by R. L. King
“So I guess we’re on our own, is what you’re saying,” Jason said. “Again.”
“It would appear so,” Stone agreed, not looking happy about it. He glanced out the window—it had started to snow, and little flurries fluttered around the car. “Especially since it looks like I should be driving.”
“I can drive,” Jason protested.
Stone gave him a sideways look. “Remind me where you’re from again, Jason?”
“Uh—Ventura. Why?”
“Southern California. Have you ever even seen snow outside of a cinema or a television show?”
“I went skiing once,” he grumbled.
“Yes, well, you’ll forgive me if I don’t put my life in the hands of someone who ‘went skiing once,’” Stone said. “Especially since it appears the roads around here can get a bit dodgy, if the squiggly lines on that map are any indication.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who rented the land yacht,” Jason said, forgetting how much he’d appreciated its amenities earlier. “Ever hear of a Jeep?”
“Boys, don’t squabble,” Verity said, affecting her best—and entirely unconvincing—’motherly’ tone. “Or I’ll make you both ride in the back seat and I’ll drive.”
After a brief break to switch drivers, they turned north toward Preston County. Jason had taken Verity’s spot in the back seat and Verity moved to the front. After fiddling with the car’s radio and determining there were no stations in the area playing anything she could stand, she settled back with the notebook Stone had been reading and attempted to make some sense of it.
Stone glanced over at her after about half an hour. “Getting anything?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, a headache. I’m sorry, Doc—I know she was your friend, but this chick writes like she was tripping on some really good drugs.”
“Content or handwriting?” he asked with a grin.
“Both.” She tossed the notebook back on the console and leaned against the passenger side window, looking out into the swirling snow.
“If this gets much worse, we might have to stop and get some warmer clothes,” Jason said. He didn’t relish the idea of getting out of the warm car into even this relatively mild snowfall.
“You’re probably right,” Stone agreed. “If you can hold out for a while longer, I’m sure we can pick some things up somewhere in Preston County.”
“If they even have clothing stores out here in the boonies,” Verity muttered.
Stone chuckled. “Well, it’s a bit cold for them to go naked, so I suspect they have something suitable. Just because we’re not surrounded by fast-food restaurants and nightclubs doesn’t mean we won’t be able to find proper amenities. I hope,” he added, with a dubious glance around.
It wasn’t long before they were forced to leave the main highway and continue on smaller roads. Though they definitely offered better scenery, they made for much slower progress—especially since the snow was coming down harder now.
Darkness fell quickly. The road, which had been working its way upward through the trees at a leisurely incline, began to climb more steeply and grew twistier. Stone slowed the car. He’d been looking tense for about the last hour, his eyes focused fully forward in concentration, both hands firm on the steering wheel. “We’ll need to find someplace to stop soon,” he said without looking away. “I need a rest from staring out the window, and we’re getting a bit low on gas.” Snow fell steadily; they hadn’t seen another car in half an hour or so.
Verity looked at the map again, using a little flashlight from her bag. “It looks like there’s a town a few miles up,” she said. “I don’t think it’s very big, though.”
“As long as it has a gas station and a place to get a cup of coffee, it’ll look like heaven,” Stone said.
“This isn’t like driving in England, is it?” Jason asked, leaning over the back seat to get a better look out the front window. He’d die before he admitted it, but he’d realized many miles back that he was glad he hadn’t pushed Stone into letting him drive. The snowfall wasn’t heavy, but it was coming at them nearly horizontally, making it look like the Lincoln was preparing to jump to light speed.
“It can be,” Stone said. “But it’s only a few miles to the train station. Nobody in their right mind drives into London, and I don’t remember ever going joyriding in weather like this in my youth.”
All three of them watched the road now. Verity glanced at the map occasionally, but since she wasn’t sure exactly where they were relative to the town she had spotted, she couldn’t tell them how far it was.
They rounded a sharp bend; the car’s headlights illuminated the leafless trees and left the road dark for the couple of seconds until they got pointed in the right direction again.
That was enough, though. “Al, look out!” Jason yelled as something dark and fast darted out into the road directly in front of the car.
Stone saw it too. He swung the wheel right, trying to steer around whatever the obstruction was. It might have worked, except the obstruction was a deer. It panicked when it saw the massive form of the car approaching and froze right there in the middle of the lane.
The front end of the Lincoln clipped the back end of the deer, and the two went off in opposite directions: the deer continuing its headlong flight across the road followed by two friends they hadn’t even seen, and the Lincoln veering off toward the right side. Stone fought with the wheel as he tried to get the car moving straight again—he hadn’t swerved hard, and under ideal circumstances he probably would have succeeded, but the car was heavy and the snow made the road slippery.
The back end fishtailed, and its momentum spun the car off toward the shoulder. It crashed through a guardrail and rolled down a shallow incline, where it slammed to a sudden stop on the far side of a ditch. Steam clouded up from beneath the crumpled hood.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
For several seconds was all was silent except for their harsh breathing. Jason spoke up in the darkness, his voice shaky: “Everybody okay?”
“Y-yeah,” Verity said. She sounded even shakier than Jason did.
