Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm

Author:Kate Wilhelm [Wilhelm, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781551668727
Publisher: Mira
Published: 1991-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The drizzle became rain briefly, then drizzle again, then the moon was sailing through streaky clouds, and the drizzle came back. She even saw some stars for a short time when the city lights were well behind her and the countryside closed in dark and mysterious, as if the world ended where the light from her high beams got lost in the trees on both sides of the road.

For long stretches she was alone on the road. An occasional car passed her, a truck, another car or a cluster of traffic, some came opposite her, vanished with twinkling red taillights.

“Okay,” she muttered at one time, to herself, the rain, the oncoming lights, or nothing. “Okay.” She was thinking of Mike Dinesen, and their noncommitment to each other, their denial of the future, not through words, but the lack of words. Neither of them wanted the future wrapped in plain brown paper; neither was willing to be the trailing spouse while the other achieved fame and fortune. He would be in Oregon through this year, and then where? He had no idea, was unconcerned. For three summers he had been in Austin, Texas, working with people he spoke of with a touch of awe. Gods, she had decided. She could not imagine anything short of a god inspiring him with awe. All over the country people were willing to kill for tenure, but he had shrugged it off, not caring that the university here had given it to him in spite of his lack of enthusiasm. There were other offers pending; she knew so little of his field that she could not tell if they were important, and he seemed to treat them all the same way interesting, but not compelling.

Up ahead she could see the lights of a covered bridge, the last landmark before the road twisted and turned as it followed the shoreline of the reservoir. Ten, twelve more miles, then a hot bath, a boring book, and sleep. Her eyes burned with fatigue.

The road made a Y at the bridge, the right lane aimed at the bridge; she made the left turn, went under an overpass, and suddenly her car was out of control as the windshield seemed to explode, not throwing glass—it was tempered and didn’t do that—but cracks ran through it, glass shattered and dropped out, and the car careened dizzily from the right lane to the left, grazed a rocky formation, was flung back to the right lane and sideways into a tree, then another. She was jerked from one side to the other, thrown against the steering wheel, then snapped back sharply as she fought to control the car. And then it scraped a tree again, and this time both right wheels were off the road, dragging. The car turned halfway around and finally came to a stop. She had a cramp in her foot from pressing on the brake.

After that her memory played games with her. She was sitting in the car, dazed,

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