blast. Alive enough to be afraid.

Alabama’s ‘Y2Kave’ is a bit of a time capsule in that regard. It is the site chosen by a group of 20-something pessimists for their final days on earth, a tribute to a night of hedonism and paranoia. ‘The Y2Kave’ is far enough off the beaten path that it has been spared defacement. Animals find the place repugnant for some reason, perhaps the residual paint fumes or the unnatural coloring of the walls.

The small cave has become an unlikely respite from the modern world- but a temporary one. The dawn of the century was, by no means, an age of absolute contentment. ‘The Y2Kave’ is the product of fear- naïve fear, perhaps, but fear just the same. Few stay for longer than a week before the place’s subtle haunting drives them away.’

Hector and I reach the cave late in the afternoon, having overshot the turnoff half a mile before catching the mistake. I’m happy to find ‘The Y2Kave’ vacant. My sense is that visitors tend to be meditative rather that rowdy but I don’t savor the possibility of having to commiserate over the state of the world. Things are obviously bad. Let me suffer alone.

Hector is asleep when I set him down in the sling. He opens an eye when I reattach his harness and closes it again once I stand. I let him rest and step into the cave.

Shitholes doesn’t mention that some amount of purposeful conservation has occurred at the site of this ancient doomsday party. Empty bottles of discontinued wine coolers have been organized along one wall. Scraps of paper have been patched together and anchored by rocks. Several other items- a frisbee, a joint, a pack of Camels, a pair of glasses- have been inventoried in the back where visitors have identified them in chalk. Two halves of a Y2K emergency pamphlet have been rolled up and pressed into a wine bottle. It reeks of late-nineties graphic design, all 3D fonts and clipart despite the dire warnings.  

A controversial timeline of the party itself has been laid out on another wall, this also in chalk. The anonymous attendees of the original party seemed to have begun a mural early in the night- a visual depiction of human civilization from the beginning of time. The mural is largely western, beginning with a satirical depiction of Adam and Eve, leading into vague scenes of Egypt and possibly China, and slowing down once more for the founding of the US. To their credit, the artists had a pretty good memory of the past centuries’ American atrocities and less-satirical depictions of those events take up much of the remaining space.

The chalk timeline notes the drunken sloppiness of the painting as the timeline reaches 2000, at which point there is an unfinished sketch of the party itself followed by a couple dozen doomsday scenarios. Everything from nuclear war to alien invasion.

There is some internet chatter about a jutting rock near the end of the mural where paint has dried dark brown. Some suggest the party ended in violence, when drawn-out paranoia overcame the nihilism. The inclusion of twenty-odd cans of food and a rusted pot in the inventory suggests the potential for a longer stay- a half-hearted shelter for the early days of the end times. It doesn’t take much for humans to turn over so few resources.

I bring Hector into the cave a little later to see if he has a sense for the place. He hops here and there and he pauses briefly to lick at the bloody rock before I pull him away. After the novelty has faded he, like other animals, seems to be in favor of spending the evening outside.

It’s a clear night, and not so cold for mid-autumn. We sleep under the stars and pack up early the next morning. We make better time on the way down and are soon cast back into the troubled present, eased not by the respite itself, but for having recognized the futility of dwelling overlong in the past.

-traveler

‘It’s impossible to deny that small town America is made of denser earth than its cities, complicated as they are by sewage, subways, and secret means of egress for the billionaire elite. Small towns exert gravity such that passing vehicles slingshot by, hurriedly propelled between coasts. Long-time residents find their homes difficult to leave, weighted, as they are, by generational inertia.

The frequency of ‘Runaway Truck Ramps’ in rural America represents the nation’s half-hearted solution- a system that, in theory, would funnel the collected energy of a truckful of runaways into a single attempt to break from a small town’s orbit. Those who try to avail this service quickly realize the truth of the matter. Funding for the ramps fell through just months after construction began. Hopeful runaways will find that most are nothing more than hard-earned dead ends.’

Though Shitholes is right to warn against staking one’s escape on a random ‘Runaway Truck Ramp,’ a handful did make it to a later stage of construction before being de-funded. They aren’t complete by any stretch of the word. They aren’t particularly safe. They aren’t even particularly well-placed but their functionality is enough that travelers’ havens tend to spring up nearby. Hector and I spend a week near the lake at Pearl City and we let ourselves grow comfortable with the idea of staying put for a while.

