Blizzard (Camren Short Story)

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Hope you enjoy this Short Story.

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Her body ached from driving hunched over the steering wheel. Her anxiety over the worsening conditions had settled into a knot between her shoulder blades. Lauren leaned forward in the rental car as if that would help her see through the curtain of blowing snow. Visibility was only a few feet. Damn. I should have splurged on that SUV, she berated herself. Or at least stuck to the main road.

She had turned off the state highway a couple of miles back to take a secondary road through a national forest. It was a much shorter route on the map, but there were almost no homes along the way, and snowplow crews hadn't yet touched the isolated road. She was traveling faster than she'd have liked, for the road was hilly and curved. But she feared the lightweight car would be instantly mired in the deep snow if she slowed down. The detour had been a horrible mistake. At the rate she was going, it would still be another hour or more before she reached the hospital in Marquette.

She'd had several close calls already, where the car fishtailed or began to bog down in a heavy drift. The bursts of adrenalin that each episode released kept her on edge.

There was only one other set of tire tracks and they were quickly fading as the snowfall increased in intensity. She liked following them; they seemed a comfort somehow-as if proof there was something of civilization out here in this vast landscape of trees. So she was disappointed when they turned off into a driveway, and she was left to plow ahead on her own. The driveway led off to a light in the woods, the first she'd seen in miles. Somebody's home. I sure envy them right now.

The blizzard made her claustrophobic. The whirlwind of snow around the car pressed in on her until all at once she could no longer see the road directly in front of the car. Oh, Shit Oh Shit Oh Shit. Her heart sped up. She could feel it pounding in her ears. She kept her foot on the gas, praying as the seconds ticked by for the cloud of white to lift enough for the road to rematerialize.

She never saw the curve.

The car went off the road and tucked itself between two oak trees, burying its front end into a massive snowdrift. The airbag deployed, and Lauren was wearing her seatbelt, so when the car stopped moving she was surprised to find that aside from having been scared out of her wits, she was uninjured.

She tried the engine. Nothing. But the interior dome light still worked. She looked at her map. She was more than twenty miles from Marquette, with nothing between her and her destination but forest.

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and turned it on, doubting whether she could get a tow truck to come to get her. She didn't have to wonder long. No signal. No surprise.

Lauren knew she didn't have a lot of options. She could stay with the car and hope that road crews discovered her, but she might have a very long wait. It was snowing so heavily the plows would be kept plenty busy just trying to keep the main roads cleared.

The obvious choice would be to walk back the way she'd come. The light she'd seen was only a mile or two back, she was certain.

Temperatures were only in the teens but Lauren had a suitcase full of clothes in the back seat. She put on her warmest things, dressing in layers. It was her feet she was most worried about. They were already cold. She put on two pairs of socks and loosened the laces of her tennis shoes so she could still get them on. Her gloves were also inadequate, so as she set off down the road she pulled her arms inside her coat and kept her hands against her body.