Excerpt: Help Desk

No sooner had the word 'sharp' entered Edna's mind than her idle speculation was interrupted by the distressing feel of a tire going flat. 'Oh, great,' she thought. 'It's dark, it's foggy, and I have a flat tire and no cell phone reception.'

She had an image of herself in her nice powder blue pantsuit and high heeled shoes trying to wrestle off the flat tire and put that stupid excuse of a spare on. She hoped there was a call box around here.

She glanced in her side view mirror and attempted to pull to the side of the road.

Just then, the driver behind her got tired of doing the speed limit and honked. Then she pulled to the right and illegally passed Edna.

Edna jerked back into her own lane, which apparently did not do her tire any good. The limping Yellow Maverick weaved alarmingly. Then Edna tried again. This time the car to her right and behind her honked and pulled past on her left.

The man flipped her off, either not knowing or caring that Edna was having car problems. Edna would have responded, except she had her hands full of twitching metal and rubber.

In spite of the other drivers' reluctance to allow her passage to the shoulder, Edna managed to wrestle the Yellow Maverick over three lanes to the area where she hoped there was a call box. Another car idiotically chose to dodge around her to the right instead of the left.

Eddie jerked the wheel left, and then jerked the wheel right. She managed to get out of the flow of traffic.

The next thing she knew, she was off the freeway entirely and bumping down an exit ramp that had loomed up suddenly from the fog.

Eddie drove down the ramp as fast as she thought the car could stand. Her heart was pounding and she kept checking her rear view mirror to see if somebody was coming up behind her.

Not that she'd be able to do anything except brace for impact if somebody did.

She kept an eye out for a place to pull off, but before she did, she found herself going uphill. The road she was on now zigged to the right, then it zigged to the left.

Eddie looked out the passenger window, but could see nothing but darkness and fog. A look out her window showed her more darkness and fog.

She rolled down her window and the fog rolled in. So did the sounds of the distant freeway. She should have been able to see the freeway, but the fog cut her off as effectively as a brick wall.

She could barely see the road. If it had not been for the street lamps that had so beckoned to her from the freeway, she was certain that she would have plunged over the side.

It was that fear that kept her from trying to pull over to the side. She did not remember seeing a shoulder to the road when she'd dreamed her childish daydreams about them.

Eddie did not dare stop on the road as she still had visions of being rear ended. Considering that this road did not appear to lead to a residential area, she calculated that she was more likely to be struck by a truck rather than a vehicle.

Eddie did not try to calculate her chances of surviving that. She clutched the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white and her hands ached. She alternated between stiffening her arms until her shoulders hurt and forcing her to relax so she could keep control of the Yellow Maverick.

She kept to her limping pace, all the while keeping an eye on her rear view mirror. If she spotted headlights coming up behind her, she'd have to try veering towards the mountain and hope there was a shoulder there.

If she tried to veer into the other lane, she could hit oncoming traffic or worse, go over the side and land on the freeway.

She'd always scoffed at stories where somebody's heart pounded like a jackhammer, but now hers was doing just that.

She could FEEL her blood pressure rising and the blood buzzing through her veins like a mob of angry hornets.

Every turn she made she half expected to be smashed off the road by an on coming tractor trailer. She lowered the windows in an attempt to hear anything through the muffling fog. Her eyes were as wide as possible to catch any trace of movement in the fog.

She cautiously negotiated yet another jog when a sudden blare almost made her leap out of her skin.

It was her cell phone.

She glared at it, wondering when she'd put that annoying ring tone on it and what could it possibly signify.

Then Eddie forced herself to drag her eyes away from the phone and focus on the road. She did not care who was calling, this was not the time to interrupt her.

One more jog in the road and she saw something loom dead ahead of her.

Slamming on the brakes was out of the question, much as she longed to do so. She eased up on the accelerator and babied the Yellow Maverick to a halt just yards in front of...

A locked gate.