The darkened highway, dark, dark, no moon, no moon for a month now, and none evermore. The moon was gone.

Now the wind was a ceaseless, howling, desperado beast with long legs marching forever down and out from the hills. And the 18-wheel trucks with their trailers and payloads now forever pounding down the lanes of the Interstates were howling, desperate beasts; and so too were the truck's drivers howling, desperate, lonely, lesser creatures, desperate for want of anything save for what their world had become.

The ghosts of murderers slunk just beyond the gray lights of the truck stops, few and far between. M. could feel them all and hear them. Ghosts of vermin, roadkill, wastrels, felons. Chittering, snarling, lurking by the guardrails and the Port-o-sans and the gas pumps.

Kill and be killed, kill kill kill kill. Feeling the ghosts was worse than seeing them, much worse, much much much worse. And what was worse, he was hungry. He felt guilt for his appetite.

He stepped into the diner just as the white girl was