Long Haul 1983, pt 2
On The Road Again
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For the month of October, I’m taking a break from my Blade Runner RPG campaign, “Shadow of the Waxwing Slain” to play some spooky games. Today, I’m playing Long Haul 1983 by SCP. Check out Part 1 here.
If you’re new here, check out the Table of Contents for other stuff I’ve written! Thanks!
I start the engine.
4dF = _--- → _- → Engine doesn’t start
The engine rumbles and kicks out, almost as if sighing. Shit.
I try again, whispering “come on, just a little farther.”
4dF = ++-- → ++ → Engine starts
It comes on and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
I get back on the road.
It’s still raining but not too hard.
I keep an eye on the rear-view, watching the black cloud in the distance, always following, swallowing up the horizon behind me.
With my attention on it, I don’t realize I’m lost for about an hour. I must have taken a turn or two, pulled onto a different highway, without realizing it. I don’t recognize the landscape.
I wipe my eyes pulling off the road for a moment. I’m tired from pushing too hard the night before and any sleep I do manage to get is troubled and messy. I clench my fists on the steering wheel.
I’d trade my lucky lighter for a good night’s sleep.
I take my lighter out for a moment, flicking it open. It was silver and unremarkable, but I’d had it since I was a kid. I didn’t even smoke anymore but I liked having it.
I close my eyes for a second, feeling the weight of it all.
Body: 4dF = +_-- → +_- => Success
I open my eyes and pull back out onto the road, looking for signs and finding my way back on track.
As the day winds down, I look for somewhere to stop and sleep. I’ve been finding hotels and motels, parking the rig behind the building and using one of the rooms, keeping the lights off so as not to alert anyone or anything when I’m there.
It’s worked so far, I suppose.
I find one, a Motel 6, and pull in as the sun sets, parking the rig out back. As I walk around, inspecting the truck, I notice something on one of the exterior door handles.
A black ooze, bubbling.
I wipe it off with a rag and toss it as far as I can in the parking lot. It left the shiny chrome dull and blackened in spots.
I make a phone call.
I start the engine, nerves coming up, hoping she starts first try.
4dF = +__- → +_ → Engine starts.
She rumbles to life, providing relief.
I drive. The rain has stopped, but I can hear the whipping of the wind as it buffets against the truck.
Cards: 9 of Clubs, Jack of Hearts, 8 of Hearts
Coming down a steep hill, after a hard turn, I see fire in the road. I can’t make out what’s burning and I don’t have time to brake, so I drive right through it.
RIG: 4dF = ++_- → ++_ → Success.
I burst through the flames on the other side, without a problem. I pat the steering wheel. I thank her for keeping me safe.
I let out a breath and relax my hands, gasping as a sudden jab of pain explodes in my sprained wrist. “Goddamnit!” I growl.
However I’d been gripping the wheel had exacerbated the pain and it hurt like a motherfucker.
BODY: 4dF = +__- → +_ → Success
I manage to ignore the pain and keep going.
Later in the day, I get hungry. The gas-stations I’ve been stopping at have been lacking and I need something to eat.
I find a car by the side of the road, nobody in it but it was running.
I pull the truck over and get out, looking into the woods for any sign of the driver.
Nothing.
I waited a few minutes.
Nobody.
I look back, seeing the cloud encompassing the horizon, encroaching and enveloping everything behind.
I check the car, finding a duffel bag in the trunk, full of cans of food.
I hesitate, again, looking for the driver, before slamming the trunk closed, climbing back in the truck and tossing the duffel into the passenger seat.
“They’re probably already dead,” I tell myself. “Why else would they leave the car like that and not come back?”
It doesn’t make me feel any better, as I get back on the road, pop open a can of beans and eat them straight from the can.
As the day gets on, I find a place to pull off, but decide to keep going, to get some more miles under me.
I draw another card, hoping for a Spade, so I can advance to the next environment.
Card: 6 of Hearts
As I drive, I shake my head at myself. I’d always liked being a big, solid type of guy, but now I wished I was leaner and quicker on my feet. I wouldn’t need so much food, maybe I wouldn’t have had to take that person’s stash…
“Can’t change it now,” I said. “Whoever it is, they’re in the cloud now.” Food would be too, wouldn’t it? Would’ve been a waste.
I keep driving, unable to stop, not feeling tired.
I draw another card.
Card: Ace of hearts
It’s dark out now, the moon blocked by clouds, the headlights the only illumination as far as I could see.
Until the neon lights on some dive bar by the side of the road. I decide this is finally the place to stop, pulling over out back behind it.
There’s nobody inside, just an empty dive bar with neon lights on the wall, liquor behind the bar, a pool table with a few pool balls on it.
Underneath a neon beer sign is a first aid kit, almost as if left there for somebody to find.
I take it, open it, grab some ibuprofen and dry-swallow it.
It’s not long until the ache in my wrist and the pain in my back fades, making me feel much better.
I advance the Body Stat.
I make a phone call.
I start the engine.
4dF = +___ → +_ → Engine Starts
The comforting grumble greets me as it does every morning.
I drive.
It’s still windy, pushing against the truck at times.
Cards: 9 of Spades, 4 of Clubs, 5 of Spades
I feel especially tired after such a late night of driving, so before noon, I spot a place to rest. It’s a scrapyard off the road a short ways, gate wide open. After I pull in, I close the gate behind me and lock it.
I take a nap in the truck.
The CB radio sputters, waking me up. I hear voices, human but I can’t understand them. At first, I think they’re speaking another language, but after a few seconds, I realize it’s english words, but jumbled together in ways that don’t make no sense. Gibberish. I try to respond, but after I speak, there’s nothing. Radio silence.
