'Mile 81' by Stephen King
"With the heart of Stand By Me and the genius horror of Christine, Mile 81 is Stephen King unleashing his imagination as he drives past one of those road signs...
At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded up rest stop on a highway in Maine. It's a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It's the place where Pete Simmons goes when his older brother, who's supposed to be looking out for him, heads off to the gravel pit to play "paratroopers over the side." Pete, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out.
Not much later, a mud-covered station wagon (which is strange because there hadn't been any rain in New England for over a week) veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says "closed, no services." The driver's door opens but nobody gets out.
Doug Clayton, an insurance man from Bangor, is driving his Prius to a conference in Portland. On the backseat are his briefcase and suitcase and in the passenger bucket is a King James Bible, what Doug calls "the ultimate insurance manual," but it isn't going to save Doug when he decides to be the Good Samaritan and help the guy in the broken down wagon. He pulls up behind it, puts on his four-ways, and then notices that the wagon has no plates.
Ten minutes later, Julianne Vernon, pulling a horse trailer, spots the Prius and the wagon, and pulls over. Julianne finds Doug Clayton's cracked cell phone near the wagon door — and gets too close herself. By the time Pete Simmons wakes up from his vodka nap, there are a half a dozen cars at the Mile 81 rest stop. Two kids — Rachel and Blake Lussier — and one horse named Deedee are the only living left. Unless you maybe count the wagon." ~ Amazon
As you all know by now, King has a very interesting mind and creates some tantalizing and simply weird stories. Mile 81 is one of those weird stories that is impossible to put down. A car that eats people? Really? But no matter how absurd King's plots may be, it is the characters that truly make the story. Every character in every King novel to date has been so well-written that it feels like they are standing next to you. With only 80 pages you would think it would be hard to get invested in these characters, but it's not. The only complaint that I have with this novella is that it is too darn short. I felt like the story could have gone on much longer and engulfed all my time, but I can see why King chose to make that decision. All in all, Mile 81 is a great read that I would recommend to everyone.
At the end of the novella there is a short excerpt from King's November novel, 11/22/63. I tend to not like excerpts because they just feel out of place, but I must say that this excerpt has whet my appetite for the novel. The maybe twenty pages or so that were included were so attention-grabbing that I am dying to read the book right now. The book has already been snatched up to be made into a movie! If that isn't a tell-take sign that it's going to be good I don't know what is. Mark your calendars because King's version of Kennedy's assassination is sure to engulf your whole being.
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