"We'll get you there." He put the truck in gear and crawled away from the store, feeding the gas lightly. "My tires are pretty good," he said. "I'd hate to start spinning my wheels, though." They crawled up the long, gentle grade into the driving torrents.
"Notice my store's located at the foot of the hill?" he chattered. "I picked it partly for that. People have time to see the sign, not like a flat straightaway where they go whizzing past fast as they can."
Groff cranked down the window and stuck his head out. He couldn't be wetter and he wasn't perfectly sure that through the rain-streaked window his ditched car would be visible. The headlights seemed to bore yellow cones through the teeming rain without illuminating anything outside their sharp margins. The drops battered at his face and hair; he pulled his head in feeling a little stunned. The violence of this storm—he had a vague feeling that it couldn't go on without something giving. What, he didn't know.
Headlights stabbed at their eyes from the rear-view mirror. Behind them a horn howled and out of the darkness behind plunged a shape. Zehedi gasped and twitched his wheel to the right. The car from behind zoomed past them, cut into the right lane again and roared on; its taillights soon were dim and then disappeared.
"Crazy idiot!" the storekeeper gasped, appalled. "He could have wrecked us! He must have been going fifty! In this!"
Groff twisted in the seat and stared through the rear window. There were headlights, far back but coming up fast. And the headlights went out as he watched, with a glimmer....
He knew suddenly what had given. Even a city man, born and bred in city safety, could recognize the signs.
"Step on it," he said to the storekeeper swiftly. "Floodwater behind us. Get us to the top of the hill. Fast."
Zehedi didn't argue or hesitate. Few people argued or hesitated when Groff used that tone of voice. Quickly and steadily he stepped on the gas. They whirled around the curve where Groff's car stood empty and past it. It was a long, straight upgrade from there. Either the rain had slackened off a little or Zehedi was more worried about what was behind them than about the rain; they roared up the hill, accelerating all the way, and only stopped when they saw another car parked by the side of the road, lights on and windshield wipers flapping, and a man leaning out of the opened door, staring back.
It was the car that had passed them. Zehedi recklessly stopped alongside him, making it a tight squeeze in case another car wanted to get by. The other driver misinterpreted the move.