Hard Shoulder

There is a breed of workaholic whose fuel is ambition. Zack knew it; he saw them every day—youngsters, mostly, flitting about the building like immaculately dressed hummingbirds. He wasn't like them. Whatever goals he'd had—if any—were long forgotten. He was a different breed.

"What?" he snarled into his hands-free. "What do you mean they only just got the Burke memo? No, not tomorrow—now. I don't care if it's 11:30 at night! I said now, damn it!" He stabbed the end-call button on the console. "Fuck! Incompetent cretins!"

At least the traffic on the motorway was light. He’d be home in thirty minutes, which meant he’d have two hours to dissect the Burke account if he was to get his preferred minimum of four hours' sleep. He used to manage on fewer, or none at all, but now he was pushing fifty, and Doctor Nikolai—that patronizing prick—was harping on about some bullshit blood pressure issue.

The car in front braked. "No, no, no! What are you, blind? Get a move on!" He ground his palm into the center of the steering wheel. "Come on! Move it!"

The phone rang again. "What is it!" he screamed at the dash. "Mr. Roland, hello... I apologize, I thought you were someone else... No, no, it's all under control... A minor hiccup in communication, I assure you. We’re back on track and looking good... Right... Eight a.m., I’ll be there. Thank you, sir... Good night to you too, Mr. Roland."

He passed the familiar sign that read: Next Exit: Bristol, Gloucester. 5 Miles. Not far now, he thought. Shit, shower, crack the Chardonnay, and get this God-forsaken Burke account in hand. He checked the dash clock: 11:45 (all his clocks were set ten minutes ahead) and took a long, deep breath. We’re good. Everything’s good.

Beside the asphalt, the English pastures swept by solemnly, their edges fraying on the rasp of a thin, gray rain. Somewhere further in the gloom, the farmland surrendered to copses and hills, which huddled under the half-moon as though listening to one of her tales.

Long-term growth projections stand. No disclosed liabilities that could have inflated the valuation. None disclosed. That’s the line. If Burke comes up dead in the water, fuck him. I sent the memo as soon as I knew. As soon as I knew. I’m safe as houses. Everything else is brushwork.

Zack listed in his head all the possible loose ends and their solutions. It wasn’t too difficult—narratives are like steel bars: reliable, but bendable for those with the muscle. More than a few hummingbirds would be getting rolled over, not as an act of cruelty or self-preservation; it was an industry-wide strategic practice. All private equity firms' reputations are scaffolded with the corpses of underlings. Just a fact of life.

"Where the fuck's the exit? Oh, please, don't tell me I've missed it!" He squinted through the windshield, searching for a sign or anything familiar, but the rain was slanting down now in vicious sheets, and all he could see were the veiling flares of cat's eyes tumbling toward him and the taillights of other cars. "Where are you, you bastard?"

Five minutes went by. Zack was now sure he'd missed the exit; he had no idea where the next one was. He was losing hope he'd get his four hours' sleep tonight. Then came a sign ahead. He leaned forward, his chin pressed down on the steering wheel. "What's this say—what's this?"

Next Exit: Bristol, Gloucester. 5 Miles.

"What the hell?"

He'd read it right. He knew he had. But that couldn't be the sign. He accelerated from 65 to 80 miles per hour. A quick calculation told him five miles would take three minutes and 45 seconds. He noted the time on the dash clock—exactly midnight.

12:01.

12:02.

...12:03.

He punched it up to 90.

12:04.

And then he saw a sign flying toward him. Next Exit: Bristol, Gloucester. 5 Miles. He wasn't mistaken.

He fumbled around in the glove compartment for a pack of nicotine gum and popped two in his mouth. He'd never been a hypochondriac, but in that moment, Doctor Nikolai planted himself firmly before his eyes, an ear-wide, shit-eating grin on his face, words like "stroke" and "embolism" spilling out of it like baby food.

"Shut up, you pussy. You're not having a stroke." He looked at himself in the rearview mirror. His eyes were raw and dark underneath—but no more than usual. He gritted his teeth and contorted his face this way and that, not really knowing what he was doing, but finding nothing untoward.

"Stop being a child," he said. "There's a perfectly rational explanation here." He pulled up on the hard shoulder. Massaging his face as he gathered his thoughts, he hadn't noticed that the motorway had come to a complete standstill.

