ALL CHARACTERS ARE ADULTS.
Robin Rizzo stood beneath the porte-cochere at the entrance of the Long Island Convention Centre. She pulled her handbag close to her side, gripped her briefcase firmly, studied the sky, then lifted her wrist and checked the time. Five o'clock. The forecast called for no rain and she left her raincoat and umbrella at home in Valencia County. She looked at the sky again, thinking. Her Sebring sat on the street two blocks away. The lightning strikes weren't close.
"Shouldn't be a big problem," she decided, and bolted into the open, running for her car.
Almost immediately things went from bad to worse: the sky turned green beneath its cover of gray clouds, then the clouds lowered and became black. The courthouse flags flapped in the breeze. Cellophane wrappers pin-wheeled over the streets and sidewalks. Some of this trash snagged in hedges or blew beneath newspaper boxes. The wind whooshed through the tops of the oaks, too. And raindrops fell in fat gobs, like pigeon shit, out of the blue.
Smokers loitering around the square, seeing the rain moving forward in a lateral, gray wall, like a regiment of rebel soldiers in a skirmish line, nigger-lipped or daintily puffed final drags from their smokes, then flipped them to the pavement. One smoker crushed and twisted her smoldering cigarette with her high-heel, then fled inside.
Thunder rumbled close by, lightning flashed too far away to hear, and the rain fell heavy and thick. Runoff soon covered the streets to the tops of the curbs. Orange street lamps awoke in the darkness and glowed soberly. Blinking traffic lights rocked and swayed in the wind. The Jollyville City Bus stopped at the courthouse across from the convention center; a woman with soggy, matted hair stepped off, then struggled to open and control her umbrella in the wind. The wind lifted the woman's dress to the top of her legs and pressed the wet fabric tightly against her thighs and hips.
Robin ran as fast as she dared, down the sidewalk, across the street to the opposite side, then down the sidewalk to the intersection. She had the 'cross' light and ran into the street where she stepped into a pothole, lost her balance, and fell face first onto the pavement and into the water. No one saw her distress or plight; her ankle was sprained and two of her nails broke from the collision with the pavement. Every other pedestrian had fled indoors.
Drenched and dirty, Robin sat up, collected her bag and briefcase, and assessed her situation. The bag was filled with water. She emptied it and checked her cell phone. Dead. The heel from one shoe was lost. Nothing seemed broken, though, and she pushed herself up and limped toward her car with an unbalanced gait.
Inside her car Robin pressed her brow against the steering wheel and cried, and when she finished crying she reached for a Kleenex or handkerchief to wipe her face, and both were sopping wet. She dried the wet ignition key with her slip, then cranked the Sebring's engine, switching the window defogger and wipers on before pulling into traffic. Home was a good three hours away with the rush, and the entrance ramp for the expressway was clogged with cars creeping along in the deluge.
On the expressway, at last, Robin and the traffic moved slowly away from Jollyville. She checked the time. Six o'clock. Then the phone. Nothing.
Dark arrived soon enough, and the storm poured atop Robin as she crept ever closer to Bay City. Her sprained foot tormented her, and she was physically and mentally drained from the fall and the stress from driving in bad weather.
She looked at her watch and thought, "Another hour or so should do it."
Rolling along in the rain, a large truck slowed up beside her, covering her windshield with splashed water and spray from the road. Her windshield wipers were useless in the assault of rain and road-water. She slowed the Sebring to let the truck get ahead of her and the truck slowed, too. She pressed the accelerator to get ahead of the truck and the truck matched her. She considered pulling over but couldn't see the shoulder through the rain. She backed off again, and the truck did the same.
"Surely he can't be doing this on purpose!"
She tried slowing again and a car behind her was quickly on her bumper and riding the horn. Robin sped up. The car rode her bumper.
"What an idiot!"
A mile further along the truck abruptly switched lanes forcing Robin onto the shoulder and down an exit ramp that suddenly materialized out of the night. She barely saw the stop sign ahead, and skidded the Sebring trying to stop on the wet, oily roadway. The honker followed her down the ramp, laid on the horn again, then drove around her, vanishing into the dark.
"Where am I?" She looked around.
Across the intersection the information signage was missing from its mast.
"Damn kids!
"Be calm, Robin!" She told herself.
"Which way?" She wondered.
"If I go right that should take me to 301."
She turned the Sebring's wheels to the right, looked down the road, and gunned the motor. She passed a hitch-hiker.
'I don't think so!' She said to herself.
Robin soon discovered that the road passed through the Valencia National Forest, an immense tract of wilderness preserved for habitat, recreation, and logging. The wilderness tract was lonesome and dark most of the time, especially at night during a storm.
Five miles into the forest Robin came upon a hazard blinker and a DETOUR sign pointing her to a gravel road through the black woods.
Two miles up the gravel road a deer leaped across her path; Robin veered to miss it and the Sebring sank to its axles in the soft, muddy shoulder.
Robin gunned the engine and the rear wheels spun in their muddy cradles. She checked the Sebring's GPS navigation and confirmed she was in the middle of nowhere on a gravel road. She pressed her brow against the steering wheel and cried again, then cursed, then accepted the situation.
"Someone will come along in the morning," she assured herself.
She sat in the dark with her head resting against one hand, her elbow resting atop the door. Far away, up the road, she saw headlights and became excited.
"Help!"
She flashed the Sebring's headlights, waited, and watched the other vehicle turn off the road about a quarter mile from her. Within fifteen minutes she noticed a faint light through the woods in the area the other vehicle had gone.
"A house?" She wondered.
She contemplated her circumstances, for long minutes, and decided to test her luck walking to the source of the light.
Robin forced the car door open, collected her bag, got out, locked the car, and limped off into the storm. Three times along the way, her sprained foot twisted in the mud and she feared she would faint from the pain. But the pain was brief, and within an hour she discovered a rustic cottage at the end of a driveway that connected to the gravel road. An old truck was parked in front of the house. Lights were on inside.
"Prob'ly a toothless sociopath butchering a virgin," she feared.
Robin limped to the door and knocked. Then knocked again. She was drenched and cold, and screamed when a large hand touched her shoulder.
"Can I help you?" A male voice spoke.
"Jesus Christ! You scared the crap out of me!" Robin barked. "I really need to get home or use your phone. My car is stuck back down the road, and I'd really, really appreciate it."
"Come on inside," he said.
"No, I don't think I want to. Thank you anyway. Do you have a phone I can use?" Robin was a small woman, less than five feet tall, and the man seemed huge to her.
"I'm sorry, but I don't have a phone."
"HE IS A KILLER!" She thought. "Could you maybe give me a lift to the highway in your truck? Look, I'll pay you for your trouble!"
"Okay. Where do you live? Maybe I could drive you home?"
"Is he nuts?" She thought. "Bay City. Just take me someplace with a pay phone and I can call someone to come for me." Robin deftly pressed a hand against a window pane so her prints might be found if anything sinister happened. She did the same when she got inside the truck.
'Bruce' was the man's name. He cranked up the truck, drove down his drive, and turned onto the gravel road.
"Do you need to stop at your car?" He asked.
"Please," she replied.
Bruce pulled up beside the Sebring and stopped. Robin fetched her briefcase and returned to the truck. She remained silent, alert, and thinking, as he drove towards the paved state road. Then, less than a mile away, a large pine lay across the way.
"Let's go the other direction," Robin ordered.
"Cant," Bruce said.
"Why not!"
"The road cuts across a swamp and is under water."
"I need to get home! I am not spending the night out here in the boonies with a man who could be a killer!" Robin was close to her limit for frazzled.
