WhiteOut

WhiteOut


The cell phone lay open by his head. Merciless gravity jammed his cheek down against the bitter cold roof. The rest of his body was hung up by the steering wheel and tangled in his seat belt. Clearly, his neck was broken. Right?

She tried not to look at his face, but she could not tear her eyes away. Blood poured from his nose and pooled against his cheek.

She clawed her way in through the smashed passenger window toward the cell phone. Digging her knees into the thin layer of snow that blanketed the road, closer and closer with each second, her nearly frozen hands pulled her aching body along the roof of the vehicle. She felt some of the jagged teeth of glass from the opening bite into her skin through the thigh of her jeans, but she knew that she could not stop to inspect her wound.

Night was coming.




The girls watched the rear lights of the Jacob’s Ford Explorer through the blowing snow as they followed in Cara’s minivan. The twists and turns of Bedford road, along with the frequent gusts of white-out snow, made visibility difficult unless they stayed close.

“Picked a fine day to make the move.” Even though the minivan’s heat was turned up to roasting level, Cara wore her purple winter jacket and clutched the steering wheel with gloved hands. Sitting ramrod straight, she would not let herself lean back in her seat. “Couldn’t just wait til the storms weren’t in the forecast. Noooooo. You know Michigan. If you don’t’ like the weather now, just wait a day!”

Becky’s lined denim coat lay in a ball in the back seat among Jake’s things. She had long ago pulled her gloves off and continued to wipe the sweat from her face with one of them. Her wavy dark hair was damp and her bangs were pasted to her forehead. “I feel like a Thanksgiving day turkey in here.”

Cara ignored the comment. “Why’s he goin so slow?” She eyed the digital clock above the stereo. “It’s almost 7:00.”

“How bout we turn it down just a bit?” She slid the knob down a couple levels and Cara didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t think snowflakes should sizzle when they hit the glass.”

“Story of my life, I guess,” Cara said ranting on, still not involved in her friend’s remarks.

Jacob’s SUV carried his bedroom furniture, clothes and television. Cara and Becky toted along with his hunting equipment, books, and a bookcase. After they dropped all of it off at his new apartment in Battle Creek, they’d have to go back for more.

“Really, girl, you know how lucky you are?” Becky tilted her head in order to see around the patch of ice and snow on the windshield that the wiper blade continually missed. “Some day, I hope I’ll be as lucky.”

Cara took her eyes off the road to glare at her best friend. She knew that Becky had a thing for her boyfriend. That’s why she wouldn’t support her like a good girlfriend should when she got into moods like this one. Cara also knew that Becky was way too plump to ever act on any desires she had for Jacob. Certainly, he may have thought she was cute but there was no way Jacob would ever go after a fatty.

Other incredibly mean thoughts swirled in Cara’s brain some more, but her cell phone went off before she could unleash them. “Hey Jake.”

Becky smiled as if the call was right on cue. She pulled the back of her chubby hand up to her mouth and pretended to make-out with it noisily, a pantomime they had played on each other since fifth grade.

Cara took her steering hand off the wheel and swatted at her shoulder. Then quickly gripped the wheel again. The minivan swerved suddenly but stayed on course. The goofy smile on Becky’s face vanished as she grabbed the arm of her seat and the door defensively.

“Whoa, ladies, what’s goin on there?” Jacob said evenly into Cara’s ear. “No messing around. These roads are bad.”

“It’s good. Becky’s just distracting me. That’s all. Yeah, she does that.”

“Ok, in a few minutes we’ll pass through Bedford. After that, the road’ll get worse. Be careful, babe. There isn’t’ a lot of traffic that goes through here this time a’ year.”

Cara felt like saying, “Well why are WE then?” But she heard the genuine concern in his voice. The fact that she knew he loved her made how she felt so hard.

“Can’t wait to get this move outta the way so we can relax.” His country boy charm came through the phone.

“I know. Me too.”

“Love you.”

Cara replied loudly and clearly so Becky would hear. “I love you too.”

Becky clamped her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter, only half succeeding.

Cara rolled her eyes.

“Ok, Ok, ladies. Call me if you need anything. Remember, be careful.”

“We will. Bye.” She closed her phone and set on the dashboard.

“I LOVE YOU CARA!” Becky sang. “You got it made,” she laughed. “Pick out any kid names yet? He called us “ladies”, didn’t he?”

Cara stared at the snow and sleet as it crashed against the windshield and vaporized. She watched the wipers quickly brush it away, clearing her view to Jacobs red taillights. As the tires battled the snow and slush on the road, she tightened her grip and held the minivan steadily on the spotted asphalt.

