I stared at Nancy for what felt like years before I finally saw her move again. She just shifted in her seat a little at first, then started to reach up towards her head. I felt a weight lift off my heart – I hadn’t killed the poor thing after all.
“Stay here, sweetie,” I told her, leaning across the seat and giving her a hug. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
It wasn’t a lie, exactly. I certainly hoped that was what would happen, though I had my doubts. But I had to do something… Nancy may have gotten us into this mess, but I was the one who’d crashed the car and trapped us here. And, besides, Nancy was helpless now, innocent. Looking over at her, in her little dress and her wet diaper, I couldn’t bring myself to blame her for anything that had happened.
So I got out of the car, making sure to lock all of the doors before closing mine, and hiked up the ditch to the trunk. I wasn’t sure how much good it would do against this guy, since he obviously had some kind of magic mojo working for him, but the tire iron made me feel a little more confident that I wasn’t just blindly heading into his path, a lamb to the slaughter. I didn’t bother to close the trunk before running off down the road, towards the sound of his engine, wanting to keep him as far away as I could.
How exactly I was going to do that, I hadn’t quite figured out – I didn’t so much have a plan as a general desire to keep Nancy safe. I knew his truck was big enough that it could probably run me over without a second thought, but I was hoping that he wanted a little more than to just kill us. Then again, I didn’t know if he cared about me either way; he could just be after Nancy.
I guess I could have tried to hurl the tire iron through his windshield as he drove by or something, but I didn’t trust my aim enough to risk my one weapon that way. So, as I saw the headlights coming around a corner, I simply stood there, in the center of the road, staring them down. I could feel my teeth rattling in my skull as the truck grew nearer and nearer. “Come on!” I screamed at it, half wishing he would just run me down and get it over with.
As if reading my mind, he decided to defy me, instead opting to pull over to the side of the road. It sat there, rumbling, a beast ready to pounce. I didn’t give the man the satisfaction of watching him, chancing he would see the fear in my gaze, though from the corner of my eye, I saw him moving about. Was he deciding whether I was worth getting out for? He did seem the sort that took the time to think through his decisions, the kind who had a plan that he liked to stick to, and hated it when somebody, like me, threw a wrench into it. I could only hope that was the case, and I had pissed him off, even just a little. A few moments later, the truck turned off, and the door opened.
My fingers tensed around the tire iron, as I tried to prepare myself for whatever he could possibly throw at me. He stepped out of the truck, gliding effortlessly towards me, looking taller in the darkness, at least until he banished it by flicking on the lighter again. Then he looked taller in the faint light sent off by the flame,.
“Well, little lady,” he said, a smile playing across his half-lit face, fire reflecting off his too-white teeth, “are you two all right? I saw you run off the road up there, thought I’d come make sure everything was fine.”