“Al?”
“Yes—fine.”
“Nobody hurt?”
“Just—a bit banged up.” Stone sighed, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have tried to avoid that deer. I should have just hit the damned thing.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Jason said. “I’d probably have swerved harder than you did.”
“So now what?” Verity asked, looking around. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t think this car is going anywhere.”
“Guess you can’t levitate it out of the ditch, right, Al?” Jason asked.
Stone struggled with the driver’s door, trying to get it open, but it was stuck fast. Verity tried her side and was able, with Jason’s help, to shove it open far enough for her to slide out. Jason followed her, and then Stone slid over and got out on that side as well, scooping up the notebooks from the floor as he went. Soon the three of them stood at the edge of the road, looking down at the car.
“No,” Stone said at last. “Levitating Lincolns is a bit out of my power range, even with your help. I think you’re right, Verity: this car is not going anywhere.”
“So—what? We walk?” Verity didn’t sound like that idea held much appeal.
“Either that or stay here,” Stone said. “We don’t have any way to contact anyone, and we don’t know how far ahead the next town is. Did you happen to get any idea last time you looked at the map?”
She shook her head. “No, because I don’t know exactly where we are. If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere around two or three miles.”
Jason slipped and slid his way back down into the ditch, wincing in pain. “That’s a long walk in this weather. Give me the keys, Al. I’m freezing. I want to get some stuff out of my suitcase.”
If their situation had been a little less worrisome, the sight of Jason and Verity digging in their suitcases, layering tw
o sweaters each under their leather jackets, would have amused Stone. He himself made do with his wool overcoat and a scarf, paying more attention to hunting up a leather shoulder bag and stashing the notebooks in them.
“Listen,” he said when he’d finished. “Why don’t you two get back in the car and close the door, and I’ll go find help. Clearly I’m coping with the cold better than you are. Jason, is there any danger the car might do anything unpleasant, like explode?”
Jason grinned. “And you accuse me of watching too many action movies. Cars don’t just spontaneously explode, especially when the gas tank is fine.” His expression quickly grew serious. “But there’s no way we’re gonna just sit here and let you go off by yourself. We should stay together.”
Stone shrugged. “Suit yourself. We could just try staying here and seeing if anyone comes by, but given the number of other vehicles we’ve seen lately, I have a feeling that this road isn’t terribly well traveled at night.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Much as I hate the thought of walking in this cold, at least the exercise’ll keep us warm. And I’d rather do something than sit here and wait for something to happen.” He pointed at the car. “Gather up whatever warm stuff you have, and let’s bring those energy bars if we still have any, just in case.”
“If things get too bad, we could stun a deer,” Verity pointed out. “And I don’t think we’re gonna starve in two or three miles.”
“You two act like we’re setting out for bloody Outer Mongolia,” Stone said, amused in spite of himself. “I used to play in worse than this as a boy back home.”
“In those?” Jason asked, pointing at Stone’s Doc Martens. “Hypothermia’s no fun, Al. None of us are dressed for being out at night in weather like this.”
“Cool, frostbite,” Verity said with a sigh. “Ah, well, I didn’t need all those toes anyway. Shouldn’t we get going? Standing around is probably worse than moving.”
They made one last pass through their suitcases for anything that might be useful and then with one final look over their shoulders at the stricken Lincoln, they set off down the road.
They trudged along in silence, walking single file along the graveled shoulder so if anyone came along, they wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the unfortunate deer that had put them into this situation. Unconsciously they fell into their usual pattern: Stone in front, Verity in the middle, and Jason bringing up the rear. “Hey Al, you don’t have a ‘warm’ spell, do you?” Jason asked, only half-kidding.
“Sorry. I could hit you with a lightning bolt, but I think the cure might be worse than the disease.”
Jason tried to keep his mind off the cold and the fact that his body ached from being banged around inside the car. The adrenaline had staved off most of it for a while, but as he came down off that, he suspected he might have pulled a muscle in his shoulder and hit his knee on the back of the console a little harder than he’d initially thought. Stone was limping and trying not to show it, and Jason had spotted a bruise beginning to bloom on the mage’s forehead, while Verity kept rubbing her right arm when she didn’t think anybody was looking. At least they’d all been wearing their seatbelts, or things would have been a lot worse. It was one of the things Jason had insisted on: he’d seen the aftermath of too many accidents during his brief time at the police academy.
The road was narrow, winding, and bounded by thick forest on both sides. It continued heading up; by the time they had made it about a mile from the car they still hadn’t seen any road signs or mile markers, except for one big yellow sign with a picture of a deer on it. “Big help, there,” Verity muttered when they passed it. They had in fact seen several other deer—or something moving, anyway—off to the side of the road as they walked. There weren’t many lights up here; fortunately the moon was high and the sky was relatively clear, so they weren’t forced to depend on Verity’s tiny flashlight. During a couple of particularly dark patches where the trees loomed over the road and their thick branches blotted out the moonlight, Stone raised his hand and produced a small but bright ball of light which did a surprisingly effective job of illuminating the path ahead. “I forgot you could do that,” Jason said with a grin.
