“We’ll be okay,” I said, almost shouting to make sure he could hear me over the noise of the snow and wind and road. “All we have to do is get through the next few miles.” I wasn’t exactly sure where we were, but my guess was we were halfway between Rob/Buster’s place and a highway that was bound to be in better condition than Lolly Road.
“Sure to be,” I murmured. “Has to be.” Because if it wasn’t, we might spend the rest of the winter out here, encased in a snowbank, waiting for the spring thaw.
“Rrrrrrr,” Eddie said, his growl growing louder.
“Doing all I can, pal.” I peered through the windshield and saw what I’d been seeing—white. “We’re still on the road. Down on the right, there, I can see the edge of the asphalt.” Not the actual asphalt, since everything was covered in snow, but I could make out the change in elevation from roadway to ditch. As long as I could keep that in sight, we’d be fine. At least that was my plan.
“Rrrrr!”
Once again, I ignored my cat. “You know, I used to complain about not having a white line on the edge of these roads, like on highways, but maybe it’s better on these roads. What good would it do, really, and—”
“RRR!!” Eddie’s growl turned into a spitting hiss, sounding like he was in a fight for his life.
“Chill, buddy,” I said. “We’re okay. Honest. We just have to—what in the—”
Out of nowhere, an SUV had appeared, pulling up alongside the bookmobile.
Seriously? Someone was trying to pass in these conditions?
I shook my head and inched the bookmobile as far to the right as I dared, but the SUV didn’t go around. Instead, it moved closer.
“You have got to be kidding.” Trying to give the driver the benefit of the doubt—maybe it was a guy with a wife in labor and he was trying to rush her to the hospital but she was terrified of passing the bookmobile in the snow so he was trying to get more space to go around—I steered us a teensy bit farther right and instantly felt the tires ride over the outside edge of the asphalt.
The SUV moved closer.
I did about the last thing I wanted to do—took one hand off the steering wheel. I jammed the heel of my hand into the middle of the steering column and laid on the horn.
It did no good; the SUV moved even closer, its headlights merging with ours. If it moved any closer, it would hit us and there was nowhere to go. Except . . .
I took my foot off the accelerator and started a gentle brake. Let him go around if he wanted to drive that much faster. Eddie and I weren’t in a hurry. Getting back safely was far more important than getting back on time.
But the SUV slowed, too.
And moved closer.
Frightened that it was going to hit us and furious at the driver’s stupidity, I did an equally stupid thing. I slammed on the brakes.
This, of course, violated a vitally important rule of winter driving, which is: Never, ever slam on your brakes. If you’re on an icy road, all it’s likely to do is put your vehicle into a slide in a direction over which you have no control.
Which was exactly what happened.
It was a long, slow slide and I had plenty of time to review all the mistakes I’d made, not only that day, but throughout my life, starting with the time I’d cut my own hair at age four and ending with not checking the weather forecast before driving out to Rob/Buster’s.
“Hang on, Eddie!” I called, because there was nothing else to do. I felt a bump, and the bookmobile slid off the road, onto the narrow shoulder, and thumped into the ditch.
Hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs tumbled to the floor, Eddie howled, I yelled, and a thousand years later we came to a stop.
I unbuckled my seat belt and scrambled over the tilting console. The strap holding down the cat carrier had done its job; the carrier was still in place and Eddie looked up at me, unblinking.
“Are you okay?” I opened the wire door. “Please tell me you’re okay.”
Eddie leapt out of the carrier and onto the console, purring and rubbing his chin against my shoulder.
“Thank heavens,” I said, snuggling him close. “I never would have forgiven myself if anything had happened to you.”
“Mrr,” he said, still rubbing.
I kissed the top of his head and looked out the windows to see what I could see. “Uh-oh.” Though I was mostly seeing the white of blowing and gusting snow, I could also make out the headlights of the SUV that had run us off the road. One of the bumps we’d felt while sliding must have been it hitting the bookmobile’s bumper. It had spun around and was in the opposite ditch. Facing us. With a broken windshield.
My hand automatically reached for my cell phone. It usually lived on the console, but the Ditch Episode had moved it elsewhere. I scrabbled around on the floor, found it on the far side of Eddie’s carrier, and turned it on.
There was, of course, no service. At all. I’d figured as much, but I’d had to try.
“First things first,” I said. “Yes, it’s best to stay with your vehicle in a situation like this—because it’s way easier to find a bookmobile in a snowstorm than it is finding an efficiently sized human like me—but I have to go see if that driver is okay.”
“Mrr?”
“Well, no, I don’t particularly want to,” I said, pulling my hat down and tugging on my mittens, “but it’s the right thing to do. I’ll be back in a minute.”
At least I hoped I would. If the driver was hurt, I’d do what I could to help, but if he or she was hurt badly, I’d have to run back to Rob’s place. And if he was gone, because his house could be in the opposite direction, I’d break in and use his landline to call for help. Then again, it might be Rob over there in the ditch. He had been in a hurry to leave, hadn’t he?
I walked a zigzag path around the fallen library materials, and opened the door. This was harder than normal, because the floor was tilted at a ditch-defined angle and I had to push the door open over a snowbank. My brain was doing another type of pushing, that of pushing away thoughts about damage to the poor bookmobile. I would think about that later.
Outside, away from the headlights, I realized how dark it had become. And how much the temperature had dropped. And how hard the snow was coming down. And how hard the wind was blowing.
I shivered and sincerely hoped I wouldn’t have to run to Rob’s. “Hello?” I called as I walked across the road. The SUV had stopped at a steeper angle than the bookmobile, and even from the road, I could see that the passenger-side fender was a crumpled mess.
“Hello?” I approached the driver’s door. “Um, are you okay?” I peered in through the tinted window. The front seats were filled with released air bags . . . and nothing else.
No one else.
What on earth had happened to the driver?
I frowned and looked down, hoping to see tracks I could follow. Maybe he or she had been dazed by the crash and wandered off into the snow. I couldn’t let that happen. Without shelter, in this weather you wouldn’t last overnight, maybe not even a few hours, depending on how you were dressed.
The tracks were there, but they were already filling with snow. I followed them, head down, to the back of the SUV, around the back bumper, and—
“There you are,” said Stewart Funston. “Took you long enough.”
“Stewart! What are you doing out here? You were driving that SUV? What were you thinking? But you’re okay, right? Eddie and I are shaken up, but we’re fine, and—”
My slightly anxious babble came to an abrupt stop when Stewart stepped closer. By the red of his taillights, I could see he was holding up his right hand in an oddly familiar position.
He was pointing a handgun at me.
Since I was Minnie and didn’t always think before I spoke, I said the first thing that came into my head. “You’re kidding, right?” Because maybe he had one of those weird brain tumors that was making him act out of character. Or maybe he’d banged his head when his SUV had spun into the ditch and thought I was an enemy.