PART 1: With a Little Help From My Friends

It's a lot harder to move an unconscious human body than they let on in the movies. There's something about dead weight that seems supernaturally heavy. Eddie couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds, but Foxy would have sworn that he'd gained another fifty pounds all of a sudden. Even with Big Ben Cruikshank taking the lion's share of the load, Foxy was tiring quickly and the renewed snowfall wasn't helping matters any.

The breakdown lane of Route Seven was shrouded in deep gray nothing. Only the sound of their labored breath seemed to penetrate the air. Black pine trees stood tightly packed and endless on their left - so tall they seemed to arc overhead before vanishing in the snowflakes.

Foxy fixed her eyes ahead of them and waited for the BMW to appear. Every slow foot of progress brought them closer to safety. And Eddie slept despite the jostling, the cold and the terror the evening had brought them all.

Ben saw the truck first.

"There!" The giant pointed with the hand that held their gas cans.

The gloss-black hood of the beamer was barely visible under a crust of ice, but sure enough, it sat half on, half off the median, collecting a blanket of snow.

With the gas cans at their feet, Ben took hold of Eddie while Foxy dug through his jeans pocket for the keys. Eddie murmured and his head rolled from one shoulder to the other.

"I'm not getting fresh, stringbean…" Foxy said between great breaths of air.

A minute later, Foxy was arranging Eddie in the backseat and Ben patiently tipped the red aluminum gas cans to the side of the truck, listening for the gurgling to stop. When he was done, he and Foxy wiped the snow off the BMW with their sleeves, always looking over their shoulders.