When it’s time to leave, we take the ramp and find that leaving isn’t so hard after all.

-traveler

‘Though it goes by many names and leads in several directions, most agree that ‘The Sharp Right’ is a single phenomenon manifesting in multiple ways. The overall illusion is always the same- the sudden arrival of a traveler’s exit several miles before expected. Some describe ‘The Sharp Right’ as insidiously mundane. Others recall its exaggerated signage, something they only recognize after the fact. Massive signs. Flashing lights and warnings. The inclusion of exclamation points and underlines. Whatever it takes to force the driver into a sudden, panicked turn.

Of course, once the driver turns, ‘The Sharp Right’ disappears, giving way to whatever should be there on the shoulder of the interstate- a tree, a barrier, a precipice, or just enough of a slope to start the vehicle rolling.

 The frequency of ‘The Sharp Right’ is difficult to track for the fact that the majority of its survivors will never understand that their lives were threatened. A moment’s hesitation will have saved them and, though it may prove disorienting to find the true exit where it should be, most will chalk it up to exhaustion. The only lasting evidence of ‘The Sharp Right’ is the skid marks one sometimes sees veering right on a perfectly straight stretch of road- a trail of broken glass. A twisted traffic barrier.

‘The Sharp Right’ is among the few of the Wayside’s legally recognized oddities, it being a ‘hail mary’ for the wealthy drunk driver. As of publication there are no reliable means by which is can be detected or warded against. A traveler can only be advised to remain attentive, and to trust their intuition, even if their intuition takes them a little out of the way.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘The annual Halloween store appears mid-September and reaches its highest density in the following month. By Halloween night, its haphazard storefronts will occupy all available lots, will have consumed a handful of businesses here and there, and will seem, most certainly, a weed in the verdant capitalist garden of strip malls and shopping centers.

At the height of its invasion, most Halloween stores will collapse, expelling the remainder of their inventory into the parking lot to be swept up and carted off by bottom-feeding bargain hunters. The disbursement of costumes and decorations in second hand shops will maintain consumer interest and lay the foundations for the subsequent year’s Halloween bloom. Given its natural concession, the annual Halloween store will prove itself less a perennial weed and more a gaudy annual, a time-sensitive facet of the healthy consumption cycle.

There are, on occasion, some stores that mutate. These specimens continue past their prime- their presence not a matter of virulence but of a singular hardiness. At worst, a ‘November Halloween Store’ represents a benign eyesore- a blemish that calls into question the health of businesses nearby. Shoppers are advised to tread carefully, not for any danger inherent to the store, but in respect for the swiftness with which a healthy ecosystem will cannibalize the uncanny.’

It’s been over a decade since I’ve attended a Halloween party or any other function that might require a costume. It’s been nearly as long since I’ve been so anchored as to run the risk of needing candy for trick-or-treaters. The likelihood of a ‘November Halloween Store’ still having viable samples of either this late in the month seems unlikely anyway. What brings me to the ‘November Halloween Store’ is a simple vision: Hector in a rabbit-sized costume.

A carrot? A hotdog? A sphinx-like headdress? The costume itself doesn’t matter. What occurred to me in a tent-warmed mid-morning doze was the image of Hector in any costume, really, the sheer ugliness of the creature amplified to something altogether surreal by tiny angel wings or a wreath of flower petals.

Shitholes is right, though. There is something unseemly about the store as it stands at the foot of winter. Both the grocery and the day clinic that sandwich it seem wilted, their plate-glass windows heavy-lidded with fatigue or suspicion. There is no one inside the store, neither customer nor employee. A door to the back is ajar and the sounds of some streaming video or cellphone game spill out from inside.

The products are a mess. Thanksgiving has just begun to recede along an aisle in the back and Christmas has sprung in rashy patches, its tinsel creeping in and out of plastic jack-o-lanterns. The bulk of the store is still Halloween-themed. Someone has tried to repurpose samples of the inventory, pitiable attempts to market the longevity of items that are inherently seasonal. Rubber masks have been sewn into oven mitts and rain parkas, rippling noses and mouths. Pumpkins are stacked into mock totems and snowmen and even cacti, of sorts.

