We stopped about twenty feet back from the big truck. The driver’s door swung open and a pair of black snow boots appeared, followed by a burly bearded guy with a bright orange stocking hat and matching ski bib.
“I’m guessin’ he’s in a pickle,” Harvey muttered.
Natalie cursed. “If he is, then we are, too.”
The snowplow driver gave a come-here wave in our direction.
Doc opened his door. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”
The four of us watched in silence as Doc and the snowplow driver conversed, their scene spotlighted by the headlights. After several slow nods, Doc looked back our way, his face drawn in a frown.
Harvey grunted. “That there look doesn’t make me feel candy bar good.”
My gut sank, too. I would’ve liked to have several candy bars at that moment, so I could shove them all in my mouth and wallow in chocolate until this damn snowy version of Hell went away.
The plow driver headed for his truck. Doc held up his index finger toward us, and then followed after the driver. He stood at the base of the steps leading up into the plow, looking up while the driver leaned inside the open cab.
“What do you think is going on?” I asked. “Are they shutting down the highway? Are we going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard for a week and end up on national news telling the world how we had to eat our leather gloves and boots to make it out alive?”
“Sheesh, Vi,” Natalie said, groaning. “Why do you always think the worst first? Maybe they’re just exchanging phone numbers so they can call each other sometime to meet for a beer.”
I rolled my eyes so hard that my whole head turned along with them, ending up with my chin pointing in her direction. “Dear Lord! Is that the best you could come up with? Exchanging phone numbers in the middle of a freaking blizzard?”
“Violet’s tendency toward negativity may have something to do with her DNA,” Cornelius said, his focus still out the windshield. “Natural-born killers lean toward paranoia over positivity.”
“I’m not negative,” I said. “Or paranoid, either.”
“Corny has a point,” Harvey said. “Ya tend to think the boogeyman is out to get ya more often than not.”
“That’s because the boogeyman is out to get m—”
“Listen.” Natalie held her hand up in my face, quieting me. She inched down her window. A high-pitched whining sound made us all look around through the windows in the back of the SUV.
The whining sound grew louder, coming closer. A snowmobile came into view through the swirling snow. He skirted my Honda and then pulled up next to where Doc was standing. Doc moved back as the snowplow driver stepped down into the snow, closing the plow door. After a handshake with Doc, the driver hopped on the back of the snowmobile and the machine spun around, zipping back past us without even a wave good-bye.
“What the hell?” Natalie mumbled, her face pressed against her window.
My heart pounded. “Uh, please tell me they are just taking a little break and are heading off to make snow angels where we can’t watch.”
Before anyone said anything else, Doc pulled open the door and slid inside. He turned in the seat and looked at me, his face grim. “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“The good,” Cornelius spoke up first. “My grandmother always said to choose positivity in the face of potential doom.”
“Why’s that?” Natalie asked.
“So you can die with a smile on your face.”
I guffawed. “How is that better than being negative?”
Natalie covered my mouth. “Give us the good news, Doc.”
“We have a full tank of gas.”
Oh, crud. Was that the best he could offer? “That was a precaution on my part,” I said, squashing his good news with reality. “Tell me the bad shit.”
“The plow had a hydraulic line burst. That means the driver can’t lower and raise the blade to adjust as he plows. There’s no going forward until they get a mechanic out here to fix the hydraulic line.”
I covered my eyes. “Oh, shit.”
“Now do you want the real good news?” he asked.
I lowered my hand, glaring at him. “I’m going to hurt you when we make it to dry land.”
He grinned. “The good news is we’ve been given orders to wait here.”
“Here?” I gaped, looking out the window at the frozen wasteland around us.
“In the middle of god-forsaken-nowhere?” Natalie asked, finally hopping on my negativity bus.
Doc nodded. “We’re to sit tight.”
“Why?” Harvey asked. “Is San-ty Claus coming to rescue us?”
“Not this time. Your nephew heard about the hydraulic line bursting over the scanner. He left a message for us with the driver.”
“What message?” Natalie asked.
“Coop is on his way.” Doc looked beyond us out the back window. “And he’s bringing the cavalry with him.”
Chapter Eight
If time had taught me anything in this life, it was that too much of it spent with my sister always ended in a heartburning catastro-fuck, much like a volcanic eruption spewing poisonous, stinky gas and molten lava all over my family’s get-togethers.
The burned heart in these explosions belonged to my mom, of course, since she usually blamed herself for the sub-surface tension that led up to the blast. My father often tried to protect Mom from the super-heated, pyroclastic flow once the shit started to fly, but a mere mortal could only work so much magic in the face of sheer doom.
My own beating organ had long ago developed a hard outer layer when it came to Susan, much like the Earth’s crust. As long as I kept away from surefire hot spots, like all-inclusive multi-day family holidays, I remained fissure-free with all of my hot gas locked safely under the surface.
Susan was heartless. Therefore, she was unable to drum up any emotion from the deserted wasteland littered with jagged pieces of obsidian that was located between her lungs. While my parents disagreed
