by Mark Zubro
Everyone in the crowd got a purchase on the parts of the truck closest to the ground. Mike got hold just behind the front wheel on the driver’s side. An anonymous figure rushed around the plow giving orders.
“Push toward the direction it’s headed.”
Mike joined the others in pushing. The engine rumbled. Tires whirred. Snow swirled. People grunted and swore. Those on Mike’s side of the truck had to lift as well as push forward. The frame scraped on the pavement as the plow began to move. As it rolled off the Cadillac and began to tip, the left front tire of the truck came in contact with the earth and snow and fell off. The truck teetered, slid, and began to tip.
The people on Mike’s side of the truck scattered, or they’d have been crushed as the plow tilted toward them. Mike dove for the side of the road. The driver gunned the engine then leapt out of the cab. Seconds later the plow lurched forward ten feet, continued tilting and then spilled over into the ditch and came to rest on its side.
“Great,” the cop said. “We could have used the plow to make a path for all of us.”
“Not without the entire front wheel,” someone in the crowd said. “It’s not just flat. The whole casing came off. I think the axle broke.”
The cop said, “I want that driver’s name. He shouldn’t have done that.” But no one in the circle of people admitted to knowing who did it or what the person looked like. People rushed to the Caddy. It wouldn’t start, but the many willing hands made short work of pushing it off the road.
The crowd gathered to look at the road ahead. Most were shaking their heads. The cop said, “I’ve got a snowplow coming down the other side of the highway. We can get away through that.”
“How?” Mike asked. “We aren’t going to be able to get our cars across the road. The plow isn’t big enough to carry us all to safety.”
“I’m doing what I can,” the cop said.
With the two vehicles out of the way, Mike knew his car could get through for sure. How could he tell the whole crowd the truth? He didn’t like the idea of simply driving past them. That would make people angry, risk a lot of suspicion, and possible questions all leading to unwanted revelations about Joe’s identity. Of course, they could turn very happy very quickly when their own safety loomed before them in Mike’s clear path. He also felt he should offer to lead the convoy to safety. No question they could follow his melted path. He didn’t think he had much choice. How could he deny having a device that could save them? He couldn’t let people die. He said, “I’ve had my car specially modified to get through this kind of weather.”
“What kind of car do you have?” an onlooker asked.
“A fifty-seven Chevy.”
The cop said, “You need a big, heavy truck now, not some hard to maneuver old boat that’ll go off the road on the first patch of ice.”
“I know I can get through,” Mike said, but he explained no further. And after leading them to safety, how would he leave without being noticed? What possible explanation could he offer? They could follow him and ask questions later. With the storm and attendant confusion, he might be able to get away.
“I’m taking the injured in my car,” the cop said.
An onlooker in a blue parka pointed at Mike, “This guy says he can get through better than the rest of us.”
“You got four wheel drive?” The cop asked.
“No,” Mike said and realized an instant later that he should have lied.
“I’ll lead the convoy,” the cop said. “We’ll just take it slow. The next exit is only five miles. Everybody follow me.”
“You’ll never make it,” a heavy-set man with an enormous gray beard said. “Your cop car won’t get ten feet.”
The cop stood stock still and glared, but he didn’t move toward his car. Asshole he might be, but enough reality got through that he knew the big guy was right.
Mike said, “I’ve got an experimental prototype of heat expanding lights around the bottom of my car. You’ve seen the cars with the glow under the body. It’s kind of the same thing. Look, we don’t have much time. People could die out here. I’ll show you.”
Even though less than half an hour had passed, the trudge back to his car was difficult. While the physical exertion had warmed him, the cold now felt worse. His shirt was damp and his back was wet. Mike had never felt so close to frozen. He tried to walk only in the ruts. Even these were difficult to maneuver through. Slogging through deep and drifted snow was not the romp it had been when he was flopping wildly about in it when he was six years old. The weather service had underestimated the strength of the storm and the number of inches of snow that would fall in this part of Illinois.
Fifteen feet from the car, he realized he didn’t see the blue glow. He slogged as fast as he could through the accumulating drifts. Inside the car the interior was warm. He checked the gas gauge, still over half full. He wondered how long the fuel would last with the motor continuing to run and the heater on.
Mike asked, “What happened to the energy field?”
“When the emergency lights moved and the plow tipped over, it just winked out. Joe screamed when it shut off. I think he’s more unconscious than asleep.”
“Maybe the physical exertion and the excitement caused me to break the connection. Maybe a little of both happened. I probably shouldn’t have left. I’ve got to get the thing started again. I’m worried.”
