Walter was driving home from town. He had gone to pick up Duke’s arthritis medicine and a small bag of flour. The old Chevy truck rattled in the wind, its heater blowing lukewarm air. The wipers frantically slapped back and forth, entirely losing their battle against the sheets of rain. The headlights carved two weak, yellow tunnels into the blackness.
The county road was desolate, flanked by deep drainage ditches and empty, harvested cornfields. Walter was hunched over the steering wheel, squinting through the smeared glass, driving a careful twenty miles an hour.
Then, he saw it.
Through the curtain of rain, hazard lights blinked weakly—a dying, desperate rhythm. A car had hydroplaned, spun violently, and launched off the asphalt. It was nose-down in the steep ditch, its front end accordion-crushed against a concrete culvert.
Walter hit his brakes, the truck sliding slightly on the slick pavement before coming to a halt on the shoulder.
As his headlights washed over the wreck, Walter’s breath caught in his throat. The driver’s side door was flung wide open. Lying on the gravel and freezing mud, half-submerged in the rushing runoff water, was a body. A young woman.
But what made Walter’s stomach turn over wasn't just the crash. It was the road ahead. In the mud on the shoulder, illuminated by his headlights, were fresh tire tracks. Deep, heavy treads that swooped around the accident and kept going.
Someone had already been here. Other drivers had come down this road, seen a girl dying in the freezing mud, and decided it wasn't their problem. They didn't want to get wet. They didn't want the hassle. They had driven on into the warm and the dry.
Walter gripped the steering wheel. His arthritic hands throbbed in the cold. He was terrified. He was seventy-eight years old. He knew what a fall in the dark could do to a man his age. He knew the mud was like ice, and if he went down in that ditch, he might not have the strength to get back up. The freezing rain would take them both.
But Walter Briggs was a man of the old world. Whatever else the years had stripped away from him, they had never touched his core. He shut off the engine, zipped up his thin coat, and pushed his door open into the roaring storm.
The wind immediately tried to knock him off his feet, stealing the breath from his lungs. The rain felt like needles against his face. Walter grabbed a heavy rusted flashlight from behind his seat and began the treacherous descent into the ditch.
His boots slipped on the clay. He slid down the last few feet, landing hard on his knees in six inches of freezing water, pain shooting up his spine. Gritting his teeth, he crawled the rest of the way to the woman.
She was young—maybe twenty-two. She was clutching a heavy, oversized leather jacket around her shaking shoulders. A deep gash on her forehead was pouring blood, washed away instantly by the rain. Her lips were entirely blue.
"Hold on, sweetheart," Walter shouted over the roaring wind. "I'm right here. I've got you."
She mumbled something incoherent, her eyes rolling back. She was slipping into extreme hypothermia.
Walter knew he couldn't wait for an ambulance. The town's volunteer squad would take forty minutes to get out here in this weather. She didn't have forty minutes.
With a grunt of supreme effort, Walter slid his arms under hers. He was an old farmer; his muscles were withered, but they possessed a stubborn, deeply ingrained strength. He hauled her upward. She was dead weight, her boots dragging in the mud.
"Up we go," Walter gasped, his heart hammering erratically in his chest. "Come on, now. Help me out."