Edge of the World Ch. 01

"You're kidding!" Jessica pleaded.

She stood in one of the rarest locations left in America: a phone booth. Stranger still, a small line was waiting for her to finish up. In front of an old, dingy gas station normally avoided by most, the relic of times past was one of the few remaining phone lines that hadn't yet been knocked out by tree limbs or blocked out by the approaching snowstorm.

"I'm sorry, babe," David claimed, several hundred miles away and safe from the coming storm. "The roads are a nightmare. It took me forever just to find a hotel, and I still need to find someone crazy enough to take my goldfish out of the apartment for the week!"

"But, but-" Jessica stuttered, feeling like one of the anxiety-stricken freshmen in the high school English courses she taught. "You were supposed to be on the way back days ago, right?"

"We lost two men to bereavement leave," he explained. "It was supposed to be a quick job and turned into a shitshow. I'm really sorry, babe. I know you had plans before the storm, and now I can't even be there for that."

"It's...okay," she lied, mainly because the old woman waiting behind her was giving one hell of an evil eye. "Listen, I need to go and...and it might be a while before we talk again, okay?"

"I am really sorry, Jess," he continued to emphasize. It was not quite the phrase she was looking for, not after several months of dating and sorta living together, but perhaps she had overplayed how much the week off had meant to her and he wanted to hammer home how much it bothered him.

"I understand," she said slowly, edging the old scratched phone closer to the cradle. "I'll, I'll call you as soon as I'm able, okay? See you, David."

Click. Not even a reply back. Oh she would remember that shit, all right. If there wasn't a mean looking old bitch right outside the phone booth, she may have stayed inside fuming for who knows how long. She maneuvered out of the booth and scurried back to her snow-covered car, her scarf and red hair lashing about wildly in the wind until she slammed the door shut with an exasperated gasp.

The snow had been predicted, but initial forecasts had put it as a brief frost following a few days of heavy rain. Instead, the giant puddles and wet roads had turned to ice phenomenally fast, and were buried under several days of heavy, windy snow. And on top of that, a brutally cold storm was expected to land by nightfall and not wind down for close to a week.

The roads had been salted in preparation for the storm, but apparently not enough. A thick layer of ice had formed, especially over the several bridges she would need to cross to reach her house out in the sticks. She pulled out of the gas station, head bent down and peeping through the few small clear spots she'd managed to chip away at the windshield, creeping along the road at a snail's pace.

The wind had picked up considerably, and blew blinding snow across her already limited view. She risked one mostly useless glance at the high school she taught at, even though it was little more than a white blob in the distance.

She had been offered shelter in their dormitories, along with the rest of the normally home-going students that didn't want to risk bus rides or parent's lives on the frozen roads, but eagerly declined. For one thing, she was well stocked for the coming storm, it was just a matter of reaching home alive. For another, she didn't enjoy the prospect of living with jealous high school girls for a week, or God forbid a bunch of horny boys locked in a box without internet porn. She got enough hateful and lustful glares while on the clock, thank you very much. And of course, she had planned on a little alone time with David. Now she had a pile of extravagant food and some other little surprises that would sit sadly in the cold little corner of her kitchen.

She passed the school without incident and crept along, squinting to tell where the road was not only from the pouring snow but because she had miscalculated how much time she had for last-minute shopping. She had forgotten the return trip could take more than twice as long, and she was quickly reaching the horrifying point of driving in the dark in the middle of a snowstorm.

Out of nowhere a dim waving silhouette appeared at the side of the road, sunken into the snow.

"Goddamnit!" she cursed, not because she was remotely close to hitting them but just out of surprise. She braked, slowly, until the shape was pawing at her passenger door. While this was the worst possible day to be dealing with other people's shit, she had a feeling driving on in this situation would be cruel to the point of illegality, and unlocked the door.

A vicious burst of chilled air slapped at the side of her face as the figure did its best to climb in without tracking in the knee-deep snow. She watched a backpack bulging with supplies roll into the backseat as the person sat and struggled to close the door against the wintry gale.

"Oh thank god," the man gasped, and pulled back his thick hood.

