Page 59 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
“Ugh.”
“Isn’t that kind of a cliché?”
Paul laughed and ran his hands through his hair, leaving it in black spikes. “You’re a lot sharper than I am this morning. God, I would kill for some coffee.” He opened his door. “I gotta take a leak. When I get back, we can use my shovel to clear a path under the tires. It’s four-wheel drive with winter tires, so if we give it a long enough runway, we should be able to get ’er down.”
Van Alstyne also had a shovel in his cargo box—no surprise there—and after a half hour of steady snow removal, Paul and Hadley stowed the tools in the truck bed. Paul got into his own vehicle, rummaged around for a minute, and returned with a plastic bag filled with raisins and peanuts. “Since I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning, I’m officially declaring it time to open my emergency rations.”
“Oh! I’ve got something!” Hadley dug the opened breakfast bar out of her backpack. It was flattened, and crumbled into pieces, but Paul looked enthused nonetheless. They split their hoard in the cab of Van Alstyne’s truck, washing the food down with swigs from the ranger’s water bottle.
“Okay, good to go?” Paul buckled himself in. “This is going to be a bumpy ride.” He started the truck.
“What are the chances we skid straight into the trees?”
“Fifty-fifty.” He grinned at her. “But on the bright side, we can run the heater while we’re doing it.”
Hadley had been on a carnival ride called “Santa’s Wild Sleigh Ride,” and it had pretty obviously been modeled on this. The cleared path that had seemed so long while digging flashed past as Paul accelerated toward the virgin snow. They hit it and, hallelujah, kept going, with Paul’s foot firmly on the gas. The bumps and ruts of the dirt road should have been softened with its covering, but instead the jolts and drops were magnified, lurching them back and forth. Hadley braced herself on the dashboard and door and hoped she was going to keep her so-called breakfast down. Up ahead, the swath of untouched snow swung left and disappeared behind a screen of shaggy evergreens.
“Curve.” She pointed.
“I see it.”
“Slow down!”
“I can’t! If we slow down we’ll get stuck.”
Hadley closed her eyes. She felt the whole truck slide, then the rear slewing, and then, somehow, they were still barreling down the mountain.
“Damn, I’m good!” She opened her eyes. Paul was grinning again, but she couldn’t help noticing his literal white-knuckle grip on the wheel.
Santa’s Wild Sleigh Ride continued, smacking, banging, skidding, shimmying.At least when we get stuck, we’ll have less distance to walk down.Hadley clutched at that thought as tightly as she held the door handle, and was so ready to abandon the vehicle for a hike she was surprised when she saw a tiny park services building, shuttered for the winter. Beyond it, the road widened out into what was obviously a small parking lot. “Is that the trailhead?”
“It sure is.”
Nothing was plowed, but she could feel the difference as soon as they crossed onto the paved surface. She could also feel the difference in their speed. “Nowyou’re slowing down?”
“We’re more likely to skid on the asphalt. It gets snowed on, there’s a little sun, it melts, it freezes…”
“There’s ice under the snow cover.”
“There could be. Slow and careful wins the race, you know.”
“Don’t try to convince me you’re a slow and careful guy at this point. It’s too late.”
Paul laughed. “Hey, I got us this far.”
And he got them even farther. Hadley could have wept when the plowed surface of the county highway came into view. Paul accelerated one last time, burst through the berm the county plow had thrown up, and they were back in civilization.
Which meant they had some decisions to make.
“Pull over for a minute.”
“What?” He glanced at her, frowning, but signaled and obeyed.
Hadley shifted in her seat to face him. “Let’s find a place to sit downand have a cup of coffee and figure out our next step. That lakeside general store we stopped at the morning we flew would be perfect.”
“That’s Long Lake, to the west. The Northway and the Essex County Sheriff’s Department and the closest state trooper barracks are east.” He pointed toward the windshield. “I want caffeine as much as you do, but first things first. That militia—those people whokilled my uncle—have your chief. We need to get within cell phone range and then call every law enforcement agency in the area together to lock those bastards down.”
“Yeah, and what happens to Van Alstyne and Flynn when the staties and the sheriff’s department and the rangers all come in with guns blazing? How do they tell them from the bad guys?”
