The Truck

The Truck
The truck comes with a loud clang to a halt and jerks me out of my sleep. The all to familiar beeping ensues. Slowly I get up from the bed on which I’m only half-lying thanks to the force of the truck stopping. My eyes start adjusting to the bright white light shining in from the windshield. It is the only window in the truck.
The bunk-beds are located at the rear end of the truck, leaving only a small path in the middle to move around. Further up ahead, there’s the “dining room”. It’s hardly a room considering it’s not separated from the beds. The two benches on the sides touch the beds. A small table separates the two benches, and one can barely squeeze by. Each morning, a tube is automatically dropped from the ceiling onto it. The label, proclaiming that “the contents provide all required nutrients for one (1) human for one (1) day” is worn away because the tube has been reused thousands of times. Maybe hundreds of thousands of times. I don’t know how old it is. I don’t know how old anything is: the truck, the beds, the autopilot, me. Actually, I know one thing about me: I’m young. Because when my parents were still around they looked older than how I currently look. Since they died, I’ve had no reference to compare my age to.
As I squeeze by the table, the tube in my teeth, sucking the wet sludge into my mouth, the beeping continues, each beep stabbing my eardrums as I get closer to the dashboard.
The dashboard, however, is useless. The steering wheel on the left has been welded to it, so it no longer can be turned. The pedals are gone. The gearstick is gone. The “speedometer” is behind a makeshift wooden panel with two lamps and one button. The first one is labelled “fuel”. It is currently flashing. Under it there’s a button which says “OK”. I press it and finally the beeping stops, while the lamp continues to flash. Getting rid of it is going to require much more effort than the beeping: I’ll have to walk out and find fuel. The last lamp is labelled “Autopilot”. I have never seen it turn off. I don’t think that’s possible.
With my ears still recovering from that awful beeping noise, I look out the windshield.
As always, snow. Endless snow. My parents told me that once, trucks and similar objects were driving on “roads”, which were markings left by other people on the ground. Actually, the trucks and other things, “cars”, which are like small trucks, were not driving, they were driven. From “houses”. To other “houses”. “Houses” are like trucks that can’t be moved and were made for permanent living. I’ve only seen a “house” once. I was really small, but one day, the autopilot stopped in something they called “a village”. Through the windshield I could see half of the “house”. At that age I was not allowed to exit the truck, but my parents told me there were even more outside.
Today, there was nothing outside besides the snow.
Back at the beds, I get dressed and grab my bow that was lying on the bed next to mine. Since all beds except mine were unused, I repurposed them as “shelves”. Not all of them, actually. Two other beds were also empty.
On the right side of the dashboard there’s a door. The autopilot unlocks it only when needed. One time, it didn’t unlock it. A few minutes later a storm began. After it had passed, a loud “click” confirmed the door had opened. The autopilot is smarter than I thought.
Today, the door opens fine. I step out. Cold air blows into my face and hair. The bright snow shines into my eyes. The sun is out. And I begin to walk. My parents told me the truck considers a lot of things as fuel. They talked about “batteries”, “diesel”, “plants”, “trees”, all kinds of stuff, and tried to explain how each of these items look and feel. Even though I’ve never seen anything like them, they had hoped that when they’re gone and I stumbled upon a “village” I could properly utilise the opportunity. So far, I had not stumbled upon one. And, as I walk further and further from the truck, I don’t think today is the day.
The only thing I’ve been able to use are birds. Hence the bow. Sometimes, it takes days to find one. And if I miss one, I have to retrieve the arrow. I don’t dare to shoot another arrow and then forget where the first one landed. Because I only have three arrows. As soon as I kill a bird, I immediately walk back to the truck.
I return to it in the evening. In my hands there’s a dead bird in a pool of blood. On the dashboard, near the door, there’s a hatch labelled “fuel input”. The bird disappears into it. The fuel lamp turns off. The hum of the motor begins. The door locks behind me. The landscape behind the windshield begins to move and as the hours pass, more and more of the white emptiness passes too. Sometimes, the autopilot turns. Once, I tried to plot our route. I wrote down each turn. I was scared that we were driving in a circle, but no. The autopilot continued into more or less the same direction.
I go to bed. The bird will be nearly entirely used up by the motors, and a bit will be left for my next tube. I know that it meant the world to my parents to keep the truck running. In the darkness that has now set in I can see the small light on the dashboard. There’s no indication of where it’s taking me or how much of the route is left. As the motors hum, I drift to sleep.