Friday, December 4, 2009

Route Eighty-Ate

"Hot town, summer in the city..." crooned out of the radio as Lenny bounced along a snowy route 88.  The little Volkswagon was buzzing through the shallow snow drifts up the valley at a pretty good clip but Lenny was worried that if he did stop he wasn't going to get started again.  Visibility in the failing sunlight was low, but it was still better than the blinding glare that he had expected before the snow began to fall in the late afternoon, obscuring the sky.

This job better be worth it, he thought to himself.  It didn't pay a lot and it was way over in Tankerville, a backwater upitty little place through the Deepfoot Valley along Route 88, but heck if it wasn't better than anything he'd found in Thornton.

A pair of dim headlights peaked out of the canvas of falling snow in the oncoming lane and Lenny tightened his grip on the wheel; you never quite expected the full force on the wheel from passing another vehicle in snow this deep.  He idly hoped this one wasn't bigger than an SUV but Lenny wasn't overly worried; he'd driven in bad weather before and he always made it where he was going because of his one simple rule: never, ever stop moving.

1 comment:

  1. Oh Lenny is so going to die... This was from a writing prompt in class of "Winter" and man did that make me want to kill some poor schlub. Problem is I want him to die, but he might not. I have an idea for him to stop (later after the snow gets pretty bad) for some 'bad decision' (maybe a hitchhiker) breaking his own rule and getting stuck, and then for him to be rear-ended by a rig with a station-wagon slipstreaming behind him. Maybe some people die, but they are all stranded in that mountain pass for 24 hours or more as a full-fledged blizzard closes the valley down. An eclectic mix of people, alone with a hodgepodge of supplies and injuries, on route Eighty-Ate. Point of intrigue, why _really_ doesn't the rig's CB work? Does it have anything to do with the college-age daughter of the stationwagon driver and the truckers dark comments? Is Lenny the hero we want or the victim he sees himself as? Are they all dead anyways? My dark, King-inspired story awaits!

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