"Tom's okay. O-and-K, that spells okay, laws, yes, everybody knows that."
Tom wolfed a huge lunch, and Stu managed to eat a little. Then they went on. The road continued to curve upward, and Stu began to realize it had to be this hill. If they crested it without finding the right car, it would take them another two hours to get to the next one. Then dark. Rain or snow, from the look of the sky. A nice cold night out in the wet. And goodbye, Stu Redman.
They came up to a Chevrolet sedan.
"Stop," he croaked, and Tom set the travois down. "Go over and look in that car. Count the pedals on the floor. Tell me if there's two or three."
Tom trotted over and opened the car door. A mummy in a flowered print dress fell out like someone's bad joke. Her purse fell out beside her, scattering cosmetics, tissues, and money.
"Two," Tom called back to Stu.
"Okay. We got to go on."
Tom came back, took a deep breath, and grabbed the handles of the travois. A quarter of a mile farther along, they came to a VW van.
"Want me to count the pedals?" Tom asked.
"No, not this time." The van was standing on three flats.
He began to think they were not going to find it; their luck was simply not in. They came to a station wagon that had only one flat shoe, it could be changed, but like the Chevy sedan, Tom reported it only had two pedals. That meant it was an automatic, and that meant it was useless to them. They pushed on. The long hill was flattening out now, beginning to crest. Stu could see one more car ahead, one last chance. Stu's heart sank. It was a very old Plymouth, a 1970 at best. For a wonder it was standing on four inflated tires, but it was rust-eaten and battered. Nobody had ever bothered with much in the way of maintenance on this heap; Stu knew its sort well enough from Arnette. The battery would be old and probably cracked, the oil would be blacker than midnight in a mineshaft, but there would be a pink fuzz runner around the steering wheel and maybe a stuffed poodle with rhinestone eyes and a noddy head on the back shelf.
"Want me to check?" Tom asked.
"Yeah, I guess so. Beggars can't be choosers, can they?" A fine cold mist was starting to drift down from the sky.
Tom crossed the road and looked inside the car, which was empty. Stu lay shivering inside the sleeping bag. At last Tom came back.
"Three pedals," he said.
Stu tried to think it out. That high, sweet-sour buzzing in his head kept trying to get in the way.
The old Plymouth was almost surely a loser. They could go on over to the other side of the hill, but then all the cars would be pointing the wrong way, uphill, unless they crossed the median strip... which was a rocky half-mile wide here. Maybe they could manage to find a standard shift car on the other side... but by then it would be dark.
"Tom, help me get up."
Somehow Tom helped him to his foot without hurting his broken leg too badly. His head thumped and buzzed. Black comets shot across his field of vision and he nearly passed out. Then he had one arm around Tom's neck.
"Rest," he muttered. "Rest..."
He had no idea how long they stood that way, Tom supporting him patiently as he swam around in the gray half-tones of semiconsciousness. When the world finally came back, Tom was still patiently supporting him. The mist had thickened to a slow, cold drizzle.
"Tom, help me across to it."
Tom put an arm around Stu's waist and the two of them staggered across to where the old Plymouth stood in the breakdown lane.
"Hood release," Stu muttered, fumbling in the Plymouth's grille. Sweat rolled down his face. Shudders wracked him. He found the hood release but couldn't pull it up. He guided Tom's hands to it and at last the hood swung up.
The engine was about what Stu had expected - a dirty and indifferently maintained V8. But the battery wasn't as bad as he had feared it would be. It was a Sears, not the top of the line, but the guarantee-punch was February of 1991. Struggling against the feverish rush of his thoughts, Stu counted backward and guessed that the battery had been new last May.
"Go try the horn," he told Tom, and propped himself against the car while Tom leaned in to do it. He had heard of drowning men grasping at straws, and he guessed that now he understood. His last chance of surviving this was a rattletrap junkyard refugee.
The horn gave a loud honk. Okay then. If there was a key, take the shot. Probably he should have had Tom check that first, but on second thought, it didn't much matter. If there was no key, they were most likely all through no matter what.