At the far back corner I find a swiveling rack of animal costumes and have knelt to examine a deeply discounted lion’s mane when the front door slams open, triggering the welcome bell with such force that it breaks from its string and arcs across the store, rolling to a stop at my feet. From between cans of false snow I see two men in Santa suits, their faces concealed by the white-bearded equivalent of a ghillie mask. They carry a crate between them, set it on the floor, and begin to assemble something on the counter. The noise is enough to draw a thin girl from the backroom. She steps to the register and pauses:

“Can I help you?”

“You don’t sell holiday shit no more,” one of the beards says, “Now you sell hotdogs.” He flips a switch on the machine on the counter and its rollers grind to life.

The second beard tears open a sack of hotdogs and dumps them into the machine where they squirm and grind and ostensibly warm. “No more Halloween. No more Christmas. Get the fuck out with your Thanksgiving garbage- now you sell hotdogs, got me?”

The girl opens her mouth to protest and the men slam their fists onto the counter.

“Hotdogs!”

The same thing happens when she tries, again, to speak.

I slip off my shoes and begin a stealthy exit toward the door but am immediately foiled by the loose bell at my feet. The scene at the register goes quiet and I hear one of the beards moving my way. He’s on me in a split second. I struggle but he twists my hood so that my jacket closes around my neck and he drags me up to the register.

“Got a customer, here,” the beard tells the girl.

“Got a purchase to make,” the second beard tells me.

I look at the lion’s mane costume in my hand and it’s slapped away by one of the beards.

“Howsabout a hotdog?” the beard asks me.

The sausages writhe in their aquarium, flop noisily against the glass.

“Uh,” I say, “Could I get one hot dog?”

The second beard open-hand slaps me across the face. The first repeats his question. “Howsa’bout a hot dog?”

“Howsabout a hot dog?” I ask, bracing myself for another slap.

Both beards nod and the woman takes a pair of tongs from the backside of the machine and captures a hotdog before it’s pulled back down to the bottom of the pile. She looks around for something to put it in and, after several uncomfortable seconds, I just take it in-hand.

“One dollar?” the girl asks, but the beards seem to have lost interest. They release me as soon as I hand her the money and drag the crate to a truck that idles on the curb outside. A third Santa beard waits behind the wheel.

I retrieve the lion’s mane once they’ve driven away but the shop’s phone rings each time I try to convince the girl to sell it to me- dead air or whispered threats by the look on her face. After the third time, she refuses to acknowledge that the store is anything but an eccentric hotdog dispensary. I leave empty-handed.

The dregs of November are always a tad bitter. Short days, long nights, and the fitful surrender of autumn to winter. A cold wind and a rattle of trees.

-traveler

I note the behavior of the first deer by sheer happenstance when Hector and I crest a particularly tall slope of the highway. The headlights pick it out standing on the road some ways ahead- far enough away that I assume it will be gone by the time we reach it. I slow, anyway, knowing there might be more in the forest nearby and when we finally close the distance I see that the thing hasn’t moved at all. When I stop, a few yards out, the deer turns its head. It had been craning its neck toward the stars.

‘Difficult to say why animals in ‘The Headlights’ focus on the sky, given that ‘The Calamity’ arrives from no particular direction. It certainly encourages those with religious leanings to weigh in with their brand of spirituality- all variations on ‘they know where they’re headed when the time comes’-type sentiments. In reality, it’s about as easy to dismiss those who think they can explain it rationally. Plenty of people have ideas about why animals can sense disaster but their conclusions are so conflicting that it’s safe to say they just know.

Herbivores are affected first, particularly those one might classify as ‘prey.’ Deer, elk, and most four-legged stompy forest creatures fall into this category as well as skittish rodents like squirrels and moles. The animals startle, freeze, and remain relatively frozen until ‘The Calamity’ occurs, sometimes days later. Scavengers come next (rats, racoons- even certain birds). Under long enough exposure, humans and other predators begin to slow as well. Survivors of various ‘Calamities’ report no particular knowledge of the oncoming disaster, only a paranoid apathy that some have compared to Martin Seligman’s discovery of learned helplessness.

A hotline was established in 2016 to gather reports of ongoing occurrences of ‘The Headlights’ but it has been of little use in preventing ‘The Calamity.’ On the contrary, several volunteers sent to verify information on-site have perished in the resultant disaster, having either misinterpreted the timeline or succumbed to the lethargy. As of publication, no ‘Calamities’ have been mitigated by the efforts of those responsible for the hotline. There are no known examples of a ‘rescue,’ whatever that might look like.

