Chapter 26: Empty

Settling in my driver's seat, I make sure Mr. Kitty is comfortable next to me. When I start the car, I realize I'm sitting dangerously close to empty. The likelihood I will make it to the next exit before running out of gas is slim to none, but I pray like hell the gods are smiling on me; being stuck out here would be a nightmare. There's no one I can call, and they couldn't get to me even if there were.

Traffic is moving, but it's incredibly slow. I don't think I've broken ten miles an hour in the last fifteen minutes. The one bad thing about my car is there's no gaslight, so I have to calculate the miles I can go on a tank of gas. That's fairly easy to do when you're driving on the highway or in town, but not so much when you sit idling for hours on end. When the needle is touching the E, I know I'm in desperate need of a gas station, and thus far, there's no exit in sight.

Seventeen minutes later, as the car starts to sputter, I pull over on the side of the road and coast as she