“At least I’m not sitting on my ass doing nothing.”
Mandy can never shut up. If we continue like this, we’ll be at it all day and night. Someone has to take the high road—and as usual, that someone is me.
I bite my lip hard to keep back a snarky remark and decide to change the subject.
“Did you pack an umbrella?” I ask.
“Yes.” Mandy peers at me warily as she draws out the word. “Why?”
“There’s no point in us both sitting around and waiting for a car to drive past because that might never happen, so I’m going to find someone who can help us.” I draw a sharp breath and exhale it slowly as I ponder over my decision. It’s a risky one, but what other choice do we have? “I’ll go back to the road and take the first shift waiting. Let’s hope someone else decides to ‘take a shortcut.’” I don’t mean to infuse a hint of bitchiness in my voice, but I can’t help it. “We’re in deep shit. The sooner you realize this, the greater our chance to make it out before we freeze to death or a hurricane hits us.”
“Are you crazy?” Mandy asks. “You’ll get lost out there. We’ll wait out the storm.”
I raise my hand to stop her protest. “Where’s the umbrella?”
For a few seconds, she just stares at me in a silent battle of the wills. When her shoulders slump slightly and she looks away, I know I’ve won. She squeezes between the seats and rummages through the stuff scattered haphazardly on the back seat, then hands me a tiny umbrella—the kind that you usually carry around in your oversized handbag; the kind that couldn’t keep you dry from a drizzle, let alone the downpour outside. But the end is pointed and sharp. It’ll definitely do.
“You can’t use that thing out there,” she says. “The wind’s too strong.”
“I know. I’m taking it with me in case a wild animal attacks me and I need protection.”
“A wild animal in Montana? What are you scared of? A cow?” Mandy lets out a snort. I give her an evil glance that’s supposed to shut her up—but doesn’t. “Yeah, you’ll poke it to death with that thing.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Now she’s silent.
A flashlight would be extremely helpful, but that’s something Mandy would never think of packing, so I’ll have to make do without one of those.
“I’ll be back in an hour. Wish me luck that I find someone,” I say and jump out of the car before she can protest.
“Be careful!” Mandy shouts after me.
I nod my head, even though she probably can’t see it, and wrap my jacket tighter around me.
The rain soaks my clothes almost instantly, and a cold sensation creeps up on me before I’ve even taken a few steps. I suppress the urge to open the umbrella, knowing it wouldn’t help much against the freezing wind that makes walking difficult.
Big drops of water are cascading down my face and into my eyes. I blink against what seems like a bottomless well pouring down on me and spin in a slow circle as I try to regain any sense of orientation. The road is barely wider than a path, with what looks like fields to either side, but that’s about all I can see. The headlights are illuminating the ditch we hit, but did we spin to the left or to the right? I can’t remember, and any tire tracks have already been washed away by the water. Basically, I have no idea which direction we came from, and the pitch black isn’t helping. The main road could be anywhere.
Dammit.
Suddenly, my emergency plan doesn’t seem so appealing after all.
We can’t be too far from the main road, so I decide to make it a brisk ten-minute walk and then turn around and head the other way.
“I can do this,” I mutter to myself in a weak attempt at a pep talk and start walking down the path. After only a few paces, I realize the ground conditions make it harder than I anticipated. The slippery mud around my shoes and jeans weighs me down, and my pulse begins to race from the effort of lifting my knees up high. It seems as though I’ve walked for miles, which can’t be because I still see the headlights of our car shining in the distance.
My groan is swallowed by the relentless rain.
That’s when I see the light in the distance. It looks like the beam of a flashlight. I should be getting back to Mandy to tell her about it, but I fear if I return to the car, whoever’s holding it might disappear and I’ll never find out whether rescue awaits us at the other end of it.
“Help,” I scream, but the light ahead doesn’t shift.
As I head closer, I realize it’s not a flashlight but a bulb hanging from a string, which stirs in the wind, and there’s a whole house behind it. The pain from plodding around in knee-deep mud forgotten, I quicken my pace and reach the porch in a heartbeat, then slam my palms against the doorframe so hard the sound could wake the dead.
Thump.
My fist hammers harder against the wood.