Excerpt of End of the Road by Amy M. Bennett

He pulled off the highway onto the clearly marked, paved side road and shut the engine off, letting the Harley coast past the well-lit sign to Black Horse Campground. He pulled his helmet off to let the spring night breeze cool his sweat-soaked brow, shook his head to clear it of the drone of the highway, and looked down into the hollow between the road and the river. The campground slept below him, dotted with pools of brightness from the safety lights and the outdoor lights of the pool and the dozen or so RVs parked in the pull-through spots. A dim light glowed from the second floor of the main office building. The owners of the campground no doubt lived on site; hopefully without a dog. Or a night watchman. He dismounted and secured the helmet to the back of the seat then walked the Harley down the gentle asphalt incline. The road was free of gravel and sand and he managed to wend his way to a vacant tent site, situated halfway between the RV sites and the office building, in relative silence. He set down the kickstand and paused a few moments. Except for the breeze stirring in the pines and the babbling of the nearby river, nothing moved or made a sound. He would have preferred a more secluded site, away from the campground office, but his primary concern at the moment was that his arrival didn't wake any other campers. As long as no one was making a nighttime trip to the bathroom, it was unlikely that he'd be noticed by the other guests. Quickly he set about putting up his tent. He was done in ten minutes; after three days, he’d gotten good and fast at setting up camp in the dark. He unrolled his sleeping bag and apart from removing his boots, chaps and jacket he didn’t bother to undress. He checked his watch; it was twenty to two. He allowed a grim smile. At least three or four hours of sleep before he was noticed. Then it would start all over again. ***** Corrie Black rolled over and swatted the alarm off without opening her eyes. Most mornings she preferred two swats of the snooze button for the classic rock station from the closest “big” city—Roswell—to wake her slowly, but today, Thursday, she needed to be up by four-thirty since Jerry and Jackie Page, her two oldest and most trusted employees, had left for a four-day weekend the night before.... She headed to the bathroom for a quick shower. Once she was dressed in her customary jeans and Black Horse Campground t-shirt and twisted her waist-length black hair into a single braid down her back, she went downstairs to the campground office and store. The office area occupied a very small amount of space in the store, which sold everything from quarts of milk to quarts of motor oil to local handmade arts and crafts and souvenirs, as well as a few gourmet New Mexico food products, such as the piñon coffee that was Corrie's weakness. Jackie usually manned the store for her and she had made sure to leave everything stocked and organized before leaving on her trip with Jerry. Corrie slipped behind the register and found a carefully numbered list of scheduled guest arrivals for the upcoming weekend. Jackie’s first notation, “Bike Rally Weekend”, was underlined three times in red, at the top of the page. The annual spring motorcycle rally was held in Ruidoso, twelve miles away, and provided a healthy amount of business for the Black Horse. Jackie had discovered that many motorcyclists preferred campgrounds and she had, despite Corrie’s feeble protests, posted a giant ad on the campground’s website… another one of Jackie’s ideas. She went into the room off the main store that served as a game room and TV room for the guests. She settled into what was probably the last Barcalounger in the state and reached for the remote. Oliver’s curiosity had overcome his annoyance at his early awakening and he jumped up onto Corrie’s lap as she turned on the early morning news. Nothing exciting or interesting; the usual litany of bad news that seemed to make up the early programs. Corrie sipped her coffee and absently scratched Oliver’s ears, barely registering stories of traffic accidents, robberies, and murders... most of them too far away to affect her personally. The mention of El Paso did spark her interest, only because she had a special place in her heart for the city that had been her parents' meeting place. A woman had been found dead in her home, apparently the victim of a house fire ignited by a gas explosion that might, or might not, have been accidental, and the police and fire departments were still investigating. Corrie tuned out the rest... She got up and looked out the window. Morning was breaking over the mountains and she decided it was time to get moving. This afternoon she would—she hoped—start getting the weekend crowd for the motorcycle rally. She was expecting Buster, the maintenance man, in early although she had resigned herself to being happy if he just showed up on time. It would be a couple more weeks before her full summer staff was in place, but she'd never had trouble operating efficiently with her winter skeleton crew. Jackie’s note had reminded her that the couple from Winslow, Arizona—the Myers, who were acquaintances of the Pages and whom Jerry and Jackie asked to come down and help Corrie out while they were gone—would be arriving sometime during the morning. Another exciting day at Black Horse Campground.