Now folks, things are about to get a-might strange in Hazzard County. And it aint even Halloween time of the year, yet spooky happenings and things that go bump in the night seem to find Hazzard just as interesting in the winter time as any other time-a the year. I ain't one for ghost stories, they give me the heebie-jeebies, but the Duke family likes to get themselves into trouble and sometimes that trouble likes to come from someplace unnatural. This ones a fright the Duke clan won't forget anytime soon...
Hugh Lester and Milton Talcott had come all the way to Hazzard from Virginia and, if they had had their choice, would have kept on going and never looked back. The job had come up at the opportune time: 1000 dollars to drive a brand new grit truck from the mid-Atlantic all the way down to the north Georgia county with no questions asked. Lester and Talcott were already under scrutiny from the law and any money that could carry them out of the country once and for all was sorely needed. So the two drove the tow truck, the gritting machine dragged behind it like a great dead beast.
Lester drove through the night, the two men's heads on a swivel the entire 15 hour ride. If any cops caught them, they were done for and they knew it. Lester's eyes were bloodshot in anxiety and sleeplessness when they crossed the Georgia line, his pale skin made the bags under them even darker. Talcott had offered to switch with him some hours back, but the lanky and often squirrley brown-haired little man opposite had refused. His hands held a death grip on the wheel as though they had been welded there. Lester was too unwell in the head to suffer such pressures, but a lifetime of poor choices and a slowly growing addiction to highfalutin strains of cocaine had only made his anxieties worse. Talcott was the same height as his companion, but nearly 100 pounds heavier, built broadly and rarely found within him much concerns for anyone other than himself. Petty crime had always been his lot in life, a life with little direction and little hope for anything better than a quick grab wherever he could get it.
They bounced along through the winding dirt roads, slick from a recent fall rain and slowly mixing into a mud-filled mess. The weather, surprisingly, was chilly that evening. Talcott hoped that it would keep his friend awake enough if the lingering drugs in the man's system weren't enough to do that for him. He kept his head pressed against the window, despite the chill, his dark forehead felt too hot. Sweat clung to his skin. His mustache felt too itchy on his face, his brain concocting things to be wrong with him to pass the time. His brown suit was too uncomfortable, there was a cramp in his left leg, a crick in his neck blossomed. Everything cropped up and then passed just as quickly when he had to make the occasional check out the windows for anything that might foul up their delivery.
Now, neither Lester or Talcott had ever worked with a Mr. J. D. Hogg before, but they had heard through the grapevine that the little tyrant of Hazzard county had his fingers in just about everything shady you could think of south of the Mason Dixon line. The "no questions asked" didn't bother either of them. They figured something was up. Maybe there was something in the gas tank or maybe the engines were very expensive and for resale, or even still maybe the transmission was stolen. It could have been anything, but Lester and Talcott weren't the types to question things especially when the money was going to be in their hands, tax-free and untraceable. Its one job was to get them to the Rio Grande and over the boarder into Mexico. Lester claimed he could speak fluent Spanish, but Talcott deeply doubted that.
"Wouldn't it be funny if the state just smelled like peaches?" Lester broke the silence from his crazed and neurotic driving. Lester talking in this state was never a good thing and Talcott knew it.
He turned his head to his driving companion, an eyebrow cocked, "Why's it funny?" he said, his voice gruff from years of smoking.
"I don't know. You know how Florida smells like oranges? I think Georgia should just smell like those dang peaches they grow here. It's peaches right? Not some other fruit? Or maybe its oranges here and it's peaches in Florida. I don't know, what do you think? No don't tell me, you don't care?" Lester chattered nervously as the comforting cloak of night started to draw in around them, draping the country byways in darkness. The soft glow of the tow truck's headlights casting yellow a few dozen yards in front of them.
Lester was right, Talcott didn't care at all. All he cared about was getting this grit truck into the Hazzard county garage and the money in his hands.
"Are you listening to me?" Lester asked, "Milton! I asked are you listening to me? Are you asleep over there, now?"
"I ain't sleeping over here," Talcott said slowly. He really didn't want to talk to Lester like this, but he didn't have much of a choice. "You better watch the road instead of thinking about peaches and oranges."
Lester was staring at him, eyes large and bulging. He opened his mouth to protest the accusation when the problem came darting out in front of them on the darkened road on four hooves with 4-point antlers.
The driver let out a high pitched yelp and slammed on the breaks, the truck skidded dangerously and nearly turned completely around. The weight of the gritter behind it slamming into their tail and jostling them about in the cabin. It launched the tow truck a few feet forward with a great crunching noise at its back end and a shudder of the chains holding everything together. A single wheel slipped off into the brambles along the road, the nose of their vehicle snarled up in branches as they finally came to a screeching halt. Lester was glued to the wheel, Talcott's arms braced against the dash and the side of the door. In the five seconds of chaos, thankfully, there was no thud of animal flesh colliding with cold steel.
"I told you to watch the road!" Talcott thundered at his partner in crime.
Lester seemed catatonic. Talcott reached over and gave him a shake to try and break him out of it. After a few good thrashes, Lester finally peeled his eyes off the road to look to Talcott.
"Good man. Get out of the car."
Lester didn't say anything, just slumped out as he was told. Talcott kicked open the heavy steel door on the other side and jumped down to the ground. The Georgia autumn night air was clear and slowly loosing its edge of summer, rife with the smell of late grasses slowly withering into winter dormancy. The vague under smell of a distant swamp found its way to Talcott in the breeze of the evening.