Travelers who recognize symptoms of ‘The Headlights’ are advised to turn-tail. Approaching a frozen animal is bad-practice in the best of circumstances but, assuming ‘The Headlights’ are to blame, there’s a decent chance that the first afflicted creature is well within reach of ‘The Calamity.’

In all this traveling I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a living deer up close. I wait for it to bolt or charge the bike, am tensed for either, but the animal breathes steadily and blinks at the light. Eventually, it turns its gaze upward, again, where the sky is clear but for a handful of stars.

The road through Belcroft is one of my personal shortcuts across the nation and home to my favorite coffee place. Turning back would mean losing a day’s worth of travel and forgoing a good cup of joe. I honk at the deer and its muscles jump under its skin. It takes an uneasy step away and then stops again. Movement along the shoulder draws my attention to several more deer to the right, concealed by brush. A dozen, all said. They, too, sway on their legs and watch the sky.

I look up, for a while, in case I can make out what they’re seeing. I weigh my options, wondering if I couldn’t make a high-speed pass through Belcroft, just to save time. I spend several minutes mired in indecision before I realize the danger I’m in. Hector and I turn back.

Belcroft is in the news the next day, emitting a plume of black smoke. I see footage of the cafe, half-collapsed, and turn my attention back to a weak mug of coffee on the table. Hector shakes symptoms of ‘The Headlights’ by noon and we’re on our way again.

-traveler

Growing up, monster truck rallies were a fixture of the peripheries. They seemed to be happening constantly, their angry commercials bookending the local news. I haven’t attended a monster truck rally and I’m not sure if what I’m following, now, qualifies. I’m not sure what I’m seeing.

‘One assumes, without thinking, that monster truck rallies are like circuses, that they travel from town to town. They are, in fact, much more like a rash- they don’t travel so much as they spread. Before the internet connected us, we failed to see that when a rally occurred in one place, a dozen others happened at the exact same time, some just a few hours’ down the interstate. Even now, for all that the evidence could be conjured from a few quick searches, rallies maintain only a vague internet presence and restrict advertising to local broadcasts, effectively camouflaging their numbers.

Truly nomadic are the monster truck hunters who re-form at the behest of a chosen-one type leader every few years when the rallies have begun to take hold. Their gathering heralds ‘The Truck Hunt’ which moves between states in order to uproot the rallies from fairgrounds and auditoriums and, eventually, drive the phenomenon back into dormancy. Unlike most secretive, monster-hunting societies, the methods of the monster truck hunters are public and ostentatious to the point of vulgarity. Their post-apocalyptic vehicular modifications and zealot enthusiasm for ‘The Hunt’ leads to their antics being folded back into the monster truck rally itself- a hyper-violent clashing of man and behemoth that can be observed like a parade from the sidewalk.

Some have begun to draw uncomfortable parallels between the rallies and the hunters, suggesting that they may be the same sickness presenting in two different ways: an ailment that pretends to cure itself in order to avoid extinction. Hit and runs are a common end for people who push this possibility, whose bodies are found flattened in their driveways or on the road outside their home.’

The rallies had started appearing again about three months ago and by last week I couldn’t finish a dive-bar fry basket without hearing the raging voice of a monster truck driver describing ticket prices from a TV high up on the wall. I figured it was about time that ‘The Truck Hunt’ began and started eating out near the rallies when I stopped over in a hosting town for the evening. An hour ago, the rally in Bakersville spilled out of the arena and past the fast food joint where I had been sipping a soda-no-ice. The plan has always been to follow and watch from afar.

A series of ambushes and counter-ambushes have occurred since then. The first involved a hidden battalion of hunters swinging down from billboards (We’re Looking!) and spearing the lead monster truck- missing the cab entirely but somehow striking in places that gushed red diesel. One of the hunters was quickly sucked down under the wheels of the truck behind it as the leader’s engine faltered and screeched. The other trucks increased speed so that an opposing V-shaped secondary group could ramp from an overpass and crush several more hunters before spinning about and re-joining the back, closing the ‘parade’ behind me.

That was twenty minutes ago.

