Kate took a long slow breath, savoring the hot, humid scents of the woods. Suddenly her mood was shattered by a loud bang immediately followed by a second report. The steering wheel jerked almost out of her hands. The car lurched out of control.
The purple jalopy careened toward the side of the road– a rough flapping noise coming from the right front side of the car.
A blowout.
She fought for control. A fleeting regret for all the things she would miss if she died flashed across her mind. She wasn’t ready to die. She fought to hold the jalopy on the narrow pavement–to keep it from rolling over into the deep ditch beside the road. No brakes; that might destroy any chance at control. She took her foot off the gas to let the car slow naturally. Time seemed to crawl while the car lurched first to one side of the road and then the other as the adrenalin surging through her veins made her overcorrect. She clutched the wheel, knuckles white, battling to straighten out after each swerve. She had just begun to think she might make it when the road made a right angle turn by the Miller farm. She couldn’t hold the curve. The jalopy hung on the side of the road momentarily then plunged off the road and down the embankment. With a last desperate turn of the wheel, she aimed the car directly down the slope to prevent it from rolling over. The jalopy came to rest in a shallow stream at the bottom of the embankment, nose down in a foot of muddy water.