The township of Sprousevale is, by and large, your average American small town. Boasting a population of 600 some-odd people, passers-through would describe it as “boring”, “empty”. Indeed, this little place had very little to offer anyone looking for anything beyond gasoline and a cheap bed for the night at the local motel. In the late 1980s, there had been a slaughterhouse and several notable ranches located on the northern outskirts which had provided both livestock and various meats for the several towns around, but both the slaughterhouse and ranches had been shut down at the turning of the century for reasons that could only be guessed at. In the years since, an aggressive bramble of kudzu has run rampant all over the skeletons of the slaughterhouse and ranches. In fact, kudzu covered the majority of the little town, such was the state of it as of late. Noone, it seemed, had cared enough to even attempt to combat the creeping vine. “Why should we? It’s only growing over the abandoned areas anyway”, would have been the justification they would give had anyone asked them about their inaction against the floral invader.
All of this would be unbeknownst to one Daniel Halters. In fact, all that he knew or cared about at that moment was that he was tired of being crammed into a van with 3 other people, even if one of those other people was his beloved girlfriend Carol Schmidt. Daniel hadn’t even wanted to come along, as it was meant to be a coastal excursion. The plan, as he had heard it from Carol, was that her and a couple of friends wanted to take a cruise to the coast to “get a little R&R”, as they had so colloquially put it. Daniel had originally refused, as he wasn’t much of a traveler. He would much rather be at home, drinking or playing his video games, pretending the majority of the outside world didn’t exist. He disdained the outside world, and he had a feeling that it disdained him right back, perhaps with even more intensity than he could muster.
For the moment though, he was being pulled back to reality by his girlfriends voice and the sight of her face peering over the left shoulder of the front passenger seat.
“Earth to Daniel?”, Carol said, having obviously been trying to rouse her inattentive boyfriend for the past few minutes.
Daniel blinked a few times, bringing his eyes up to his girlfriends face. She was a brunette, with warm hazel eyes, a small nose, and a perpetual smirk plastered across her gloss covered lips. She wore her shiny, brown, mid-back length hair loose around her shoulders. To Daniel, she looked like an angel descended from heaven, totally and utterly flawless.
“Sorry, must have zoned out. Whats up, love?”, Daniel responded, twisted his torso side to side a bit, trying to work some of the stiffness of his muscles, grimacing as he felt his joints and back pop with that strange mixture of discomfort and relief.
“I was asking you if you thought we should stop at this next town”, Carol replied, holding up her smartphone, “I looked it up and there’s a motel there that we could stay the night in. Maybe get some gas and grub, as well, yeah?”
Daniel, thought about the proverbial fork in the road before him for a moment, running a hand through his short black hair. If they stopped and got rooms, he’d get to sleep in an actual bed again. On the other, he was eager to just finish this journey and get a place to sleep at their destination. Eventually, though, the allure of an actual bed to sleep on squashed any qualms he had.
“I think we probably should-”, Daniel started his reply, but was interrupted by the sound of what was unmistakably one of the tires suddenly blowing out, followed by a few exclamations of surprise.
The van jerked around as Jeremy, Carols friend who was driving, fought to control the vehicle, which caused more screams and panic. Daniel held onto the handle above his door for dear life as the van careened across the barren road lanes. After a few feet, though, Jeremy regained control of the lumbering hunk of metal and mechanicals enough to pull to the shoulder, turn his emergency lights on, and pop the parking brake.
So much for getting a room, Daniel thought gloomily.