“Apparently I’m just full of surprises,” the mage replied, but as soon as they were back under the moonlight, he dropped the spell and put his hand back in his pocket.
They continued on. Jason lost track of how far they’d trudged; his knee began to hurt in earnest now, and to his consternation he realized that the others were pulling ahead of him. If there was anything he hated, it was being the weak link in any group. He took a deep breath and forced himself to move faster, catching up to a few feet behind Verity.
Verity must have sensed or heard something, though, because she stopped and turned back. “You okay, Jason?”
“Fine,” he said, trying not to sound like he was gritting his teeth.
Stone stopped too, coming back to where they stood. He looked Jason over with a critical eye. “You’re favoring your left leg,” he said.
“Yeah, well, you’re limping, too,” Jason replied, glaring. “Doesn’t matter. We can’t just stop.”
“We can rest a few moments,” the mage said. He pointed at a nearby rock and ordered, “Sit down and take your weight off that leg for a bit.”
“I told you, I’m fine!” Jason hadn’t really mean to snap at Stone, but it did come out sounding like that. “You worry about yourself, okay? I’ll worry about me.”
“Yes, well—” Stone started, but Verity interrupted him by poking him in the arm.
“Somebody’s coming!” she yelled in triumph, pointing.
She was right: back down the road in the direction where they’d started, a faint glow came into view. As the three of them stood off the side of the road and waited, the glow resolved itself into the headlights of a vehicle.
“Yes!” Verity cheered, pumping her fist.
“Hang on,” Jason warned. “Let’s be a little careful here. We don’t know—”
“Jason, we’ve got two mages and a guy who can beat the crap out of most normal people,” she pointed out, rolling her eyes. “I’m not worried.”
“Well, one and a half mages.” Jason said, grinning.
She glared at him.
The headlights got closer. Stone stepped out a little way into the road and waved, and the vehicle slowed and stopped, pulling off to the narrow shoulder. It was a battered pickup truck, about ten years old, with a star painted on the door. The window rolled down and a man leaned his head out. “You folks go with that Lincoln I saw off the road back down the hill a piece?”
“We do indeed,” Stone said. “We were beginning to wonder if anyone would come by. Are we far from the next town?”
“Mile or so,” the man said. “Get in—I’ll give you a lift, and you can call a tow for your car. Prob’ly have to wait till morning, though. Ol’ Jimmy doesn’t do runs this time o’ night in the winter.”
They climbed in to the cab—fortunately it was the type that had two drop-seats behind the front bench, so nobody had to ride in the bed. Verity, the thinnest of the three, scrambled into the back while Stone and Jason, after a quick and silent battle of wills over who wasn’t going to sit in the middle (Stone won), settled into the front.
“We appreciate this,” Stone said. “Could we possibly trouble you to take us back to our car so we can get our luggage? If we’ll be staying in town until morning, I think we’ll need it.”
“Sure, yeah,” the man said. He was a chubby, mustachioed man in a backward-facing baseball cap and a denim jacket over a faded Redskins T-shirt. He looked sideways at Stone. “From the sound of that accent, you’re a lot farther from home than I’d have guessed. We don’t get too many tourists up here.”
“We’re not exactly tourists,” Jason said as the man carefully checked for any approaching vehicles, then turned the truck back around and headed down the hill.
“Lost?” the guy asked when they were moving. “Name’s Fre
edman, by the way. Lester Freedman. That looked like a pretty nasty bit of business back there with your car. What happened?”
“Argument with a deer,” Verity told him.
Freedman nodded knowingly. “Yeah, that was my guess. Lots of deer around here, ’specially this time of year. Did you know you were more likely to hit a deer in West Virginia than any other state?”
“Lucky us,” Jason muttered.
Freedman chuckled. “Hope you got insurance, and nowhere to be anytime soon. Gonna take a while to fix that around here, and it won’t be cheap. None o’ the garages in this area keep parts on hand for a fancy rig like that.”
“It’s a rental,” Stone told him. “I suppose we’ll just call the agency and tell them about it, then rent another car and be on our way.”
“Hmm,” Freedman said. “Maybe. But I can tell you right now there aren’t any car rental places anywhere around here. Best you’ll do is catch the bus or get yourself a ride to Morgantown and pick up something there.”
“We’ll see,” Stone said. “Right now I think all of us just want to get somewhere we can warm up.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t gonna say anything, but you aren’t exactly dressed for the climate.” They had reached the Lincoln; Freedman pulled the truck off the road. “Just throw your bags in the back, and let me know if you need a hand.”
They quickly gathered their suitcases and bags and tossed them into the rusting truck bed next to a rolled-up sleeping bag, three aromatic bags of fertilizer, and a pair of ancient work boots. They climbed back into the cab, and Freedman once more turned the truck around.
“Listen,” he said, “I could take you into town, but I don’t think you’re gonna find much to your liking this late—most of the businesses are already closed, and there isn’t any kind of motel or anything in Highland. Best they got is some bed and breakfasts, but they’re gonna be full up with people visiting their families for the holidays.”