Attack of the Clam People

"Do you think any of those lights is the camp?" I asked.
"They're pretty far."
"I don't know what else to do but pick one and head for it."
That's what we did. We went slowly picking our way across the desert floor. At times, the truck would bog down in the sand. I kept telling the guys to throw shit out, like the firewood, thinking the truck wouldn't sink so much in the sand if it wasn't so heavy. Yeah, like it was a hot air balloon or something, duh. "GIP, why don't you get out and walk along the side of the car so we don't sink in the sand so much."
"F---you, Zurn, I ain't getting out." He locked the door. "You get out."
"Dude, you're the heaviest."
He wouldn't budge. I got out and walked in front of the truck, trying to find solid looking places where the truck might not sink so much. There seemed to be a kind of a trail. Miguel followed along driving the truck with me walking in front. The trail followed along the edge of an arroyo. We came to a Volkswagen Rabbit, laying in the arroyo, utterly wrecked, like someone had stripped it clean and taken a sledgehammer to it.
"How do you think that happened?"  I didn't want to say what I thought, which was maybe banditos caught jackasses like us (me), robbed them, killed them maybe, and left their mangled cars in the desert.
Further on we came to a cinderblock shack. "Miguel, turn off the headlights," I hissed. We rolled slowly past the shack. "Who the hell do you think lives there?"
"I don't know, but let's not see if anyone's home."
The trail just vanished into the desert. It just disappeared into tentacles of ocotillo, walls of needly cholla and huge cardon cacti. We turned back, going slowly through the dark, trying to find a road. We passed the shack and the destroyed Volkswagen. Eventually we came to another road. It was pretty solid. I got back in the car and drove slowly down the road, I didn't know in which direction. The road ended a while later in an enormous, impassable pile of white clam shells. What the--? There didn't seem to be anything but desert on either side. I backed up and turned around and all of the sudden, the road was blocked by old car junk, old seats and crap.
Holy sh!t!  An Yoho ambush? Are the Clam People attacking!?
 I gunned the engine and went flying helter skelter into the desert for as fast and long as I could, bumping, grinding, sliding, skidding. We hit some more soft sand, and the wheels spun. I got out and dug and pushed. "Keep your eyes open." The Pepper put her in forward and reverse and we were able to get it moving again. Across an arroyo, the ground looked pretty solid. "Let's go down and up that arroyo. If we can get to the other side, it looks like it might be a dirt road. Let's hurry." I scanned the darkness to see if anyone was coming and hopped back into the truck. Miguel gunned it. We dropped down into the arroyo and got halfway up over the edge of the other side when the truck bogged down in the dirt. Forward, backward, the wheel just kept spinning deeper into the earth.