The Silence on Highway 41

It was a rural stretch of Highway 41, a road he had driven a thousand times. But tonight,

his car had sputtered to a silent halt. When he stepped out to check the engine,

the first thing he noticed wasn't the cold or the darkness, it was the absolute

absence of sound. Usually, a quiet night is filled with a thousand tiny noises: the

rhythmic pulse of crickets, the rustle of dry leaves, the distant hum

of a transformer, or the wind whistling through the power lines. Here,

there was nothing. Even the sound of his own-