Diana Hartwell's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Diana sat with the engine off and her hands on the wheel. The pushing had stopped. The trunk stood open behind her, lit and useless. She needed the spare tire in the well over the rear axle, and she could not go back for it until she knew where the car actually sat. She had been guessing. Every time she hit the gas, she guessed. She could not see the rear tires from the driver's seat. She did not know if they sat on ice, on packed snow, on nothing. She did not know how deep the drift held them, or which way the car leaned. She wiped the rear window with her glove. Snow blew across the glass and filled it back in. The mirrors showed her the trunk lid and a strip of white. Nothing useful. She needed to see. That was the whole thing. See the tires, then decide. She pulled the flashlight from the glove box. She checked every window before she moved. The drift rose past the driver's door on her side. She slid across the bench to the passenger side. That door faced open road, or what had been road. She cracked it an inch and listened. Wind. No steps. No breath. She pushed the door wide and dropped out low, staying tight against the car. She crawled along the rocker panel to the rear wheel and put the flashlight on it. The tire sat cocked. The drift held it from the outside, packed hard against the sidewall. Underneath, the tread rested on a slick shelf of ice where the ditch bottom curved up. Every spin she had given it had polished that shelf smoother. The tire was not buried. It was perched. She moved the light forward. The front wheel on this side had sunk to the hub. The car was nose-down and tilted, the rear end lifted so the drive tires barely pressed the ice at all. She understood now. Weight in the trunk would not be enough. She needed to break the ice shelf under the rear tire, and she needed to pack something rough under the tread. Without that, the spare would only sit in the well while the wheels kept polishing glass. She swept the light one more time along the length of the Lincoln. At the front corner, past the buried headlight, the snow was pressed down in a long print. Two prints. Cloven, deep, close to the grille. It had been standing at the front of her car while she looked out the back. She killed the flashlight and pressed flat against the quarter panel. She counted to ten. She heard only wind. She crawled back to the passenger door and pulled herself inside and locked it. Her hands shook on the wheel. She knew what the car needed now. She knew where the thing had been. Both facts sat in the cabin with her, and only one of them helped.