The man jumped when he heard a shout from Lester in anger and disdain. "What is it?" Talcott called.
"C'mere and look at this."
So Talcott did. He sauntered around to the back of the truck to inspect the damage. The quick and sudden stop the fishtailing had send the two machines into each other, crunching them together in ways that Talcott knew probably wasn't good. Neither him nor his friend were any good with cars and the knowledge of what it took to maintain them. From what he could tell it looked bad.
"I dunno if our rear ends going to fall off or not," Lester said, "Does that happen in cars? Do you know anything about that? I'm pretty sure if we keep trying to tow this thing it will tear this bed clean off."
Talcott couldn't say if Lester's hunch was true or not. He craned his neck to look around in the darkened way. There weren't any signs of life on the road other than them and the pesky local wildlife. Of course this would happen when they were so close to their end, a deep frown creasing across his face. Talcott shrugged as his answer, "We shouldn't be far from town. Let's hide the Grit Truck and come back for it in the morning after taking this in to the shop in town."
Lester started to shake like a leaf, eyes darting about as though the forest were looking back at him, filled with every man that had ever pulled a gun on him in his life.
"Keep it together," Talcott said.
Lester instantly went for a cigarette, plugging it in his mouth and trying to calm himself down. He set about getting the gritter unhitched from its ride, its poor nose crumpled up nicely. Surely Hogg would give them an earful about it if they just delivered it as is to him. They would have to find a mechanic to replace it, fix it. Talcott could smell the money slowly slipping away from him and his lips pulled tight in frustration as he made sure the gritter was in neutral. Between the two of them and some huffing and puffing, they managed to get it backed off the road, a small dip into some brambles and the aid of gravity helped them immensely. They piled brush and low branches to cover it up from anyone who might have seen it. Talcott doubted anyone would be coming this way that cared enough to look closer if anyone came this way at all between now and when they would come back for it. He really hoped as he brushed his cut up and dirty hands against his trousers, that whatever Hogg was trying to pull hadn't been in the busted up nose. It might not show up in one piece.
Talcott felt Lester slapped his hand against his arm.
Lester pointed into the treeline, "Did you see that? I think I saw a person…"
Talcott cocked an eyebrow and looked where he was directed too. He didn't see anything, "I think you're losing it, get back in the truck."
"No, no, NO," Lester insisted, "Look over there, I saw a person, just look. Look, I can see them moving around in the tree line."
Talcott squinted harder, trying to see beyond the beams of yellow lights that cast off into the low hanging branches. He searched for a deer or maybe a loose cow, something that his crazy friend could mistake for a person in his frantic state. He couldn't deny his partner's insistance to keep looking to try and see what he was seeing made the hairs on the back of his neck start to stand up.
The crack of a branch broke loudly through the soft hum of night. Talcott jumped, latching a hand onto Lester to make sure the lankier man didn't take off running into the woods to get away.
With eyes wide, Talcott gave one last long hard look into the trees, searching, trying to find where that sound came from. He felt his entire body go cold when he saw it, a shape, a human shape, dressed in some pale shirt in the rising moonlight. It looked human, at least until it tilted its head. Among the black, where the eyes should have been, he saw the glean of glowing white points, pale and shapeless.
"GET IN THE TRUCK!" Talcott thundered.
He ran as fast as he could to haul himself back into their vehicle, broken tail end or not. They were getting out of there as soon as possible. He dragged Lester behind him, nearly lifting him up off his feet. Lester scrambled ungracefully, trying to run as well to keep up with this partner in crime. The two men tripped over each other as they pulled themselves into the safety of the truck, slamming the doors shut behind them. Lester nearly dropped the keys, the metal clattering around in his hands as he scraped against the truck's ignition. He frantically hit the clutch, shifted into gear with great heaves of terrified gasps.
There in front of them, just beyond the beam of the lights, the human black shape with the glowing bright eyes slowly walked towards them as though floating, as though it had no feet to get tangled up in forest undergrowth. Talcott begged his partner to get them out of here, to drive, to get them as far away from that thing as possible. Lester, nearly hysterical, finally got the vehicle to get going and pick up speed. That didn't stop Talcott's heart from slamming around the back of his throat. The road was open in front of them as far as they could see. Lester drove like he was possessed by the devil, sweat pouring from his forehead as he did his best to hit every shift for there was no telling what would happen if he accidentally stalled the truck out in his near-blinding terror.
Talcott craned his neck trying to see if he could catch sight of that thing out any of the windows, trying to see if they had truly gotten away from it. What he saw made him go pale, his eyes bulging out of his head. That thing was behind them, cast in a wash of terrible red glow from the brake lights. It pumped its arms stiffly, those glowing eyes on its face coming closer and closer to them. It was keeping up with the truck, it was starting to out pace it.
"GO FASTER!" Talcott screamed.
Lester didn't form words, he just made a terrible shrill gurgle in response as he drove the gas pedal to the floor, the clutch wailing as he pushed the truck faster than it was ever meant to go. The tires started to weave as they did their best to navigate through the ever growing number of deepening mud puddles on the road.
Talcott tore his eyes away from the thing behind him only to notice a second one, tearing through the trees beside them, coming in right for his window. He didn't have time to say anything to his friend before the second of those things hit the side of the truck with such force and speed no human could ever hope of surviving. It attached itself to the truck running, dragging itself up the side, and shattering the glass window into the two passengers within. The screams of utter terror echoed out into the Georgian night, split by screeching breaks and the sounds of bending metal.