"We’re lost.”
“I’m telling you, we need to stay on this road!”
“What road? Do you see any road in this weather? We could be anywhere!”
Nick clicked the windshield wipers again to make sure that they were going as fast as they could. It didn’t make a difference. The blizzard was whiteout conditions, we could barely see five feet around the car. It had been me and my friends’ stupid idea to chance the storm and try to get to the hotel on time, despite the news warnings to stay off the roads. It was safe to say all five of us were regretting that choice.
To make matters worse, we were driving through the mountains, or at least we thought we were. Either way, between the storm and our location, our cell phones had no signal so we had no way to call for help. Nick was slowly inching the car forwards in hopes that eventually we’d hit a tunnel or something. Abruptly we can to a dead stop. Nick pressed harder on the gas. There was a whirling sound.
“Keep going!” Ally said
“I can’t!” Nick said, tugging on the steering wheel “The tires are stuck!”
I’d been worried before, but now I was really starting to panic. If we were actually caught in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard, we were in serious danger. As in, this was a life or death situation. I tried to rack my brains for if it was better to leave the car running or turn it off and on every couple minutes to try to save power.
“Hey guys…” Emma suddenly said “Call me crazy but I think I see a house over there.”
“House?” I pressed my face to the window. It was faint, but I could make out the silhouette of a house.
“Is that for real?” Nick asked
“Seems to be.”
There was a silence before I asked
“Should we go for it?”
“Now’s our best chance before the blizzard buries the car.” Clark said
I took a deep breath “On three?”
Nick began to count “One, two, three!”
I wrenched the car door open and plowed forward into the snow. The wind was howling in my face and I could barely see anything. I was vaguely aware of my friends behind me as I thought about nothing but getting to the door.
I was the first to arrive. I was prepared to kick down the door if necessary, but I had just enough common sense to check if it was unlocked. I grabbed the knob and pulled. The door swung open. We all tumbled into the house and Nick yanked the door shut with a bang. We all blundered around in the dark until Ally found a light switch and clicked it on.
I blinked and brushed snow off my clothes. We were all badly underdressed for the weather, I was wearing a thin jacket that was more of a windbreaker and jeans. A couple more minutes and we would have been… I didn’t want to think about it.
The house was warm though. There was a kitchen and living room in the main area and seemed like it had some stairs going to a second floor. It looked pretty nice.
“Hello?” Clark yelled “Excuse us, we don’t mean to intrude but we got stuck in the blizzard! Can you help us? Is anyone there?”
It was dead silent.
“I guess no one’s home.” Ally said
“Maybe they got stuck somewhere for the night too.” Emma said
“I don’t think so.” I said “We’re in the mountains, so there’s no grocery stores or anything around here. More likely this is someone’s vacation house.”
“Jack’s right.” Clark said “Land’s pretty cheap around here so some guy probably bought a bunch and built a house on it. We’re probably a couple miles away from the next nearest building. It’s a miracle we found this place.”
“But if it’s so far away then how’s there electricity?” Nick asked “And gas. I doubt there would be any utilities if we were still that high in the mountains.”
“There’s probably a gas tank out back and a generator that runs on that.”
“Well that’s good news for us.” Ally said “We should be able to last a few hours and let the storm pass. Anyone have cell service here?”
I checked my phone and shook my head. Everyone else did too.
“It’ll probably get better once the storm’s over.” Emma said “In the meantime we may as well get comfortable.”
She walked into the kitchen and began opening cupboards.
“Hey, what are you doing? We can’t just take stuff!” I said
“Our car’s stuck in the middle of a snowstorm.” Nick said “I’m pretty sure there’s some law that if it’s a life or death situation you can steal.”
“Besides, we’ll pay for anything we take.” Emma said
I reluctantly followed them into the kitchen and began looking through cupboards. It was actually really well stocked for a vacation house. There were cans of soup and crackers and all sorts of baking supplies and chips, but there were also perishable things like eggs and cheese.Didn’t that mean that the owners had to come up here often? I really didn’t want someone walking in on me cooking in their kitchen.
“Hey, check it out! I’ll be able to cook something pretty good with all this stuff.” Emma said, already taking sugar and baking soda out
“Ally!” I said
“Jack, please, this won’t cost more than $20.” Emma said, holding up a mixing bowl. I looked out the window nervously but it was still a whiteout so I began helping. Emma was actually a really good cook and before long there was freshly baked bread and stew on the table.
“Don’t you find it weird that the owners have vegetables and meat in their vacation house?” I asked “This stuff goes bad pretty quickly and you need to spend a lot of extra money on electricity for the refrigerator.”
“Hmm?” Clark asked, his cheeks stuffed with food
“It’s just… never mind.” I said, but I still didn’t eat very much. I was beginning to feel that there was something very off about the entire house, even though no one else noticed.
