No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

3:45 a.m.
“Oh, shit.”
Darby cranked into reverse. Tried again. Throttled it,
again and again. No luck; the tires spun until the cab stank
with scorched rubber.
The truck was stuck there, facing the wrong way on the
rightmost northbound lane of State Route Seven, just ahead of
the blue REST AREA sign. She craned her neck to look back
through the splintered rear window — all in all, she’d made it
less than fifty feet down the highway. A quarter-mile from the
Wanapani building, tops. She could still see the orange parking
lot lights through a copse of jagged Douglas firs. It didn’t
actually matter if they found their keys, because Ashley and
Lars were still within walking distance.
“Shit-shit-shit.” She punched the wheel, accidentally
blaring the horn.
Jay looked back, too. “Can they catch up to us?”
Yes, yes, yes, a hundred-percent yes—
“No,” Darby said. “We drove too far. But stay inside.” She
opened the driver door, sprinkling loose bits of glass, and slid
out into the deep snow. She felt old and tired. Her bones
ached. Her eyes still stung with pepper spray.
“What are you doing?”
“Digging us out.” She circled the Ford’s front bumper,
squinting in the half-submerged headlights. Her stomach
plunged when she saw the huge mound of displaced snow,
sloughed into a rolling snowball in front of the truck’s grill. It
must have been a hundred pounds, maybe more, as dense and
hopeless as wet cement.
She almost collapsed at the sight of it. The enormity of it.
But then her eyes fell on the little girl behind the cracked
windshield, on the verge of an Addisonian crisis. An anxiety-