I pulled into the small town, the sputtering street light perfectly matching the death throes of my engine. I willed it to keep on going, to get me as close as possible to the town centre before it gave out completely and I had to push or – unthinkably worse – hire a tow truck.
I drove past the town sign, flinching at another backfire from my engine. I’m sure it was only a matter of time before the police were called with reports of a gunfight at the town border. I peered up at the sign, unsure where I’d ended up after taking an emergency exit off the interstate highway. Squinting against the flickering streetlight, I could just about make out the faded lettering.
‘Moorabbin,’ I mouthed to myself. It would have to do – now I just had to find a mechanic for a car service in Moorabbin, and one who didn’t mind being woken up at one in the morning.
With one final bellow of smoke and soul-clenching groan, my engine gave its final breath and the car juddered to a sickly stop.
‘No, no, come on,’ I cried out, smacking the dashboard as hard as I could. ‘Come on, you can give me more!’
The car could not, in fact, give me more.
With a sigh that could have felled an oak tree, I opened my door to see exactly which square kilometre of nowhere I’d managed to find myself in. There was nothing and nobody around – just trees and darkness and dirty, rock-strewn roads.
‘Fantastic,’ I muttered to myself. ‘I’ve seen this movie before, and it never ends well for the driver stranded in the middle of the Moorabbin woods. Why didn’t I just stay up to date with my damned log book service schedule like they told me to at the dealership?’
Impatience, was the reason I didn’t want to admit to myself. I had to leave town, and quickly. If they found me—
What was that?!
A twig, cracking in the blackness. Probably nothing. An animal, a fox or something.
The hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up…