Abby's
knuckles were white from her intense grip on the steering wheel, as she
maneuvered her car up and down and around all the hairpin turns on the roads
that snaked through the Colorado Mountains. Oh, the scenery was majestic, for
sure, but she wasn't really able to enjoy it like she would have liked to.
Instead, her eyes were constantly focusing on the dangerously close mountain
sides, loose fallen boulders and short guardrails, or more often than she cared
for, lack thereof. She also couldn't understand why people were just speeding
past her, unless they were locals and they had more faith in their trucks than
she did in her 12 year old car. Her car obviously wasn't made for mountain
driving, and she was starting to worry if she'd even be able to make it out of
the mountain passes.
When
the mountains seemed to subside and she thought the worst was over, there were
the foothills and the Eastern Colorado plains. Abby was able to relax a bit now
and allow her eyes to take in the scenery, only what she saw now didn't look
very healthy. The drought was certainly taking a toll on the residents of Colorado,
and especially the ones who still maintained active ranches and grew things in
order to make money to feed their families. And, though there were few and far
between, Abby also noticed that there were some pretty expansive and elaborate
looking ranches out in this area. She couldn't decide if being semi-isolated
was a good thing, or a bad thing. All it would take is one blizzard and the
roads around them would be closed. But, folks who lived in the country,
especially cowboy country, certainly were well versed in self-sufficient living.
Abby
wasn't so sure she'd be as self-sufficient. Just last night, Abby had
encountered a nasty fog that slowed driving to 10 miles an hour, and that was
enough to almost give her a full-blown panic attack. It also didn't help, that
her car was old and becoming unreliable. But, at least Abby had some form of
entertainment while she was driving. There was no cassette or disc player in
her car, but the radio in her old Hyundai still worked even if other things had
been slowly breaking down on her. What did she expect? The car, a gift from her
father twelve years ago, was practically an antique now and really had too many
miles on it for her to be traversing through the mountainsides in it. She often
joked with her friends that she needed to get a specialized license plate for
it listing it as an 'antique' when she renewed her tags every year.
A
blink of light caught her eye, and a quick glance at her dashboard revealed
that the car's warning lights were illuminated. Abby rolled her eyes. They
always were lit up. She could refill her windshield wiper fluid and the low
fluid light would turn off for five minutes, and then come back on. Every time
she stopped to get gas, the check engine light would come on right after
restarting the car. Abby's mechanic told her it was just dirty fuel injectors,
and he told her to buy a cheap bottle of fuel injector cleaner and add it to
her gas tank before she filled up with gas the next time. She did, and sure
enough that particular warning light flickered off. There was always some selection of warning
lights lit on her dashboard, and some of them remained on even if the problem
was fixed. Hell, even the emergency brake light flashed at her to warn her that
she was driving with her emergency brake on, the same emergency brake that was
currently in its proper resting position. Abby was chalking it up to faulty
sensors, and that nothing was seriously wrong with her car. It was just old,
getting senile, and losing its mind. Maybe her car was a hypochondriac. It
always thought something was wrong with it. Still, it got great mileage and for
its age, it had taken Abby to a lot of different places. She wasn't quite sure
how she was going to give it up, even when she could afford to upgrade to a
newer more reliable vehicle, but right now all she really wanted was for her
car to get her through this trip and returned safely back home.
"Piece
of shit lights," Abby mumbled at the illuminated dashboard, looking like it was
all lit up for a fourth of July party. So used to seeing all the glowing red
warning lights being on, Abby's eyes failed to spot something that was
genuinely amiss, and that was the elevated temperature gauge on the far right
side of the dashboard. That was something her father and every mechanic she had
ever talked to, told her to absolutely not ignore. It meant that the car's
radiator was empty or leaking, and either situation was bad. The sudden smell
of something burning caught Abby's attention. Rolling down her window, the
smell became even more obvious, and smoke started to escape from the edges of
the car hood. Abby then noticed the elevated temperature gauge and hoped that
maybe the temperature gauge was just going up because it was hot outside.
Without even thinking about it, she cranked up her air conditioning and rolled
down all her windows. Maybe that would help cool the car down.
Abby
fought the urge to panic. Out in the middle of nowhere, the only assistance she
could think of calling, was her insurance company. She reached a hand into her
purse that was laying on the passenger's seat, to search for her cell phone.
When her fingers finally grasped onto her phone she hit the main menu button
only to be met with another warning message, and that was a no cell phone
service signal. "Dammit!" Abby exclaimed, as she tossed the cell phone in
frustration onto the passenger seat next to her. She anxiously watched as the
gauge reported the temperature as getting higher and higher, and the needle was
now flickering into the highest red zone it would monitor. Less than a minute
later, her vision was completely obscured when the entire car hood erupted like
a volcano with billowing plumes of smoke. Abby had no choice now but to pull
over to the side of the road, muttering a long string of unladylike curse
words.
Abby
maneuvered her car to a stop into the grass and gravel that lined the sides of
the roadway. Thank goodness she was at least on flat terrain, and not on one of
the dangerous switchbacks of the mountains. Jumping quickly out of her car, she
ran around to the back of it and popped open the trunk. She did keep a small
selection of emergency car supplies in a crate, and she knew she had a jug of
antifreeze-coolant in there. Pulling the crate to the trunk's edge she reached
in to get the jug of coolant, but she could already tell by its smashed
appearance that the coolant jug, like her radiator, was also empty. Growling in
frustration, Abby slammed her trunk shut and went back to the front of the car.
She grabbed her keys, her purse, her currently useless cell phone, and a couple
bottles of water that she had in the back seat. Her only option now, was to
seek out some help from the closest living local, so she started walking back
in the direction of one of the expansive ranches she had driven past a short
while ago.