If You Get A Call From An Unknown Caller Late at Night While Driving, Follow This "Rule of The Road"

The following is a transcript from a short radio program that has been picked up by various listeners across the continental United States. Many have been perplexed by its sudden appearance and how it seems to preempt whatever song or radio program they are listening to at the time. Apparently there are different versions or episodes of the radio program that other listeners have reported hearing. I had initially thought that there was only the single, strange episode, but someone contacted me and discussed their experience and it was completely different than what we all had encountered previously.
Brandon contacted me with his story regarding what he was doing when he heard the mysterious radio program and the transcript of the program was different. There were the same common denominators: he was alone in his car, it was late at night, he had been driving for hours, and the program had appeared suddenly. This is what he heard.
Howdy folks, Buck Hensley here with more ?Rules of the Road?. Hope ya?ll are doing well out there and that you?re nice and cozy in your big trucks and SUVs as the cold night whizzes past. I hope your seat warmer starts working again. Nothing like a nice, warm ass on a cold winter?s night. I really miss my wife and cuddling up next to hers, how I would call in sick to work some days just to spend those few extra hours in bed with her, how I often wanted to live in that half-awake moment with her forever, but nothing lasts and I can?t get back there...
At this point, Brandon states he laughed at the surreal hilarity of the radio program that had preempted the Tom Petty song he was listening to. He states he almost changed the channel when it first appeared?there was a burst of static and he thought the signal was lost?but fatigue and slow reaction kept him from reaching the dial in time before Buck Hensley?s folksy voice came from the radio. He also states that he was a little unnerved by a single detail within the opening monologue: the seat warmer in his Jeep was broken. He listened on, transfixed.
Whoops! Sorry, got a little off track there. Anyways, on to tonight?s rule. If at any point in your journey you get a call from an unknown number, then you must answer your phone. You must take that call. Don?t ignore it, don?t screen it and don?t wait for it to go to voicemail thinking that you might call it back, because you won?t be able to. It is imperative that you pick up.
Now I know what you?re thinking and I know what you?re gonna say. Your gonna say, ?Bucky, what if it?s another one of them goddang robocallers? I get those all the time and I ignore them and they?re just the biggest waste of time and I?ve been waiting for a callback on an interview and I?ve been answering unknown numbers and I get those calls warning me about my vehicle?s warranty expiring and it?s a scam and they just make me so darn mad I could just scream. Like hell am I gonna answer another one of those calls!?
And to that I say, fair enough, I get why you're so upset. Those calls get me hot under the collar, too. Why do they call them robocallers anyways? Is there a robot on the other end dialing away with his little metal robot fingers? Bleep-bloop-bleep. But I digress.
How Brandon had wished he had a passenger in the car with him to exchange confused and amused looks with, someone to ask, ?Are you hearing this ****? Google this up and see what this is.?
So the first thing you must do is to answer the call. Make sure your phone is on loud. Make sure you hear the ring. Because if you miss it, that is no bueno. Once you answer, you might hear that dead air and clicking you get on your usual telemarketer call. You might hear some strange noises. You might hear something that is downright spooky. Just hang on a second and wait for the voice, a nice pleasing monotone woman?s voice asking you your name. I like to call her Carla. She will ask you your name. State your given name. Carla will respond that there has been some unusual activity on your ?Card Account? and that she needs the number on your credit or debit card to further research the activity and put a stop to it. This will sound sketchy as hell to you and you will likely feel the urge to hang up and tell her to ?buzz off?, but if you do so, then you will miss your chance.
Once you give her your card information, do not fret. The folks on the other end of the line aren?t gonna clean you out. They are really looking out for you and have your best interest at heart. The most you will see is a dollar or two here and there pulled out of your account every month. It will show up on your bank statements. That?s like a cup of coffee a month you?re missing out on, but it?s totally worth it. What?s the value of a dollar? That might be the most valuable dollar of your life!
