All was Lost

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I stepped out of the car to see a pile of rocks blocking the motorway. More molten rocks were falling on the waiting cars, and one narrowly missed ours. Mary, sensing a problem, went back into screaming and crying. Mum climbed out too, and gasped, then began coughing, as she had sucked in a mouthful of ash. She struggled back into the car, the desperation of the matter reflected on her face. I followed. Once in the car she said to us, after a whispered conversation with Dad, “We love you very much, and we want you to live, so we are going to have to do something crazy”.

Gran, who was squashed in the middle of us, wrapped her arms tightly around our shoulders, her face set in a mask of determination. Lily looked at Gran, and whimpered, “I’m scared, are we going to die?” Gran looked at Lily, her eyes full of the soothing kindness that all Grandmothers possess. “Don’t worry, whatever happens, you will not die, whatever happens, I will make sure you survive”

Dad looked at Mum, and they seemed to have a silent agreement. Suddenly Dad swerved to the side, and turned sharply off the road. I held on tightly to my seat belt, and just managed to avoid hitting my head on the car door. Dad drove of the road, and onto, the grass next to it. Many other drivers had also begun to do this, but instead of going right next to the road like everyone else, he went the long way. He was avoiding the traffic, but crashing through the small forest next to it.

The long branches that hung from the trees made screeching sounds as they scratched the car. The sound reminded me of fingernails on a blackboard. After 5 minutes of awkward silence, well, as silent as it can be in a car surrounded by scratching trees, a coughing gran and an erupting volcano, we burst through the other side of the forest.

We pulled back onto the motorway, which was less full as the other side, as only a few people had the initiative to drive around the boulders in their panic. After driving for about ten minutes, in which I read almost the entire driver’s manual that I found under my seat, the car began to slow. It came to stop after a few judder attempts, and we were all shocked into silence. Dad looked at the car’s dashboard, and I saw his face fall. “Oh no” he murmured, his face a mask of despair, “We are out of petrol”.

We watched hopelessly as dad climbed out of the car to look at the motor, with a sliver of hope that there might be some way he could get the car going again. After a minute or two of ominous waiting, he clambered back in. “Even if there was a little bit more petrol,” he sighed as he shook the ashes out of his hair, “the car would have still broken down in a few kilometers, the engines clogged full of ash”. He looked at us, his stormy grey eyes ridden of their usual twinkle, “we are going to have to walk”.