She’s trying to divert attention from her mistakes by annoying the living shit out of me.
I roll my eyes. “Get us out of here before we end up completely lost and living in a self-made wooden hut. I’m not learning how to set traps and collect berries to keep your sorry ass alive.”
“If this helps, I did pick up how to make a fire when I was a Girl Scout.”
I grin at her. “Yeah, your fire will be of immense help when we’re trapped in a storm.”
“Check the cell,” Mandy says, her face brightening at the idea.
“And call who if we don’t even know where we are?”
“The police, obviously. They could track us.”
Intentionally, I don’t praise her as I retrieve my cell phone and then stare at the no signal sign. “Dammit. No bars.”
Which isn’t much of a surprise.
We are in the middle of nowhere. There’s no doubt about it because ninety-nine percent of mainland USA has cell phone coverage, which is about everywhere. Mandy has just managed to find the remaining one percent, and she didn’t even have to put a lot of effort into it.
“No signal,” I say needlessly and drop my cell phone back into my handbag, which I then toss it onto the back seat amid Mandy’s toiletry case, several shoeboxes, and countless fashion magazines, all of which she picked up during our petrol station stopover. For the money, she could have bought at least two roadmaps. The thought manages to make me even crankier.
CHAPTER TWO
We remain silent for a long time. At some point, I consider asking her to drive back to the gas station, but then decide against it. For one, she’s taken so many turns that I doubt she’d find her way back before the rain begins cascading down on us. And second, the gas station is at least a two-hour drive away. If the weather’s playing along, we have three or four hours to find a motel before dusk falls.
“I could turn around,” Mandy suggests, jolting me out of my thoughts.
“No. Just keep going. The road’s bound to take us somewhere.” I open my eyes and scan the sky, worried. The gathering clouds dim the light, bathing the deserted road in semi-darkness. It’s only four p.m., but it feels as though nighttime is about to fall. As the car rolls on, the first drops of rain begin to splatter against the windshield.
Within minutes, the drizzle turns into a raging downpour and the road begins to resemble a huge puddle of water. The engine is roaring and the tires keep slipping on the muddy ground. The visibility’s so bad Mandy slows down the car and leans forward in her seat, fighting to see through the foggy glass.
“Should we stop and wait this one out?” Mandy asks.
“No. Don’t stop,” I yell to make myself audible through the noise of the splattering rain. “I fear if we stop, the tires will get stuck in the mud and no one will ever find us out here. No one can possibly survive on Twinkies and soda forever.”
“You’re right.” Mandy hits the accelerator, and the engine thunders in protest. “We’re almost there,” she says for the umpteenth time, casting another nervous glance at me.
I squint my eyes to make out the road, but it’s too late to make out the dark silhouette to our right.
“Tree!” I shout.
Instead of swinging left, to the other site of the road, Mandy turns the wheel sharply to the right, the unexpected impact of hitting unpaved, muddy earth pushing me against my seatbelt as we barely escape a collision with a tree.
Thunder echoes in the distance, once, twice, when I realize it’s not thunder but the spluttering sound of a dying engine.
The car cogs several times…and then stops abruptly.
“That was close.” Mandy leans over the steering wheel, panting.
“Yeah. You could say that.”
She turns the key in the ignition, but nothing happens. She tries again. Still nothing.
Double shit.
This isn’t good at all.
“Ava?” The panic in her voice is palpable.
“We’ll be fine,” I lie, even though I know better than to make false promises. More than likely, we’ll have to spend the night in the car, huddled together for warmth in the hope that the rain will stop at some point.
I make a mental note to be mad at her for the rest of our lives.
I peer out the passenger window into the dark. The sky has turned black, and the torrential rain makes it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.
Except for a road sign consisting of a wood panel that appears to have cattle carved on it, I have no idea where we are.
“Great. Just great,” I whisper.
We’ll freeze to death.
The thought is so scary I shiver against the coarse fabric of my jacket and barely dare to look out the window into the pitch black.
Mandy shoots me another nervous look and tries to start the engine a few more times, without any success.
This is it.
Now we’re really stuck.
“It was worth a shot,” Mandy says, raising her chin defiantly.
I stare at her in disbelief. “Who the fuck tries to turn around on an unpaved road with apocalyptic rain pounding on us?”