four women in college, in the same car, driving back to southern utah university, choose a shortcut, near the state line, which leads them into a highway space warp. one wrong turn at a fork in the road onhighway 56, that soon would threaten their very lives. maria, crystal, jonny and abbey... together, they tooka day trip to nevada, to see the rodeo in pioche. jonny was driving her father's painstakinglyrestored chevrolet. it was nighttime when they returned on highway 56. it was getting late. after crossing the railroad tracks in modena,they came to a fork in the road, and no one remembered which of the roads they had come in on.
all the roads out here looked the same, flankedby the same fields of endless sagebrush. the blacktop road that headed east, must bethe right one, they all agreed. they were now driving toward gadianton canyon. they drove for a long time. the road changed from black asphalt, to whiteconcrete, and maria suggested it might be time to turn around. but they were already at the end of the road. jonny had to stop the car, because the onlything in front of them now, was a huge landslide of red canyon rock.
so they turned around and drove back. but the open country was not the same. instead of a desert, they saw fields of wheat. the sagebrush was gone, replaced by grainfields, rippling in waves, under the full moon. a full moon that was not supposed to be there,at this time of year. they were lost. incredibly lost. with great relief, ahead on the road, theysaw the glow of civilization,
the street lights of a small town. they came to a diner on the edge of town. jonny immediately pulled over into the parking lot. crystal said she could smell hamburgers. the diner had one of those neon signs, whichhummed, and occasionally spit. but the neon sign was not in english. its letters did not look like that of anyknown alphabet. as the girls pulled in, some patrons werecoming out of the burger joint. they were laughing and arguing with eachother.
one of them turned around and pointed at the chevy. abbey's window was already open, so she leanedout to get directions. she tasted the cool night air. and then, abruptly,she leaned back, and rolled up her window, fast. "let's go," she breathed. crystal was also on the passenger side, andshe began to scream. jonny put all her weight on the gas pedal. in slow motion, the chevrolet spun around,spraying gravel against the glass windows of the diner.
suddenly they were headed back the way theycame. the streetlights receded behind them. jonny said, "i saw them too." and then crystal said, "they weren't human." maria was busy looking out the back window. "we're being followed," she said. jonny could see them too, in the rear-view mirror. two vehicles were coming after them. then jonny could clearly see, these vehicleswere not from the earth she knew.
they were egg-shaped. their headlights were intensely bright. their engine noise was high-pitched, likea nest of mad hornets. according to the speedometer, jonny was nowdriving over 80 miles an hour, and the others begged her to slow down. that is when the road itself gave out. the chevy flew into the darkness, kickingup a huge cloud of red dust in its wake. now she had to slow down, as the car buckedover the sand, tearing into the sagebrush.
she had almost succeeded in getting it under control, when the car fell head-long into dry stream bed. the car got stuck at the bottom of the arroyo. the motor stalled out, and refused to start. although bruised and scared witless, noneof the girls was seriously injured. it seemed like a lifetime before daylightcame. they abandoned the car, and struck out onfoot, heading west through the desert. they walked for miles before reaching highway56, but it wasn't twenty minutes before they flagged down the utah highway patrol.
it was maria who first approached the patrolman, then returned to the group, to report that the officer really was a human being. the chevy was recovered three miles east ofthe main highway, with no tire tracks behind it, as if it had just materialized out of thin air. there is no fork in highway 56, and no trace, of where the girls left the main road, was ever found. these women believe they drove into a different world. a world where utah had never become a desert. a world that suffered fewer meteor strikes,and fewer extinction events than our own planet.
where the dinosaurs never died out. instead, they evolved.
