Ruby ran all the way, a full three miles more, up to the Mobile Highway. The first car rental place she found was on the strip between a mattress store and a Church’s Fried Chicken. The bell on its door jangled loudly as she nearly took it off the hinges coming through at an almost dead run.
“Hello and what have we here?” said a guy sitting at a desk behind the counter. He was young and had one of those silly mountain man hipster beards that went to the chest of his corporate polo.
“I need to rent a car,” Ruby gasped, red-faced, sweat dripping onto the carpet tile.
“Let me guess. Got tired of running? Figured, let me try this car thing,” said the rental clerk snarkily as he laid down the cell phone he was playing with and stood.
“I just got into a damn car accident!” Ruby said loudly, acting only a little more in shock than she actually was. “My Mazda got completely totaled! The fire department had to cut the door off! I almost died.”
“No way,” the clerk said, wide-eyed, no more snark or irony in sight.
“Yes. Two miles down the road there. Some dumb little twit was texting on her phone and T-boned me. If her front end came in another inch closer, I’d be dead right now.”
“I’m so sorry,” the guy said. “Are you okay? Can I get you something?”
“No. I’m sorry for yelling. I’m still shook up a little, I guess. I just need a car real quick. My mama just had back surgery over at Sacred Heart. I need to pick her up. She has a bad heart, too, and she worries.”
“You poor thing,” the clerk said. “We’ll get you fixed up. We just got a minivan in, a Honda Odyssey, a nice new one. Would that help you? I’ll even charge you for a compact.”
“Perfect,” Ruby said. “Thank you.”
“We’ll get you right out of here,” he said as he handed her a pen and a clipboard.
She sat in a chair, dripping sweat onto the paperwork, as he left to get the van. The clipboard shook in her hand as the enormity of everything came crashing down around her ears.
She thought about her sister and the children. She thought about Mark Thanh, her coworker, quarantined somewhere. And Steve, the diver, gone missing. He was just a kid.
She looked out at the traffic. On her run, she had been thinking that she would head to someplace safe in order to figure out what to do next. Call some friends. Maybe call a lawyer.
But she knew what she had to do now.
Ruby took out her phone and opened the back and pried out the battery as the guy with the beard arrived outside with the van.