High Voltage

He didn’t know where he was going and had never fixed the GPS on his truck. That was OK, though. He had done it this way a hundred times. Find an on-ramp and follow the signs for Highway 2. Once he got there he’d be able to get back home.

He felt good when he found the on-ramp – proud of himself actually – if Hannah were with him now she would have frantically been on her phone trying to get directions immediately but he was smart enough where that wasn’t necessary. He liked when he did things his way and they worked out.

Whoa, this was quite the on-ramp. His truck could handle a curve going 45 miles per hour with no problem, but this was more than a curve, this was a full circle. It just kept going and startled him a bit as the truck started to feel like it was going to tip over. He slowed down a little but got as much of the feeling as he was comfortable with.

“The Silverado can always handle it,” he said out loud to himself with a chuckle.

The circle finally ended and led him onto the highway – a highway anyway. He looked at the sign – Highway B4. What was that? He never heard of this highway before and even the sign didn’t look like the ones he was used to. And he had never heard of Highway B4 before, granted he was always discovering new parts of the city, but he figured he would have at least heard of it.

Oh well, keep driving, nothing else he could do. He looked down at a boxy compact car passing him on the left. He could see the driver, a bald nerdy looking guy with glasses and a thin mustache looking really annoyed, and for some reason Dave got the feeling this driver was annoyed with him. The bald man’s face looked almost animated which made Dave chuckle at first but then he got an eerie feeling about the guy that sent a terrible chill through his body and he looked forward. 

His truck was a lot bigger than any of the other cars on Highway B4. He felt like he could run them all over like he was in a video game or at a monster truck rally or something. The longer he drove on Highway B4 the more it just kept on going. No exits, no one getting off, no one getting on, just all these small cars around him that kept on driving. 

Finally after a few miles he saw an exit and was determined to get off regardless of where it took him. It was another circle just like the on-ramp and this time he drove a lot more carefully feeling like he did not want to be getting in any kind of accident. The exit became very narrow and he realized it was leading him into a parking garage. 

He didn’t like how he was being forced into this and he looked backwards thinking about how he could get out. The road was much too narrow for him to turn around and driving down this narrow road backwards didn’t seem like a good idea. When the little bald man he had noticed on the road pulled up behind him looking impatient, it confirmed for Dave that turning around was not going to be an option. This bald guy was really starting to give Dave the creeps.

The parking garage had a fair amount of cars in it and Dave noticed there was a walkway with rails around it. One led to an office. Dave was going to have to get out and ask where he was then ask for directions to Highway 2, otherwise he feared he was going to just drive himself deeper into this unfamiliar place.

There was an opening between two of the rails that allowed him into the walkway. Once he walked through he was startled by a zap that he heard behind him. He looked back to see that the entrance he had come through was closed off. A sign was now on the rails that read: “HIGH VOLTAGE”. His truck was right past those rails but now he couldn’t get to it.

He walked between the rails up towards the office only to see that there was no one in there. He looked back down the walkway to see his exit was still blocked off by the high voltage rails. There was another walkway that led down towards where his truck was.  At the end of it there was an exit but it almost looked like what you walk through when you’re going through airport security. There was something that looked like a metal detector that people were walking through to exit. He walked closer and a sign on the metal detector looking thing read: “DANGER: HIGH RADIATION. DO NOT ENTER.” Why people were walking through it anyway, he did not understand.

He looked past the rails again at his truck. The rails were too high to jump over. The people walking through the high radiation area almost looked like zombies, just walking through, and then walking out of sight. He didn’t see one of them get into a car despite their being cars parked everywhere. 

“Can I help you?”

The voice behind him startled him. Standing behind him was a bald man wearing a lab coat. The man looked more intelligent than the bald man in the small car and he didn’t look freaky like that guy did.

“Oh, yes,” Dave said and he found that it felt great to actually be talking to somebody. “My truck is right there. Do you know the easiest way for me to get to it?”

“Certainly,” the man said.

The man touched the high voltage rails and they disappeared, at least enough to create the same space that he entered through. It was like the man had used some fingerprint identity to make that happen and Dave had a feeling that had he touched the rails like that he wouldn’t have had the same result.

The two walked back out to the parking lot without any issues. As they walked towards his truck, Dave noticed an extension cord on the ground. It was plugged into the wall but the loose end also had a plug on it, and it was a big one. Dave then watched the cord lunge at him like a snake. It poked him right in the leg, stinging him. His leg then went numb and he dropped to the ground. 

“Gotta be careful of those,” the man in the lab coat said as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened. “Those are high voltage.”

Dave’s leg felt an immense amount of pain and it felt like it was paralyzed. He wondered if he’d be able to sue the parking garage for that happening. But when he still wasn’t able to move his leg he wondered if he was even going to make it to his truck.