Mile 81 is Stand by Me meets Christine—the story of an insatiable car and a heroic kid. At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded-up rest stop, a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. Its the place where Pete Simmons, armed only with the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out. Not much later, a mud-covered station wagon which is strange because there hadnt been any rain in New England for over a week veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that says closed, no services. The drivers door opens but nobody gets out. By the time Pete Simmons wakes up from his vodka nap, there are half a dozen cars at the Mile 81 rest stop.
