text: [Themes: modern]
  
  You find it hard to believe there is really anything wrong with the Ram. It may be a few years old and have thousands of more miles on it than your Ford, but Ray Cooper keeps it in good shape. But at the same time, it wouldn't be here unless Ray himself was up from New Jersey. Since you've seen no sign of him, it begs the question of who Gordy and Charlei really are, and why they are now claiming the truck is theirs.
  
  It is chilling to think about all the possibilities those questions imply. And if your suspicions are correct, it would be a tactical mistake to call your passengers' bluff. Who knows what they're capable of?
  
  So instead you pull your truck up at a right angle to the Dodge and shift it into park. Then comes an awkward moment with the three of you just sitting there, wondering what comes next. If you're right, this whole thing is just a sham; the Ram can start perfectly fine on its own, but the Goodcheer-Fellows said they were stranded here by a dead battery, and so here you are.
  
  Your passengers seem to be waiting for you to do something, so you pull the cable that pops up your hood. Both Charlei and Gordy shuffle nervously in their seats.
  
  You turn to Gordy. "You'll need to pop yours, too, so I can get at the battery." You look him straight in the eyes, but he says nothing, nor does he reach for the door.
  
  It occurs to you that although you're trying to play along, taking their word at face value, you may have inadvertently called their bluff anyway. You already know as fact this truck belongs to Ray Cooper; you even recognize the "Garden State" license plates. So it stands to reason that neither of your passengers has the keys.
  
  Despite all the rain outside, your throat feels dry as you swallow hard on a gulp of air. Gordy's delay is a troubling development.
  
  Charlei is the first one to break the tension. "God, do I have to do everything around here?" she says as she pushes her door open and jumps down to the soggy driveway. You and Gordy watch as she splashes over to the Dodge, opens its driver's side door — which, by the looks, wasn't locked — and pops the hood. This allows the game to proceed.
  
  You push open your own door, resigned to the fact that you are likely to get drenched in the next few minutes; there will be no way to connect the two batteries and keep dry at the same time, not in this storm. But intuition tells you that if this charade ends well, wet clothes would be the best possible outcome, if that turns out to be your only discomfort. You have a set of jumper cables stashed under the seat, and with the coil in your hand you step around to the front of the truck.
  
  Charlei is already lifting the Ram's hood, but she recoils when the wind catches it and wrests it out of her hands. "Is it safe to do this in this kind of weather?" she shouts through the rain.
  
  "The trucks aren't going to jump themselves," you reply, encountering the opposite problem with your hood: the wind is blowing against it, making it difficult to lift up. You hope this whole fantasy ends soon, because the wind-blown rain in your face is making it difficult to breathe.
  
  Another truck door slams shut, and you now see Gordy watching from the sidelines. You attach the first two clamps to your battery terminals and then run the cable over to the Ram. The engine compartment is becoming littered with wind-blown pine needles as you hurriedly attach the remaining two clamps.
  
  "You'll need to turn your ignition," you yell to Charlei. She nods and returns to the Ram's cab, and as she does so you still have to wonder if she even has the keys to the thing. But she climbs into the driver's seat, and a moment later the engine starts up beautifully, without even the slightest hesitation.
  
  As you are disconnecting the cables, you see Gordy circling the F150. "I'll bet this thing cost a fortune!" he says, as if oblivious to the elemental forces surrounding him. "How much did you pay for this, Al?"
  
  The game is starting to take a bizarre turn, despite your best effort to not deviate from the script. You had hoped that by playing along they'd take the Ram and leave you alone, but now Gordy seems interested in changing the rules, as if he is growing bored of the old ones.
  
  Instead of answering his question, you decide to make a show of getting back inside your truck. "If you guys don't mind, I need to be getting—"
  
  But Gordy steps forward and holds the door closed, keeping you in the rain. "Honey, I think we should get ourselves one of these!" he says.
  
