The story's narrator and a handful of strangers find themselves trapped together in a freeway truck stop diner after semi-trailers and other large vehicles are suddenly brought to independent life by an unknown force and proceed to gruesomely kill every human in sight.
While the employee restroom is inside the diner, the men's and ladies' room are by the outdoor gas station, and the narrator's attempt to gather fresh water from those places nearly costs him his life when the trucks realize what he is trying to do.
Jerry remembers from his time in the Boy Scouts that the horn blasts are Morse code, and translates that the trucks are demanding humans start pumping fuel.
The remaining three humans surrender and, taking turns, start pumping the gas into the mile-long string of waiting trucks.
[2] In 1997, it was adapted again as the TV movie Trucks, starring Timothy Busfield, Brenda Bakke, and Brendan Fletcher, which Video Business called "Mindless, but well-executed and rarely boring" with "the fiery action King's fans no doubt want to see.