The waxy paper wrapper slid off of the small candy bar. Elizabeth -- Lizzy to her husband, Nick, and all of their friends -- popped the chocolate-coated hunk of nougat, caramel, and peanuts into her mouth and chewed. It wasn't the best snack in the world, but in the middle of New Mexico -- or was it Texas now? -- at three AM, health didn't really matter. She dropped the wrapper into the plastic sack that was tied around the gear shifter and pulled down her sun visor. The mirror that was inset into it had a small light attached that popped on when the visor was partly down. The light bounced back over her head, gently illuminating the back seat. Lizzy turned around and looked around the headrest at her daughter, sleeping in the back seat.

Jamie was nine -- and-two-thirds if you asked her -- and tall for her age. Her head rested against the seatbelt strap, a comfortable enough position to sleep in, even with these bumpy dark roads. Children can sleep anywhere, though. Beyond Jamie's head, dust boiled up behind the small SUV into a faded pink cloud that quickly turned white and then darkened into the black night. Lizzy smiled at her girl, then turned back around, pushing the visor back up, leaving the dashboard LEDs as the only lights in the cab.

Elizabeth turned and looked at her husband. He had been driving for the past four or five hours and looked tired. The clock in the dash, just above the radio, glowed a faint three-forty-five in the morning. She saw him rub his eyes in his way; fingers on one eyelid, thumb on the other, then pinched together down the bridge of his nose that he had broken when he was six, falling out of an apple tree. You couldn't see the break unless you knew where to look and caught him at the right angle. Seeing him rub his eyes was a sure sign he was getting drowsy and ready to go into a sleep-trance. "You doin' OK, babe?" she asked, her voice quiet. "Wanna maybe pull over or something?"

He shook his head a little and rubbed his eyes again. "Maybe put on some music?" He waved a hand at the radio with its six-disc CD changer. "Anything you want will be fine with me. I just need something to keep me thinking. Maybe something I can sing along to. That usually helps." She nodded and clicked the on/off/volume knob. The electronic sounds of some kid's pop album started and she quickly fiddled with other knobs and buttons to turn it down and move it away from the back speakers. She pressed the button labeled "2". A crowd cheered and she recognized it as the opening track of a live bootleg of Tom Waits from Italy. "Jockey Full of Bourbon" started up and Tom's gravelly voice rumbled through the night-dark car, matching and complimenting the static of road noise. Lizzy sat back in her seat and smiled to herself. They both loved Tom Waits. She could see Nick nodding in the driver's seat, a smile on his face too.

Two tracks later and Tom was howling that "Jesus gonna be here soon" and Lizzy was starting to get drowsy herself. Nick seemed to be doing alright, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and still nodding to himself. "You alright still, babe?" she asked again. "I'm getting pretty sleepy myself. If you want to pull over, we could all nap a bit and I'll drive the next leg. We don't have too much further to go do we?" She yawned.

Nick glanced at the dashboard clock. It was past four now. "We've been driving for...," he stopped to add up the time they had been on the road. "Well, we started at nine-thirty or so. So that makes it seven hours?" He yawned, catching the compulsion. "We probably have another five or so to go. I wish we weren't in the middle of so much nothing. I wouldn't mind stopping on the side of the road if I could see some signs of humanity. Even just a gas station or a few houses." Another yawn.

"Yeah, it really is empty, isn't it. I never knew Texas was so empty. Just fences and grass." She looked out the side window, plains and fields and small clumps of trees illuminated by a half moon and the countless millions of stars. "I haven't even seen another car in hours. I'm sure no one would bother us if we just pulled off on the shoulder." She looked down at the road whizzing by beside the car. "Or ditch, rather." She giggled a bit, her mind going silly from exhaustion. "Just pull over, honey. We'll be OK."

He nodded, covering another yawn. "OK, I will here in a bit. You go ahead and close your eyes. I'll be alright for another half hour or so." She nodded sleepily back at him. A mandolin was being picked to a gypsy melody behind Tom Waits bawling out "Chocolate Jesus". The stars were so bright out here away from a city or even porch lights. Bright until her eyelids slid themselves down between her and outer space.

"Shit!"

Elizabeth's eyes jerked open just in time to see the road tilt away from normal. Her hair flew toward the window and the stars filled the windshield. The car continued forward, turning as it fell. Stars turned into moonlit trees turned into a thousand-year-old barbed wire fence lit by headlights. Tom, on the radio, said "You've got to hold on" and the cut off, silenced by the upended SUV. The barbed wire fence flipped itself over, the SUV crashing down on its roof, crunching the roof against pockmarked and cracked blacktop. Glass flew into the cab, tiny pebbles smacking against Lizzy's hands, arms, and face. She heard Jamie scream from the back seat, then darkness wiped everything away, stars, fence, glass, screams, gallons of blood. Everything.