Bill took off after her. She sprinted down the hill towards Neddie's pickup truck. She made it to the truck just yards ahead of Bill, threw open the door and leaped inside, only to discover there were no keys in the ignition.

"Alice," Bill said, opening the door.

"Damn it! Damn it! No keys! Neddie's got the keys!"

"Alice! You've got to calm down! There has to be a—"

"We've got to get out of here!" she screamed, staring at him wildly. Fear was coursing through her.

She could feel that something had happened to the others—something she didn't even want to think about.

"Hot wire! You said you worked on cars! Can you hotwire a car?"

"Of course I can hotwire a car but—"

"Then do it! Do it now, Bill!"

Rather than argue with her, he got into the truck, reached underneath the dash and he yanked down the wires leading to the ignition switch. It only took a few seconds to find the hot lead. He touched the wires together and the starter motor turned over but the engine wouldn't catch.

"Again! Do it again!" said Alice.

He tried several more times with the same result then got out and went to the front of the truck and raised the hood.

"What's the matter with it?" Alice said.

"It's wet," said Bill. He shrugged. "I don't know."

It was nothing glaringly obvious. Nothing he could see in the dark with only a flashlight and he wasn't really looking that hard, either, being more concerned with calming Alice. That was why he didn't see the cut wires leading out of the distributer cap.

Alice jumped off the truck and ran to him.

"Why don't we just hike out of here?" she said, "Just get out, right now?"

"Look!" said Bill, taking her by the arm, "It's ten miles to the nearest crossroads. Steve will be back soon. We can use his Jeep to get help. Don't worry. There's probably some stupid explanation for all of this."

"Like what?" she said.

He put his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek.

"It's okay. We'll be laughing about this tomorrow, I promise."

He grabbed the hood of the truck and slammed it shut.

"Come on, let's get out of this rain."

***

Getting out of the rain was just what Steve Christie was thinking about as he sat in the drivers seat of his Jeep about five miles from the camp, stuck in the mud. The deer had bottled across the road in front of him and he had only seen it at the last moment. He had swerved but the added weight of the load he was towing sent the Jeep slewing around and the trailer jackknifed, nearly flipping over. He barely managed to bring the whole sliding rig under control, but not before he had skidded off to the side of the road and onto the soft shoulder which the rain had turned into quicksand.