Hector and I keep up for a while, more out of necessity than brave journalistic integrity. Both factions mistake us for one of their own. A spear, tossed to me horizontally as though to be caught and thrown, bounces impotently off my torso and clatters to the asphalt before being ground under the tires of something behind us. A muscular man in only leather pants and a helmet shouts orders at me from his own bike and then tries to get close enough for a one-hand strangle.

Hector and I exit all at once. I hydroplane on blood and oil, wobble, and skid to a halt. Three motorcycles whiz by and a monster truck passes overhead, all in the span of half a second. An impact from any one of them would have killed us both.

In another second, ‘The Truck Hunt’ is nothing but twinkling red light on the horizon. I walk the bike to the shoulder and check on Hector, who is drenched in whatever blood-adjacent ichor the monster trucks spray. He doesn’t seem particularly agitated and he chews at wild sage while I change the bedding. In the meantime, I nurse the calm that speaks to fresh trauma. The calm that keeps a person up at night.

-traveler

A bridge spans the center of ‘Crater or Maybe Volcano State Park’ in New Mexico, rickety, as most walking bridges seem, but also newish, given the park’s recent opening. The state of the bridge after so little use reiterates the confident flippancy of the name and I’m loathe to risk crossing it with Hector, in case we fall, or without, in which case he likely starves in the kennel on the back of the bike (or fossilizes for all I know). There are a great number of questionable things being done under the current government and the trust I may have once had, the trust that would make me think the bridge was built stronger than it seems, has long dried up. We content ourselves with a walk around the brim as a much braver couple makes the crossing, their nervous laughter reaching our ears when the wind is just right.

‘It seems likely that the budget for ‘Crater or Maybe Volcano State Park’ fell through some time between its proposal and its ‘completion’ but that certain funds had already been granted and were too tedious to return. The result is a total of three benches, placed around a natural pit, a bridge to cross it, and a handful of signs indicating that there are no handrails (whether they were simply too expensive to install remains unsaid).

The informational signs are printouts stapled to repurposed cardboard and they are purely speculative, reading like a stilted argument between two Rangers, one of whom has been assigned to argue that the pit is definitely the impact site of some ancient meteor and one whose educated guess is that it is ancient, yes, but terrestrial in nature.

The ‘Crater or Maybe Volcano State Park’ invites visitors to weigh in on the debate at every turn. The insistence is endearing, at first, but increasingly desperate as each new sign attempts to crowdsource the geological information required to properly name the site. A cement post near the exit suggests the aborted foundation for a donation box that was never funded in full.’

Hector and I are a quarter of the way around the rim when the bridge breaks and the couple disappears into the crater or maybe volcano. We might not have noticed the screaming if the wind hadn’t been just right. I gather Hector and we rush back toward the entrance where I seemed to have a bar or two of cell service. In the time it takes us to reach, someone else has made the call. A helicopter performs skeptical loops above the pit while those of us in the parking lot give statements. I have my helmet on before the local news starts interviewing but I worry I may show up in some of the background shots.

It’s hard to know how quickly a thing can end for a small mistake.

-traveler

‘We’re looking for people like YOU!’

Billboards tend to blur in the peripheries until I’m checking for a likely lunch spot or the rare Shitholes destination that advertises outside of the book. I could have driven past a number of these before noting anything that seemed… strange.

‘Are you between the ages of 18 and 64? We’re looking for people like YOU!’

‘We’re looking!’

‘We’re looking for PEOPLE!’

‘Are you between the ages? We’re looking for people like YOU!’

No phone numbers on these signs. Just a general declaration of what the advertiser is looking for. I stop to look it up but the only hits are people, like me, who are trying to figure out what the story is. I add my findings to a couple forums for posterity and pull back onto the highway.

‘We are looking for PEOPLE!”

‘We are looking for YOU!”

Just before Hector and I make it to our exit I see a much larger version of the same sign, flickering with halogen bulbs and propped up on two stilts, precariously tall. An arrow points from ‘We’ to a dim warehouse below the sign. An arrow drawn from ‘YOU’ indicates my general location on the highway.

I stop again and flip through Shitholes, nervous in the untrodden dark. No entry indicates any knowledge of these signs or of the warehouse to which they seem to lead. Ahead, the sign pulses with a heat mirage, swarms with moth-hunting bats and bat-hunting bigger-things that swoop heavily on the edge of the light.

We exit early, content to let that one pass. The compulsion to seek out mystery in the face of danger has faded, in me, at long last.

-traveler