THE GHOST FROM THE HIGHWAY LEFT A FADED POLAROID IN MY POCKET AND NOW HE WANTS HIS PAST BACK

The sudden silence inside the truck cab was deafening. The flatbed rolled another ten feet on momentum alone before coming to a dead stop against a thick bank of overgrown blackberry bushes.

"What happened?" Martha panicked, her hands gripping the dashboard as she stared out into the dark, tangled woods. "Did they shoot us? Did they hit the engine?"

"No," Jax muttered, his face grim as he turned the ignition key again. The starter clicked once, twice, and then went completely dead, the dashboard lights flickering out entirely. "We're out of gas. Your brother-in-law had a funny definition of a full tank."

Toby whimpered softly from the middle seat, pulling his oversized jacket tighter around his thin frame. "Are the bad men going to find us here, Jax?"

"Not if we move," Jax replied, reaching over to push the passenger side door open. The metal hinge groaned in the quiet night air. "We're only a mile from the old switchyard office. We walk from here."

Martha let out a frustrated groan, sliding down from the high cab into the wet mud. "Walk? Jax, I'm forty-five years old, my apron is shredded, and my feet are bleeding inside these loafers. We can't hike a mile through federal timberland in the middle of the night!"

"You want to stay here and wait for the sheriff's cruiser to find us, be my guest," Jax retorted sharply, though there was no malice in his voice—only the cold, hard reality of survival. He reached back into the cab, scooping Toby up into his arms and setting him gently down on the damp ground beside the truck. "Grab what you can carry. We move now."

They set off down the overgrown logging trail, the dense pine forest closing in around them like a suffocating blanket. The only sound was the crunch of twigs under their boots and the distant, rhythmic rumble of semi-trucks thundering down the interstate a half-mile to the west.

After twenty minutes of grueling hiking through the brambles and mud, the dense trees abruptly thinned out, revealing a vast, open expanse of rusted iron rails that gleamed faintly under the moonlight. In the center of the weed-choked tracks stood a dilapidated wooden structure with broken windows and a sagging shingled roof—the old Cheyenne switchyard office.

"Is that it?" Martha asked breathlessly, leaning against a rusted telegraph pole to catch her breath.

"That's it," Jax said, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the perimeter of the abandoned building.

Something was wrong. The heavy wooden front door of the office, which should have been swollen shut by decades of rain and neglect, was standing slightly ajar, a faint, flickering yellow light spilling out from the cracks in the rotting floorboards.