“Recalculating route.”
“That’s the third time now!” The driver slams the wheel, flinching when the horn hiccups at the hit. He can’t allow himself to turn off the headlights and disappear in the cover of darkness, or he’ll really be driving blind. He doesn’t need more signals to disclose his location. Don’t slow down. Don’t stop. Act normal, he reminds himself, clenching his jaw as he’s glancing towards the dimmed phone screen.
Even the best and newest route-planning applications fall short when it comes to remote, nameless places. Barely able to find his way out of a printed maze in a children’s activity book, the runaway driver is forced to trust the coordinates given to him to get to the safehouse, and the monotone voice coming from his phone that was still refusing to reach a decision on the quickest route to safety.
The driver knows he has no better choice. He knows that if he’ll try to get there on his own, he’s bound to circle and back track, driving straight into the arms of the waiting police force like a nicely wrapped present. Deep breath, another one, and the driver pulls his foot from the gas pedal, until the car is slowly cruising towards a fork in the road. He must keep moving and not stop.
“In 100 meters, turn left.”
“If you say so,” the driver murmurs, ranting in his own mind that no one really knows how far 100 meters are while driving. It’s not like there was another turn before the split, but if there is another complaint to be made on the deaf ear of his phone – why not? The driver calms down and turns left as the voice instructs. The road looks the same as the one he leaves behind – unkempt, cracked, and adorned with trees on both sides, with no streetlights in sight. “Well, you gotta have a street to have streetlights,” he mutters again into the cold air condensing into a misty cloud for a moment. He wants to turn the heat up, but remembers they say that it increases fuel consumption, and he can’t afford to stop and refuel even if there was one on the planned route, but as far as he knows – a miracle has to happen so that the fuel left in his tank will last, before his navigator changes its mind for the fourth time.
But hey, third time’s the charm, right?
“In 200 meters, turn right.”
“Ah, right. That’s a new one,” the driver rolls his eyes and turns the wheel on the next turn to yet another desolate road, “so now we’re trying to zig-zag away from the cops?” He’s not really expecting the phone to answer but thinks it might be nice that they’re on the same wavelength, trying to flee the cops like they’re partners in crime.
He’s drumming the steering wheel to the rhythm of his frayed nerves, glancing up to the night sky blackened by clouds so dense that not even the moonlight shines. The drive takes him so far away from any nearby city that even their lights don’t shine silver linings in the sky. His gaze shifts to the front, watching the road. It was as if the world doesn’t exist outside the patch of light his car shines ahead of itself.
The only one to really know what lies ahead was the phone, and it’s slowly reflecting the amount of remaining fuel in its remaining battery percentage.
A chill is clawing at the driver’s guts as he’s realizing he needs a lot more than a miracle. His hands tighten around the wheel, and he breathes deep, until he feels the muscles around his ribcage stretch when his lungs fill up with the cold, musty air cycling in the car, coughing and wheezing as they protest this decision, and he slams the breaks before he veers off the road.
The car screeches to a halt, hums and waits.
The driver hits his head against the wheel a few times, his fingers cold and pale from their persistent grasp. “What could possibly happen if they catch me?” he peeks at his phone, its light growing even dimmer as the battery life keeps depleting.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve done yet.”
A police car’s siren echoes into the driver’s awareness as he realizes he almost fell asleep, casting red and blue flashes on the bare trees on the sides of the road, making them appear as though they are monsters inching closer with each flash. The driver’s pulse picks up with his heart pounding in his throat, blood rushing in his ears to deafness, and sweat colder than the frigid air in the car washing over his body. He’s not thinking, he can’t. Tearing one hand off the wheel and frantically feeling for the gears while his head is buzzing like an old radio stuck between stations.
The driver floors the gas pedal down and the car screams and swerves, lunging forward to the abandoned road.
“In 50 meters, turn left.”
The car is almost thrown into the trees when the driver makes a hard left.
“In the next roundabout, keep straight.”
“Why is there a roundabout in the middle of nowhere?!” the driver screams into the empty car, fighting the steering as he turns around a large rock in the very last minute to not hit it and struggling to turn it back, straightening the vehicle back on the road.
He’s panting, not feeling how his teeth are gritting so hard that they might crack.
“Keep straight.”
“I’m going straight!” he growls, eyes wide and stuck to the road, desperately trying to see past the beams of light.
He dreads looking at the rearview mirror.
Is the police car still on his tail?
He straightens up, feeling a chill crawling down his spine like a giant centipede.
“Turn right.”
He doesn’t think and takes the turn.
The car stops.
Even the lingering fumes burned off entirely.
The driver steps out of the car, shaking. It’s not the cold air outside.
It’s him, now standing at the edge of a cliff looking over black waters, and the car just meters behind him.
“Recalculating route.”
