Dreams

Chapter One-Part 2

Stevie Long let out a stream of curses, she applied pressure to the gas and once again had her wheels spinning. The car stayed stuck in the snow. She looked out past her steering wheel and into the dark. The snow was coming down steadily, in big thick flakes. She had been driving almost twenty-four hours and by her calculations, was still over three hours away from Kansas City.

Stevie had planned to stop at any cheap motel she could find on the way to break up the trip but everyone she saw had had no vacancies. As she drove closer, the storm grew thicker. She was keeping her eyes open for a place to stay, but wanted to keep driving into town instead of veering of course to find a place.

She tried, once again, to get the car moving but it was with half a heart. Stevie knew she was stuck and stuck well. This would teach her to drive into the Midwest in her Toyota Prius during the middle of winter. She laughed at the thought of her driving an F-150 or similar truck, she would have been in a ditch well before now.

Stevie loved her little car. It was great on gas mileage, good for the environment and drove like a dream. For the most part it handled well in the snow. Glancing out the window she wondered if anybody would drive by. She hadn't passed a car or a town in miles. Since driving off the road nobody had passed by. Her cell phone lay in her purse and she pressed her lips together as mild irritation started to seep in. She had meant to buy a car charger but it had slipped her mind. Her phone had been dead for a few hours and until now she hadn't even worried about it.

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she debated on what to do next. It wasn't unlike her to be in this situation. She was often forgetting things, or misplacing them. Her cell phone charger was just part of the normal. As far as being stuck, that didn't bother her. She had been stuck in places before. Either running out of gas, getting a flat or whatever else distracted her. She had learned long ago that if you didn't go with the flow the waves would take you under. It was a debate she had with her worry wart of a sister all the time.

Stevie believed whole heartedly that you should not worry about things out of your control. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. Her sister, on the other hand, worried over everything, she stressed herself sick. She popped more antacids in a day than Stevie would her whole life.

Stevie debated for several minutes if she should stay in her car and wait for somebody to come along or get out and walk. She remembered seeing a sign a ways back saying next gas station twenty miles. Figuring she was probably within a few miles of the gas station by now she gave thought to walking to the exit. It would hard, in the heavy snow storm. But not wanting to sit and freeze to death she decided to take the hard way. She wasn't a waiter by nature. Many would call her impatient.

She reached in the backseat and dug into her suit case, by the time she was done she had on two sweaters, her winter coat, two pairs socks, winter boots, jeans, and two pairs of gloves, a thin pair and a thicker pair. She put what she considered essential, for the next twelve hours, into her over sized purse and then she wrapped her scarf around her neck and pulled her hat down over her ears, and then she braced herself and got out of the car.

Mick Brown had the radio blasting as he drove along the icy roads. The wind picked up blowing his truck across the lanes like a toy. He could see no more than five feet in front of him and was making driving near impossible. He had planned to drive all the way back to Kansas City today but got a late start and with the weather he got even more behind.

Mick realized pretty quickly that he wouldn't be making it all the way back tonight, he looked up hotels and motels on his GPS and hadn't got a hit on a room until a small motel about two and half hours out of KC. His GPS told him he was still about forty miles away. He hadn't checked the weather, but heard there might be snow, hadn't heard there was going to be a damn blizzard. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time he had seen a storm so bad.