Approx 2,820 words
©2001
Whiteout
By
W. E. Lopez
Phyllis
Holton was surprised the moment the first snowflakes struck the windshield of
her Buick. She should have expected it,
for the skies had been gray with heavy cumulus clouds since early morning. Now it was two hours past dark and the augury
of the day had been fulfilled.
Phyllis switched her lights to low
beam as the swirling snowfall intensified.
Already the snow was sticking on the two-lane roadway leading from Lee Vining to
This time she had made up her mind
and would not surrender to John’s abusive behavior. Each time he beat her seemed worse than the
last. And each time he apologized for
his brutishness, promising it would never happen again. This time she had ended up in the Emergency
Room and emerged with two cracked ribs and a very painful jaw. There would be no turning back now. Phyllis Holton had cleaned out their joint
savings account the moment she signed out of the ER. Then she visited three ATM machines and ran
up the maximum cash withdrawal she could on the three credit cards in her
wallet. She had nearly $3,000 in her purse
and would soon be in
The rear wheels spun and she knew a
moment of terror before she identified the cause. Even though she was driving very slowly, she
had neglected to turn off the cruise control and her tires were slipping on the
new ice as the engine tried to maintain a constant 35 mph. Quickly she disengaged the cruise control and
kept a steady pressure on the accelerator with her right foot.
“Take it easy, Phylly,”
she cautioned herself. “You don’t want
to kill yourself over this. You just
want to get to
For the next six minutes, Phyllis
drove into the night. Suddenly the car
began to jerk and jump while slowing at a rapid pace. She saw her speed drop to 30, 25, 20, then
the engine quit completely. With the
engine dead and the power steering and brakes useless, Phylly
pulled the car to the right while pushing the break pedal with both feet. The car stopped and immediately Phylly became aware the heater was no longer putting out
warm air.
Phylly pulled the hood release and stepped
out of the warm comfort of the car. When
she opened the hood the trouble-light illuminated the engine compartment. “What the hell do all these gizmos do?” Phylly asked herself.
The strange assortment of wires, tubing and hoses baffled her. “What is it men do when they check under the
hood?” Whatever it was, she decided that
she could only make it worse by fooling around here. She slammed the hood and hopped back behind
the wheel, glad for the protection against the chill wind blowing outside.
“Perhaps it only needs rebooting?”
she thought. Phyllis Holton’s only
experience with mechanical contrivances had been domestic appliances and her
computers at work and home. When the
computer suddenly took a swan dive, many times a simple re-boot could put it
aright.
Phylly turned the key, only to hear the
starter grind and grind and grind. “Oh,
pickle!” she said and folded her arms across her chest. The car was definitely chillier now, making
her breath visible in front of her face.
She fumbled on the floor in front of the passenger seat and retrieved
her purse. Opening the flap she pulled
out her cell phone and pressed the clear button so the lights would appear and
she could read the illuminated screen.
“Damn!” she cursed again when confronted
with an LCD readout which said “No Service.”
“Okay,
Ms. Smarty-Pants Holton, what are you going to do now? It’s getting colder by the minute in here and
you didn’t pack anything before you left.
Instead you planned to buy anything you needed when you got to
“Stay with the car,” Phylly
reminded herself. She hesitated while
thinking the only advantage to staying with her car would be to make it easier
for someone to find her frozen corpse.
Under the passengers seat she found
nearly a dozen plastic grocery bags she habitually stored for use as litter
bags when she and John were traveling. Phylly took off first one Reebok then the other, putting
two layers of grocery bags over her cotton socks. The Reeboks would not protect her from the
cold and wet of the snow, but the plastic bags would at least keep her socks
dry and that should help.
Phylly popped the trunk and headed for the
rear of the car to see what she could find that might prove useful. Hmm, an old and thickly padded flannel shirt
John usually wore when he changed the oil.