Jessica vaguely recognized the man, well basically the boy, from high school, but hadn't taught him personally. He was a senior set to graduate a few weeks from now, with a mostly neutral opinion in the teacher's lounge, aside from the coaches who found him decent at track & field. Not that there was any high schooler she would want to meet in this kind of situation, but she had at least lucked out on encountering the most bearable student. Still...

The boy turned to her and paused, recognizing her as well. His nose was running profusely and his face was reddened from the bitter cold. Clearly he had been outside for a good long while.

"Mrs...McCormick?" he guessed.

"Yes it is," she half-lied. "I don't think we've ever-"

"Look I'm sorry," he interrupted, pointing out a windshield he had no view out of. He continued to breathe heavily and rub at the snot he couldn't keep from escaping his nose "Metal trash on the road. Tore into my tire, fell in the ditch. Out here for hours. Ha...hoo..."

Jessica considered the road ahead, the only path to her home, and possibly a minefield now.

"Don't worry," he sighed. "Think I cleared it, before it got bad. You got a phone?"

"Towers are out," she informed him, "and most landlines are down."

"Well, shit," he wheezed without thinking, then quickly glanced at her. "Er, I mean, oh no."

"Relax, I'm off the clock," Jessica sighed, eying the road. She may as well have been trying to look through a white tarp thrown over the windshield. "Where's your home?"

"Ten miles from the turn at Levi," he hesitantly answered. From his face she had an idea he knew the coordinates he just gave may as well have been to another planet. She would already need to defy death once on the upwards slope leading to her house. There was no way in hell she could go down Levi, a winding and steep road slithering alongside a range of hills, in the current weather.

"Well...shit," she agreed.

The boy gave a meek laugh that immediately died in his throat. She reminded him of a youngster who had made a mess and was afraid to tell their mom about it.

Realistically there were no other options she could even begin to consider, but...well, this was a nightmare scenario. She shut off even thinking about the whole mess, not wanting to dwell on the days, perhaps even a week of awkward hell she was about to endure.

"You're going to have to stay with me a while," she said, more of a grudging admission to herself than a statement to him. "Do your parents know where you're at?"

"I managed to call them when the car slid into the ditch," he explained. "They knew I was heading back to the dorm, but I lost service right after."

Jessica tried not to show her concern. Most phones went out in the afternoon, which meant he'd been out there for at least four hours, probably more. Even with a trapped car for cover, that had to have been a long lonesome hell of thawing out in front of a heating system that may or may not run hot, then climbing out of the ditch, on the lookout for anyone else dumb enough to try the road.

The car crept onward. While the boy in the passenger seat eventually stopped shivering and his nose ran dry, he hadn't "warmed up" in the social sense. Aside from waving his hands in front of the heater vents, he'd barely moved a muscle.

"I'm afraid I've forgotten your name," Jessica admitted.

"Oh, I'm David," the boy answered, and it took every ounce of willpower not to curse or laugh at the cruel irony of her worsening winter week. She would be spending her impromptu vacation with a David, all right, it was just one she didn't know and couldn't do anything with.

She considered him for a moment, and decided to say "You can call me Ms. McCormick. When we get to my house...IF we get to my house, I'll make you a spot on the floor to sleep. I'd let you have the couch but if the power stays out, the fireplace is going to be our only heat source for a while. Do you understand?"

"T-Thank you so much," David answered gratefully. Some of the tension in his body fell away. "I know this is an annoying thing to put you through, and all because I thought I'd could beat this damn storm and make it to the city..."

"It could happen to anyone," Jessica assured him, even though she felt like the fates had chosen her for their personal chew toy. "And hey, maybe the weather won't get that bad. We might be heading back into town this time tomorrow."

The boy nodded politely but stayed silent, gazing up through the windshield at the frozen hell coming down on them.

***

The weather did not improve. If anything the storm was deadset on being worse than the meteorologists claimed in every way.

The young man had stayed silent and near motionless on the trip home, only moving to locate the seatbelt when he noticed the slick, dangerous hill she needed to overcome. She briefly accelerated on the downward slope before the big incline to gather speed. What little momentum she dared gain quickly dissipated on the steep climb, until the car came at a slanted stop.

