Judge Me Not ...

Chapter 1

"Arfghhhhhhhhhh!" she screamed as flung the worthless map out of her hands. "What kind of name was Minaupi anyway?"

Her phone had no signal and her Google map was rendered worthless as well. It could have been in Antarctica for the lack of signal she got from her phone.

Her mind wandered to her family, her parents and her sisters April and May. Her parents had named their daughters after the months in which they were born. June was the eldest followed by April. May was the baby of the family. If these were her last hours she would surely miss her family, they were really close.

June had always been the conscious one. The 'dependable' one, The reliable daughter. The one who her parents leaned on to solve all of her siblings' problems because she had the clearer head. She had always been careful in her choices. As a teenager she had managed her younger sisters' lives and money especially May's and had realised that she had a flair for management. So when she graduated from secondary school she had decided that she would be a management executive.

After graduating from university with a degree in Management studies, June had gotten employment with the Hemusk Organisation as a junior assistant in the Marketing department. Five months ago she had been awarded her MSc in Business Management and Marketing after doing it part time for two years. She had her whole career ahead of her, and today she had been offered the position of her dreams: Senior Marketing Officer in the marketing department. She loved her job and now as a senior officer, she had her freedom to develop products and execute them plus she managed the twenty-eight other members of the department. She did not hate her colleagues but 20 of them were over forty and had not moved with the times.

She got out of the vehicle, the sun was setting, and it would be dark soon. She looked around her; there was a huge expanse of green brush for miles. The dirt road she was on lead to a desert of nothingness. How could she have veered off the motorway and ended up here? About twenty minutes ago, she had decided to look for a small inn or B&B where she could rent a room for the night, her plans seemed alright until she took a turn to the left and got off the motorway. Somehow she could not navigate her way back onto the M26.

She got back into the 35-year-old truck that she had borrowed from the clerk at the gas station in the last town after her two front tyres had been punctured because he had put down metal grates in front of her rental when she was moving out of the gas station.

She made a decision.

"Okay, since I am here I will just keep on driving," she said to herself, "I am sure some one from this wasteland will be around soon."

The engine started with a hushed tone as if it was expecting her not to continue. She eased down the dusty road bumping along with the potholes. Tomorrow she was expected to be in Edinburgh but if she could not make it she would lose everything, everything she had worked hard for the last six years.

However, today she was going to be late for her big chance if she could not find her way out of this empty space. The sun had gone down but a few embers of light still illuminated the cloudy sky. June kept going along her route hoping to see some life form before it got too dark. Suddenly, a large deluge of rain exploded from the heavens. A rainstorm!

"No!" she screamed banging onto her steering wheel. She knew that travelling alone would have been treacherous but not like this not now when things were finally going her way, when she had decided to let her hair down and to relax and to take a chance. She had no qualms about an adventure but not when she finally had her dream job.

The heavy rain made her visibility poor so she had to inch across the horrible road that was now a spit of gluey soil, not fit for even a worm to crawl in. She had been driving for nearly an hour in the downpour when she saw a light in the distance. She inched toward it but soon found out that there was not direct road to get to it. June still tried to manoeuvre the old truck through the dense bush and suddenly she heard pop. The truck could not move. She tried in vain but it was stuck.