It was many sizes to large for her but would provide some warmth. She also found half a canvas tarp, about
three feet by eight feet that John used as a ground cloth when working
underneath. She wriggled into the
flannel shirt and buttoned it clean up to the collar. Then she wrapped the tarp around her
shoulders. It didn’t provide any
additional warmth but it did help to break the driving wind. Lug wrench?
Useless. Spare tire? Hadn’t she seen news clips of the
The decision to walk towards
The moon was not visible above the
clouds, but it did provide a milky white light of sorts. She set off, her feet making crunching sounds
in the snow. Occasionally she would
glance back toward her car, already regretting that she had left the shelter it
provided from the piercing wind, but still strongly convinced she would be
better off if she kept heading in the right direction. The third time she glanced back, although she
knew she hadn’t gone more than seventy-five yards or so, the blinker lights
were no longer there.
Crunch, crunch, crunch went the Reeboks. Maybe she should be counting paces to keep
track of the distance she walked? What
good would that do, except possibly take her mind off the numbing cold?
Her feet were cold and getting
colder. Beneath the scrap of tarp and
the flannel shirt she wore, she began to perspire. She pulled the tarp tighter trying to keep
the chill from blowing under the backside of the tarp. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven… how
many steps to a mile? Twenty-eight,
twenty-nine, thirty! She fairly shouted
the number in her mind. Could thirty
steps equal a hundred yards? And 1760
yards equaled a mile. Only 1660 yards to
go. She continued to count.
Phylly’s nose began to drip and she tried to
bend her face to her shoulder so she would not have to let go of the tarp. No good, she was not an Olympic class
contortionist. She was finally able to
lift both fists to her face without letting go of the tarp and wipe her
dripping nose. Now she had mucus wiped
across her face, which froze and cracked in the howling wind.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… she kept
counting. Suddenly, as she reached
nineteen, her left foot slipped in the snow and she went down and rolled twice,
three times. When Phylly
ceased to roll, she sat up to take stock.
She must have wandered off to the right of the road and slipped down an
embankment. At least she had managed to
hold onto the tarp. Phylly
pulled it tight around her and sat there for a moment.
“Christ! It’s cold,” she thought. And it will get much colder before you get
warmer, Phylly.
She knew she had come only a few hundred yards and realized she would
never be able to walk the eight to ten miles on into
Painfully she got to her feet and,
leaning heavily forward, nearly losing the tarp in the strong wind, managed to
balance herself with one hand while she climbed up to the highway. Phylly was
disoriented now, which way should she head to return to the car? Visualizing the roadmap in her mind, she new
But she couldn’t see the moon. The heavy clouds and blowing snowflakes
permitted her only an occasional glimpse of vague illumination with no hint of
direction. Deciding that she had left
the road by heading too far south, Phylly turned
left, hoping that would lead her back to the car. She pushed on, placing one leaden foot in
front of the other. At least they didn’t
feel frozen anymore.
“Oh, my God!” Phylly
gasped. “Isn’t loss of sensation the
first indication of frost bite or serious damage?” She stamped her feet harder as she quickened
her pace. In the next moment she
collided with a tree.
“Damn! I’ve lost the road,” Phylly
thought. “But which side of the road had
she strayed to?” The thought that she
was lost in a blinding snowstorm that would probably kill her brought tears to
her eyes. She wanted to throw herself
down on the ground and pray for a merciful and quick death. Hadn’t she read that freezing to death was
not generally painful? That it was
simply like going to sleep?
“No!” she shouted into the
darkness. “I will not give up!” But what more could she do? If she simply walked off into the night,
where would she end up? Phylly tried to calm herself and think rationally. Leaving the shelter of the car had been her
first mistake. She’d been smart enough
to bring the flashlight with her, but it was useless since she could not see as
far as ten feet through the swirling snow.
Slowly she stood her ground and turned slowly to her left, pausing each
quarter turn to scan the darkness for the blinkers of her car.
There! Had she seen something? Yes, she had, but it couldn’t possibly be her
car, it was much too far away. Could it
be…? Yes! It looked like a fire flickering in the snow
at least half a mile away, perhaps farther.
