Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

There was no sense opening the door to look down. They could see what they were going to hit way out in front of them. Trent just made sure he and Donna were belted in tight and grabbed the steering wheel to brace himself.

The final hundred feet or so seemed to take forever, but when they hit, it felt like they had come in without a chute at all. The truck lurched up and sideways, and a huge cloud of snow billowed up around them, completely blinding them for a second before it swirled away. Trent felt the pickup tipping to the right, so he goosed the motors and cranked the wheels into the tilt and brought it upright again, but when he let off the juice the pickup kept rolling. It bounded up over a snowdrift, caught air for a second, then plowed nose-first into the next drift, throwing up another big cloud of snow.

“The chute’s draggin’ us!” Trent growled. He concentrated on steering, hoping that the fabric would catch in a clump of grass, but when they plowed through four more snowbanks without slowing, he decided to change tactics. The shroud lines stretched out straight ahead of them, but they slacked up for a second when the pickup crested a snowbank, which meant the wind wasn’t blowing much faster than they were moving.

“Hang on!” he said, and he tromped the juice pedal. The wheels spun for a second, and the uneven power to three wheels made the truck slew around sideways, but he turned into the slide and brought it back straight before they went over. And now the shroud lines were on the ground. He aimed for them, driving right over the top of them and running up their length until he drove right onto the parachute canopy. He braked to a stop while he was still on top of it, and cloth billowed up around them, flapping like mad now that it was pinned down, but it couldn’t inflate with the pickup sitting astride it.

“Can I breathe now?” Donna asked.

“I think so.” Trent set the brake and waited to see if it would hold. The pickup lurched back and forth as the parachute tugged on it, but there wasn’t enough cloth free to drag it anymore.

The radio crackled to life. “Mon dieu! Etes vous—are you all right?”

Trent picked up the microphone. “I think so. I don’t dare move until we get the chute folded up, though, or it’ll drag us to hell and gone again.”

“Stay right there. I will be there in several minutes to help.”

“Roger. Thanks.” Trent popped the latches on his door and cautiously opened it, expecting the wind to snatch it out of his hands, but it wasn’t blowing all that hard. Maybe fifteen or twenty miles an hour was all. There was just a hell of a lot of surface area on the parachute.

There was a lot of surface area on his hat, too. He felt it lift up, but he grabbed it before it could go anywhere and set it on the back of the seat.

He stepped outside. The air swirled down the open neck of his Ziptite and bit right through his shirt. “Jesus,” he said, “It’s colder’n a witch’s tit out here. Let me get our coats.”

Donna laughed. “How cold?”

“Very fucking cold!” Trent yelled as he closed his door and fought his way through the billowing parachute to the camper. He had to watch his footing in the snow; the Ziptite suit’s plastic feet were slick as skis. The chute had wrapped itself around the whole back end of the pickup, so he had to pull it away from the camper and cram it under the truck so he could get to the door, but that actually helped cut down on the amount of it catching the wind. He popped open the door and leaned in just far enough to open the storage compartment with their sleeping bags and other cold-weather gear in it, dragged out his own coat and put it on right over his Ziptite, then grabbed Donna’s coat and went back around to the cab and handed it in to her.

While she was putting it on, he went back to look at the parachute and see how they could fold it up without it getting away from them, but he would have to drive off it to even begin to fold it properly, and there was just too much wind for that.

He looked at the situation for a few seconds, his ears growing steadily colder until he pulled his stocking cap out of his pocket and tugged it down over his head. “Welcome to the Riviera,” he muttered.

The cloth at his feet was wedged up against the tires. Trent grabbed a handful of it and wadded it up in his arms, tugging more and more of what wasn’t actually under the wheels from beneath the pickup until he had all the free cloth he could get in his hands. Maybe he could tie it up with a rope or something, and then drive off of the rest of it and do the same to that? Or… yeah. He got one arm around the ball of parachute cloth, opened the camper door with his other hand, and shoved the cloth in through the door.

“Drive forward a few feet!” he yelled.

Donna popped open her door. “What?”

“Drive forward a few feet. I’m gonna pull the parachute loose a little at a time and shove it inside the camper.”

“Oh… okay.” She closed her door, then a few seconds later the pickup rolled forward.

“That’s good!” Trent slapped the side of the truck and she stopped while he gathered up more parachute, then he had her drive forward again and gathered some more until he finally got it all inside the camper. The shroud lines were a tangled mess, and there was no way he or Donna were going to fit in the camper themselves until they got the chute folded up and stowed in its proper place, but at least they wouldn’t get dragged downwind anymore.

He climbed up on top of the pickup and unbuckled the shroud lines so he could shove the whole works inside the camper. While he was up there, he spotted motion far out across the plain. A big cloud of snow was approaching from the side.

“Company’s coming,” he shouted down to Donna.

“I see them.”

Trent tossed the shroud lines to the ground and closed the empty parachute cover, then shoved the last of the lines in the camper along with everything else and slammed the door on the whole works. He hurried around to the cab again and climbed in, grateful for the warmth and still air inside.

Donna took his hands in hers. “Man, your fingers are like icicles.”

“They’ll be all right.” He released the brake and goosed the truck forward, turning toward the oncoming cloud of snow. Whoever was out there, he wanted it clear that he had taken care of his own parachute.

Donna had left the computer on the dashboard, and Trent could see that the emergency bugout screen was still active. One keystroke would take them out of a bad situation, but unless they were about to die it would send them into an even worse one, because the door latches weren’t light. He and Donna could probably seal up their Ziptites before they passed out from lack of oxygen, but he didn’t want to try it.

They could at least improve their odds. “Snug up your door,” he told her. He reached over his left arm with his right and did his own latches while he drove. Then he reached behind his head and undid the bungees holding the rifle down. Donna gave him a funny look, but she did her door, too.

They looked ridiculous with their winter coats over their spacesuits, but Trent didn’t care. It was a hell of a lot warmer that way than with either coat or suit alone, and with any luck they wouldn’t have to stay bundled up for long. He did make one concession to appearances, swapping his stocking cap for his cowboy hat. Nothing said “Don’t mess with me” quite as well as a black Stetson.

The oncoming vehicle was painted white. They were almost on it before they saw it at the head of its plume of snow. Trent veered to the right, intending to pull up alongside it and talk with the driver window-to-window, but the other driver veered the same way.