Christmas Consort

Swerving

Twenty minutes outside Nowhere, the light rain turned to drizzle and a big four-door sedan hydroplaned in a turn right in front of Kylie's VW. The big red nose on the fishtaling car came right at her before swerving off around the turn toward distant headlights. Heart in her throat Kylie swerved onto the edge and her front tire hit the mud. The slow down of one tire careened the back end in the front, ripped the front from the mud and whipped the whole car around in a perfect 360 shooting the front off into a small tree on the embankment. Though small, the hardwood sapling was strong enough to stop Kylie's Super Beetle and stand quite pert with the front end of the old German made car crushed around its trunk.

Kylie forced several deep slow breaths in and out of her lungs before she took stock of her situation. She still gripped the steering wheel and her seatbelt had probably saved her life. The windshield had popped inwards and cracked up without losing any pieces. The warped edge of it leaned against her head, so she shoved it away, opened the door and stumbled out of the car.

Her headlights still shown strong, and her engine was still running, the steady buzz of it issuing from the rear of the car where it was located in these Bugs. Thank heavens I wasn't going any faster. She wiped rain from her face only to find it was blood trickling down her temple. She leaned back into the car, cut the engine, slipped on her heavy down coat, and grabbed her purse.

Her kleenex were in an outside pocket and she stuck one to her head first thing and pressed a bit. Her wound was more lump than laceration; only one tissue did the job. The (not Ruger) was heavy in its made-to-carry pocket in the bottom of her purse. She felt for it out of habit before digging her cell phone out and discovering she had not one bar of service. Turning in a circle she got nothing and started to walk toward town holding her phone up as she went.

Daggone that sedan. It was the only car she'd passed since leaving the highway an hour before, and it just had to lose control right in front of her and then keep going. She reasoned that they must not have seen her wreck and that was why they kept going without checking on her. The asphalt was shiny white where it reflected the three quarter moon, and the road held water in several places she could see into the distance. That certainly wasn't very well engineered, she thought. Relief trickled down her body; she felt lucky to be alive.

The sign ahead said eight miles to Nowhere, but a coughing sound turned Kylie around. A figure stood between Kylie and the VW she now wished she had not left. Her breath fogged in front of her face in the chill air and the figure's long hair drooped forward as it wheezed and coughed. Kylie let out a sigh. Another woman, she thought and stepped toward her.

The woman's head came up with her next cough and Kylie saw two things and gasped. The woman's hands reached, a placating gesture easy to understand. But her eyes shone like the wet road, and her cough produced no fog of hot air meeting the cold.