<strong>On the Road to the Caves<br/>Allison Garvey</strong><br/><br/>She had the pedal pushed down, urging the bug to move as fast as possible.  The rain was blinding and if she'd met any on-coming cars, Al had no idea what she'd have done; the wipers weren't holdin up their end of the bargain agains the downpour.  Her stomach was roiling; fear and dread seemed to be battling within her.  Fear of what might be at the caves, and dread of being too late.  But, the routine...it had been going on for too long.  Unless the appearance of the monsters in the bar was a sign that things were going from bad to worse than bad.<br/><br/>"Don't borrow trouble," she muttered.  "The car started.  It's a sign.  A sign you're doing the right thing..."<br/><br/>The engine huffed, coughed and stalled.  Al looked at the gas gauge and saw that she had half a tank even as the car coasted along the road.  She quickly took the car out of gear and eased onto the dirt shoulder.  The ground was so saturated that even the light VW Bug sank to the floorboards.<br/><br/>Al sat in the car, dumbfounded.  AFter everything that had happened that night, she felt that this might be the last straw.  She might be that camel whose back was broke; possessor of the last nerve finally "gotten-on."  And, then she started to laugh.  Hysteria fought with a real sense of the absurd as she leaned her head on the steering wheel and laughed.  She banged her head a few times and glanced up as the gas gauge suddenly shifted to the big red E, the little idiot light coming on. Pressing back from the wheel, Al laughed harder.  Only the laughter had turned to tears somewhere along the line and she could feel their coolness running down her face.<br/><br/>Sighing, wiping her cheeks, Al pushed the emergency button to set the lights to flashing and turned off the headlights in favor of the parking lights.  The battery would be next to go, she mused.  She grabbed the door handle and pushed.  The car was sunk below the level of the tarmac, the door stopped about five inches out, scraping on the rough edge of the road.  Sighing, Al rolled the window down and climbed out of the window to stand beside the dead Bug.<br/><br/>Dead.  Bug.<br/><br/>"I hate bugs," she  muttered, giving the car a firm kick to the door panel.  Al climbed up to sit on the roof, legs dangling over the side as she waited for what would come next. "Aliens," she said.  "Little green guys with probes," she mused.  "Most action I'd have seen in a long while..."  She looked up at the sky, then pulled the hood up on her jacket and waited.