A Week in the Snow (2 page)

She flipped through the television channels and watched the local news, which was not so different than the news in Miami, though the accents of the newscasters were decidedly different—not as slick and careful, somehow. She watched a bit of a movie, something she vaguely remembered from years ago, but quickly tired of the drama.

She turned the channel again and this time she hit the pay-per-view section. She looked at the listings, and one of them caught her fancy:
Sebastian’s Hot Ride.
She laughed out loud at the name, but that didn’t stop her from clicking on the title. When it asked if she was sure, she clicked on the button that said she was, though she had no idea what she might find. When the images filled the screen, she dropped the remote on the bedside table and stared.

“Jackpot,” she whispered.

The man on the screen was tall, broad-shouldered, unbelievably buff, the kind of man who graced the cover of romance novels. The woman with him was impossibly tiny, her breasts much bigger than God had intended, and she wore nothing but blood red lipstick.

Rebecca watched as the woman lay on the bed and pressed her ample breasts together with her hands, her come-hither eyes making it very clear what the tall stud was supposed to do. He crouched over her and slid his long, thick cock between the white globes. The woman lifted her head a bit, and the camera watched from behind as she sucked his balls into her mouth and worried them with her tongue. The sounds of moans filled the air.

Rebecca’s own moan joined in as she slid a hand between her thighs. The movie was unreal, completely over the top, but that didn’t stop her from looking at the dick and wishing she had one right now. When the man changed positions and got on top of the woman, lifting her legs high in the air and slowly impaling her with his impossibly perfect cock, Rebecca slid a finger inside herself. She imagined the couple on the bed were really her and Gene, and she watched with fascination as they went through every position imaginable. She played with her clit the whole time, backing off when she got too close to the finish, wanting to make it last.

When the man on the screen held the woman by the hips and slowly pushed his dick into her tight ass, stretching her with it, Rebecca came so hard she felt lightheaded.
She watched the movie to the end, hoping to garner some new and interesting positions to use during her time with Gene. When it was over she flipped off the television and lay awake in the darkness, thinking about Gene, and almost wishing she had taken the plane after all.

During the journey, Rebecca stopped often to shoot images that struck her. A field of late-blooming flowers caught her attention, and so did a huge group of wild turkeys. In Tennessee she took pictures of the soaring bridge over the Natchez Trace Parkway. She stopped at a cafe in Kentucky and took pictures of the tractors outside, the farmers at the counter and the waitress who gave her a free scoop of ice cream on top of her apple pie. In Illinois she caught an impressive mass of dark clouds over the flat corn fields while she listened to dire accounts of severe weather on the FM radio stations.

She found old barns everywhere and took enough pictures to create a whole book of them, if she was so inclined. Some of her favourite photographs were those she snapped of the giant windmills. The steel rose imposingly from the ground, at definite odds with the century-old silos and small, squat farmhouses.

She spent the night in a little motel that offered only three channels on the television, no room service and a heater that worked only half the time. There would be no pay-per-view this evening, but she was too tired to care. She cuddled up under the blankets and fell asleep to the buzzing of a neon Vacancy sign outside her window. The new morning dawned crisp and clear, and the neon buzz was replaced with the sound of chirping birds.

In northern Illinois she saw her first snowfall.

Rebecca pulled over to the side of the road when she saw the little white flakes. She stared at the windshield as the snowflakes fell, stuck to the glass for a moment and melted into a drop of water. She was stunned by how pretty they were. She had lived all of her twenty-something years in sunny Miami, where the thermometers never dropped below the fifties. Now that she was seeing snow for the first time, she was utterly fascinated.

Rebecca got out of the car and stood in the cold air, surprised that the temperatures had dropped so quickly. She grabbed her camera, focused on the trunk of her car and tried to get shots of individual snowflakes before they melted. She found it much harder than she had imagined it would be. Finally she put the camera away and simply stood in the softly falling snow, listening to the world around her and breathing deep of the crisp air.

