text: [Themes: modern]
  
  The most valuable thing you own tonight is that truck; you hold the keys to it, the Goodcheer-Fellows have a queer obsession with it, and it may be the only functioning vehicle for miles around. Now it's high time you use it to your advantage. No more Gordy, no more Charlei, no more revealing sundresses, no more games. You're not sure how far you'll get even with an F150 under these conditions, but there are always options — even if they are just limited ones.
  
  You set the Coleman down on the table, then make your way to the door. "What? Al, no, there's firewood right over here!" your hostess says behind you, mistaking your intent. Your mud-encased slippers are still where you kicked them, but you decide that all things considered you are better off in your bare feet.
  
  The door flies open when you turn the knob, however, the storm blowing it into the cabin without hesitation. It almost knocks you backward in the process. Bob, apparently, has been building strength, intent on making a bigger impression than a downgraded tropical storm normally would.
  
  "Al, seriously, what the hell are you doing?" Charlei says, running across the room, also barefoot. She tries to take the door out of your hands and close it in front of you, but with the help of the wind you hold it firm.
  
  "You can play these games on your own!" you say, making a second attempt to leave.
  
  "Games? What games?" she protests, but you don't stick around to listen. By leaning into the wind you are more successful this time; as you dash down the stoop onto the wet grass, you picture Charlei standing behind you in the entranceway, the wind tickling the edges of the sundress—
  
  No. No. No. No! As you stomp across the rainy ground, the skin of your soles splashing in the water, you try to think of manly, asexual things: Torque. Horsepower. RPMs. Wins above replacement, runs batted in, touchdowns, tax-deductible IRA contributions. The floral pattern printed on the cotton, was that—?
  
  Your truck is still parked beside the Stratus, a fresh coating of leaves plastered to the windows and the paint job. Climb up, turn the ignition, use both hands to pull the door closed behind you. The headlights shine on the sides of the hunting club, with its tarpaper siding that has no doubt seen more than one storm like this. The trees doing a wild dance in the wind, slaves to a force that might well blow them to the ground.
  
  Instead of trying to back out of the long driveway, you shift the truck into drive and make a big loop through the yard, recklessly rolling over the sticks and branches that have already gathered there, rumbling over them like speed bumps. Then you gun it back to the road, concerned by the way the trees are swaying into your path; linger too long, drive too cautiously, and you may be trapped here anyway if Bob manages to block this one and only exit route.
  
  But the conditions are so bad that the only way you know you've reached the main road is when you see the twin blue reflectors on spiraling white stems planted on each side of the driveway entrance. They come upon you faster than expected, and your bare right foot feels every detail of the rubber pad on the brake pedal. The truck casts two waves of water forward as it comes to an abrupt stop.
  
  It seems that you have a left-right decision to make, in terms of which is the best direction to get yourself out of here. Left leads to Griffin, but you'd be shocked if the road were still opened that far, if in fact it hadn't washed out in the first few miles. That little hamlet might be the safest place you could go if you could get there, but now your thoughts are tending in the other direction: to the right, deeper into the woods, past the Bear's Den.
  
  It was something that Charlei said, before she went to change her clothes:
  
  —We thought we found some people up the road who could help us, but that didn't pan out so well.
  
  People up the road?
  
  —Yeah, from New Jersey, not very friendly. Certainly nothing like you, Al.
  
  People from New Jersey, just up the road. She might've meant Ray and Mindy Cooper, who own a camp a short distance to the west of the Bear's Den. They live in Paterson, New Jersey, somewhere down by the city. Unlike the hunting club, they do come up north for weekend getaways from time to time in the summer; you hadn't seen them this weekend, but if—
  
  And if your suspicions about—
  
  > head left, toward Griffin.
  So assuming all of your fears, concerns, and theories are correct, what exactly do you plan to do about any of it? You are just one person, and hardly a vigilante. If the Goodcheer-Fellows are the type of people you believe them to be, capable of doing the deeds you suspect them of doing, then the best thing you could do is get yourself off of this dead-end road. There are other people who should know about what is happening here tonight.
  
  And so you steer the truck left onto the road, in the direction of Griffin. Yes, the possibility of a washout is high, but then again it is still relatively early in the course of the storm; the road may still be perfectly fine, only getting worse the longer you hem and haw.
  
  It is not an easy drive, however, with all of the same blinding conditions that plagued the short trip between the Bear's Den and the Starbuck Mountain Gang's place, now compounded by the passage of additional time: more branches have come down, more small trees, more rain to swell the streams and turn them into hungry floods eating at the road's surface. As you work your way slowly up to the height-of-land behind Honnedaga Mountain the wind gusts, causing the trees to shudder on both sides of the road; it is just a brief moment, perhaps a premonition of devastation yet to come.
  
  The downward slope on the other side of the small mountain does not look good; you stop the truck and examine the running water ahead of you in the headlights, turgid and muddy. The truck might make it down this, but it won't be pretty and of course there is no way of knowing what conditions you'll find at the bottom. And this wasn't even the spot you had been worried about!
  
  You reach into the glove compartment and grab your phone, which you stowed away hours ago since it is usually little more than a useless distraction out here. If by some chance you could get a tower signal from this high ground it might spare you the need to continue; you could text 911 and alert them of the possibility that your two neighbors have been murdered. The innuendo on which your suspicions are based might be tough to convey, though, and what exactly is 911 going to do about it in these conditions?
  
  This is all moot anyway, because your phone is completely blind tower-wise, just as you expected. You've never gotten a signal this far from town, and although it might've been worth a try it was doubtful new towers have been sprouting up tonight in the storm. And so you are back to your original course of action: to attempt to navigate the washed-out slope as best you can and hope for better luck beyond.
  
  The wild-running water has stripped away the road's surface, leaving behind a bed of mud and cobbles. Nevertheless the water appears to be flowing across it evenly, suggesting there is a drivable surface underneath the flow. So you shift into low gear and release the brake, giving this venture a try. The tires roll their way into the stream and you hear the water flowing against them, almost gushing as high as the struts. Still, you maintain a solid grip on what remains of the roadbed, only having doubts when you encounter a deeper gully that had been perfectly concealed by the water.
  
  It's a different story when you reach the bottom of the hill and encounter a stream flowing across the road at a place where you have never seen flowing water before. This is a major rain event, yes, and you understand the concept of the ground becoming saturated and the excess runoff needing new places to flow. But now you are presented with a body of water that is completely unfamiliar to you, flowing in a twenty-foot wide torrent off the hill to your left and forming a good-sized pond across the road. The flooded section doesn't look that deep, and you are still flush with the success of making it down the hill. And so you continue forward.
  
  But the water continues to rise, even when you think you are past the halfway point. The truck becomes less and less responsive until all four tires seem to lose contact with the ground. The current sweeps the Ford off the road, eventually pinning it against the base of a sturdy hemlock tree. Water spills into the open bed behind you, weighing the truck down and causing it to sink lower into the flood — and taking you with it. You can't open the door because this newly-formed brook is pressing against it, and even if you did manage to get out of here, what odds would you have swimming against the current?
  
  This is hardly an enviable position to be in, although your luck must eventually improve — right? But the truck continues to sink lower as the mud and water continue to pile up, and eventually the flash flooding gets the better of you.