“H-humans should r-really consider hibernation.”
Mona’s teeth chattered as she spoke, infusing her words with a slight vibrato. She tried to smile but her skin felt as if it had been pulled like plastic wrap against her skull; her flushed cheeks stung and the corners of her mouth felt as if they were about to crack open.
“Hang in there, baby. Someone’s bound to come along sooner or later.”
Matt tried to make his tone sound light and cheerful, but a fear had gripped his insides with a hand colder than the frosted guard rails that lines the edge of the hill. He wasn’t exactly scared of dying; he’d come to grips with his own mortality long ago and harbored no illusions about the frailty of life. But the thought of Mona lying in a snowbank with blue lips and ice encrusted eyelashes kept haunting his vision. In her, he’d found the perfect partner: she was beautiful in her own quirky way and always made him feel like a nervous schoolboy eagerly awaiting his first kiss. She was the only person, in fact, who he had ever truly cared about. Everyone else in the world was simply looking out for themselves; they would stab you in the back with a smile and then dance a jig on your grave if given half a chance. They were devious and self centered and could barely be considered human at all. But Mona… she was like an angel who’d been sent to help guide him along his chosen path. She touched him in ways he’d never realized he could be touched, both literally and figuratively. She was the one person who knew all of his secrets, every nook and cranny of his mind… and life without her would be unbearable. He’d been down that road before: it was full of brambles and briars that raked at the soul, traps and snares… but with his woman by his side, those obstacles bowed like servants to a greater power.
“How long do you think it’s been, Matty?”
“Nine, ten miles maybe. You tried the cell lately?”
She nodded her head, causing the fur-lined hood of the parka to bounce with the movement.
“N-no signal. Not out here in Bumfuck… you sure do know how to plan a honeymoon, babe.”
He glanced at her to see if she were truly angry with him, but her eyes twinkled beneath the shadows of her hood like a pair of jewels.
“Only the best for my wife.”
They walked in silence for a while, listening to the rhythm of each other breathing and the shuffle of their footsteps. The snow seemed to muffle everything, to make it sound as if it wasn’t quite real. It was all too easy to imagine that this was nothing more than a dream: that one of them would wake up to the drone of the heater and the lull of tires rolling over pavement. However, the wind would occasionally gust and the needles of pain it jabbed into exposed skin were enough to drive home the reality of the situation.
“I’m so tired, Matty. So tired….” Mona’s voice was barely a whisper. “I feel like I could just lay down right here and go to sleep.”
Fear clenched Matt’s heart and he whipped his head toward his new wife. She’d begun stumbling, her heels kicking up these little eruptions of snow as her knees buckled. His own calves felt as if the muscles had turned into overcooked noodles and spasms formed hard little knots in his thighs.
“Don’t you do it, Mona, you hear me? Don’t you lay down on me, girl.”
“I don’t regret anything, you know. I just want you to know that, Matt. In case… in case anything should…”
“Don’t talk like that! You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay. We’ve been in tougher situations than this, right? Remember Rock Hill? Remember Townsend? Just hang in there, babe.”
Panic fluttered Matt’s heart and blood surged through his veins, causing his temples to throb with a whooshing so loud that it drowned out nearly all other noises. Even his own voice sounded as if it were being heard by a fetus within the womb.
“I’ll carry you, baby. Want me to carry you for a while? I’ll do it.”
He saw Mona’s trembling lips move, but her voice was as lost as if he were watching a silent film.
“Come on, piggy back, baby. I can do it, really I can.”
Tears shimmered in his eyes and he felt their warmth trickle down his cheeks. Mona shook her head and everything within Matt felt as hollow as the chocolate bunny he’d surprised her with last Easter. He couldn’t let her give up, couldn’t allow her to leave him….
Through his veil of tears, it almost looked as Mona had begun to glow softly. As if Heaven were shining down through the darkness and calling his angel home. She tripped over her own feet and fell to her knees in the middle of the road.
As Matt rushed to her side, another sound encroached upon blood swishing through his head. This was a low rumble that sounded as if the earth were about to crack open. Perhaps Satan himself was rising from his subterranean lair: he would appear in plumes of sulfuric smoke and bathed in the flickering fires of Hell, ready to do battle with his timeless nemesis for the possession of this single soul. At the same time, the glow around Mona intensified, like God was readying himself for this struggle and calling upon a legion of angels to watch His back.
Scooping his wife into his arms, Matt closed his eyes and clenched his teeth so tightly that it felt as if they were only moments away from shattering like porcelain. They couldn’t have her, either one. Jehovah, the Deviclass="underline" he would fight them both, would pull ethereal arms from sockets to use as a clubs as he beat back the heavenly host and hordes of demonic warriors. He would stand over his dear, sweet Mona and unleash a fury that would make the Book of Revelation look like a lullaby.
The rumbling was now so loud that he could feel it vibrate within his chest and he opened eyes that were now as hard and cold as the chunks of sooty ice lining the road.
“They can’t have you, baby.” he whispered. “You’re mine….”
The glow was now so bright that it almost seemed as if they inhabited an island of daylight amid a darkened sea. And was it just his imagination or could he hear the frenetic squeal of fiddles, like a muffled call to arms for the gathering armies? But would either side actually choose The Devil Went Down To Georgia as the armageddic equivalent to fife and drums? For Matt was sure that’s what it was now: the Charlie Daniel’s Band turning an epic struggle between Good and Evil into nothing more than a hoedown.
The volume of the music increased and a thin voice wavered through the hillbilly onslaught.
“You folks need a lift?”
The words came from a thin, mustached man who leaned out the passenger window of a battered truck. For a moment, Matt simply crouched there as he blinked his eyes. Part of him was certain that it was nothing more than a trick of his mind; that if he were to run up to the truck it would dissipate like a mirage in the desert.
“That your woman, buddy? Looks like she’s ‘bout to freeze her tits off. C’mon… get your asses in here. We’ll give ya a lift.”
Matt threw up his hand to indicate that he’d heard the man and whispered to Mona as they struggled up from the snow.
“We’re gonna be okay, sweetie. See? Didn’t I tell you?”
The cab of the truck was cramped and had the lingering stench of urine for some reason. The driver, whose name they’d learned was Earl, took up most of the seat with his wide girth and the smaller one was wedged between him and Matt like mortar between bricks. Mona sat on her husband’s lap with her legs slightly off to the side and her head resting on his shoulder. Despite the warm air that had gusted over her face for the past ten minutes, she was just now beginning to regain feeling on the tip of her nose and earlobes.