Ok, so you say to heck with all of this? Well this is what will happen. As far as punishments go, with this one you might actually have a fighting chance and it actually makes quite a good PSA for safe driving. From then on after receiving the call, whether you?ve answered and didn?t give your number or ignored it all together, the next time you pick up your phone while driving it will result in a deadly motor vehicle collision.
It doesn?t matter if you?re on America?s loneliest highway without another vehicle for miles, I?m telling you: DO NOT PICK UP THAT PHONE. Do not text. Do not make a call. Do not adjust your Spotty-fi playlist. Let that hunk of plastic and copper and platinum and gold and terbium lie. Turn it off and throw it in the backseat if you have to.
You will get complacent. You will get comfortable and you will forget. Just a quick buzz and you glance down at the phone or you glance at your GPS because you?re not sure when your exit is coming up and BLAMMO! That will be all she wrote. A semi from nowhere will appear, a bend in the road that wasn?t there before, the horizon will turn upside down as your vehicle careens across the landscape.
You ever see what happens to a vehicle that goes underneath a semi truck?s wheels? Think about what happens to the body. I don?t even know if you can call it a body at that point. The parts are all there but they don?t seem to add up.
And your face? Think about what will happen to your face. We?re wired to see faces don?t you see? Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Our minds are drawn to them in our environment from birth, seeking that connection. Your mom, your sister, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, they?d do anything to see your face one more time, even if it?s lifeless and a little bloated and a little too made up by the mortician. Your family will take seeing that semblance, that mediocre representation of the face they once loved as a means of closure.
But they won?t be able to because that thing above your shoulders can not be called a face at that point and all the king?s horses and all the king?s mortuary men cannot put your broken eggshell runny yolk face back together again and you?ll have to have a closed casket. Your loved ones will have to imagine it.
Well that?s all for tonight. Hope ya?ll have warmed up a bit and got your phones where you can reach ?em. Stay alert out there. Stay lively. Stay lonely. Once again, I?m Buck Hensley and these are ?The Rules of the Road?.
From there Brandon states that he was shaken to his core. He felt a little silly getting so spooked by the broadcast, but he was on a dark highway all by himself in the middle of the night. He pulled off at the nearest truck stop, went inside a bit, drank some water and returned to his vehicle.
Five miles down the road, his phone rang.
He says he didn?t know what to do. He had sudden concerns that it was all a trick, that if he picked up his phone he would end up in a deadly car accident. He hesitated. The phone rang again. Making sure he kept his eyes on the road, he reached for his smartphone with a trembling arm and answered.
There was a pause on the other end. Then a click. He heard a wall of noise on the other end and it took him a second to distinguish all of the wailing sounds stacked on top of eachother.
He had been to funerals before: grandparents and older family members and the funeral of a friend that had died too young, a beloved teacher from his grade school that had gotten cancer. These sounds were the sounds from those funerals, the inexplicable grief that could only be expressed in loud wails and sobs, the cursing of the heavens and the asking of why? Why? Why? And they were all happening at once, right there on his phone and in his ear.
He states he heard the woman?s voice suddenly appear on the other line; she cut in through the awful sounds and they faded into the background.
?Please state your name.?
He gave her his name.
?We?ve noticed some unusual activity on your credit card. To verify your identity and investigate this further, we need you to provide the 16 digit credit card number, expiration date, and CVV number. Please provide these now.?
Brandon tells me he was at a loss as to what to do. He had the sudden thought that there was a rogue broadcast out there in this part of the country, getting gullible people to listen to the warning and then hitting them with the call.
But then he thought of his family in some church, the images and sounds of their grief. He could always cancel the credit card.
He started to pull to the side of the road, leaning on his left side to reach the wallet in his back pocket.
?Are you there Brandon?? the voice asked. ?Please provide the numbers now.?
He was getting frantic and there was a patch of gravel and he overshot a bit and went off the side of the road. He dropped the phone and gripped the steering wheel, guiding himself to safety.
It took him several minutes to find his phone on the floorboards and when he did, the caller was gone.
