The Road To Nowhere - The Road To Nowhere by Emma Urquhart

We were on a road trip when the world stopped. Driving without any destination, following old dreams along the Interstate. We took turns at the wheel, and slept together when the cold winters night set in; bodies slotting together like spoon under two dollar blankets we'd bought out of Wal-Mart. Neither of us knew what we were doing, where we were going, or why – we just knew we had to.

Before we started spending days discussing life in diners and waking each other up with cups of coffee, I'd hesitate to say we were even friends.

The last morning I woke up in a car, there was ice across the windshield like a spiderweb of cracks along the glass. I wiped the condensation away, looking out onto a road where mist hung low against the tarmac, obscuring any sign of where we were.

The engine was dead, and the driver asleep – at least, I hoped he was asleep. I have trouble telling, so I shook him to check. A long, drawn-out groan informed me he was still alive and well.

Drinking coffee as black as the sky until the sun began to rise, we watched the dashboard thermostat flash up a few degrees, and the ice begin running in a slick sea down the windscreen.

I joined the driver in the front, sliding into the passenger's seat. We pulled down sunshields and leant back to bathe in the cold light of morning.

It showed us lines of cars on either side. Caravans, buses and RVs full of people sleeping, or staring out at us. I noticed that this was the first time I hadn't heard horns blaring through a traffic jam, and shared the joke with my friend.

“We've been here since yesterday evening,” he told me.

“Christ,” I whispered in reply, and reached for the in-car kettle and another cup of coffee.

When we exited the van to relieve our bladders of the excess coffee, we met a mechanic. He called himself Matt, so we did too. Matt had no idea what had happened, and he hadn't found anyone else who did. This seemed like enough proof that we were stuck, so we grabbed out bags, locked the van and began walking.

Surrounded by more morning mist and the hulking shapes of silent vehicles, you could be forgiven for thinking we were on the road to nowhere, instead of following a line of stopped cars along the Interstate.

I toyed with the idea that everything had stopped because there was no more road up ahead, but then we passed one of those all-terrain vehicles, so I scratched out that thought and went back to guessing wildly.

After walking in silence for a while, my partner looked up at me and said, “This looks like the road to nowhere.” I wondered if he was a mind reader, but then decided we'd just both been watching too many horror movies.

I shrugged. “I think that's what we've been following all along.”

“No way!” The sharpness in his reply made me glance his way. He was wearing the kind of grin that's contagious, so I was already smiling when he explained, “We're on the road to somewhere, obviously. See, that's why I don't let you ask for directions – you don't know where you're going.”

“Oh, I know where I'm going,” I smirked. “Anywhere I want!”

“We can go there after we go somewhere, alright? God, you kids have no patience...”

A few hour passed with us arguing over whether we were destined for somewhere, anywhere, or nowhere. I suggested nowhere as along the suicide lanes, and anywhere along the roofs of stopped cars. He decided walking along the railings and white road markings to somewhere was as good as taking the road, and tried to convince me anywhere was beside me.

People followed us, and when they asked where we were going, we told them “wherever” and let them decide for themselves.

After spending weeks on the road, it felt good to be walking again. Playing 'I Spy' through the mist, 'Tag' between lines of cars, 'Chicken' between stationary traffic. I'm not usually much of a morning person, but this trip had changed me.

By the afternoon, as we relaxed in the shadows of a truck, helicopters rushed by overhead. The thought of a couple of 'copters saving a few rush hours worth of traffic had us in hysterics. When some guy got their radio working and corrected us – not a few rush hours, but a world's worth of traffic – some of us laughed until we cried.

The rest of the evening was spent racing the mist to the city, daring the stars to shine before we saw city lights. Singing, dancing, discussing, doing all that could be done to keep spirits up and people moving. It felt like I'd die if I stopped.

By no means were we the leaders – others walked ahead, it was never our idea. If we thought of ourselves as leaders, it would mean this was a race, but when we looked in the eyes of those around us, we knew it wasn't. We walked together.

In time, the bright lights of Chicago rose up in the night before us, marked out be a beeline of traffic.

People were flooding from the city to us, and the two crowds met with hugs, cheers and the warm embrace of total strangers.

Breaking away from the group on the city's limits, we watched this all, the roads back where we'd came from sloping in front of us, our backs to what lay ahead, and all the alternative routes twisting and turning in the shadows below our main road. The smell of exhaust still lingered to the cold metal machines lined up alongside us.

I don't think either of us could say it. We knew it, we screamed it in our own minds, but the words refused to form on our lips: “This isn't it.”

We scrambled up onto the roofs of camper-vans and lorries, the drops between our roads and the smaller ones below us calling to us to dare slip up, the stars spinning above. On top of a delivery lorry on the Interstate 55, we scanned the roads around us and started searching for our next destination.