  "Gordy, don't be silly," his wife says. "You know we can't afford such a fine vehicle!"
  
  "Al seems like a reasonable man," he replies. "And as you said, he wants to be helpful. Don't you, Al?"
  
  For a moment you forget all about the driving rain, wondering instead if you need to be more worried about Charlei coming around behind you. This feels like a pivotal moment: do you act, or do you continue to play along? On the surface this odd couple appears harmless, but of course appearances can be deceptive. You've seen no evidence that they are armed in any way, but you also don't know what their limits are, or if they even have any. Until now you had been disturbed by their passive-aggressive facade, but now you sense their true natures may be predatory. What are they doing here, and how did they gain access to Ray Cooper's truck? And now that Gordy has his eyes set on your vehicle, what is he prepared to do to take it?
  
  Thus you feel that you have arrived at a decision point: act now to protect yourself, or continue to play along and hope to come away unharmed?
  
  > play along with this evolving game.
  "What do you say, Al?" Gordy says, still between you and your truck. "Do you mind if Charlei and I take the F150 for a test drive?"
  
  You look to Charlei behind you, and then back to Gordy. They are both glaring at you intensely, as if waiting for your slightest move. Neither one appears physically threatening, but you'd rather not be found guilty of underestimating their capabilities. Yes, this is still some kind depraved game, but you suspect the stakes may be a little too high for comfort.
  
  "No— No, I don't mind," you say.
  
  "That's the spirit!" Gordy says. "I wish there were more people in the world like you."
  
  It feels like defeat, like capitulation, but the goal here is to keep in the game long enough to play a second round. Whether that will be tonight, or some other time, remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it requires all of your control not to react when Gordy climbs into the cab of your truck and sits behind the wheel. With the dome light glowing above him, he looks almost like a child out of his league, about to learn he is no match for a V6 engine.
  
  "Gordy, should I go back up to the cabin and get our things?" Charlei asks.
  
  "Is there anything that's really all that important?"
  
  "No, I guess not...."
  
  "Then let's not waste any more time," he says. "The longer we linger here, the more I worry our friend Al here might start getting ideas. And that wouldn't end well for him."
  
  "All right," Charlei responds.
  
  "Before you do, though, can you do me a favor, babe? Turn off that Dodge and take the keys."
  
  Crap. You had been hoping they would overlook that detail. But Charlei dutifully does as asked, and the truck that you had "jumped" goes silent.
  
  "Now, Al, I just want to say that you're an upstanding citizen," Gordy says as his wife climbs up into the passenger seat. He is now sitting in your seat, the window rolled down. "You have no idea how many people would put up a fight to protect what's theirs. That's the problem with this world: too many people focused on material gain. Not you, though. I like that in a man."
  
  Everything about him fills you with rage. Standing in the rain, however, makes you feel ridiculous. He rolls the window up and then gives you a nod before turning his attention to the dashboard in front of him. Charlei points to where the shifter is located, and a moment later the truck lurches backward before coming to an abrupt halt. When next he steers the truck forward, he does so with less power, and a moment later the F150 is driving away without you down the long driveway.
  
  So, there you are, standing in the driving rain. Even your underwear is soaking wet. You feel very shaken by this whole episode, as if it were a near-death experience with a razor-thin margin. The night is dark and nasty, and the nearest phones are many miles away; without your truck, it would probably take at least four hours to hoof it back to Griffin. This means your options are few, and none of them seem especially restorative.
  
  In fact, you can think of only two immediate courses of action: take shelter from the storm here at the Coopers' A-frame and see what else Gordy and Charlei might have done, or walk the half-mile back down the road to the warmth of your own cabin.
  
  > stay here.
  The door to the A-frame is just up a short walkway, and as you noticed before it is already wide open. Clearly the Goodcheer-Fellows had been here before they found you, and you can only imagine what they might have done during that time. You hesitate to think what it is you might find, but it's madness to be standing out here in the middle of the raging storm.
  