I sigh and get back on the road.
I come to the northern border, the highway widening into a series of lanes, the modern structure built across the road overhead attached to another building where the border patrol officers operated out of. An electronic sign sat above each lane, stating “CLOSED” in red. A few vehicles clog the lanes, with no drivers or people around.
I find an open lane and drive through, not even slowing down, smashing through the bar blocking the way.
No borders. No boundaries. They aren’t necessary anymore. If they ever were.
“We were all just people, weren’t we?” I ask out loud, not realizing until later that I’d used the past tense.
An hour or so later, I stop and make a phone call.
The rain has come back with a vengeance.
I start the engine.
4dF = ____ → __ → Engine starts
She purrs as she starts, friendly and welcoming.
As I get on the road, I see pools of water and flooding in some areas. I try to avoid it as best I can and take it easy.
Cards: 8 of Diamonds, 2 of Hearts, 3 of Diamonds
I start to see people, here and there, but I blink and they’re gone, figments of my imagination. I wonder if I will ever see anyone ever again.
I should feel sad but I find myself not really feeling anything at all. I’m just driving. I’m just going through the motions, almost in a daze.
Maybe I’m not here, either, not really. Maybe I’m in limbo. Purgatory. Some kind of in-between.
I feel…nothing.
The next card allows me to reroll a body roll if I fail. Considering I still have the Rig one as well, I’m in a pretty good place, mechanics-wise!
I don’t like way my thoughts are headed, so I the reach into the glove box, grabbing a rainbow-colored pouch that I’ve been using off and on to smooth me out. Looking in as I drive, I get my pipe out and a container of cannabis. Unfortunately, as I open the container, I realize I’m empty.
“Shit,” I say, tossing the container onto the floor of the passenger seat, along with the pipe and pouch.
I miss the mindlessness it used to give me as I continue to drive, the miles of landscape passing by me.
MIND: 4dF = +++_ → +++ → Success
I shake off my irritation, focusing on my breathing and trying to stay mindful.
As the day gets on, I decide to keep driving.
Card: King of Hearts
As the sun dips towards the horizon, I stop at a pull off to take a leak.
As I’m finishing, I look back at the truck. Behind it, miles away is the enormous black cloud, but I see something else, something emerging from the darkness, billowing forward at incredible speed.
Billowing toward me. A tendril, a limb, an extension of the cloud itself hurtling straight for me.
I swear, running for the truck but it hits before I make it, hurling me to the ground, encompassing the entire pull-off in pitch blackness.
I struggle to stand, a powerful wind pushing against me. I hear voices, shrieks and screams, human and inhuman, loud and piercing.
I can’t see but I push forward, toward where I think the truck is.
Sharp things, claws maybe? grab me, hold me, try to pull me back. Pulling me where? Into the cloud?
BODY: 4dF = ++_- → + → Success
My grasping hands find something solid, the hood of the truck. I slowly pull myself toward the driver’s side, ripping the door open and climbing inside, gasping for breath.
It’s still pitch black but I don’t need to see to start the truck, put it in gear, and slam on the accelerator.
A few moments later, I pull out of the tendril of the cloud, the setting sun bursting into view.
I go as fast as I can for as long as I can before I glance back at the rear view.
The cloud sits as usual, miles away, tendril reabsorbed or whatever.
I check myself and find that I’m mostly unharmed, thankfully.
When I feel I’ve gone far enough, will it ever be far enough?, I pull off to sleep.
I make a phone call.
I start the engine.
4df = +++_ → ++ → Engine starts
She growls, ready to go, faithful as always.
Cards: 2 of Diamonds, 7 of Clubs, 9 of Hearts
I drive.
This card allows me to reroll a MIND roll if I fail.
The road gets rougher, the truck bouncing over pitted pavement, potholes and flotsam left over from the flooding.
RIG: 4dF = ++__ → ++_ → Success.
We get through it, the truck and me, without a problem.
As the day gets on, the air gets hazy, smoke from a distant fire. I close the windows, coughing and gagging. It smells like sulfur.
BODY: 4df = +++- → + → Success
I grab a bottle of water from the duffel bag and drink some, feeling better.
I keep driving.
Card: 4 of Diamonds
I remember driving with Sydney on a road trip. We drove for hours, laughing, talking as well as arguing and eventually fighting. I can remember that whole trip, vividly, one of the best times of my life.
Other memories are fading but at least that remains clear. I hold onto it.
Remembering, I keep driving.
Card: King of Clubs
Looking in the rear view, the cloud is closer, too close for comfort, rolling forward and enveloping the land behind me.
I jam on the gas, pushing the truck to it’s limits in an attempt to put more distance between us and the darkness.
The truck engine whines.
RIG: 4dF = +__- → +__ → Success
We get away. For now.
I don’t know how much longer I can stay ahead of it.
I pull off for sleep and make a phone call.
I start the engine.
4dF = +_-- → +_ → Engine starts
I drive.
Cards: King of Spades, 7 of Spades, 2 of Spades
As I drive, I look and see over a wall to my left, the dark cloud. To my right, I see the dark cloud.
Behind me is only the dark cloud, swallowing everything in its path.
I jam on the accelerator, trying to get away but it sticks close.
I can’t shake it.
Finding a payphone, I brake suddenly, sending the truck sliding and nearly tipping over. I run to the payphone, wind whipping at my clothes, darkness overtaking everything.
I make a phone call.
This is getting creepier! Love it!
This is a cool game. The calls really add atmosphere.