Excerpt of Cold Day in July by Stella Cameron

Prologue
Three miles and she'd be home.

She was close enough to smell safety but not dose enough to touch it. And the car didn't feel right, hadn't felt as if it were responding quite fight since she'd started it. She got a sensation that she couldn't rely on the engine, and that this time it would let her down, not that she could always trust her premonitions. Her imagination often went wild in the night.

These late drives home were getting worse. Why couldn't she have been born to love darkness, the black on moonless black of the hours after midnight and before dawn? Rather than taking this suffocating back route along the bayou, which was shorter, she could start driving the better lit main street through Toussaint, then cut down Bonanza Alley to St. Cecil's and the parish house.

Only 2.4 miles and she'd be home.

The car jerked. It had been jerking since she left Pappy's Dancehall. She stepped on the pedal and it sank to the floor with no resistance.

2.3 miles.

Move, move, move. God, get me there just this one more time and I'll light all the candles in the church.

Out of gas? The needle bounced. I filled up last night. It's gotta be full now. Gould be more of an incline than she thought and it was throwing the gauge off. Oh, yeah, it's those big ol’ hills of Louisiana. This was the land of the Big Flat, and people who remarked on it weren't talking about tires.

2.2 miles? Hell, no. She'd gone farther than that. Come on. I'm bein' good now. Have been for a long time, months. Listen up, someone! I'm doin’ my best to put all the bad stuff behind me. Don't punish me some more, I've been punished plenty.

2.1 miles. Still making progress. Ah, who was she kid- ding? The engine had quit and she was coasting. And she was going to throw up. Sweat seeped from her back and beneath her arms. Her hair stuck to her neck and face.

The only sounds she heard were grit beneath the wheels, and live oak branches slapping against the car as it rolled to a stop on the rock-and-grass verge.

She came to a standstill with drifts of gray Spanish moss cloaking the windshield.

If she dared, she'd call the law for help, but she didn't want any special notice from Deputy Spike Devol. There wasn't anyone else she could bring out here at this time of night.

The doors were locked. Dawn wasn't too far away. Why not stay where she was until it got light? She rolled down her window an inch, and the nocturnal choral burst inside on air that would heat up again before it ever cooled down. Katydids calling, and the staccato whine of cicadas---frogs grunting their own descants. And the bayou was there even if she couldn't see it, the nebulous surface of the water silently sucking at drenched banks. As a child she'd giggled at the sight of slick-coated nutrias sliding between marsh grasses that thrived with muddy roots. Tonight the idea of the soup made from those big white rats gagged her.

Before she'd left Toussaint to sing at Pappy's she'd stopped for gas. Could be she had a hole in the tank... or that someone had made a hole in the tank?

She had enemies, but they wouldn't come around to punish her now. She'd outrun them.

In the past week or so kids had been caught syphoning gas from cars and trucks around town. Damn their scaly little hides. That's what this was all about. Tomorrow night-- tonight now---she'd be at Pappy's listening to everyone complain about the same thing. Two and a half miles wasn't any distance to walk, not since she'd cleaned up her act and got healthy. She knew the way well. This would be a piece of cake.

Yeah, so why can't I believe my own happy talk? Staying put until morning was the safest thing to do.

A heel could kick the glass in. Or a good sized rock could smash it--and her.

In her purse she carried a gun, a very small gun, but it could kill real well. She'd never actually fired the thing, but she'd been shown how. If someone crept up on the car, she'd shoot them. She would be fine where she was, and every minute that passed brought daylight closer.

There wasn't enough air. Bug s slid through the narrow opening in the window and buzzed around her head. Bugs were all the company she had out here, and they weren't going to do her more than minimal harm. Swallow and breathe and get out…and walk.

The door, as she unlocked it, ground as if muffled by a quilt. With her purse strap over her shoulder, she slid out and shut the door behind her. The pencil flashlight she had on her keys gave only a pinpoint beam of light, but even that was comforting.

Instinct--and alligator sense--made her walk in the middle of the narrow old road. Any markings had disappeared long ago. The penlight bobbled over the ground like a drunken glowworm. Faster and faster she walked until she reached a sharp bend in the road and looked back. Shapes of trees and swaying moss made an entrance to a black tunnel, and when she faced forward again, it was toward another hole filled by the night.

Just beneath her skin, flesh and nerve crawled. And even as she sweated she turned cold until her face flushed again, and her head seemed about to burst.

Something cracked. Oh, shit. More cracking, splintering, the steady breaking of brittle wood--a faint whirring.

She screamed, then clamped her mouth shut and carefully withdrew the gun from her purse. Holding it in front of her, trying not to shake, she shone the pen- light on the barrel. Let them see the chrome gleam and know they weren't playing games with a pushover.

Silence.