  Whatever trepidation you have about entering the camp, however, is erased by the sound of trees crashing in the forest; even the white pines standing guard over the driveway seem caught in some new strengthening of the gale, one which threatens to overwhelm their rigidity. A crashing limb twelve feet long and probably weighing a couple hundred pounds misses you by a matter of yards, and this sends you running up to the Coopers' open door.
  
  You close the door behind you to seal out the weather. The inside of the camp is completely dark, and of course the light switch near the door does nothing to change this. The last time you were here was for a Fourth of July cookout two summers ago, and you remember there being a generator out back to power the camp's few electrical amenities. You're not about to go mess with that. Instead, you find a shelf nearby loaded with emergency supplies, including a beefy flashlight. The battery doesn't seem to be fully charged, but the light is adequate for now.
  
  What you see is chaos: small twigs still bearing tufts of green pine needles, leaves with their whitish undersides tipped up, old issues of Adirondack Life blown from a shelf and soaking up the rain water on the floor. This wasn't directly the work of Gordy and Charlei, just the result of their leaving the door open during the storm.
  
  So, the Coopers' place was ransacked by Bob, but not necessarily by the marauding Millennials who just ran off with your truck. At least, this is your initial impression.
  
  "Ray? Mindy? Are you guys here?"
  
  You cautiously move farther into the room. The A-frame has an open floor plan: a den dominated by a fireplace flanked by narrow windows to your right, a modest kitchen to the left, stairs leading up to the sleeping loft. Neither inhabitant responds to your calls, and the silence fuels your worst fears. If you just narrowly escaped death yourself, then perhaps your neighbors from New Jersey were less fortunate.
  
  But where are they? Not in the den, not in the kitchen. Not in the bathroom, either; the shower curtain got tousled in the wind, but you find no Hitchcock-esque murder scenes behind it.
  
  Next are the spiral stairs leading up to the loft. Water drips off the metal risers as you slowly circle your way up to the top.
  
  "Ray? Mindy?" you say as you climb. "It's Al Flansburgh, from down the road."
  
  Again, there is no response. However, when you complete the spiraling ascent and shine the flashlight into the sleeping area, you find a queen-sized bed with some disheveled sheets, but no bodies or bloodstains. Someone slept here recently, but no one died here.
  
  This is a relief... isn't it? Maybe the Coopers aren't here, and never were? Maybe the Goodcheer-Fellows stole the Dodge Ram elsewhere, and something inside it (an address stored in the GPS?) led them here? If those two twats came here to rob the place, it would be difficult to tell considering the disarray caused by the storm. And at any rate, what would they hope to find? The camps on this road are hardly posh places. None have connections to the electrical grid, nor even an old-fashioned telephone land line. This place here, with its generator and gravity-fed water system, may be the most "modern" of all of them. But even here you're not going to find any HDTVs or Blu-ray players to steal; the lights and rudimentary indoor plumbing just indicate the limits to which people from New Jersey are willing to rusticate.
  
  > Next page.
  So, in the absence of a grisly murder scene, you begin to relax — slightly. It would be a lie to say you were completely at ease; after all, you have just been stranded at someone else's camp in the middle of a major storm by a pair of fucktards who just ran off with your truck. You can't rule out the possibility Gordy and Charlei might make a return appearance, and so you'd feel better if you had a way to defend yourself this time.
  
  As it happens, Ray Cooper fancies himself as a hunter, and you know where he keeps his rifles and shotguns. During that cookout two years ago, he was proudly showing his gun cabinet off to the male neighbors in attendance, and in particular the collection of shells he was hoarding — which, as he put it, was enough to make "Andrew Cuomo and his effing SAFE Act blush." It is located downstairs, in a storage area behind the kitchen.
  
  The flashlight beam leads the way. But as you cross the wet floor at the foot of the spiral staircase, the sound of fluttering wings sends you jumping across the room. Shining the light up to the high ceiling, you see a small bird, probably blown in by the storm, trying to find its way out. Christ, everything is out of joint tonight, with both man and nature deviating from their lanes.
  
