Their Native gentleman guide was far behind them on the road, but not the horrific residuals of their most recent experiences.

Liz and Linda were on their way toward what they hoped was even the tiniest garage that could go pick up their dead-batteried-car.

They were solemnly pensive as they began their trek down the road where all of this began. Liz was the first to speak, "I wonder where this is in relation to where we found that house with the girls in it."

Linda added, "You mean you wonder if we're going to have to go by that house again?"

"I don't know, there's no way to tell."

"Yuh, no landmarks, just trees."

"I don't know if I can do that again," Linda admitted.

"It's too creepy to think about. You know something even creepier is that when we were sleeping in our car, Strong Heart, one of those poor teens, was all by herself in that house all night long. "

"Remember the house Dragonfly said Gruff dropped the passenger-side-guy off at? We must have walked by that too." Linda shuddered.

Linda gasped, "Remember the eerie van that passed us in the fog? Oh my God, it's a good thing it was so foggy; they must not have been able to see us walking."

Liz's mouth opened wide, "We could have been thrown into that van and ended up in the house with the girls, with no one to rescue us."

Linda's voice shook, "We could be in a hotel in Billings. Oh my God, what if it was in the same hotel we are scheduled to be in?"

Now that sickens me, Liz was shuddering. "Ewww. Creeepyyy. I don't think I want to know anymore."

Their legs turned to rubber. "Let's sit down for a minute, my legs aren't holding me up." Liz suggested.

Linda agreed, "I'm feeling a little faint."

They were comforted to be able to sit on a large fallen Maple tree like the ones in Vermont. Shaken by the realization of everything that had happened, more importantly, what could have happened; they just sat there.

They simultaneously asked, "How did we get here?"

At the beginning of their vacation day, things went very much like we remember from Liz's dream in the cave. They got off to a good start. Let's fast-forward to when things began going awry in the damp fog.

**********************

Fortunately, Liz was driving, so Linda didn't have to think she'd done something wrong. The car's trouble-panel lit up like a rocket ship. Liz eased the car to the right side of the road.

"What?" Pounding her fists on the steering with each, "No. No. No. Not now. Not here. We're in the middle of nowhere."

She wanted to just lay on the horn, but didn't; not that she was worried she would disturb anyone. There was absolutely no traffic happening; a double-edged sword.

They'd tired of fighting trailer trucks, RV's and drivers who thought they were entrants in the Montana Raceway Park. They preferred to take their time on the scenic route.

The first problem could have been a foreshadowing. "The fog is so thick we can't see anything."

"Yuh, where is Em's Big Sky Montana?" Their friend, Emily, was originally from Montana. Her descriptions of Montana were the reasons they chose that state to travel through.

Another reason, for Liz, was it is the home of the Crow Nation Native Americans. She hoped it would have the same wonderful energy as the region she lived in, where the Abenaki were very active 100's of years ago.

Linda asked Liz who only knew a few car vocabulary words, "What do you think's wrong?"

"It's so damp here, it might be the solenoid," one of her favorite words. "I think it affects the battery charge."

Frustrated, Linda said it, "So we're just stuck here? And I've no reception on my cellphone."

"Well, I certainly won't, if you don't." Linda was the one with the fancy cell phone, not all of the bells and whistles, but hers certainly had more capability than Liz's.

There's a TV ad where the cell phone salesperson is informing this poor young fellow, who just wants a phone to make calls, about pushing this button or that button to be able to play games, to see the earth from way up high and on and on.

The young customer keeps pleading that he just wants to make phone calls. That would be Liz. She just wants a simple cell phone to make phone calls. There was no reception for miles around her home, so she was pretty well saddled to a land-line life.

Linda had no reception around her area either but often traveled to visit a family member and to do many long-awaited errands in a town with excellent reception.

"It's still daytime, but with that dull overcast sky there's no way of knowing what time it is, much less which direction is north or south or anything else for that matter.

Math would be required to estimate the new time, depending upon the time zone. They knew it changed somewhere, but had no idea exactly where. They had figured they could find out by turning the radio on. Well, that wasn't going to happen.

"What are we going to do now? I'm hungry."

"Me too," Liz groaned.