"Ohhh shit," the two of them nearly said in unison, as they felt more than saw the car sliding backwards despite the accelerator on the floor.

"Look look look!" she gasped, her head bent down to peer through the nearly useless rearview mirror.

David turned in his seat and squinted. "I'm trying but I can't see anything. Just go back straight-"

"I am!"

"Okay okay, just tap the brake until we-"

"I know!"

They survived the car coming to rest between two daunting hills.

"Well this sucks," David said. He examined the road ahead, the tire tracks where the snow had been wiped away to reveal the solid sheen of ice beneath.

"Yeah..." Jessica sighed. She enjoyed a few more seconds of meager heat from the car then killed the engine. "My house is just up this hill, though. If we go off the road a bit and use the trees, I think we can make it up."

So the two embarked on their journey. David volunteered to lead the way, mashing the snow down until he hopefully hit rocks and leaning his backpacking weight against the trees along the way. Jessica followed at a distance, preferring not to get bowled over should he lose his footing. Her teaching experience reinforced the clumsy teenager stereotype more than enough to make her wary, track athlete or no.

It was in the middle of contemplating all the times she'd seen freshman boys trip over their feet that she felt a rock give way beneath her foot. Her ankle twisted at an unnatural angle, and in her hasty recovery pain relief overrode maintaining her balance. She gve a short squeal as she began to fall backwards.

"Wha!"

"David turned, one hand latched onto a narrow tree trunk, and lunged for her flailing arm. He managed to catch her wrist with a painful grip, and she quickly grabbed on with her other arm.

"You alright?" he gasped. Once he realized she was too concerned with hissing "shit" under her breath repeatedly, he continued, "just take it slow and climb up to me, okay?"

"Shit," she continued to hiss with every step on her twisted ankle, but she slowly reached the uphill side of the tree and lean against it to rest.

"How bad is it?" David asked.

"I can make it," she sighed, judging from the next fifteen feet or so where the hill finally leveled off.

"We can rest here a bit," the boy suggested, then pointed at her raised foot. "Raise your pants leg, the snow will help with the pain a bit."

Her face brightened at the surprisingly good idea. Steeling herself for the cold, she dipped her bare ankle into untouched snow.

"That...was smart," she had to admit to him. Her head lolled back in a smirk as the blissful cold eased her sufffering somewhat. "Boy scout?"

David laughed. Now that his teacher didn't appear to be in mortal peril or a bitchy mood, he smiled and shook his head. "Just stuff you learn in track. I can...I mean, I can dig out some wrapping tape from my pack when we get to your house. Unless, you need it now?"

"No, we're almost there," she told him, and gently shook her leg free from the snow.

Twenty minutes later, once she had grudgingly wrapped an arm around his shoulders for support, they arrived at the enclosed porch preceeding her humble home. They stomped the slush off three of their four feet at the threshhold and passed the screen door with audible sighs of relief.

The sun had finally dissappeared on their journey, and Jessica had held the flashlight on her phone foward to light the way. Now her hand was too numb to fish out the keys from her purse.

"Here, left middle side," she said and lit the inner contents for him.

"Left middle side?" he muttered. Clueless on what exactly that meant, he began riffling through the left outer side. It was only a split second until he found what she meant, and she tried to be as stoic as possible, but a smal tremor of indescribable embarassment squirmed through her stomach when his fingers ran across what must have looked like an absurd number of condoms stashed away for her recently ruined plans.

"Got it," he said a little too flatly, and soon unlocked the door.

"Thank god," Jessica groaned, as the two of them shuffled into the dark and electrally dead house.

***

The interior spared them from the biting wind, but the temperature wasn't exactly balmy after an entire day without electricity. The candles and flashlights were on the living room table, and within minutes the house was aglow with light.

The kitchen was adjacent to the living room, separated only by a couch and the counter. She limped to the oven and turned her burners to the max. Every little bit would help until the fireplace was going. David, meanwhile, unloaded his backpack on the couch until he found a small baggie of first aid basics.

