Chloe Carter's Arc

Chapter 5 of 12

Chloe sat behind the wheel with the knife across her thigh and stared at the trees. The mat was not going to be enough. She had known that after the third try. The rear tires needed something with teeth. Something the rubber could not give her. She thought of the tree line and the dead branches under the snow, and she understood what she had to do. She got out. The wind pushed her sideways. She waded off the shoulder into the timber, sinking to her knees at every step. Under the low pines the snow was thinner. She kicked around the trunks until her boot struck wood. She bent and pulled up a branch as long as her arm, then another. She snapped off the soft ends and kept the hard middles. She wanted rough bark. She wanted things that would bite. It took four trips. Her arms shook by the last one. She piled the wood beside the right rear tire and knelt in the slush she had already dug. She laid the biggest branches flat against the packed snow, running them away from the tire like rails. She wedged the smaller ones crosswise between them, bark up. On top of the whole mess she pressed the rubber floor mat, textured side down, so the tire would grip rubber first and drive the wood into the ice underneath. She did the same on the left side with what was left. Then she stood up and looked at it. It was ugly. It might hold. She got in and shut the door. She did not pray. She put the car in drive and fed the pedal the way she had taught herself, thin and even. The tires whined. The wood cracked. The sedan shuddered, sat, and then climbed. She felt the back end lift onto the branches and catch. She kept her foot steady. The car crawled forward a foot. Two feet. The front tires found the packed track she had cleared and pulled. The sedan rolled out of the hollow and onto the road. She did not stop. She could not stop. If she stopped she would sink again. She steered into the center of the road where the wind had scoured it thinnest and kept her speed at a walk. The branches and the mat stayed behind her in the snow. She watched them shrink in the mirror until the next bend took them. Her hands were shaking on the wheel. She let out a laugh that came out closer to a sob. She had done it. The car was moving. Then the headlights caught something ahead on the road. A shape at the next switchback, low and still, off to the side where the drop began. Not a drift. Not a tree. She eased off the gas and the sedan slowed on the ice, and the shape did not move.