Mike didn’t know how long Joe could hold out with the energy field off. His fingers tapped at the communicator, but the glow did not reappear. Minutes passed. He was near tears with frustration. He reached into the back seat to touch his husband. Mike felt cool skin. Joe’s chest still rose and fell. Mike turned back to the communicator and redoubled his efforts. He’d just gotten a bit of a soft glow to start when there was a sharp rap on his window.
The cop was glaring at him. Several people from the crowd were standing behind him. He closed his hand around his technological contrivance. Mike rolled down the window on the old Chevy. The blue glow disappeared. Cold air and snow rushed in. Steam billowed with each breath the cop exhaled. Joe moaned but did not waken.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” the cop demanded.
“It’s only been a few minutes,” Mike said.
“Nearly ten and we’ve got to be moving.” He pointed to the back seat, “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s sick. We need to get him home.”
“Does he need a doctor?”
“No.”
“You sure? Why is he passed out?”
“He’s asleep.”
Mike wondered at the cop’s solicitousness. He was showing more interest than Mike thought logical or usual, but they were unusual circumstances. The cop waited. Mike repeated, “He’s sick. We need to get home.”
One of the other members of the crowd came up behind the cop and tapped him on the shoulder. The cop spun around and snarled, “Fuck off?”
Undaunted the stranger asked, “What’s the hold up?”
“You got this heater deal or not?” the cop asked Mike.
“I told you, it’s experimental. I can’t get it to work right now.” And he couldn’t, and he hated himself for risking part of the truth on a failure. He didn’t want to waste time talking to the cop while Joe’s life hung in the balance.
“Screw it,” the cop said. “If we make a convoy with everybody with four wheel drive leading, we should at least make it to the next exit. Anybody who doesn’t have it can follow us. We’ve got to try something. Everybody follow me.”
Mike went back to working at the communicator. He didn’t know how he could make his fingers move faster. Jack asked, “Can you really not get it to work?”
“I’ve never been so frustrated.”
“Want me to drive while you try?”
“You ever driven through snow and ice?”
“There always has to be a first time. We practiced on the simulators in driver’s ed.”
Mike was torn. The roads were h
orrible, but for now they could follow in ruts forged by the cars ahead. Even though all of the other cars would be exiting at the first opportunity. Joe, Mike, and Jack still had to get to Chicago.
“Okay, you drive.” They dashed to each other’s side of the car. A few minutes later the cars ahead of them began to move. They lurched forward. Mike tried focusing his mind on the communicator, using the thought, emotional, and physical processes Joe had taught him. In twenty-five minutes of driving he managed to get a sustained glow around the palm of his hand, but nothing more. They never went over twenty miles an hour, often under ten, but they didn’t stop. No one slipped off the road.
Jack’s hands gripped the wheel, staying alert to the travel conditions. Mike felt himself sweating in the heat from the car. His palms were damp. After another twenty minutes the blue glow expanded to encompass himself.
Jack broke the silence, “The exit is in just a mile. What do we do?”
“Follow them, I guess.” He glanced into the back seat. “I’ll have to keep trying this damn thing. At least try to park away from the rest of the cars.”
They began to see the lights from a Flying J truck stop and gas station. They passed the blue gas, food, lodging Interstate signs. The headlights ahead began to turn. Jack tapped the brakes for barely a second. The car slewed three feet to the left, but he righted it, and they kept going. They reached the beginning of the off ramp.
Ahead the cop car reached the apex of the exit. Mike watched it slew to the right, continue on a few feet, and then begin slipping toward the twenty foot drop off of the cloverleaf ramp. Brake lights flashed red in the line ahead of them. The cop car continued to slide as it reached the edge of the road. A few feet more and it began to tip, then roll onto its side, then flip onto its top. The rotating mars lights, which had led their procession, winked out.
The cars behind the cop continued their crawl beyond the exit and pulled into the half-filled truck stop parking lot. Mike thought this was sensible and safer than stopping the convoy half on and half off the highway. He knew they had to follow. He didn’t relish the idea of leaving the safety of other people. Getting stuck in the road in the middle of nowhere would not help Joe any.
The first drivers were out of their cars and heading back to the turned over cop car before the last cars even reached the exit. People from the truck stop rushed out to join them. Jack kept the car inching forward. Mike watched as they dragged the cop from the car. He seemed to be well enough to be gesticulating angrily.
When Mike and Jack’s car was three feet from the turn into the truck stop parking lot, Mike said, “This is useless.” He banged his fist with the communicator inside it against the dashboard. A blue flash illumined the interior of the car.
“Shit.” Mike tapped the face of the communicator. The glow shimmered for a moment, steadied, then grew. He glanced out the windshield. The glow existed outside the car and was melting snow.
“Turn around in the parking lot as soon as you can,” Mike ordered. “Go to the entrance to the Interstate. Go slowly, carefully, and make no sudden moves. I don’t know if I can sustain this.” Mike heard Joe moan. He assumed the blue glow was helping to revive the alien as well as cast the energy field. He didn’t know how strong he could make it, or for how long he could keep it going.