“You don’t understand.” She paused. “Though I suppose you wouldn’t.” Because you’ve never had a boyfriend.

“Understand what?” Becky looked at Cara’s silhouette against the fogged up side window. “I understand you’re never satisfied. That you have so much, but . . . nevermind. You don’t wanna hear it.”

“It’s just like this trip. . . . You see?” She swallowed. “A bad weather night. His truck ahead of us provides visibility. Provides comfort. Safety. But he also holds us back. I can only go as fast as he does.”

“What? You don’t like his driving?” Becky looked confused.

“Kinda.” Cara replied as if Becky was continuing the metaphor. “But it’s more than that. That could be my whole life!”

“You’re getting too deep for me, sister.”

Cara sighed. “I figured.”

“This isn’t about breaking up again, is it?” she sighed. “A fool would dump a guy like Jake. You’re no fool, babe.” Becky paused, “I mean, really, where’s my Prince Charming?

Cara bit her tongue.

“So college is on hold. Big deal. Jake’s new job is gonna make things set for you guys. I think he needs your support.”

“You and my mom sharing notes?”

“No. But that’s a good point. What would your folks say? I mean, you wanna piss everyone off? Throw the world off kilter? One thing for sure is meant to be and that‘s you and Jake.”

Cara fumed, but didn’t speak to her friend for the next ten minutes. Instead, she studied the graying world outside her windshield. The way everything flew sideways, not straight down. The way the night and the wind did its best to snuff out the flakes of white. Chaos lived out there. Not rules.

“Meant to be,” she mumbled and slammed her hand on the steering wheel.

A powerful gust of wind and sleet struck the side of the minivan. A whiteout engulfed the vehicle, cutting off sight of the Explorer. Without seeing the taillights ahead of her, she had no way of knowing if Jacob slowed down or stopped completely. She tapped the brakes to give herself more reaction time.

The phone rang suddenly. Becky grabbed it. “Hello?”

“Where’d you guys go? I lost ya.”

“We’re here. We slowed down.”

Cara scanned the dense cloud of snow, looking for lights of any sort. Taillights, street lights, lit up business signs. They must be to Bedford by now. “I don’t like this. Can’t see a thing.”

Becky pushed the speaker option on the phone.

Jacob piped, “It clears up up ahead of you. This is really weird.”

“What’s weird?” Cara leaned forward, squinting into the white.

“Just so quiet.”

As if they exited a tunnel, the world outside instantly became clearer. Jacob’s glowing red lights appeared in front of them through the blowing snow. They rolled forward.

With an explosive howl, a burst of snow swallowed both of them, cutting off their visibility to only a few feet in front of their vehicle. Jacob for some reason slammed on his brakes and fishtailed sideways and Cara’s minivan rolled into the back corner of his SUV. Both girls heard the crunch of his taillight against their front bumper.

“Look!” Becky pointed into the blizzard. “Whitetails.”

Still shaken up, Cara leaned forward in enough time to see the last of three whitetail deer bound over the large ditch that ran along Bedford road. “Oh my god. Thought,” she breathed, “ I was gonna die. Dad’s gonna be pissed though.”

In that instant, something larger, much larger, slammed into the side of the Jacob’s SUV. The impact raised the driver’s side tires of the SUV off the snowy asphalt nearly a foot. When the force relented, the vehicle fell back to the pavement and bounced several times before settling. Then the girls watched Jacob get rocked again. The latest attack was followed with a thunderous roar.

Cara and Becky saw movement within the cloud of white. A wide furry torso and the enormous brown head of a bear, whose girth rivaled that of the Ford Explorer it had assaulted, revealed itself. It shoved Jacob again, as the curtain of snow blew away. The Ford bounced back to the pavement as it did before.

The girls clamped their hands over their ears as the beast, back arched, bellowed again in presumed rage. Becky whimpered painfully as if noises were being squeezed from her body without her permission. Cara’s chest rose and fell rapidly to the point of near hyper-ventilation. She looked at her friend.

“He looking . . .at . . .us?” Becky managed to gain a little more control.

“I think so.”

The bear brushed his nose against the grill of Cara’s minivan. They felt the thump vibrate through the body of the vehicle. Then it nudged them again, harder.

Suddenly, the cell phone rang. The alarm filled the vehicle like a siren, deafening them as it taunted the girls from the dashboard. Cara’s hand shook as she slowly reached out for it, careful not to attract attention with her movement. Jake’s name flashed on the small screen.

As if the cell phone agitated it, the creature let out another explosive roar and pounced on the hood of the minivan. It instantly caved in from the pressure of the beast. The snout a few feet from the windshield and its jaws agape, the girls braced themselves as the beast furiously shook the minivan.

