Previously:

When Tommy saw Liz & Linda looking in his direction, he continued his rant. "Closed." He pointed downward. "Look, the grass has barely been groomed. I don't think anyone has tended to anything in weeks." He waved his hands toward the building behind him. "Closed also. Nothing seems to be in business. I hope your garage is open."

Liz and Linda looked at each other in horror.

**************
Distracting herself from the shaking inside, Linda took time to reflect on her body, "I'm so achy breaky." Linda groaned out the words.

"Me too," Liz said, "Ugh. I know my sciatica is going to kill." She did a familiar yoga move, slowly bending over to touch her toes. When she couldn't reach her toes on the first try, she stretched more and made it. "Oh, that feels so good."

While Liz was doing her stretching, Linda was circling her to walk it out. Their bodies were telling them this was the first they'd sat for so long since they left their stalled Honda Fit.

As Tommy was moving very slowly farther up the incline, they followed, discussing how little they'd sat before Tommy invited them into his Honda Accord.

They recalled a few situations where they got to sit and enumerated them. "The first was when we were sitting, hiding from the mad van speeding toward us." Liz offered the first one.

Linda retorted in a sarcastic tone. "If you call that sitting, half down a bank, when someone's almost running you over. What about the sitting we had to do waiting for the right time to move along the hedge while someone, no more than seventy-feet away, was holding a gun?"

"Does sitting, terrified, outside the invisible entrance to the cave count?" Liz said.

"How about you sitting in the swamp while I tried to figure out how to get your leg out of the deep suctioning muck?"

"Linda, I think you're stretching what rest periods are if you count that one."

"Well, you were sitting there, while I was going back and forth making sure I didn't join you with one leg trapped. What would we have done then?"

"Good question. The nice long time sitting on the benches in the Community Center at the Reservation was lovely. It was such an honor." Liz continued. "To actually be served by Chief Lavendar. What a beautiful countenance she had."

"It was nice to sit quietly on that large fallen maple log, reflecting upon how we had gotten to that point."

Liz interjected sarcastically. "How we'd survived, was more like it."

On that log, they'd had a startling realization of their impending danger. The van whizzing at them, soon to sweep by them again, nearly mowing them down, was not just any van. It was a van with five gagged, tied up, blinded, teens tossed back and forth, in harrowing captivity.

The two survivors shivered to face the fact, that they too, could have easily been snatched up and heaved into the van.

Liz put her hand up in a 'stop' gesture. "Well, that's enough remembering for today."

"Maybe for a lifetime." Linda admitted the best sitting they'd done was in the back seat on the beautiful hand-woven blanket lovingly gifted to Tommy by his Aunt Wise Fox and cousin Juniper, who went missing. "May God be watching over them, wherever they are."

"Many of the buildings have crime tape across their steps, porches, or doors. What could have happened here? Hopefully, they didn't get the garage people. "


Liz made her way over to one of the knick-knack shops, to peek into a dusty dark window. "Look, Linda, there're sheets covering everything!"

Linda darted to the next building with the 'closed' sign on it. Slipping under the caution tape, she put her hands up to shield the light, to better see the interior. Linda spoke into the window, "White sheets, white sheets all over the store."

Tommy was quiet again, no more ranting. It was the other two who were expressive. Liz yelled up to Tommy. "What is going on around here? Each shop has ghostly white sheets covering all the novelties."

"I wasn't kidding when I said this has turned into a ghost town. Let's walk down a little farther, around the end of the line of these buildings. That's where the garage is."

Liz and Linda grimaced as they looked at each other. Tommy did have a good build as he strolled past the vacant buildings. He had a solid upper body from all of his work as a chef. He obviously took good care of his health.

"God, the universe, and Wolf led us to Tommy. This all worked out so well." Liz was musing.

"So far," Linda said.

"I know the garage will be open, even if it is the only business open, it will be open. It has to be." Liz pounded her left fist into the right, open palm.

" Where is this garage? It sure is hidden good down here." Linda and the others continued to descend along the dry, packed, golden dirt.

"See, the dirt is gold-colored; that's got to be a good omen." Speaking to an as yet unknown entity Liz pleaded. "oh, please, please be open."

They passed one rusted-out Chevy, then a green faded Ford truck that had seen its day.

"This looks like a setting from an old movie, 'The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly'. Can you hear the music echoing among these creepy buildings?" Liz waved her hands, palms, extended in a presentation gesture. "

All we need to complete the scene, is deserted buildings with signs hanging by one corner...oh we just walked by them didn't we?" Liz made a gallows humor raspberry sound with her lips."

The junkyard vehicles were morphing to a more recent era. They spotted a 2000 Honda Hatchback. It looked a lot like the one Liz had had, but a different color. Liz had a red one, a cop magnet. She surprisingly did not attract too much trouble.

"Please, Wolf, please, universe, let there be someone there." Liz pleaded.

Anxiety was burning a hole in her chest, moving upward, choking the air from moving through her trachea. She longed to curl into a fetal position with Wolf to lie with her to quell her angst.

"Here's the garage," Tommy blithely stated. Though he had no investment in the reality of this auto repair shop, he was happy for them. He regretted his fatigue was showing through the thinness of his enthusiasm.

Liz paused to palm her ear forward to improve the acoustics. Unsure if the music she was hearing was coming from the interior of the garage or the inside of her head as a result of her tinnitus, she asked her reliable sidekick. "Linda, do you hear that music?"

After a slight delay, tilting her head to catch any sounds, Linda answered with a lilt of hope. "Yes, I do hear something." The last word denoted a question in Linda's mind.