By the time the sun went down, she was crossing the Iowa border. Small farmhouses dotted the landscape, their porch lights shining in the twilight darkness. The snow was falling harder now, and Rebecca drove with her windshield wipers on. The heater in her car had never been used before—why would she ever need it in the Sunshine State? When she turned it on, a burning smell blasted out of the vents. Once the dust was burned away, there was nothing but the blessed heat blowing over Rebecca’s face and feet.

The farmhouses became few and far between, and the road was darker than ever without streetlights to help guide her way. The snow came down furiously, drifting across the road, piling up in the ditches. Mixed in with the snow was a hard ticking sleet, the tiny pieces of ice pinging from her windshield. Her headlights shone on a fury of white as she looked for another porch light, and became increasingly worried when none appeared.

When she glanced down at the gas gauge, that worry turned to near-panic.

She pulled carefully to the side of the road and reached for her cell phone. She dialled Gene’s number and immediately got a beep, followed by another, louder one. She looked at the little glowing screen.

Call failed.

She tried it again, with the same result. There was no signal.

Think, Rebecca. Think. What’s the best thing to do now?

She knew she was on the right road—she had turned on to it several miles back, but she was still a good thirty miles short of where she needed to be. Glancing at the gas gauge one more time, she decided to drive on until she came to another service area. Then she would call Gene, tell him her situation, and ask him to come out and meet her. He knew the roads better than she did, and he knew how to drive on snow. She hadn’t the faintest clue.

Comfortable in her decision, she carefully pulled back on to the road. At first she kept her speed at a crawl, but as she grew more confident in her abilities to drive on the snow-covered road, she pressed harder on the gas pedal.

The tyres lost their grip and the car began to skid.

Rebecca tried to remember what she had learned about snow, and whether she should turn into the skid, or away. Before she could decide, there was a dull thud, and the rear of her car bounced. Another thud, and the car slid into the ditch with an air of finality. The engine stalled, sputtered and died.

Rebecca sat behind the wheel, her knuckles white, staring out of the windshield. She took a deep breath. She closed her eyes as the shakes set in.

It had all happened so fast.

Her hands still shaking, Rebecca reached again for her cell phone. She pressed the button and the blue light of the tiny phone filled the car.

No service.

“Damn it, not now!” Rebecca punched buttons on the phone, as if that would make a difference. She threw it on the dash, grabbed the keys, turned the ignition and heard the satisfying roar of the engine. She cranked up the heat, held her hands in front of the vent for a moment, then put the car into gear. Gingerly she pressed on the gas pedal and felt the tyres catch. They gained traction for a moment but almost immediately slipped again, dumping the car back into the ditch. Rebecca put it in reverse and tried the same thing. No luck.

“Damnation!” she hollered.

She shoved open the car door and climbed out. The ditch was deeper than she had thought and the car was on an angle, so getting to the road was a bit of a struggle. When she turned to look back at the car, she realised it would never come out of there without the help of a tow truck.

The snow was coming down, obscuring everything. It was frigidly cold, like standing in a refrigerator. She got back into the car and slammed the door shut behind her. At least the engine was still running—she held her hands in front of the heater vents, trying to stay warm while she took stock of the situation.

Her phone didn’t work. Her car was definitely stuck. It was still snowing, and now the world was so white she couldn’t see the yellow lines of the road, though she knew they were only a few feet away. There hadn’t been a porch light for miles. She knew which road she was on, but that was all she had in the way of direction.

She was already getting warmer, though. The car’s heater was a dragon of a thing, and would probably keep her toasty warm until the gas ran out.

The gas.

She stared at the gauge. It was sitting at just below a quarter of a tank, which was enough to last for a while, but not nearly enough to last through the night. If she were really as stuck as she seemed to be, that gas wouldn’t hold out long enough.

“Think,” she whispered, fighting against panic. “Think.”

She could walk as soon as the snow let up, and try to find the nearest house. She was wearing tennis shoes, two shirts and jeans—not heavy enough to fight the cold of the snow. She had other clothes in her trunk, including a coat. She could layer all of them if she had to.