“What if someone follows us?” Jack asked.
Mike glanced around. “They’re safe. They’ve got food. They’ll be warm. Why bother? Why pay attention to us?”
People were drifting away from the crowd at the cop car. The state trooper seemed to be trying to convince them to help right his vehicle. No one seemed interested. The other cars were nestled as close as they could to the lights of the diner. Parked far to the left of the gas pumps was a covey of semi-trucks, engines still rumbling.
Mike glanced from stopped vehicles dripping water, to gas station, to the crowd at the cop car and said. “Just drive within the glow and don’t stop for anything.” Again the snow within the blue glow was melting within seconds. Mike felt that a forest in the process of petrifying might move faster than they were going.
As Jack reached the foot of the entrance, Mike saw the state trooper waving his hands and limping through the drifts toward them. One of the members of the crowd broke off and followed. The officer had covered half of the distance. He was coming at right angles and could cut them off.
Jack saw him as well. “Should I stop?” he asked.
“No,” Mike said.
“Do I run him over?”
“No.” Mike tried to gauge the remaining distance. “Even though we’re going really slowly, he’ll never catch us, I hope.” He peered through the swirling flakes. “I think the other guy is your dad.”
Jack didn’t look back. He tromped on the gas pedal. “Don’t!” Mike exclaimed.
But it was too late. The car outpaced the energy field, hit the snow, and began to spin. They turned three hundred and sixty degrees and wound up heading in the exact same direction.
“We can’t risk going off the road,” Mike said. “Just take it easy.”
The cop and Kazakel were moving faster than Mike thought. The rear of their car passed the two of them as they reached the entrance. The cop bashed his hand on the trunk. Mike heard the cop’s shouts but couldn’t make out the words.
“Go! Go!” Mike shouted.
The car slid forward. The blue glow faltered. “Don’t stop,” Mike ordered. The energy glow began fading. “Come on, damn it.” He shut his eyes, clutched his communicator, and concentrated. The car lurched forward. The thumping on the trunk stopped. Mike opened his eyes. The steady blue glow gave him an instant of comfort.
Mike looked through the rear window at the disappearing figures of the cop and Kazakel. He said, “What business is it of that cop if we want to risk our lives driving through this?”
“My dad probably said something to him, some lie.”
“The cop acted like a fool earlier.” He told Jack about the conversation at the accident site. He finished, “We have no need to give in to a power hungry moron.”
“How do you know he’s all that?” Jack asked.
“Anybody between me and help for Joe is all that and more,” Mike said.
“You’ve never been overly dramatic before.”
“I’ve never driven through a snow storm with a possibly dying husband in the back seat before.” Mike sighed. “I should take over the driving.”
“It’s not hard. I’m not tired.” It was after three in the morning. “We don’t even need the wipers,” Jack said. “As long as I keep the speed below twenty-five, we’re fine. If I get tired, I’ll tell you. Maybe you should concentrate on keeping that magic gizmo working.”
“It’s fine now.”
“How did he manage to follow us and get ahead of us?”
“Maybe he got a ride in one of those goddamn semis that kept passing us.”
“If we’re lucky, he’ll be stuck there for days.”
“I hate trusting to luck,” Mike said. “I feel like that’s what Joe and I did, and look where it’s gotten us.” He sighed. “I guess for now we don’t have much choice.”
“That cop was pretty pissed off. My dad will tell any lie or make up any story. He’ll give them our names, or if he won’t, the cop might have gotten your license plate number and reported it.”
“We did nothing illegal.”
“Yeah, but that blue glow and the melting snow would be awful hard to explain.”
“I was desperate. Joe has to get to his ship.” Joe had barely moved since they reentered the Interstate. “If necessary we’ll come up with an explanation. Besides the cop couldn’t possibly have known what it really was. We defied him by going back on the road, but I think we’re safe. I hope we’re safe.”
Their progress continued to be slow but steady. They drove for hours and met no one else on the road. Even the semi-trucks had given up.
As dawn approached and the sky began to turn to gray, they encountered
several snowplows, one of which followed them for several miles.
“Those things probably have two-way radios or for sure cell phone communication,” Jack said. “If they’re after us, we could be in trouble.”
“Can’t be helped,” Mike said. But no one tried to stop them.
At the intersection with Interstate 80, they began to see more cars on the road. With the increased traffic, they were forced to slow their speed to match the traffic. The energy field no longer made much difference to their progress. Still they advanced at a steady pace. The glow did melt the snow around them, so they were far less likely to slide. Soon a long line of cars was following them. In the early morning light the blue glow was still noticeable but nowhere near as much as it had been.
