From that point on, I was hardly driving. The Bug did what it wanted; lefts, rights, merging with traffic, crossing a train track, ever putt-putting ahead. I had my foot on the accelerator, but the Bug knew when it needed to shift gears. I’d stepped into some real-life fairy tale. Or a horror story. I suspected I was about to find out which, and that it would not be Disney fare.
The scenery transitioned as we went. Strip malls became less frequent sights. Suburban housing grew sparser and sparser, finally surrendering to rural homes with chickens and the occasional goat wandering their yards.
It finally became long stretches of woods, with hardly a house in sight. We’d been on the road for several hours now, and I looked down at the gas gauge. A little more than a quarter of a tank left.