The phone slid off from the dash and Cara managed to catch it. When the attack finally relented, she opened the phone and slowly lifted it to her ear. Jacob called her name, but she was too afraid to answer, thinking that the wrong sound would set the bear into another rage.

“Oh, god. Are you ok?” Jacob asked through the phone.

The bear let out a restless groan. With its front paws still perched on the wrecked hood of the minivan, it studied the girls. They tried not to flinch at the sound of crunching metal as the bear shifted its weight.

Tentatively, she answered, “He’s staring right at us.”

Trying to be as far away as possible, Becky pinned her head and shoulders back into the passenger seat as the animal’s nose glided over the windshield. It’s hot breath clouded up a two foot section of the glass. “Somebody tell me why Yogi’s not sleeping yet?” she whispered.

Jake’s came into Cara‘s ear. “Are you ok?”

“Fine. Right now,” she answered.

“Ok,” he said. “My shotgun is in the back seat there. You’ll have to unzip the gun bag. The shells . . . “

“A shotgun? Jacob, I . .”

He cut her off. “Don’t talk. Just listen. The shells are in a box on the floor behind your seat. You’ve seen me load it before. I know you have. Remember? You need to pump it to eject a shell after you fire.”

“I remember.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

Becky asked, “What is happening?”

Cara shushed her.

“When he moves away your van . . .” She heard him take a deep breath. “You need to get it and load it ASAP. Aim for the head. ‘Kay?”

“Yes.” She could not believe that she was doing this. Staring into the dark eyes of the beast, the winter wind swirled around them. “Wait, how are you . . . ?”

“Here goes, babe.” And the line went dead.

They heard Jacob hit the horn on the Explorer, over and over again. Short blasts mixed with long ones.

The bear swung his gigantic head around, pulling his weight off from the minivan. Bellowing, it rose up on it’s hind legs and towered over the SUV. The animal pounded its paws down on Jacob’s roof, causing the driver’s side window to explode from the pressure.

The girls saw Jacob shield himself from the flying glass with his arm. Now! Go! Now! She pleaded with her body to move. When it finally kicked in, it was as if lightning had shot through her limbs. She burst into the back seat past screaming Becky. Under the boxes and a couple bags she came up with the twelve gauge. Unzipped the bag. Then searched the floor of the vehicle for the box of shells.

“What is happening! Cara! No!” Becky screamed. “No!”

Cara raised her head above the seat. The beast continued to assault the Explorer. Jake kept up with the horn despite the attack. With another mighty shove, the battered Ford flipped onto its side. They heard the contents of the vehicle go crashing to the passenger side. More breaking glass. Jacob’s horn kept blasting. Another monstrous blow rolled the Explorer onto its roof. The SUV teetered on the side of the ditch.

The horn stopped.

“Oh my god!” Becky’s hand shot to her mouth.

Cara watched the bear as she blindly grabbed at the floor for the shells. Suddenly, the interior lights came on. She felt the cold air hit her face. And she watched her best friend leave the minivan.

Without her coat, dressed in only a sweater and jeans, Becky waved her chubby arms as if she were signaling an aircraft. “Hey! Hey! Look! Hey . . . .get away from there! Shoo!” she cried. “Stop! Please stop!”

With the box of shotgun shells, finally, in her hand, Cara dumped them out onto the floor. She inserted three shells, then two more into the tube on the underside of the barrel of the weapon, like she had seen Jake do. Then she pumped the handle with her left hand to bring a shell up into the chamber.

By the time she exited the minivan and brought the gun up to her shoulder, the bear was on top of Becky. Cara could not see her friend’s body struggle under the hulking torso of the beast, but she could hear her scream and grunt as she fought.

She pulled the trigger. With fire and thunder erupting from the barrel, the shotgun recoiled back into her shoulder. Her body jerked back as she caught the butt of the weapon. The shot flew off target, high and to the right.

The animal backed off from Becky briefly to investigate the noise. It turned its head in her direction.

With the strength she had left, Cara pumped out the spent shell and cocked a new one into the chamber. Tightening the shotgun butt against her shoulder to lessen the impact of the recoil, she brought the weapon up again.

Deafened by the last shotgun blast, Cara could only hear the pounding of her own heart as she faced the beast. Exhausted by fear, the gun grew heavy. Her knees wobbled. She wept without knowledge of it.

Almost appearing intrigued by a new adversary, the bear turned away from Becky. Like maneuvering a van, it took a moment to align the full heft of its wide body with her. The beast roared through a blood-smeared snout.

