Truculence (edited)

Aggressiveness; ferocity (n.)

by David Backer

Bernard didn’t know anything about the fat, sweating man in the back of his limo. The only thing the man said before they left was,
“Drive to the end of Interstate 81 and wake me up when we get to 83.”
This made Bernard nervous.
After they started driving up 81 the passenger fell asleep and Bernard reached a kind of peace with the situation. But then they hit a long and empty stretch of highway between Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania and Bernard heard a loud rumble coming from behind him. He saw four pairs of headlights speed up and overtake him and in less than ten seconds there were four unmarked tractor-trailers surrounding his limo—one on every side of him. Bernard lost his sense of peace. He couldn’t see the road in front of him or behind him or the sky on either side of him. Only trucks. Then the trucks slowed down and they forced Bernard to slow down and everything came to a full stop.
Bernard looked back at the fat passenger as he woke up from his nap and looked out the window.
"Why the hell are we stopped?" the fat passenger asked.
"I don't know sir, I..."said Bernard.
"What the hell are all these trucks?"
"Sir, I really don't know, they just..."
Bernard's high-beams were on and they flooded the space in front of the limo with white light. He watched as four large men emerged from the spaces between the trucks. It was like the trucks produced them from steel and rubber and gasoline and sent them into the space lit up by his headlights. The men from the trucks looked alike: they were broad-shouldered and ferocious-looking men with huge foreheads. The man that came from the front truck wore a baseball cap backwards on his big square head.
Bernard's passenger got out of the limo and walked forward to speak with the man with the backwards hat. The three other drivers surrounded the passenger like they surrounded Bernard with their trucks. The anonymous passenger, sweating now in the light, yelled and pointed at the man with the hat and lunged toward him and continued doing this until the man with the backwards hat pulled out what looked like a .22 caliber handgun and shot a round through the passenger's head. The passenger’s body fell back into the waiting arms of one of the other drivers, and this driver dragged the body back to his truck. Bernard could hear the scrape of the passenger's shoes against the pavement. Then the other truckers went back to their trucks and drove off with the body of the fat passenger.
Then it was dark except for the space in front of Bernard’s limo where the trucker with the gun and the backwards hat stood in the headlights. The gun was still in his hand and the headlights lit up his dirty face. He was staring right at Bernard. Bernard watched him blink and bring the hand with the gun up to his face. Bernard’s fingers tightened on the keys in the ignition of his limo and his foot floated above the accelerator.
Then the trucker pointed the gun at Bernard but before he could shoot it Bernard turned the key and started the engine and drove his limo into the center of the trucker with the gun. Then it was dark and the body of the trucker was splayed across Bernard’s windshield and Bernard’s heart was beating hard through his chest and he could see the trucker was still breathing and he put his limo in reverse so the body fell off and he drove around the body and truck and drove away breathing and sweating.