Red Snow by Christine Sutton

Chapter One 

    " Carry on…hmm hmm hmm...Don't you cry no more !"  Kayla sang along as Kansas belted its signature tune. She played air drum on the steering wheel as she drove down the California Highway, bobbing her head to the music.
    She couldn't believe that this was such a desolate stretch of road. California had always looked so lush and beautiful in the brochures. Great big trees, beautiful beaches, majestic mountains. The brochures never pictured stretches of highway running through the desert, surrounded by nothing at all.
    The gas station in Barlow had provided much needed sustenance of microwave burritos, beef jerky, Pepsi Cola and Ho-Hos for desert. "Dinner of champions", she had told the young clerk standing behind the counter, looking like he would rather be boiling in lava, than working at the Barstow Gas-N-Go.  He didn't laugh. Dinner paid for and eaten, she went back out to the car.
    As she buckled herself into the seat, she caught a glimpse of the 1967 Impala that was parked across the lot. Its black paint gleamed in the warm desert sun. Just above the grill, a chrome skull with gleaming red eyes was mounted. It looked to be about the size of an actual skull, not one of those tiny little replicas you got at the AutoZone stores for five bucks. The front window was dark, as though it was tinted. The car looked a little scary as it just sat there, seemingly staring at her. She pulled out of the lot and onto the road, watching the Impala as though it might come to life.
    The dusty, classic 1965 Corvette Stingray convertible she was delivering, was tooling along the highway, seemingly by itself, at eighty-nine miles per hour. Easing off the gas pedal a little, she thought again about the lecture that had been given by her boss at the dealership, Mr. Groves.
    "That car is worth over seventy-thousand dollars! If you can get it to Texas in perfect condition, and I mean PERFECT, you get a bonus. If there is one scrape, ding, speck of dust, or even a crumb on the seat, not only are you fired, but you will pay the insurance deductible, which I assure you is more than you earn in a year. No passengers, no hitchhikers, no nothing. Just you, driving like an old lady to Texas. Are we clear?"
    "Yes, Sir." Kayla had replied. She had had an urge to salute him, but thought that might cause him to have an actual stroke or something, so she resisted. She began her trip from Olympia, Washington to Northwest Texas that afternoon. She had been driving for two and a half days already and even though her trip had been broken up by stays in a few mediocre motels, she was getting bored of this bullshit scenery. Everything was brown. When she had passed through towns like Merced and Modesto, there had been signs of life, but when she got to Bakersfield, all life ended. Then began the trek through nothingness. Tiny towns scattered throughout the desert, each one like a little oasis, offering respite to weary desert travelers.
    There was only one reason that she took this assignment. The bonus. Delivering a seventy thousand dollar classic car across five states would net her a ten percent commission on the sale, plus overtime pay for travel. Almost ten thousand extra dollars to go towards her wedding and her new life.
    She and David had been together for two years, and he had finally popped the question. She wanted to move out of her mother's home more than anything in the world. She loved David more than anything, but he was also her ticket out of a shitty life. Time spent with her mother was like time spent running your knuckles over a cheese grater. The constant put downs and hateful remarks were one thing, but the active sabotage of Kayla's life was another. Since alcohol and drugs were no longer a part of that life, Kayla had been trying to get things together. When it was obvious that moving back in with her mother was the only way to save enough money to straighten herself out, she had been afraid of what that might bring. On