Ford Explorer 1993 NWT 177

Zach was reading about Williamsburg when the man jumped into the back of his truck.

“Go! Go! Go!” shouted the man, and thumped the side of the truck like it was a horse.

Zach didn’t have anything better to do so he floored it, leaving a good inch of rubber on the asphault as he pulled away from the curb. “Where we going?”

“Out!” The man was laughing to beat the band, but it wasn’t crazy laughing, it was just laughing. Like he was getting away with something too funny for words. On a tear, maybe, or running out on his girlfriend.

They were out on the highway in the dust when the man knocked on the little window in the back of the cab. Zach slid it open and cocked his head toward it.

“Turn left!” shouted the man.

“There’s no road there!”

“Turn left!” he repeated.

They bounced off the road and into the brush. There was a cliff ahead. Zach started to step on the brakes but the man knocked on the window again. “Keep going,” he said, suddenly serious. “Trust me.”

So Zach floored it and they jumped off the edge of the cliff. He saw a door open up in the ground below and the man in the back was laughing, laughing, laughing again and then…