Not Quite Forever

Walt tried yelling at Larry over the noise of the engines. “It’s an old campground.”

“That explains a lot. Think they could have gotten turned around in here?”

“Maybe.”

Something out of place sounded behind him. Walt turned toward the noise. “Did you hear that?”

Larry shook his head. “What?”

“Chance, kill the engine.”

Walt made a cutting motion with his hand to the other driver.

With the noise down to nothing but the bubbling liquid inside the engines, Walt tilted his head.

The hope that had filled him a moment before drowned as he heard nothing but silence.

“Now I’m hearing things.”

Larry cursed. “We’ll find them.”

Walt was punchy, tired, and so fucking scared he couldn’t see straight. “You circle around east, we’ll take the west, meet back here.”

“Sounds good.”

Chance started the engine again when Walt heard the noise. “Turn it off,” he yelled.

Every hair on his arms stood. A horn. Weak but clear. He caught three short honks, three long, three short.

“Holy shit,” Larry yelled.

“Where’s it coming from?” The noise bounced off the trees, making it sound like it was behind them, then in front of them.

Walt thought he saw a flash of light, only to look over his shoulder to notice the flashing lights of the plow.

He pointed behind them. “I’m going that way, circle the back side. Someone is out here.”

Larry smiled for the first time in two days.

Dakota once again huddled next JoAnne, and forced her eyes to close. Sleeping while she was mostly warm was safer than doing so while freezing.

Slumber knocked on the backs of her eyelids. She imagined the warm breeze off the ocean, the gentle waves. Didn’t Monica say she and Trent had a vacation home in Jamaica? God, that sounded really good.

The hum inside her head had been there for hours. She didn’t want to acknowledge the headache or the possibility that her blood pressure might be taking a hike on the high road.

She ignored the hum and snuggled deeper under the blankets.

The hum grew and Dakota jumped.

She peered outside the car and screeched when she noticed a distant fading light.

“Oh, God.” She jumped over the seat, sent JoAnne flying.

She hit the horn, let it blare. When she turned on the lights, they faded.

“What is it?”

“Help.” Dakota pointed out the window. “They can’t hear us. Grab the flashlight.”

JoAnne scrambled out from the covers, grasped the flashlight, and waved it out the window.

Dakota opened the door, ignored the biting cold, and ran to the back of the car.

The lights connected to the hum moved farther away.

She dug in her bag, found the flare, and flinched when she sparked it to life.

With the red glow sloshed in three feet of snow, waving it. “Here! Hey!”

JoAnne laid a palm into the horn.

“Oh, God, no.”

The vehicle moved away from them.

Dakota screamed.

She tried to run, fell flat on her face and nearly doused the light of the flare.

The horn lost its power but that didn’t stop JoAnne from yelling out the window.

Dakota turned to look at the car, noticed a second light.

Changing her focus, she waved at the second set of lights, the ones moving closer. “Look!” she yelled and pointed.

JoAnne turned, flashed the light in a new direction.

The lights on the plow turned off and then on again.

They see us.

Dakota moved to JoAnne’s side. They hugged each other. “They found us.”

“They did.”

The plow stopped feet from the car, and someone from the passenger seat swung down from the cab.

“Dakota? Mom?”

“Walt!”

“Walter.”

They crawled over the snow and met somewhere in the middle. Bundled and hardly recognizable, Walt pulled them both into his arms.

“Thank God.”

Joy came in the way of heat as it spread all over her limbs. Tears, the good kind, fell down her cheeks.

JoAnne was laughing with nerves. “About time you found us.”

Walt laughed and soon Dakota joined in.

He pulled away and looked in her eyes. “Are you OK?”

“I am now.”

He kissed her, as if she were a lifeline and he was on his last breath. He stopped long enough to hug them both again, then ushered them inside to the warmth of the plow.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Calls were made long before they arrived at the house. Walt didn’t let go of Dakota’s gloved hand the entire trip down the hill.

His mother’s story kept him from needing to ask anything.

“It’s my fault really. I shouldn’t have distracted Dakota. We got turned around. I thought I could get us back to the house the back way.”

“We looked there.”

“We obviously didn’t get there. We drove in circles until Dakota put her foot down and we stopped.”

Walt kissed Dakota’s forehead.

“She’d filled the car with water and food. Such a smart girl you have here, Walter.”

Dakota glanced over Walt’s shoulder at his mother. “We bonded.”

“It seems that way.”

His mom laughed. “I suggest a spa weekend if we need more bonding. I think it might be time for your father and I to find a second home in Arizona. Do they call that snowbirds? Living in one place during the summer and a warm place in the winter?”