and, taking turns, start pumping the gas into the mile-long string of waiting trucks. When the narrator exhausts the fuel reserve of the truck stop's gas station, a fuel tanker arrives to replenish the fuel cisterns. When the narrator is at a point of collapsing, he is relieved by the counterman, who starts pumping gas for his "shift". The narrator says that he will have to show the girl how to handle a fuel pump, and that she will do it because she wants to live. The narrator thinks to himself that perhaps this will last only until the trucks run out of fuel, rust, and fall apart, but he then has a grim vision of forced assembly lines churning out new generations of trucks, and the trucks, aided by construction vehicles and tanks, doing great efforts such as draining the Okefenokee Swamp and paving much of the wild backcountry, stamping it into a great plain. The story ends as a pair of planes fly overhead, and the narrator laments "I wish I could believe there are people in them." Adaptations The story has been adapted into two films. In 1986, it was adapted for cinema with the King-directed Maximum Overdrive. In 1997, it was adapted again as the TV movie Trucks, starring Timothy Busfield, which was made on a considerably smaller budget than Maximum Overdrive but was much more faithful to the original story. See also Stephen King short fiction bibliography External links The story at HorrorKing.com 1973 short stories Horror short stories Short stories adapted into films Short stories by Stephen King Works originally published in Cavalier (magazine)