Chapter 3

The trucker's words played on a loop in my head. "You're lucky to be alive." The stark finality of his tone left no room for doubt. We had stared into the abyss, and somehow, the abyss had let us go. The knowledge didn't bring comfort, it only sharpened the edges of our fear, making it a tangible thing sitting in the car with us.

"He sounded so sure," Emily whispered from the passenger seat, staring out at the blackness rushing past. "Like he was talking about a coyote or a mountain lion. A normal danger."

"Maybe out here, it is," I said, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. My pragmatism was fighting a losing battle against the cold, hard evidence of our own eyes and the trucker's grim confirmation. A part of my brain was still screaming that monsters weren't real, but the rest of it was telling me to shut up and drive faster.

"We need to get to a city," I decided, my voice firm. "A real one. With streetlights and crowds and no empty space for things to hide in. We'll drive all night if we have to."

"Agreed," Emily said, not a trace of argument in her voice. The shared terror had forged a new, unspoken agreement between us. The goal of our trip was no longer to see the country or find adventure, it was simply to survive it.

We pushed on, the miles flying by under our tires. The landscape remained stubbornly dark and empty, an unchanging canvas of black. For a long while, we were the only car on the road, our headlights a solitary beacon in the immense void. With every bend in the road, I half-expected to see that tall, lanky figure standing there, waiting for us.

Slowly, agonizingly, the adrenaline began to fade, replaced by a deep, bone-aching exhaustion. The fear was still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it was a low hum now instead of a screaming siren. The sun began to rise, casting a pale, grey light over the desert and chasing away the deepest shadows. The world looked normal again, almost peaceful. The red rocks glowed in the early morning light, and for a moment, I could almost convince myself that the events of the previous evening had been a nightmare, a product of exhaustion and heat.

We passed a sign: "Kingman - 50 miles." A real town. Hope, fragile but persistent, began to flicker within me.

Emily seemed to be feeling it too. She finally sat up straight, stretching her stiff limbs. She even managed a weak smile.

"Fifty miles," she said. "We can make it fifty miles."

"We can," I agreed, a genuine smile touching my own lips for the first time in what felt like days. The relief was intoxicating. We were going to be okay. We had escaped. The monster was behind us, a bad memory in a stretch of road we would never, ever travel again.

"Can you imagine trying to explain that to anyone back home?" Emily asked, a hint of her old humor returning. "'So, how was the Grand Canyon?' 'Oh, we didn't make it. We were chased by a mythological desert demon and had to flee for our lives.'"

I let out a short, sharp laugh. It sounded rusty. "They'd think we'd been sampling the local cacti."

The mood in the car lifted, the tension that had been strangling us for hours finally loosening its grip. We were giddy with relief, drunk on the simple fact of our survival. The sun was up, a city was near, and the nightmare was over.

Then we heard it.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

A rhythmic, slapping sound from the back of the car. It was the unmistakable, gut-wrenching sound of a flat tire.

I swore and pulled the car over to the shoulder, the flapping rubber making a terrible noise against the pavement. We both sat there for a moment in stunned silence as the engine ticked and cooled. The brief, hopeful bubble we had built around ourselves had just burst, leaving us stranded. Stranded on the side of a lonely highway, in the middle of the very desert we were so desperately trying to escape. Fifty miles had never felt so far away.