With another yank of the trigger, a portion of fur on the bear’s neck exploded into a red spray. Cara fired again before the animal could charge. It’s torso, above the left front leg absorbed the grouping of buckshot. The coarse scent of gunpowder heightened as the ejected shell flipped to the pavement. The creature wilted.

Despite her frazzled nerves and the resistance of nearly every muscle in her body, she forced herself to move forward. Cara fired again in mid stride. Lung shot. The bear’s front legs gave away and its chest collapsed onto the cold pavement. Finally, the back legs followed and the entire length of the animal lay on the road.

Cara stood over the bear. It wheezed and pawed at the air.

Cara searched the snow with her eyes for the body of her friend. Becky had managed to drag herself away to a cold patch of asphalt that was free of snow. Her cheeks fluttered in and out as she labored to breath. Both of her hands pressed into her mid-section in a failing attempt to hold her guts in. A puddle of blood widened around her with every few seconds.

Cara paused to wipe her tears away with the forearm. The frozen wind bit her face. The bear groaned and showed her its pink teeth. She poked the bear in the eye with the barrel of the shotgun and pulled the trigger. A mass of brain and bone exited the back of its head.





When Cara found her cell phone laying in the snow, she worried that she had crushed it under her boot as she had jumped from the minivan earlier. The cracked screen and the rattling sound it made when she turned it over in her hand confirmed her fear.

Now, with Jake’s phone inches from her grip, she felt his eyes on her. She stole a glance at her boyfriend as he dangled in a tangle of seatbelt and limbs. With his cheek flattened against cold ceiling of the SUV, she studied his blank expression. Waited for sudden tick or flutter of an eyelid.

She strained forward again. Fingertips scratched at the cell. She shimmied forward with her knees and hips to pick up a little of the difference. Still out of reach. Cara cursed.

As his body loomed over her, she felt bitter sadness hit her, but also a bud of sustaining relief. The kind of relief that you feel when you know your life will change drastically, but for the better. No more was she trapped in the role assigned to her by Becky and her parents and the others. Fate or karma or God just came through and wiped her future clean. For that, she decided that she could handle the sadness.

Phone clutched in her hand, she was about to back out of the vehicle when she heard an awful creaking sound and felt the weight of the SUV shift slightly. Her legs, hanging outside of the Explorer were dragged along as the vehicle inched toward the frozen water within the ditch. Suddenly, her descent halted and she could exhale again.

“Shit. Shit. Shit!”

Then she heard. “Close one.”

Cara looked up and Jacob, despite his broken nose, attempt a smile.

Like someone set her feet on fire, Cara pushed herself backward across the interior roof of the vehicle, cutting her leg again on the glass. “Oh my god!” she panted. “You were gone! You were dead!”

His response was a groggy “Uh, not yet.” Suddenly, the Explorer let out another painful whine. Metal against pavement. It settled again. “Whoa!”

“Are you ok?” she asked. “Anything broken?”

“This thing . . . gonna go any . . . second.”

“Injuries?” she repeated. “Broken bones?”

“Can’t move my . .my arms,” he paused. “Can’t move my legs either. I‘m scared.”

Cara looked over to Becky. A thin layer of new snow covered her. One arm fell to her side. The other hand was frozen to her chest wound. Her eyes stared off into the trees.

“I will go get help” was all she could think to say.

“Ohhh,” he said, “So cold.”

Cara felt the tears coming again and she could not stop them. Her body shook as she fought them back. “I am cold too.”

When she finally gathered enough strength to get to her feet again, she stomped the snow out of the treads of her boots. Dusted herself off. Wiped her cold wet face one more time. Took three deep breaths and kicked the side of Jake’s SUV.

“Cara!”

She stomped again, this time leaving a dent in the door.

“Cara. What is happening! What are you doing!” The Explorer shuttered and teetered.

“No!”

The third kick dislodged what ever rock, tree limb or clump of dirt that held Jake in place. The SUV slid down the side of the ditch, broke into the sheet of ice below then sank into the ice cold water beneath that.

Cara watched the black creek water pour in through the broken windows and swallow more of the Explorer with every second. The water was not deep enough to submerge the entire vehicle. Instead, the SUV settled on the dirty creek bottom with only the passenger side tires still visible, sticking up out of the water. Fewer and fewer bubbles popped to the surface.

She hugged herself as the emerging cold pressed against her body. While the gray world gave way to the darkness, Cara reached down and picked up the shotgun. She pocketed the cell phone. Then continued along Bedford Road toward Battle Creek.

She whispered to the night, “I am free.”



THE END