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I didn’t want to die in Nebraska.

To be fair to the cornhusker state (motto: “Show us corn and we shall husk it!”), I wasn’t keen on dying in Colorado or Iowa either, but hadn’t felt my life in any particular danger in either of  those two states. It was in Nebraska that our tire blew out.

The car was packed with myself, my wife, our two daughters, and a half-ton of blankets, toys, books, markers, and crumbs from the “eat this ’cause we’re not stopping for lunch” food group. The trunk was likewise packed with suitcases. We were on a road trip dressed in a black, a multi-state journey of mourning with a funeral as its destination. We’d been on the road since 7:00 and making good time.

The road was making a funny, rumbling noise. It was a construction zone, with odd pavement. No surprise. But then the noise got considerably louder and less funny. The steering wheel started tugging in my hands, like it had something really cool to show me over here, on the side of the road.

“I think it’s the tire,” I said, and started pulling over.

There wasn’ t much of a shoulder to pull off onto inside the construction zone. It was a narrow strip of highway, just wide enough for a single car and a person to squat next to it, peering at a tire. On one side was waist-high concrete barrier. On the other other was a constant death-stream of vehicles rocketing by at 75, shaking our car in their wake.

“It’s the tire,” my wife confirmed from the passenger side door. “It’s mostly gone.”

Very aware of how close the car was to incoming traffic, we got out and put the girls on the far side of the construction barrier. There was no actual construction going on over there, but there was a quarter-mile strip of mud, so they’d have something to occupy their time while not being reduced to pulp by passing semi trucks.

“Where are we?” asked my wife. I had no idea. I was just the driver; how should I know such things? There was a watertower on the horizon in front of us, suggesting a town of some sort. Behind us was… another vehicle? Yes, an SUV parked on the shoulder a little ways back with its hazards on and a woman inside. I decided to visit our freeway neighbor and see if she knew where we were.

“Outside Omaha,” our neighbor said. “I’m out of gas. Trying to call triple-A. It’s a rental. Thank you.” She rolled her window back up.

Back at the car, my wife asked, “Think we can change the tire?”

Of course! The spare! In my shock, my lizard brain had totally forgotten that we even had a spare tire. I pulled the suitcases out of the trunk and started digging under the secret floor. I found the tire, then the tire iron (which will always seem to me more weapon than tool), but not the jack.

“I don’t think it’s in there,” said my wife. She’d loaned it to a friend, who’d never returned it.

I headed back to the SUV, to see if I could borrow a cup of jack from our neighbor. She was on the phone and couldn’t be disturbed, but a Nebraska highway patrol car pulled up behind her while I was there. An officer who looked like he’d been spending all afternoon squinting into the sun looking for John Connor stepped out of his vehicle and asked what was going on. I explained, he nodded, and I headed back to the car.

“They’re sending a van,” I told my wife. “They’ll have a  jack.”

Here’s where I give a big shout-out to the volunteers of the Nebraska Motorist Assist Program. For it was these fine folks who had the van — and the jack — that made the rest of our journey possible. With the help of a retired dude in a fluorescent vest, we were able to get the spare on, get enough air in it so we could actually drive on it, and limp into Omaha to replace the blown tire.

Safe at home again, I’m thinking of writing a pair of letters to the state of Nebraska: the first praising its NMAP as the highway heroes they are, and the second suggesting they change to nickname to the “corn-and-tire husker state.”

This week’s entry in the Worth a Thousand collection is a pseudo-fairy tale called Hearts, with an illustration provided by Mu Young Kim. Mu joins Bradley K McDevitt and Patrick McEvoy as an artist whose work is both a) awesome, and b) featured in the Worth a Thousand fiction collection.

Are you an artist? Would you like to join these illustrious (pun intended) ranks? Drop me a line, and let’s make some magic!

Yes, I’m a tool. More accurately, I’m finally some one’s target market. If you’re selling televisions, cars, pop stars, hand soap, hunting supplies, reality TV shows, or celebrity relationship gossip… I don’t care. Your square peg bounces off the round hole in my head where advertising should go.

But sell me zombies?

Sell me a TV show (on AMC no less!) about zombies based on the The Walking Dead comic series I’ve been reading for the past seven years?

I’m so there. I’m following your Twitter feed, liking you on Facebook, and generally drinking the Kool-Aid. I’m not worrying about spoilers — I’ve already read the comics, I know what happens — I just want to stalk and devour all the info I can find.

Because I’m a tool. A tool for The Walking Dead.

Here: Watch the trailer, drink some Kool-Aid, and join me on the edge of my fanboy seat as we wait for the Halloween premiere to roll around.

I had nightmares as a kid, same as everybody. Most of them are lost in the fog of growing up, but one from when I was four or five stands out: My grandfather, who I loved, sat at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night, smiling and motioning for me to come to him for a hug. But when I did, the toys on my dresser behind him leered and leaped toward me like evil jack-in-the-boxes. (Jacks-in-the-box?) And so I sat in bed, terrified and torn between the loving patriarch and demonic playthings that he, of course, couldn’t see or hear.

I think the worst nightmares are those that take place in your bedroom, in your bed. Because upon waking, there isn’t that moment of “Oh, good, I’m in bed, it was just a dream.” There is no sudden relief, but just the exhausted peace as the dread slowly seeps away.

…Until you hear that sound again, somewhere in the dark of your room.

No bad dreams last night, but I did finish a new Worth a Thousand entry, a story of childhood fears called Under the Bed and in the Closet, inspired by the always-creepy artwork of Brad McDevitt. Give it read, give it a Tweet, pass it along to all your Facebook buddies, and be sure to swing by Brad’s site to say hi and thank him for the artwork.

(No new Worth a Thousand this week, I’m afraid. Last week’s business trip took my free time out back, put a bullet in its head, and dumped its body in the desert. But in return, it gave me fuel for another wave of the pulpy, overwrought prose you’ve learned to love.)

Las Vegas after dark holds few surprises for me. I’m not a local. I’m not even a regular. But I’ve been there often enough to get a feel for its primal rhythms, its drunken grinning stagger, its fratboy howl. The details change with the ever-evolving skyline, but the heart of the place is the same as was the first time I visited. I suspect it’s the same as it was twenty years ago, thirty, more.

But as the sun lurches white and burning back into the sky, the Vegas night shift gives way to the morning shift. The strip is empty where, at midnight, a pack of dead-eyed people in hot pink t-shirts reading “Hot girls to your room in minutes” were handing out pornographic business cards (“Candi, $99, 555-121-2233″). In their place are slightly younger, slightly more lively people in hot pink t-shirts reading “Grand Canyon Tours” and handing out discount tickets to tourist attractions.

The crowds of sweaty, smiling drunks are gone. Sweaty, serious joggers have their place. They run in pairs, rather than full packs. They speak in hushed tones to each other, if at all. They are not here for a good time. They’re racing the sun: jogging in 85 degrees is one thing; jogging in 100 is another.

As the morning heats up, perhaps the joggers will be replaced by middle-aged and elderly tourists, who might give way in turn to young and foolish as the sun sets and the cycle begins anew. I don’t see it happen, but I can imagine it, on my way to the airport and back to the real world.

Check out this week’s Worth a Thousand entry, Gone Native. It may be the only story to ever feature Lady Ashwood and her man Huxley.