I keep the receipt in my logbook, right next to Tuesday's entry. Pilot Travel Center, Exit 117, Salina, KS. $247.83 for diesel. Time stamp: 02:47:03 AM.
The problem is, there's no Pilot at Exit 117. There's no anything at Exit 117.
I've been running this route for twelve years—Kansas City to Denver, twice a week. I know every truck stop, every rest area, every place you can grab coffee at three in the morning. Exit 117 is wheat fields and a farm road that leads to more wheat fields. Always has been.
But I remember stopping there. I remember it clearly.
I was running late that Tuesday night. Dispatch had called with a pickup change, and I'd lost two hours sitting at a warehouse in Topeka while they sorted out paperwork. By the time I hit I-70 west, I was pushing my hours hard. The fuel gauge was hovering just above a quarter tank—enough to make Denver, but not by much.
That's when I saw the lights.
Bright white LED floods, the kind that make you squint even from a mile away. Clean concrete islands, red and blue Pilot signs reflecting off my windshield. I almost drove past it—I didn't remember a Pilot there—but fuel is fuel, and I needed to log a break anyway.
The place was immaculate. Too clean for a truck stop. The kind of clean that makes you notice how dirty everything else is. The attendant was a kid, maybe twenty, with the palest skin I've ever seen. He smiled when I walked in, but he never blinked. Not once, the whole time I was there.
"Fill up the big rig?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "And I need to use the restroom."
He pointed toward the back. "Right through there."
The bathroom smelled wrong. Not dirty wrong—it was spotless, like everything else. It smelled like my grandmother's house after she died, when we went to clean it out. That closed-up smell, like air that's been sitting still for decades. But underneath it was something else. Something sweet and thick that made me want to hold my breath.
I finished my business and got out of there fast.
The kid was still behind the counter when I came back, still smiling, still not blinking. I grabbed a coffee and a bag of chips, paid cash for everything. He handed me the receipt without looking at it.
"Drive safe," he said. "Long way to go yet."
I didn't think much of it until I was back on the road. The coffee tasted like it had been sitting in the pot for hours, bitter and burnt. I dumped it out the window after a few sips. The chips were stale, like they'd been sitting on the shelf for months.
But I made Denver on time, logged my delivery, and forgot about the weird truck stop until I was doing my books the next week.
That's when I really looked at the receipt.
The timestamp was wrong. 02:47:03 AM. But I'd logged my stop at 5:52 AM, right after sunrise. I remember because I'd noted the time specifically—I was cutting it close on my hours, and DOT gets pissy about drivers who fudge their logs.
I called Pilot customer service. They don't have a location at Exit 117. Never have. The closest Pilot to that exit is forty miles east, and it's been there since 1987.
I drove back the next week, just to be sure. Took the exit, followed the farm road. Nothing but a rusted mailbox and a field of winter wheat stubble stretching to the horizon.
I asked around at other truck stops. Nobody's ever seen a Pilot at Exit 117. A few of the old-timers remember when they were talking about putting a travel center there, back in the '90s, but it never happened. Environmental issues, they said. Something about the groundwater.
I've run that route six more times since then. Exit 117 is always the same—empty, dark, just a farm road disappearing into fields. But every time I pass it, my fuel gauge drops a little more than it should.
Last week, I checked my logbook again. Really checked it, going back through months of entries. There's something I didn't notice before.
Every Tuesday night run, my fuel consumption is exactly $247.83 higher than it should be.
I've started taking the northern route through Nebraska. It's longer, and dispatch complains about the extra miles, but I don't care. I don't want to know what happens if I stop at Exit 117 again.
Because I'm starting to wonder: if the station doesn't exist, and it never existed, then what exactly drove away from there at 2:47 AM with a full tank of diesel?
And why does it have my logbook?
