“Are you sure this is the right way?” Roderick McCarthy asks as his formerly new, now mud-splattered, boots squelch and crunch their way through wet, soggy dirt and dry, fallen leaves.
Keeley McCarthy consults her old, but still shiny compass, and then looks up at the trees and reddening sky, “Almost; this looks familiar.”
“Of course this looks familiar,” Roderick says, shifting the picnic basket from his left hand to his right, which has been bandaged with a red and white checked napkin, “It's all trees and rocks. This entire forest looks the same.”
“Honey, I know you wanted to go to the Halloween Carnival, but I thought this would be romantic: a picnic surrounded by the beauty of the turning leaves. The reds, and golds, and oranges of the forest in fall. I'm sorry about you falling down that hill..”
“I'm fine, I just want to go home,” he replies, brushing uselessly at the dried mud covering the front of his shirt and jeans.
“And I'm sorry you cut your hand up on that wine glass; I hadn't realized they were so delicate.”
“It's fine, but I still don't see why we had to leave the GPS in the car. We've been wandering around for an hour now; it's going to be dark soon.”
“I don't need a GPS; I was a Lady Chipmunk,” Keeley says proudly, holding up her compass.
“Lady Chipmunks sell cookies.”
“They taught us all the same things they taught the boys... we just sold cookies too.”
“Didn't they teach you to be prepared? Bring the- OW!” Roderick is cutoff as a large pine cone falls from the tree above him, and bounces off of his head.
“What?” Keeley asks, oblivious.
“Nothing, lets just get to the car before we die out here.”
“Dramatic much?” she asks as she passes through a row of trees and into a clearing, “Look, here we are!”
In the clearing a rough, dirt road leads up to the edge of a cliff where a silver SUV sits in the fading sunlight. With a click, Roderick unlocks the car, and loads the picnic basket into the back while Keeley walks around to the front of the car to look out over the cliff's edge at the wilderness below..
“It's so beautiful,” she sighs, still clutching her compass in her hand, “Seeing the sun set over the forest like this.”
“It's a postcard, let's go.”
“I want to drive,” Keeley says cheerfully.
“Yeah, whatever,” Roderick says, and tosses her the keys, realizing his mistake a moment too late.
Keeley reaches awkwardly for the keys, but doesn't get a firm grip on them. She fumbles the keys back and forth between her hands, and Roderick winces at the sound of metal against rock as something falls over the side of the cliff and down into the rapidly darkening forest below.
“No!” Keeley shreiks, “My compass!”
“Your compass? You have the keys though?”
“Yes, but that was my Lady Chipmunk compass from when I was a little girl,” Keeley explains, sadness creeping into her voice.
Roderick moves to stand with his wife, looking over the cliff's edge. At the bottom of the rock wall is a clearing, but it's already getting hard to see the ground as the sun sets, “I'm sorry, hon, but I don't think we're going to be able to get it back.”
“I know,” Keeley says, resignedly ,”Let's go.”
The McCarthys climb into the SUV, and Keeley brings the engine to life. She attempts to shift the car into reverse, but is too distracted to notice that the gearshift clicks too many times.
She presses the gas, and the car surges forward instead of back. It's front wheels drop off of the edge of the cliff, and its back wheels raise up off the ground, leaving the vehicle rocking on the cliff's edge like a child's teeter totter.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod!” Keeley screams, stamping her foot down uselessly on the brake pedal.
“Just stay calm,” Roderick says, trying to push himself backwards through his seat with little success, “We just need to stay calm, and think.”
A small bluebird lands on the hood of the silver SUV, possibly attracted by the warmth of the idling engine.
“It's gonna make us fall!” Keeley says, pushing herself back into her seat.
“It doesn't weigh enough to do that, just stay calm.”
Another bird lands, and then another, and then five more.
“We're going to fall!”
“It would take a huge bird to tip a car this size,” Roderick tries to sound reassuring.
Five large spotted owls land on the hood of the car.
“Oh come on!” Roderick yells in disbelief.
A condor lands in the midst of the other birds, and there is a loud scraping sound as the SUV tips and slides off the edge of the cliff. The birds all take flight as the car and its screaming passengers drop, engine first, into the muddy ground below. The screams are silenced by the sounds of bending metal and breaking glass as the SUV falls over onto its roof.
Silence again falls over the darkening woods.
As the powder from the airbags clears, Keeley finds herself hanging from her seat, her head touching the now much lower ceiling of the ruined car, “Are you okay?” she croaks, looking over to see her husband dangling by his own seatbelt.
Roderick is looking out the deformed window; he reaches out and plucks something out of the mud and broken glass and holds it up, “I think I found your compass.”