But first she would wait for the snow storm to let up, so she could see where she was walking when she did venture out of the car.

Rebecca laid her head back against the seat. The engine was still humming along and the heater was blowing full blast. She was warm in her little cocoon of a car, and for a while she simply watched the snow fall outside the window. She even admired how pretty it was, even though she was scared to death of what might happen if it didn’t let up soon.

When she looked back at the windshield, it was covered. Panic sliced through her, clean and sharp as a razor blade. She sat up to stare at the white. How much snow was out there? She opened the door a bit and watched as it cut a path through the white drifts, proof that the snow was at least a foot deep, maybe more.

Deep enough to cover the tailpipe?

The sobering thought sent her out into the snow in a hurry. Rebecca pushed the door open all the way, climbed out into snow that now came up well past her ankles, and struggled to the back of the car. The tailpipe wasn’t blocked, but it was close. She knelt in the snow, cursed as it soaked through her jeans, and pushed handfuls of it away with her hands. It was still coming down, hard enough to make her efforts seem lost in the blizzard.

“That’s what this is,” she murmured to herself, her teeth already chattering. “This is a blizzard.”

She cleaned around the tailpipe as well as she could, then trudged back to the car, where she leaned towards the heater vents. Her hands were already numb. The cold had seeped through her jeans and now seemed to cool her whole body, making her tremble from head to toe. The heater warmed her quickly, but she knew any chance of finding a house with a glowing porch light was quickly disappearing under the threat of that heavy, wet snow.

She gripped the wheel, leant back against the seat and hollered her frustration at the top of her lungs. The sound filled the little car, but did absolutely nothing to make her feel better. She slammed her fist down on the dashboard, and that immediately made her feel guilty. The car was doing a good job of keeping her warm, after all. She laid her head on the steering wheel and squeezed her eyes shut.

“I will not cry,” she chanted. “Will not, will not, will not.”

Outside the snow kept falling, turning the landscape into an endless world of white.

Chapter Two

Richard Paris strapped on his helmet and eyed the snow. The forecast hadn’t anticipated this much, but he wasn’t surprised—when Iowa decided on snow, nobody knew when it would end, not even the meteorologists. Tomorrow morning there would be abashed apologies about the forecast on the morning news, but nobody really minded. There was nothing more unpredictable than Mother Nature, especially in October.

The snowmobile had been sitting idle all year, just waiting for a night like this. The highway patrol had closed down the roads, which was a moot point, because the roads were impassable by now anyway. Only snowmobiles could make their way through until morning, when the road-clearing equipment would come out with a vengeance, ready to do battle against all the white stuff. From the looks of things already, the roads would be impassable tomorrow, too.

Richard climbed on to the big machine with a grin of anticipation. He remembered this feeling from being a kid, when the snow would come down and school would be cancelled. His mother would make him bundle up in layers and layers of clothing, so much fabric he could hardly walk, and he would waddle down to the garage and find the sled. Long, sleek, long ago painted yellow but now a mellow gold colour, it would beckon him from the corner. After moving away a year’s worth of stuff—in his father’s garage, there was always a mountain of odds and ends—he would set the sled on the snow. He remembered how it would slide out of his hands almost immediately, ready to run on the ice.

Though it had been years and years, he’d never forgotten what it was like.

Richard turned the key in the ignition and the snowmobile gave a mighty roar. It choked out a bit of smoke before it ran clean and easy, a finely-tuned machine ready to have some fun. Thirty years fell away as Richard leaned over the handlebars, released the brake and cranked up the gas.

“Yeah, baby, run!”

The snowmobile shot out of the driveway like a machine possessed. The blades slipped across the snow and the engine hummed as Richard turned into the road, fishtailed a little, then straightened up and gave it more power. The snowmobile gained in speed and Richard put his head closer to the machine, peering through the windshield as he left tracks on the pristine snow.