  There is nothing you can do to help the bird now, and it's probably better off in here tonight anyway, so you decide to leave it be for now and remain focused on the task of arming yourself. At the back end of the kitchenette a door leads into the storage area, which is basically a lean-to tacked onto the rear of the A-frame. Ray's guns are in a tall plastic storage cabinet off to the left... locked with a combination padlock. Damn you, Ray! Well, there's only one way around that. You'll need to find an axe and see if you can bust your way in.
  
  There is a wall full of tools next to the camp's back door, the one leading out to where Cooper keeps a supply of neatly-stacked firewood. But as you shine the light along the array of implements hanging from their pegs, you see just about everything imaginable except an axe. One spot is empty, however, so maybe the axe wasn't returned after it was last used, and is still outside next to the wood.
  
  You try to open the door, but something on the other side is preventing it from budging more than a couple inches. You set the flashlight down so you can throw your entire body into the effort, but all you gain is maybe another six inches of space.
  
  It's enough to squeeze through. You grab the flashlight and force your body sideways through the narrow gap... and then nearly trip over the body of Mindy Cooper, her back torn open and pooling with rain water. Shining the beam of light farther ahead, there is another lump on the ground that can only be Ray. There is something long and skinny sticking up from his back.
  
  The axe handle.
  
  You scramble back through the door and close it tight behind you, as if to keep the dead out of the cabin. Some bags of landscaping mulch are stacked up against the wall, and there you sit with the flashlight turned off, trying to calm yourself. What a messed-up situation. How could any of this be happening? And to think, Heather had been worried about the storm. A tree falling on you might be the last of your worries right now.
  
  So, what had just been disturbing theories up until this moment have now been confirmed: you had a run-in with a pair of cold-blooded killers tonight, literal axe murderers, and you are probably only still alive yourself because you didn't resist their efforts to take your truck. You have no idea where they came from, why they are here of all places, or what it is they really want. You are positive you never met Charlei and Gordy before, nor do you have any reason to believe any of this is about you. Maybe Ray and Mindy had made some enemies back home? That would be a stretch of the imagination: Ray is (was) a logistics manager for a trucking company, and Mindy ran a beauty supply shop in a little strip mall somewhere. They were suburbanites like you, not mobsters.
  
  This leaves you with a chilling conclusion: everything that has happened here was a random event, no more predictable than the track of a wild hurricane. But if so, can you really know that you are safe just because you saw the Goodcheer-Fellows drive off in your truck? Perhaps, like Bob, they are lodged here in these mountains, circling around and unable to get free.
  
  You really need to get inside that gun cabinet. You don't want to pull an axe out of Ray Cooper's corpse to do it. So you flip the flashlight back on and see what else you have to work with — and then you see the chainsaw sitting on a shelf.
  
  Can you use a chainsaw to cut through thick plastic? You can't imagine it doing the saw any good, and heaven help you if the cabinet has a metal frame inside. But this is an emergency situation, and not a time to be delicate. You set the flashlight down so that it can light up a large swath of this utility room, grab the chainsaw, and yank on the cord. It roars to life on the third try: RIIIIINE-riiine-riiine-riine-RIIIIIIINE-riine!
  
  The saw feels feral in your hands, a lively little badger that is eager to be of service. You're not sure the best way to go about this project, so you decide to make several slices into the door that you might be able to bust out with a hammer. The saw shreds the plastic and makes a rough edge, but it does the job. Within minutes, you have cut away an entire panel large enough to reach through. You turn the saw off.
  
  "What the hell is Al doing in here? Busting up the furniture with a chainsaw?"
  
  "Must be he didn't see all that wood out back."
  
