Chloe Carter's Arc

Chapter 4 of 12

The sedan crawled through the third switchback and Chloe let out a breath she had been holding since the cabin. Then the snow thickened. It came down in sheets now, not flakes, and the wipers dragged instead of swept. The road ahead lost its edges. She could not tell where the shoulder stopped and the drop began. She eased off the gas. The rear tires hissed, caught, hissed again. The powder was building faster than she was moving through it. She knew what came next. She had felt it in the driveway at the cabin, that soft grab when the wheels stopped biting and started swimming. She tried to keep momentum. She fed the pedal in a thin, steady line, the way she had taught herself on wet parking lots. The sedan answered for maybe twenty yards. Then the back end sank. The car tipped left, kissed a wind-shaped drift at the road's edge, and stopped. The engine revved on nothing. The rear wheels spun free in the powder. She closed her eyes. She counted to three. She opened them and got out. The cold cut through her coat. The drift against the rear quarter was already up to the wheel well, its surface smooth and folded like poured cream. She kicked at it. The snow gave and then packed. She went back for the rubber mat she had used at the cabin, jammed it under the right rear tire, and climbed in. Reverse. Drive. Reverse. Drive. The mat shot out behind her the first two tries. On the third the tire caught it and held, and the car heaved forward six inches before the front end plowed into fresh powder and stalled again. She got out. She dug. She dug until her gloves were soaked through and her fingers stopped bending. The snow kept coming. For every scoop she cleared, the sky put back two. She stood up beside the driver's door and looked at the road behind her. Already her tire tracks were softening. In an hour they would be gone. A voice in her head, calm and reasonable, said: leave the car. Walk. Find the man's vehicle on foot before you freeze. She stared down at the sedan. The black paint under the snow. The interior she had picked out. The key she had signed for herself, the first thing in her life no one had given her and no one could take. She had bought this car with the money she earned before any of this started, before the trial, before the new name. Her eyes stung. She wiped her face with a wet glove and felt the heat behind her teeth turn. "No," she said out loud. "No. Not this one too." She got back in. She shut the door. She reached under the passenger seat, closed her hand around the knife handle, and set it on her thigh. She would dig until dark if she had to. She was not walking away from her car.