Chapter II

He hated the thunder. The sound it made, the way the air seemed alive in his lungs… he crouched in the back seat with his jacket over his head, flushed with the embarrassment of his childish fear. The scientist side of his brain knew that it was nothing, simply a noise caused by the rapid expansion of air heated by lightening, but the other parts of him were simply happy to hear Peter's voice, "You alright back there, Walter?"

"I'm fine," Walter replied, his voice small and muffled from the floorboard. He winced away as blue light flashed in the car, and lightening streaked across the sky, and he pulled the jacket tighter around his shoulders.

Olivia leaned back over the island, flipping on the overhead light, "Walter, we can stop," she said gently, draping her own jacket over him, "the weather reports say this storm should pass overnight, and it's no problem…"

"No, thank you," Walter replied, sinking lower under the coats.

Sighing, Olivia frowned with worry, turning forward in her seat and turning the light back off again. Walter waited, sweating with anticipation of the next crack, and low, awful rumble of thunder. He murmured an exclamation of fear as noise shook the air once more, and Walter tried not to breathe.

There was a click, and a voice emerged from the speaker low on the door, near Walter's head. A local station of soul music filled the car, and Walter felt his eyes well with tears as the storm outside seemed to fade away, and he sighed, swallowing back the lump in his throat, "Thank you," he whispered.

There was no reply from the front seat.

The song had ended, as Walter felt himself dozing off, and the announcer was speaking about vacationing in Lake Pontchartrain. His words slurred to memory as the jackets slid from Walter's face to settle on his gently rising and falling chest. The rain began to batter at the windows and windshield, the rivulets reflecting on his calm visage in the silent flashes of lightening.

xXx

Walter was wrenched awake as the air in the car flashed red, and Olivia screamed sharply. There was the screech of tires on wet pavement, the grinding crunch of metal twisting, and a flash of pain as Walter's head glanced off the window, shattering the glass as blood exploded from his temple. He lost consciousness to the sound of tree limbs snapping, and the weightless feeling of a rollover.

"Walter? Walter!? Walter!" the feeling of a trembling hand on his cheek, digits as cold as his own. Peter tapped his cheek again, "Walter, come on, wake up!"

His eyes eased open a crack, a wave of sight, sound, and pain overwhelming his slurred senses. He blinked and exclaimed as Peter pushed his eyelids open, blinding him with a flashlight, "He's alright. No concussion, just a wicked goose egg."

"My brain is bruised…" Walter moaned, raising his hands to his throbbing temples, "Peter, what… what in the world happened? Where…?"

"Take it easy," Peter said as he helped his father sit up in the back seat. Rain continued to pour outside, the flashes of lightening offering a new adventure in pain to Walter's damaged cranium, "I just slid off the road. The damn lightening took down a telephone pole, and I had to swerve before it hit us."

"Nice going, boy," Walter grumbled, dabbing away the blood on his stinging, shredded ear with his sleeve, "a regular roadman, aren't you?"

"You're welcome," Peter growled bitterly.

"The storm must have taken down the phone lines," Olivia said, sliding her cell phone shut with an agitated sigh, "I can't get a hold of any of the services locally. It could be hours before anyone comes along."

Peter shook his head, "Don't worry about it. The car isn't too banged up, and if I can get back onto the highway, we can get to some help." he frowned, "Besides, I'm a little rusty in my diagnosis, so it's probably best if we get Walter some medical attention."

The mud made it impossible to back out of the car's nose-down position in the undergrowth, but Olivia and Peter set about to gather some of the broken limb wood from the impact and stack it under the tires, improving traction, and soon, they were back onto the highway, headed toward any sort of civilization.

Walter covered his eyes in the hopes that not being able to see the world would allow for it to stop spinning. It did not, and he soon felt nauseous. At last Peter pulled off the highway and onto a dirt drive , where Olivia insisted there was a small, out-of the way motel where they could seek shelter.

The air in the car was nearly steam as they pulled to a halt in the dimly-lit parking lot, finding the motel closed, "Maybe we could look to see if there's some other place we could get help," Olivia offered, "There has to be some other place around here- there just can't be a motel in the middle of nowhere."

They began to consult the map as Walter felt a new wave of headache hit, and he pressed a spare tee-shirt to the side of his head to stop the bleeding. He blinked away a drip of red that escaped his pressure, and asked, "may I open a window?"

"No, Walter. It'll ruin the upholstery."

Walter smiled tiredly, and replied stiffly, "Oh, gosh, I wouldn't want to do that. I can't breathe, in here."

"No."

Walter slammed his elbow into the window, knocking the already busted glass out of its place to shatter in the parking lot, "It fell out in the crash," he explained lightly as Peter and Olivia paused to glare at him. They returned their attention to more serious matters.

Walter quietly watched the rain wash away his blood on the fragmented glass, and soon it disappeared into the prevailing black of the asphalt. Absently, he held out his palm to let the rain baptize his cold hand. He was wondering if the rain would calm his throbbing skull if he hung his head out the window when something in the corner of his vision moved. Slowly, Walter inched his eyes upward toward the tree line, the source of the movement. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, his breath growing shorter as he watched, listening.

The brush moved again, and Walter nearly jumped, "Peter, there's something-"

xXx