  Crap! Gordy and Charlei have returned, and you completely missed it while you were playing with the chainsaw. They're already in the house, and you hear footsteps in the kitchenette stomping toward the utility room. Someone will be barging through that door within a matter of seconds — so even though you've successfully cut into the gun cabinet, there will be zero time to select one of the guns, find the box of matching shells, and load one into the other.
  
  > take the nearest blunt object and swing at whoever enters.
  You look to the shadowy wall of hanging tools and immediately lay eyes on an old sledgehammer. It is not hanging but is standing on its head on the concrete floor, the handle leaning against the wall. Whichever person is approaching is practically at the door, and so you must reach for the hammer and lunge at the door in one uninterrupted action. The thing feels heavy in your hands — a good thing, it will be more effective that way — but a pair of metal storage racks near the door are limiting your ability to swing it broadly. The door opens and you thrust the business end of the hammer at Gordy's face.
  
  There is a gun of some kind in his hand, and in the collision it goes off. The bullet rips through your left shoulder, propelling you backwards onto the floor.
  
  "Aggghhh!" Gordy screams on the other side of the door. "The fucker broke my skull!"
  
  You, of course, are not in the best of shape either, but you assess quickly that you are still partly functional. Adrenaline is no doubt a factor. You grab the sledgehammer with your right hand (your left is probably out of commission for the foreseeable future) and open the door to the kitchenette. Gordy is on the floor holding his face in his hands, blood trickling through his fingers, a snub-nosed pistol beside him where it dropped. Just beyond the gun stands Charlei, holding a flashlight of her own.
  
  "Al," she says, "what the fuck's gotten into you?"
  
  Another head game, acting as if you are the aggressor here. Judging by her frozen stance, she was either about to retrieve the pistol at the moment you barged through the door, or she was about to tend to her injured husband. Neither is far apart from the other.
  
  "Who are you?" you rage. "What do you want?"
  
  "I told you, we are—"
  
  "Not your names. Who are you?"
  
  "Look, Al, you're clearly in a bad mood. But that doesn't give you permission to bust Gordy's face in. I mean, come on, let's be adults here."
  
  So, straight answers are too much to ask for. Not that you were really expecting one anyway; you just needed an extra moment to review the scene here and consider your next move. Gordy is on the floor at your feet, apparently in major pain and effectively incapacitated. (Score one for the good guy!) Charlei is just a few feet away, stopped in her approach by your sudden appearance; were it not for her light, you'd all be in darkness. She is not armed as far as you can see, but who knows what she has hidden under that soaking-wet hoodie. The snub-nose is on the floor between you. Technically it's closer to you, but with Gordy in the way she has the clearer path.
  
  And then there's you: a bullet hole in your shoulder and blood running down under your shirt and into your pants. You still have a one-handed grip the sledgehammer, but this adrenaline rush is sure to fail you soon.
  
  "Al, you're beginning to freak me out here," she says. "I need to check on my husband. Don't be doing anything stupid."
  
  Gordy is no longer screaming but his breathing is hurried, as if he were in a terrible panic for his life. His concern for himself may very well be legitimate, but her concern for him gives you an idea. You bring the hammer up as high as you can above him (which is less high than it would've been before the gunshot wound) and hold it there, as if threatening a death blow if she comes any closer.
  
  But this threat of violence provokes a curious reaction: she whimpers. It may be the first unguarded emotional reaction she's made all night. Clearly, you've hit a nerve.
  
  Charlei moves the light beam away from you and Gordy, and at first you think it's because she doesn't want to see what you're about to do. But then the same light comes hurling through space at you, striking you in the temple. The flashlight goes clattering into the darkness, its bulb forever out.
  
  You are now experiencing pain in two parts of your body, although one is likely to result in only a bruise. Charlei seems to be gone now, but you have no idea where she went. Throwing the light was probably a distraction to cover her escape. Therefore you no longer see the need to threaten Gordy with the sledgehammer. Instead, you want that little gun of his.
  
