dochermes

"Not Even Close To Nowhere"

8/11-8/13/2016

I.

"We've hit rock bottom before but this time we're digging under the rock," Perry grumbled. Steam had stopped pouring out from under the hood of the fourteen-year-old Ford Taurus but there was not enough light to see what was wrong anyway. Under the stars of a Utah sky without a moon, strange twilight showed enough for him to see his cousin. She was rummaging about in the trunk.

"Here's the flashlight," Kari called out. "Batteries are as dead as a week-old fish stick. It figures, it figures. I wonder how close we made it to Salt Lake City, anyway."

"Look around you," her cousin yelled. "Highway for a hundred miles in front of us, highway for a hundred miles behind us. We're not nowhere, we're not even close to nowhere!"

Everyone thought Perry and Kari Costigan were twins, but actually they were cousins born to sisters who actually were twins. Kari and Perry had been born a week apart in the same hospital. Both cousins were about five feet ten, thin and a bit coltish at nineteen. Both had curly reddish-brown hair, dark green eyes and long narrow faces with upturned noses. They could wear each other's clothes and sometimes did.

"Anyway, we don't have any tools and neither of us would know how to use 'em if we did," she pointed out.

"You got a point," Perry admitted ruefully. "No cell service way out here, my phone's not even showing one bar."

"Damn damn damn. Nothing has gone right for us. We're broke until we reach that job offer in Salt Lake City. The woman said she would front you a week's salary once we turned up. My cards are maxed out. All I have is a single and some change in my pockets."

"I've still got that twenty in my shoe..."

"That stinky thing!" Kari laughed. "You've been walking on it for so long I bet it's imprinted on your foot."

"Not enough for a tow truck, even if we could call one." Perry leaned back against the battered Taurus with its strip of rust around the rear wheelwell and the driver's outside rearview mirror held on with black electrical tape. "You're the smart one, they say. What's your best idea?"

Kari Costigan put her fists on her hips and turned to gaze back in the direction from which they had been driving. She was wearing baggy jeans with one knee out and a blue checked flannel shirt with the tail hanging down behind her. "Um. Hmm. Well, we know there's nothing back that way. We drove since dawn and saw nada along the way. So our chances of finding something up ahead are unknown but probably better."

"Almost zero is better than actual zero? I suppose. Maybe some lonesome farmer will think you're hot and give you a ride while I have to sit in the back with the chickens."

Kari laughed. "At least you'd finally make some friends." She reached around in the back seat of the Ford and handed him his backpack, while getting her own gear. All she had brought was the bookbag she had used in high school and those six months at the community college, now stuffed with clothes. "I guess that's everything."

"Didn't I have a can of Red Bull?"

"Aw, I drank that while you were snoozing," she said. "Sorry, I was driving and needed the caffeine." She shouldered her bag and started hiking, and after a second's hesitation Perry followed her. It was chilly out on the desert at night, a real change from the suffocating heat of the day that had killed their car. They walked along in silence for a while before Kari began, "If we had stayed with my Dad after the divorce-"

"Don't get into that again. His new girlfriend was in your class at college, for God's sake. The last thing she wanted was the two of us around and Dad is so hopelessly whipped he went along with it. If we make it to the city, your Mom's pal at the bakery promised us jobs."

"Big thrill. Large charge," she said. "I don't really want a boring life baking bread and icing cakes! I want some excitement... Wait. Hold still."

Puzzled, he stopped in mid-stride and came over next to her. "What now?!"

"I heard something. Out there." She put her finger to her lips. "Listen."

The hissing was not loud, but it was unnervingly close. They could see nothing. Without a word, both cousins started walking quickly and broke into a full run as the hiss followed them. Heavy footsteps scraped in the dry earth nearby.

"Oh God oh God," Kari breathed, taking the longest strides she could.

"A.. big snake? No, it can't be, it's walking." Her cousin turned his head to glance back and screamed. "Don't look, Kari! Run!"

Suddenly there was a horse-drawn wagon in the road directly in front of them. They had no idea how it had appeared there. The ten-foot-long wagon was wood painted off-white, with a red gingerbread-style roof and symbols on both sides of the outline of a row of horseshoes in red as well. Sitting on the front platform with his feet on the buckboard, holding the reigns of the single white horse, was an old man with silver hair down to his shoulders.

"Hurry, climb in the back!" he ordered them sharply. "The door's open."

Frantic and confused but not inclined to hesitate at the moment, Perry and Kari ran around and scrambled in through the unlatched door at the rear of the wagon. The door slammed shut by itself behind them, they heard the stranger make a clucking noise and the horse swung around to pull the wagon back in the direction it had been coming from.

"Yes, I hear it, too, Senior. Never you mind. The crawling ones couldn't catch you on their best day." The silver-haired driver in the old-fashioned frock coat leaned back over his shoulder to talk through the open panel behind him. "Are you children all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're okay... but," Kira hesitated. "But look at the inside of this thing."

( the rest of the story )