DEAD STRETCH

Synopsis

Wade Corliss hauls what dispatch tells him to haul. Tonight it is a sealed trailer, no manifest, and three times the usual rate. The only condition is a delivery by six in the morning and one rule: the trailer doors stay shut. Past Rawlins the interstate empties out. Around midnight the trailer starts to knock. When he turns off the radio, something knocks back, slowly, in the rhythm of his own breathing. The next stop is forty miles away. The delivery is two hundred. Wade has a payment due and a daughter to see Saturday, and he has promised to deliver.

Who this is about

Wade Corliss is thirty-two, a long-haul driver from Casper with a late truck payment, a daughter in another state, and no habit of asking what he's hauling.

What goes wrong

A sealed trailer hooked to his cab on a dispatcher's word begins to knock, then to answer, from inside, when he turns the radio off.

What's at stake

Opening the trailer breaks the one condition he was paid to keep. Not opening it means driving the last two hundred miles with whatever is in there.

Why it keeps going

An empty interstate at night, a fuel stop forty miles out, a six a.m. delivery window, and something in the back that knows his name.

Takeaway

A man who keeps his word is hardest to frighten and easiest to trap.

Shelves

Themes

Story, in the creator's words

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Style

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Characters

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Tech stack

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Schedule

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Production plan

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