  As you step past him, though, he grabs your leg and pulls it out from under you. You fall hard on the floor, your bad left shoulder bearing all of the impact. You scream, of course, because the pain is horrific, but you also see Gordy's shadow groping frantically for the pistol. He can't see it; he only knows the general direction of where it fell. You at least don't have blood trickling into your eyes, so you can see its shadowy form between you. You reach for it, fumble with it in your fingers, point it at Gordy, and fire.
  
  > Next page.
  You find your truck in the driveway, more or less unharmed, although you can't say the same for yourself. You know you are in rough shape, but first you just want to get the hell out of here. It takes multiple tries to find a one-handed way to pull yourself up into the crew cab, fully aware that Charlei might come after you at any moment. She doesn't, but when you finally attain the driver's seat and find no key, you almost wish she had.
  
  There is a spare key, but retrieving it entails crawling back down into the rain, reaching under the body of the truck, and locating the magnetized key holder that you hid long ago, never expecting at the time you'd ever actually need it. When you are finally able to sit yourself in the driver's seat, key in hand, it feels as though hours have passed. In reality it's probably been more like twenty minutes.
  
  The truck rumbles to life, and with it the radio. Gordy and Charlei had apparently found your Sirius XM subscription and turned it on to the Coffee House channel; as soon as you recognize Ed Sheeran's crooning voice, off it goes. You shift the truck into gear and roll down the driveway, trying to see if anyone is coming after you in your mirrors but unable to see anything in the rain. So rather than looking backward, you focus on what's ahead of you.
  
  The old road, built well before the Civil War and nominally hardened with gravel for use by automobiles, is starting to get rough. The hours of high winds are beginning to bring down bigger and bigger branches, which crunch under the truck tires as you drive over them. An entire tree about six inches in diameter spans the width of the road like a wooden speed bump, and what is normally a small stream flowing through a culvert has now run amok, flooding the road under a good eight inches of water.
  
  You almost stop at the Bear's Den out of habit, but no, you really need to try and get yourself into town. Not that the sleepy hamlet of Griffin has a hospital, but it may still have the means to summon an ambulance for you — and this is critical, because the blood loss from your shoulder wound is now completely undermining that adrenaline rush you experienced back inside the A-frame.
  
  There is nothing that can help you at Bear's Den anyway, so you merely note the place as you pass it by. The kerosene lamp is still burning in the window, just as you left it. You wish you could move a little faster, that this road was less of a disaster, because your consciousness is becoming a little fuzzy around the edges. The length of time it might take you to reach civilization might be less than Gordy's bullet is willing to grant you.
  
  The fallen trees are one thing. The steep hill leading down to the side of the Honnedaga River is quite another. The rain is falling faster than the ground can process it, and thus the excess is flowing wildly in a dozen little flash floods. One of them has overrun the drainage ditches on the hillside, turning them into swollen creeks that are eating away at the gravel surface. What remains of the road is barely wide enough to accommodate the truck's wheel base. By morning, the road will be gone altogether.
  
  But when you reach the bottom of the hill, you realize escape from this place will be impossible. When you reach the little concrete bridge over Stockholm Brook, you find water rushing over the road for a distance of several hundred feet. The road itself is probably gone, and the bridge itself may not last the night.
  
  The safer option would be to stop here. They say that if a road is covered in water not to drive through it, because there is no telling how deep it might be, and this is how cars become stranded (or swept away) in a flood. But that wisdom assumes you're not otherwise bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, that you have the luxury of options.
  
  The good news is that it may not matter anyway. It is becoming more and more difficult to maintain focus, as if you are incredibly tired and want nothing more to close your eyes and fall asleep. Yes, you know what is really happening, and no you can't stop it; you're going to need more than just strong coffee to snap yourself out of this one. So if there is any chance to save yourself, any at all, you'll need to gun the engine and see if the F150 is able to power its way through this flood.
  
  And so that's what you do. The last thing you remember before passing out is the bobbing of the truck in the water as it drifts helplessly toward the river.