Someone’s mountain cabin, she
wondered? She certainly couldn’t do
anything to help, but she could get warm and perhaps seek help. The amber glow flickered and shimmered
through the blowing snow and she started toward it, head bowed against the
wind. Crunch, crunch, crunch went her
Reeboks, but she barely heard them.
Crunch, crunch, crunch. Suddenly
the fiery cabin materialized from the darkness and she realized it was not a
fire at all. It was the rotating amber
beacon atop a snow removal vehicle!
“Help!” she managed to croak, but her
throat was too parched for the sound to carry.
“Help!” she cried again. Four
more steps and she saw a huge bear of a man standing beside her Buick, and the
dump truck with the rotating beacon just behind.
“What the…?” the man shouted as he
ran to her. “Lady, where’d you go? I been stopped here
next to your car for at least ten minutes hoping someone would show up.”
Phylly extended her arms toward the man and
stumbled face first into the snow.
Ralph Lauren could see the woman was
worn out and probably had a severe case of hypothermia besides. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her
to the five-ton snowplow, opened the door and helped to arrange her on the
seat. That finished, he closed the door
and quickly rounded the front of the truck to climb into the cab. The engine was still running and Ralph
reached to turn the heater blower to high before he realized the rapid thawing
of her frozen body parts might become extremely painful.
He reached for the microphone slipped
on the dash and held it to his lips.
“Frank? Come in Frank,” he called
to the road maintenance shack. “I got a
problem here and need some help.” Ralph
released the push-to-talk button and waited for a reply.
“Go ahead, Ralph. What’s up?”
“I run across a car stalled here
about 12 miles west of
“You want me to call an ambulance and
have them meet you half way, Ralph?”
Lauren looked at the attractive
brunette now slumped in the passenger seat with her head on her chest. She might be right pretty, even beautiful
once she got cleaned up. “No, thanks,
Frank. I’m sure the storm had dropped a
lot of crap behind me also. I’ll just
turn around and clear the highway going back, then
I’ll start back to your location.
Shouldn’t take more’n half an hour, I
guess. No sense sending an ambulance out
in weather like this.”
“Ten-four, Ralph. I’ll call ahead and let the clinic know
you’re on the way.”
“Roger, out,” Ralph said as he
replaced the mike in its clip. He gunned
the diesel and slipped the truck into low and pulled out in front of the lady’s
car. In a few minutes he found a spot to
turn around and was headed back to
When his passenger began to show
signs of life, Ralph reached behind him and grabbed his thermos of hot coffee,
which he handed to her. “Like as not,
you could use something to warm you on the inside too, lady.”
Phylly shook her head to clear away the fog
and accepted the thermos. Pouring it
into the plastic cup she took a deep swig.
“Ahh, that’s just what I needed,” she
said. She took another deep draught then
refilled the cup and held it out for her rescuer. “I’m not quite sure what happened toward the
end there,” she said. “I’m sure glad you
happened along when you did.”
Ralph took the cup of hot coffee from
her and took a healthy swig. “I don’t
want to sound like I’m scolding you lady, but didn’t anyone ever tell you to stay
with your vehicle in case of trouble?
Especially in weather like this?”
“Well, I guess I should have,” she
admitted, “but I thought I could keep warm by walking and I didn’t think it
would be too far…”
“Just far enough to kill you,
ma’am. It’s near to 25 degrees outside,
and with the blowing wind, the chill factor has got to be down around 15
below. You don’t exactly look dressed
for no polar expedition.”
“No, I guess I’m not. I was headed for
“You can say that again, Miss. Weather man’s reported this surprise storm
blew in from the
“Then I guess I’m very lucky you found
me,” Phylly said.
“Lucky? I’ll say you are. Five minutes more and you would have been
deader than Caesar’s ghost.” Ralph
fumbled in the pockets of his jeans and found a five-dollar bill. He held it out to her. “Here,” he said.
“What’s this for?”
“When you get to