Chapter 6 Snowline #3
A plume of black smoke belched into the cold air. Elias whooped with savage triumph and slammed the vehicle into gear. The plow lurched forward six feet, blade grinding against packed snow and ice. The blocked lane opened by a narrow margin.
The Milemen pickup roared closer.
Lark stood in the road, rifle raised, too exposed.
Dane grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back.
“Not worth it.”
Lark twisted.
“I can stop them.”
“You can die trying. We have enough hobbies.”
Silas fired from the passenger window. The shot struck Tomber’s cargo box with a metallic punch. Rosa returned fire from inside the cab, one arm braced over Mae’s curled body.
Elias drove the plow straight toward the oncoming pickup.
For a terrible second, Dane thought the old man intended to ram it head-on.
Instead, Elias turned hard at the last moment, dropping the plow blade into the drift and throwing a heavy wave of ice, gravel, and frozen slush across the road.
The pickup swerved blind. Its rear fishtailed toward the ravine side, recovered, then slammed into the school bus with enough force to crush the open door inward.
Silas disappeared from the window.
“Elias!” Dane shouted.
The old mechanic bailed from the plow as it stalled sideways across the road, now blocking the pickup but leaving Tomber’s narrow path open above it. He hit the pavement hard, rolled once, and came up limping with his shotgun in one hand.
“Don’t you leave without me, Whitlock!”
Dane grabbed him by the back of his coveralls and half-threw him toward Tomber.
Lark climbed into the cargo box. Elias followed with less dignity and more profanity. Dane got behind the wheel and found Otto curled in the passenger footwell with one of Mae’s boots against his ear.
“Status?” Otto gasped.
“Bad,” Rosa said.
“I was hoping for a subcategory.”
Dane started Tomber.
The truck crawled through the gap Elias had cleared, tires slipping on ice near the ravine edge. The damaged steering pulled right, toward empty air. Dane fought it with both hands, jaw locked, every muscle in his bad leg shaking as he feathered the pedal.
Nell watched the drop through the windshield, face colorless.
Mae groaned against Rosa’s lap.
Behind them, the Milemen pickup’s engine revved. Metal screamed as it tried to back away from the bus. A door opened. Someone shouted. Silas was alive.
Of course he was.
Tomber’s rear wheels slid.
Rosa grabbed the dashboard.
“Dane.”
“I know.”
The right front tire hit the crumbling shoulder. Gravel broke loose and rattled down into the ravine. For one sick moment, the truck seemed to consider the fall.
Dane turned into the slide, not away, easing the wheel with hands that wanted to overcorrect. Tomber drifted, shuddered, then caught the inner edge of the lane and climbed past the plow.
The road ahead rose toward the snow shed.
Dane did not breathe until the ravine dropped behind them.
The snow shed was a long concrete shelter built against the mountain where avalanches must have crossed the road in winter. Darkness swallowed its mouth. On the far side, beyond a hundred yards of tunnel-like cover, pale daylight showed.
Dane drove into it without slowing.
Inside, the world became engine noise, shadow, and the echo of their own survival. The truck’s headlights swept over concrete walls scarred by old plow blades and spray-painted messages from people who had waited there during storms, road closures, maybe the end.
WE ARE STILL HERE
GO WEST
DON’T OPEN THE BLUE VAN
Mae began to sob softly, not from grief yet, not from safety, but from the unbearable shock of being touched by living hands after waiting among the dead.
Nell held her hand.
Rosa pressed a bandage against the woman’s leg and murmured instructions that sounded less like medicine than a spell.
Otto, still trapped in the footwell, whispered, “I respectfully request that our next rescue involve a larger seating arrangement.”
No one laughed, but the sound that moved through the cab afterward was close.
At the far end of the snow shed, Dane slowed enough to look back.
The Milemen pickup had not followed. Not yet.
Lark’s voice came through the hatch, strained but steady.
“They’ll have to clear the plow or find another road. That buys hours.”
Elias added, “And if they touch my plow work, I hope it bites them.”
Dane drove out of the shed into white light.
The road beyond curled along the mountain, higher now, with snow lying clean in the shadows and dark pines standing thick on both sides. For a few miles, at least, they had the pass to themselves.
Nell looked at Dane over Mae’s bent form.
“You stopped.”
Dane kept his eyes on the road.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t want to.”
“No.”
“But you did.”
He did not know what answer she wanted, or whether she wanted one at all. The truck rolled west beneath the cold mountain sky, carrying one more life than it had before, one more risk, one more reason for someone to say they should have kept driving.
After a while, Dane said, “Don’t make me proud of it yet.”
Nell looked down at Mae’s hand in hers.
“I won’t.”
But her voice had changed, just a little.
And for the first time since the bell in Sallow Creek, Dane let himself think that maybe changing was not always the same thing as breaking.