“Nothing encouraging.” He tilted his head toward the Caddy. “Let’s see if we can get this sucker out of the ditch and find your brother.”

As they walked to the car, Katie said, “What do you mean, nothing encouraging?”

“It’s like we thought. It wasn’t just these couple of cars that went nuts. It’s all of them. So, if Archie was in one, it’d be a good thing to find him. Let me get behind the wheel this time.”

“Okay.”

“Not that your driving wasn’t superb. It was pretty awesome, to tell you the truth. But I’ve got a little more experience getting cars that are stuck, unstuck.”

She held out her hand in a be-my-guest gesture.

The front end of the Cadillac remained nose-down into the ditch, but the back wheels were still firmly on the pavement and not the gravel shoulder. Bruce pointed. “That’s a blessing. Mighta spun if we’d landed on the stones. Sit on the trunk.”

“What?”

“Extra weight on the back wheels should help give us some traction. You’re about the skinniest thing I’ve ever seen, but every little bit helps.”

Katie pulled herself up onto the back end of the car. The trunk lid was the size of a dining room table, if not bigger. The incoming cloud cover made the black metal less hot than she had feared it would be. At first, she had her legs dangling over the back bumper.

“Farther up,” Bruce said. “I don’t want you slipping off and getting run over.”

Given how sharply the car was tipped forward, it wasn’t hard for Katie to slide farther up the trunk. She ended up reclining against the rear window. Bruce carefully opened the front door, hanging on to it so it didn’t get away from him. He slipped onto the seat, pulled the door shut, and braced himself against the steering wheel.

He turned the key, and once the motor had roared to life, he let it idle down and carefully put the transmission into reverse. Bruce tossed his right arm over the back of the seat and turned so he could see where he was going, but all he could really see through the window was Katie, and sky.

He feathered the accelerator. The engine sent the power to the rear wheels, and the car groaned as it struggled to come out of the ditch. The undercarriage scraped against grass and gravel as the vehicle slowly extricated itself. Once the front tires touched gravel, Bruce turned the wheel hard and slowly straightened the Caddy out onto the middle of the road, straddling the center line.

“Okay!” Bruce said. “Hop off!!”

Katie slid off the trunk, came around to the passenger side, and got in.

“You want to take over now?” Bruce asked.