Free Bitch Factor by Chris Rogers

frenzied blur of twisting, whirling whiteness; then a brown patch shifted into view.
    When the moaning sounded again, instinctive dread pulsed at the back of her neck. Behind her, Dann rapped on the window. Dixie ignored him, trying to discern the source of the moaning. When it came again, recognition struck like a wet snowball. A cow, you ignorant city fool .
    But one cow wouldn’t present such a wide mass of brown. A number of cows, then. Hadn’t she heard that sheep and cattle would bunch against a fence on the downwind side of a storm—especially a sudden and violent storm? Each animal pushed mindlessly ahead until they sometimes smothered one another in panic.
    Dixie’s teeth, chattering like castanets, began to ache. Thebiting cold stung her face. She tugged open the car door and sank onto the seat.
    “Two things” Dann said. “Here’s what’s happening under the car right now…”He paused a beat. When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Residual exhaust heat is melting the snow. As fast as it melts, the wind freezes it again while the car’s weight compresses it. Soon we’ll be stuck in ice. I’ll give you one guess which is easier to get out of.”
    Maybe trying to get out wasn’t the best idea . She’d played a game once called “Lost in the Arctic.” Survival hinged on whether to stay put and wait for rescue or to start walking. Players who elected to walk died.
    Watertown was a hundred miles ahead of them, hours ahead, considering driving conditions that worsened by the minute. Even if she succeeded in getting the Mustang back on the road, what made her think she could keep it there?
    Parker Dann had grown up with this sort of weather in Montana. He would know a hell of a lot more than she did about surviving it.
    “You said two things,” she reminded him.
    “If you’re considering waiting out the storm, you may as well shoot us both and save us a lot of misery.”
    She turned to look at him through the steel mesh.
    “You think it’s cold now,” he said. “Wait till the sun goes down. That Levi jacket you’re wearing is better than my shirt, but not by much.”
    She eyed his brown flannel shirt and the thick down-filled parka that lay beside him on the seat.
    “If we sit here,” he continued, “we’ll have to run the heater to keep from freezing. We’ll be out of gas before daylight. Or dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
    “What about rescue trucks?”
    “Sure, there’ll be a few snowmobiles out. But unless you have a CB radio hidden in the glove box, Flannigan, we’ve no way to signal for help.”
    She had a CB, all right, a portable. It’d been useful during the drive up, for maintaining contact with her patrol buddies through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. But here in SouthDakota, where she had no friends on a police force, and no contract to legitimize her picking up Dann, a potential kidnapping charge was a very real possibility.
    “Stay here,” Dann said, “and by morning we’ll be just another snowdrift.”
    The thought of being buried alive turned her bowels to water. Was Dann counting on that? She had noticed his subtle shift from “you” to “we.” Was he baiting her, betting on her inexperience for a chance to escape?
    “Okay, snowbird, do you have a suggestion for getting out of this ditch?”
    “Got anything in the trunk to dig with?”
    “Wrenches, screwdrivers. A claw hammer, maybe. No shovel.”
    “We can cut the top off this plastic water bottle. Use it as a scoop.”
    Better yet, she had a gallon jug of laundry detergent in the trunk that she forgot to carry in after yesterday’s shopping trip. Since they were likely to freeze before needing clean underwear, she supposed the detergent was expendable. “Okay, so we have something to dig with. Now what?”
    “Scoop the fresh snow away from the tires, then straighten the front wheels. We’ll try to take it out on the same ruts it made going in, but first we’ll have to find some