iRunStories / Season 1, Episode 10
The Rest Stop
The gas gauge had been on empty for twenty miles. Maya knew she should have stopped earlier—there'd been a well-lit station maybe forty minutes back—but she'd been making good time, and the GPS said there was another one in fifteen miles. That was an hour ago. The GPS had lost signal shortly after. Now she was coasting through absolute darkness on a road that seemed to narrow with every mile, her headlights the only illumination in a world that had become nothing but black trees and blacker sky. When her engine finally sputtered, she didn't even have time to pull over—the car simply died, rolling to a stop in the middle of what she hoped was still pavement. "No, no, no, no." She pumped the gas pedal, turned the key. Nothing. "Come ON." Her phone had no signal. Of course it didn't. She hadn't seen another car in... how long? Maya couldn't remember. She was contemplating her options—walk back? Sleep in the car until dawn? Cry?—when she saw it. A light, maybe a quarter mile ahead. Not a house, too bright for that. Something commercial. Open. A rest stop, she thought, relief flooding through her. Thank God. She grabbed her purse, locked the car (why? for whom?), and started walking toward the light. The rest stop materialized out of the...