No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

time bomb; a single bad moment away from a seizure, or a
coma, or worse.
So Darby dropped to her bruised knees and started to dig.
“Can I help?” Jay asked.
“No. You can’t over-exert yourself. Just focus on my cell
phone, please. Tell me if it gets a signal.” She lifted a
crumbling snow-boulder and heaved it aside. Her bare fingers
throbbed with coldness.
Seven miles, she thought, glancing downhill.
Seven miles to that jackknifed semi. Could that really be
all? She imagined a busy accident scene down there, swarming
with first responders, bustling with lights and motion. The redand-blue
pulse of police light bars. Road maintenance crews in
reflective jackets. Paramedics inserting tubes into throats.
Dazed victims being evacuated on chattering gurneys.
All of that, just seven miles down the dark road. It didn’t
seem possible.
Seven miles.
State Route Seven was raised here where they’d crashed,
cresting the upper lip of a switchback. The coniferous trees
were at their thinnest, the land rocky and vertical. In daylight,
with clear weather, this might’ve opened up into stunning
mountain panorama. But here and now, it was perhaps the only
stretch of Backbone Pass that had even the barest chance of
catching a cell signal. To hell with Ashley’s Nightmare
Children. In hindsight, she understood that had almost
certainly been another of his lies. Another wicked ruse, to
make her waste her battery.
Another gust of wind breathed up the mountain, creaking
branches, tugging her sleeves, lifting strange swirls of powder
that slithered across the roadway like passing ghosts.
“Hey, Jay,” she panted as she dug, straining for
conversation to fill the eerie silence. Trying to keep the mood