Last Call!

[valarltd]

Ain't No Easy Run, last year's Halloween sip, goes out of publication this month. Last chance to get it for 1.29.

Blurb: Truck driver Al has a very special run to make, with a very special cargo. He has to be very careful with this load, and where he's going he can't get a hotel. He can't even get out of his truck when he gets there, for fear of not being able to make the return trip. When he meets his new shotgun rider, Al figures the perks make up for the hard driving. Will his new pay make the job worthwhile?

Excerpt:
A good dispatcher is the best help a driver can have. A bad one can ruin your life. I have the best one ever. Staci comes through for me, and I always get the load through for her.

Even so, when I saw my dispatch orders, I stared a little, blinked twice and swallowed hard. Then I called Dispatch.

“Hiya, Al,” Staci chirped. I loved that woman. I'd never met her, but if I ever got up her way, I was going to go by the terminal and take her to lunch.

“Hi Staci. Got my dispatch. You got routing and fuel stops for me?”

“They should be coming over the onboard computer about now.” Sure enough, as if on cue, it beeped. “Al, you don't have to take this run. But if you do, it could go dedicated. And it pays two grand a week.”

“Babe, I always said I'd drive to the moon and back for you. I'll have that load back on time.”

“Good luck. And bless you.”

“Thanks. I'm gonna need them both.”

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The D-Man Checks In: So what's the cargo? I'm figuring either vampire or ghoul munchies, still warm & squirming, chained up in the back cages. Maybe how one city cleans up its streets & clears them of homeless people once a month. Gather 'em up to supposedly take 'em to a shelter, load 'em up instead into a truck trailer at a halfway point on the outskirts of town and then haul 'em off to some Gods-forsaken piece of forgotten ghost town nowhere for delivery. Keeps the homeless whom few (if anybody) will really miss off the streets so they don't become a public nuisance & eye-sore; keeps the vamps and/or ghoulies from needing to venture into civilization looking for food & thereby becoming a public threat.

"Just don't get outta the cab during or after delivery, bub... Things tend to get more than a little wild & messy at feeding time. Cash payment will be wired to your account."

Okay, if I guessed wrong, maybe an idea for a future story.

[(Anonymous)]

If you're the trucker takin' this run... Check your conscience at the door until you get back... And don't look in the rear view mirrors after you make delivery & are driving away. This ain't no easy run, as it can be rough on both the spirit and the stomach if you see & hear too much.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

You're wrong, but I like the idea...

The other guys laughed and headed to their trucks. I was getting up, when I saw the kid standing by the rear of my trailer. Mister Two-fifty-one, I expected. I went out and did a walk around. He sure was cute, all blond hair and big gray eyes. He couldn't have been more than twenty-two, and wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon medieval foot pad and the words “Thieves slip in and out unnoticed.” His tan jeans hugged his body and the leather sandals were the final hippie touch. I wanted to kiss him, just to see if his lips were as soft as they looked. I grinned at the irony instead. Someday, I was going to be in the trailer of this rig myself, I suspected.

“You get special accommodations,” I said to him. “The passenger seat.”

He smiled. “Better than the trailer with the rest of the damned. I thought it was supposed to be a train.”

I shrugged. “Trains went out years ago. I guess rail rates affect everyone.” I paid my tab and stood up to go.

He sighed. “Yeah, so now they get packed into cattle cars and hauled to Hell behind Freightliners.”

There it lay, the ugly truth of the run. We couldn't escape the fact I was taking him down to Hell.

“Get in,” I said, and climbed up myself.