The car shuddered and the steering wheel jerked violently to the right in Claire’s hands. Her attention had wandered for only a moment, but she failed to notice the enormous pothole in the roadway until much too late to avoid driving over it.
Claire’s battered, blue Pontiac veered wildly, leaving the roadway and racing onto the shale and dirt shoulder of New Mexico roadway A025. In a panic, she stomped both feet onto the brake pedal, bringing the vehicle to a sliding halt. A cloud of dust, raised by her uncontrolled entry onto the shoulder and her sudden stop, passed over and around her car as a lazy westerly breeze carried it away. Panting from the sudden shock of her misadventure, Claire sat rigid for a long moment behind the wheel, trying to regain her composure.
She was fortunate the car had veered right. She glanced across the roadway to where a sheer drop-off down the face of the hillside waited for her.
“Oh shit,” she breathed.
Claire unbuckled her seatbelt and exited the vehicle to inspect the extent of the damage. To her horror, she discovered her right front tire completely flattened. She knelt and touched a finger to a gaping tear along the sidewall where the rubber had burst under the pressure of impact with the pothole. The edge of her tire rim was dented and slightly warped as well.
“No, no, no. I don’t have time for this,” she muttered into the palm of one hand.
Claire stood and kicked at the ruined tire in frustration before looking around to assess her situation. In all directions, she found only rock, dirt, and an occasional scrub brush hearty enough to attempt existing in this barren landscape. She had passed the last glimpse of civilization a half hour ago on this road, and she figured it would be at least that long, if not a little longer, if she continued in the directions she was travelling. And, that was if she was driving which, at the moment, she most definitely was not.
The sun sat low on the horizon, one more reminder that she needed to hurry. She had been stupid, she realized, to go so far from home today. She was already pushing her luck before the car broke down. Now, with the flat tire, there was almost no hope of getting back in time.
Reaching into her back pocket, Claire retrieved her phone. The display told her it was 5:48 in the evening. Cell reception was spotty this far out, but that was the least of her worries. Who would she call, anyway? There was no one close enough to come get her.
“This is the perfect place to get murdered,” she sighed, with another helpless look around at the lifeless landscape.
Knowing the effort was pointless, but not willing to completely give up yet, Claire opened the trunk and began pulling out the car’s spare tire and repair kit.
Half an hour later, Claire had figured out how to assemble the jack and raise the front end of the car, and she was diligently struggling to loosen the second of the five lug nuts from the rim. Her full-sized, spare tire lay behind her on the ground where she had let it fall after wrestling it out of the trunk.
As she twisted the lug wrench, fighting against the stubborn nut, pain flared in her chest and her heart began to race. Claire stopped what she was doing, sat down heavily onto the ground and forced herself to take slow, shallow breaths.
“Easy,” she told herself. “Just go easy.”
After several seconds, the pain began to ease. Claire waited a moment longer to be sure it would not return. As she rested, a noise caught her attention, informing her of a new potential problem.
The roar of a vehicle engine in the distance reached her and, off to the east, she caught the flash of headlights in the deepening twilight. Her already precarious situation had just gotten much worse.
Claire crawled back onto her hands and knees and attacked the lug nut once more. She stayed low behind her own vehicle, hoping that if the approaching driver didn’t see anyone around, they would have no reason to stop.
Unfortunately, her hopes were quickly dashed.
A gray, pickup truck with Texas license plates and a crack running through the passenger side of the windshield pulled onto the shoulder and crunched to a gradual stop behind her disabled Pontiac. As soon as the truck stopped, Claire heard the pop of the door latch, and the driver’s side door creaked open. The man that exited was heavyset, bordering on obese, but young enough to still move gracefully despite his bulk. He was bald and his face appeared to have a permanent red flush over his naturally pallid complexion. A denim vest with no shirt underneath revealed a collection of tattoos that climbed from the backs of his hands all the way up to a stylized ring of flames in blue ink around his neck.
“You need some help, darlin’?” the man asked, a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth
“No thank you,” Claire responded, keeping her head down over her lug wrench. “I’m fine. Thanks for stopping, though.”
“Would you like me to change that tire for you?” he persisted, stepping closer.
“I got it. Thanks again.”
“Nonsense. I can’t just leave you here. How about I hang around just to make sure you don’t need anythin’.”
“Please, just go,” Claire begged, pressing her forehead to the metal fender of her car. She remembered her comment when she first saw the flat tire.
This is the perfect place to get murdered.
Her heart began to race again.
The man took one more leisurely step in her direction. “Say, Princess. You’re bein’ a might rude. I think maybe you owe me an apology.”
“Last chance,” Claire gasped as another pain flared in her chest. The burning lowered into her stomach and began to spread.
“I’m not going anywhere. You and me are gonna have a little fun, first. Then maybe, if you’re real nice to me, I’ll help you with that flat tire there.”
Claire thought about the concrete room beneath her house; about the reinforced chains bolted into the walls and the timed locks on the shackles. They would go unused tonight.
Tomorrow, she would wake up naked and covered in blood somewhere in the open expanse of this damned desert. Tomorrow, however, was not her immediate problem.
“Okay, darlin’,” Claire growled. It hurt to talk as her jaw cracked and reformed to accommodate her growing teeth. “Let’s have a little fun.”
J. Allen Wilbanks is a member of the HWA, and has published over 80 short stories in Daily Science Fiction, The Talisman, Deep Magic, and other venues. He has released two short story collections and the novel, When Darkness Comes. For more information, please visit his website at www.gallenwilbanks.com. Bienvenue au Danse, Monsieur Wilbanks!
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