*** *** ***
It has been both a blessing and a curse.
He tells me he has become something of a luddite now. He never turns his cell phone on when he is driving, always places it in the trunk of the car. At first he thought he could deal with it by just leaving it turned off and in the passenger seat, but during one of those notorious gridlocked LA traffic jams, he felt himself absentmindedly reach towards it. He?s stopped carrying it around as much also. He feels like his attention span is better now and he feels more focused. He now notices every time he goes out how everyone is so glued to their phones, how addicted everyone is.
But there are instances where he misses out on some last minute changes of plans and he shows up to the wrong restaurant or there are times when he arrives at friends? apartments when they?ve already made secondary arrangements for transportation and they had tried to call him when he was on his way. He has to print out directions for places ahead of time. He?s gotten lost on several occasions. He notes that not having his cell phone available has caused several unnecessary fights between he and his girlfriend.
Brandond never told anyone except me about his experience. He thinks that they would never believe him and that they may even convince him that it was all in his head. He doesn?t want to get comfortable and deny his own experience and forget about what could happen if he doesn?t follow the rules.
He?s been going to a cabin an hour outside of Tahoe on any free weekend that he can. It?s secluded and remote. There?s no cell phone service up there and he doesn?t get that fear of missing out as he couldn?t get a call even if he wanted to. He says when he?s up there, he feels at peace.
*** *** ***
I checked in with Brandon a month later, but he didn?t respond to my e-mails. Weeks passed and I tried calling multiple times, but the phone always went straight to voicemail and he never called me back despite the voice messages.
I had had some growing concerns about a large wildfire that was in the news over in that area. I wasn?t too familiar with the region, but it seemed awfully close to the general whereabouts of his cabin. Through some digging I was able to get a hold of his girlfriend, Lacy. We spoke on the phone.
?I hate to tell you this, but Brandon?s dead.?
I was quiet for a while. When he hadn?t responded, of course I had had that fear. Hearing it confirmed was still a punch in the gut.
?What happened?? I asked, fearing the cause of death was a car accident.
?It was that damn phone,? she said. ?He wouldn?t pick up. He was so hard to get a hold of. All of the time. I didn?t understand why he cared so much about safety all of a sudden. I mean, we all do it, and it is a risk, but he took it to the extreme.?
?Lacy, what is it? Did he die in a car wreck??
?It was the wildfire. He was up at his family?s cabin for his decompression time. I wasn?t feeling up for it this weekend and my sister?s birthday get together was going on. It wasn?t anything for him to go up there alone. When we saw how bad the fire was getting, we tried and tried to get a hold of him, but of course there was no answer. It was heading straight for that property.?
?Doesn?t the Forest Service or the firemen order an evacuation and go door to door??
?Yes, and they did. He finally called us from a landline at the convenient store in town, down the mountain. Said he was heading back and that it was really getting bad, but that he couldn?t contact us from the road. We learned from news updates that the pass he usually took had a shift in winds and the fire was overtaking the road. He would have to take a different route or he was going to get burned alive. But how could we let him know??
Her voice began to crack. I gave her the time, a knot in my stomach.
?Finally, we got a call from him. He had pulled over and gotten his phone out. He said that the pass was awful, walls of flame everywhere, he could feel the heat in the car. He was so scared. I could hear it in his voice.?
She was full on crying now.
?Luckily, we were able to tell him to turn around, to go the other way and take the alternate route. He was able to do so and we both felt relieved. He said he was going to hang up, that he would be in touch soon.?
She sniffled, catching her breath some. She was calming back down.
?A few minutes later, I sent him a text, an ?I love you? text. I just wanted him to know. He never made it home.?
There was silence.
?I?m so sorry,? I said.
?It?s strange. They found his car wedged into this boulder, completely demolished. There wasn?t a single burn mark on the vehicle and his body wasn?t even burned. Somehow the fire had burnt an entire area all around him, but didn?t even touch him. I hope he got my text. I hope he knew.?


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