"Here you go," he said, setting the compression tape and some ibuprofen on the counter. Where's your firewood at?"

"Backyard, under a tarp," she answered. "Give me a minute and I can help-"

David laughed and shook his head. "You're barely walking, you need to rest that leg. I can stack up wood in the porch. I'm really, REALLY tired of being cold, Ms. McCormick."

When Jessica offered no argument, he grabbed a flashlight from the table, took a deep breath and faced the brutal cold once again. Reluctant as she was to take a teenager's orders, she had to admit his presence would make things a whole lot easier going forward now. Had she been alone and taken that spill, she'd either be crawling through the muck not even halfway back yet or on her way to becoming a corpse. And even if she made it here alone, hauling in logs would have been a total nightmare.

Of course, she also wouldn't have had clumsy teenagers on her mind at all and may have avoided the fall entirely, but it was healthier, if not exactly easier, to think she had been given a minor miracle.

That didn't mean she was going to let this little punk treat her like a helpless maiden, however. She downed a generous dose of ibuprofen, set a pot of water to boiling and staggered to her room for a fresh set of clothes. Once she shed the cumbersome wet clothes for a thick sweater, baggy pajamas and poofy socks, she used the last of her energy to reach the couch and fall into its cushiony embrace.

She could have sworn she only rested her eyes for a few seconds, but the next thing she knew, the pain in her ankle had been significantly muffled, a glorious heat was drifting across from the vibrant fireplace and the smell of meat was in the air. She saw David in front of the oven, stirring the pot she'd started earlier. He had ditched his heavy clothing for a few layers of shirts and what looked like ratty jeans. For a moment he looked so like the other David, her David, she could almost taste his bitter coffee and overcooked eggs he liked to suffer in the morning.

"How long was I out?" she croaked.

"Oh hey," he said, glancing back. "It's been like an hour, maybe? I didn't know what you had this going for so I just made spaghetti with some sausage."

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "I'm starving!"

They ate in silence, Jessica scarfing down spools of spaghetti in a mildly unladylike haste, David pacing himself and looking around awkwardly now that the chores and immediate danger was past. Compared to how levelheaded he'd been when faced with the cold and the calamity, she found this nervous version a strange relief; she was still technically the authority figure in the situation, and helpful or no, found this unexpectedly necessary support a little unnerving.

"I, um, wanna thank you," he said at last, not making eye contact, " for letting me stay here. There were two other cars but they didn't see me or decided to speed on, and if you hadn't shown up, I'd be sleeping in my car getting buried in snow right now."

"Least I could do," Jessica assured him, and spared a moment of ill will towards whatever heartless pricks had drove on by to leave her in this mess. After a large swig of soda, she closed her eyes and admitted, "You really helped me out there, too."

David shyly smiled, not quite directly at her, and continued eating. They did an admirable job demolishing both the pound of spaghetti and sausage in one go. But once the plates were set to soak in the sink and the silence set in, David wasn't the only one looking for a topic of conversation. Two people with only one relatable point at different ends of the spectrum struggled to find common ground, and naturally the conversation drifted towards the weather.

"So how long is it supposed to go on like this?" David asked, nodding his head towards the battering winds against the windows."

"Last I heard, a couple of days," Jessica recalled, "but they were wrong about this before. Can you reach the radio on top of the fridge for me? We can catch up on the news."

David quickly fetched the antiquated box and gave it to her. It didn't take very long to find a weather bulletin; the typical rock station had been either downsized or fully hijacked for constant updates on what sounded like a worsening situation.

"Governor Tamlin has activated the national guard in preparation for the coming storm," a bland voice on the radio informed them. "We repeat, if you are within a mile or two of the shelters listed and have warm, reliable transportation, it is highly advised you cautiously take the main highways to their location. Fire and police staff are lighting the roads, and the snowplows will continue to run until midnight tonight. If you are unable to register in a shelter, the national guard and local services will be providing food, water and transportation for those willing in the coming days. Residents are advised to leave their faucets lightly running, and any outdoor extensions covered or insulated-"

"Man," David whispered, eyes wide. "I've never been in a storm like this. Have you, Ms. McCormick?"