Could it be a prank? One of those dipshit "influencers" he'd heard about? That has to be it. Those stupid motherfuckers.

He let out a long sigh and went to turn the key in the ignition, but then he saw the cars on the motorway. "What the hell are they doing?" He got out of his Porsche and looked around, and sure enough, every vehicle he could see had stopped, right there in their lanes. He pulled his suit jacket up over his head and started toward the nearest car, a white saloon about fifty feet away. Through the dark and the rain, he could just about make out four passengers—two adults in the front and two children in the back.

He'd barely taken ten steps when he found himself on his back on the freezing concrete, ears ringing, choking on rainwater. He stumbled to his feet. When his eyes cleared, the saloon was a twisted skeleton inside a roaring orange helix.

"Jesus Christ! What is this? A terrorist attack?"

He scrambled back to his Porsche and sped off. All the other vehicles immediately started to move again. He reached for his phone, his hands shaking violently, and went to dial Doctor Nikolai's number—but before he could, it rang.

"Hello?"

No answer.

"Who is it? What do you want? Motherfucker, if you don't answer me, I'm gonna—"

He stopped in his tracks. A voice. His father's voice. It couldn't be, but it was.

"Da?"

Da wasn't speaking into the phone; he was speaking to someone there with him.

"Da? Da! Can you hear me?"

It wasn't just his father's voice he recognized, but his words—he'd heard them before, thirty-three years ago. They were playing football in the back garden of the Irish council house Zack grew up in. His father had set up a goalie's net and was coaching Zack on penalties.

Zack stopped speaking into the phone and listened, and before long, tears were running down his cheeks.

"I don't care if you're tired! Again, back on the spot... Top left. Push yourself, Zack. Focus! Again!... No, not tomorrow. Now... Top right, put a curl on it... Good... Again. Push. Push. Don't give up on me, Zack. Push. Don't stop!"

"I'm frightened, Da. I don't know what's happening. I think I'm sick."

The phone went dead. Zack sobbed uncontrollably, not out of fear, but because he knew what had happened next; because for a moment, he was fifteen again, crouched, shivering on the kitchen doorstep, watching his father's unmoving body on the trim grass as sirens wailed in the distance.

He pulled up on the hard shoulder again and sat there silently. Before long, the warm, liquid urge to sleep trickled from behind his eyes down through his body, and he hadn't the strength to fight it.

Another explosion. He shot upright in his seat. Ash and debris joined the rain in its assault. Another one? He lunged out of the car. Again, all the others had stopped when he had. "What's happening!" he shrieked. "What are you all doing?" He spotted a camper van and ran toward it—it immediately exploded. Zack dropped to his knees, watching wide-eyed in horror yet another inferno. "Is it me! Am I doing this!"

He sprinted back to the Porsche and took off up the motorway, now accelerating to 100 miles per hour. "Don't stop, Zack. Just keep driving. Keep going."

Next Exit: Bristol, Gloucester. 5 Miles.

"Fuck you! You hear me? Fuck you! You're a liar!"

He tried to call Doctor Nikolai again, but the line was dead. So he kept driving. He had no other plan. The clock struck 8:00; the sun should've risen by now, but it hadn't. The moon hadn't moved an inch—she was determined to finish her story, it seemed. By 12:00, only the relentless hammer of the rain was keeping Zack awake.

It didn't last.

The Porsche drifted over to the slow lane. It caught the guardrail diagonally at one of the connecting steel bars and flipped. Sparks showered the dark, then vanished as the upturned car rotated to a halt. Zack crawled from the wreckage, his suit jacket in shreds. "Run!" he cried, his voice cracking. "Get out of here, you morons! You're going to die!"

He clambered toward the nearest car, a black saloon idling under a high-mast light. He beat his bloodied fist on the driver’s window, but the figure inside didn't flinch. He pressed his nose up against the glass.

It was a pale, rubberized torso. No hair, no eyes, just a smooth plastic face with a mouth fixed in a permanent, hollow "O." A medical manikin. The kind used to practice a rhythm on a failing heart.

Zack backed away, chest heaving. He looked into the next car, and the next. A row of beige, synthetic shells. Dozens of them, strapped into their seats, staring forward with sightless indifference. His legs gave out and he tumbled onto his back. Staring up at the moon, he whispered, "What tale are you telling those hills, you, that they haven't turned around?"

No answer came. Only sirens wailing in the distance.