Chapter 2

Kendall woke with a start. He sat up, and looked around, completely disoriented. Then the events of yesterday started to flood his mind.

After a deep sigh, he got out of bed. He flicked the television on, on his way to the bathroom. Shaking his head slightly when there was no sound coming from the TV, he stood in front of the toilet, relieving himself.

Flushing, Kendall then washed his hands and walked back out into the room. He flipped the TV off, and then back on. Nothing.

This wasn't the kind of hotel that had a phone in every room. Small, clean, nice people at the front desk; it was why he stopped for the night. That, and he was dead tired by the time he got this far.

Flipping on the overhead light switch, he looked up. No light.

'Great!' he thought. 'Wonder where the circuit breakers are? Yeah, right. Fuses, most likely.'

Then Kendall had another thought and looked out the window, hoping to see it was just his room that was out of power. His eyes were focused to the right, where up in the front of the U shaped motel was the office.

People were outside, but there was no sign of electricity.

Then his peripheral vision suggested a problem. If caught on tape, it would have looked like slow motion, panning across the parking lot that filled the inside of the U shaped building.

"Fuck!" he yelled out.

His car was gone.

Andy, as everyone called her from age eight on, was sitting in the middle of nowhere. Literally, nowhere. She had no idea where she was or worse yet, how she got there.

Well, ok. Now let's be reasonable. Andy knew she was in Mexico, or at least that's where she had been last night.

It was Spring Break and although Andy had little extra cash available to her, she had scrimped enough to have a little fun, and Mexico was less expensive than stateside.

She remembered being at a bar last night. Less than clear was how many shots of Tequila she had. Now it was morning. Her bones ached. Dirt was in her matted hair. She had the same clothes on.

Sitting up from the ground she was on, she held her head for a moment. Things didn't feel very good, but she needed to see something. Something very important, that the pounding in her head couldn't dissuade her from. Andy lifted her short skirt. Panties were still there. That was a good sign at least.

There was a dirt road about eight feet from where she was. Andy tried to stand and realized how painful things were. It was almost as if —

Closing her eyes and putting her hands over her face, she tried to remember.

Well, she remembered enough, now. There had been a couple of guys, and they'd had a Jeep. The other three girls she had come down with had wanted to go off with these two guys. Andy had been less than enthusiastic, but the Tequila —

The guys were going to drive. All of them had been drunk. Somewhere along the way, she'd fallen off the back of the open Jeep.

Why wasn't someone here, by now? That was last night, wasn't it? What happened?

There were many questions running though Andy's mind, and no answers.

A half an hour later, Andy got enough strength up to stand. Her party shoes were not for walking, but given the circumstances, she didn't have a lot of choices. She looked at the road and had no idea which way she had come from, or to go now. It was a toss up at this point. Andy sighed, felt like crying but knew that wouldn't do a damned bit of good. She set off on a slow walk.

Kendall wasn't a risk taker. With his car gone, the power and phone lines down, he was left with few options. The old beat-up scooter he'd bought was a sad way to travel. No helmet made it fairly intolerable.

He had no idea how long it was going to take him, driving at 30 miles per hour. Anything faster and he didn't feel safe. There wasn't much in the way of traffic laws, police, or medical care where he was driving through.

The only comforting thing was that there was virtually no traffic. He had seen two trucks so far. Both had slowed down while they pulled around him.

The first one, a family, just sort of stared at him. He was out of place. Not being able to speak the language made it worse. He knew enough to just get by, but that was it.