Switching off the engine, Emily climbed out of the cab and leaped down onto the tracks, then the ground, closely followed by Rhia and Thor.
The Dodge was barely visible beneath the snowdrift that had all but covered it overnight. That was okay, though; they wouldn’t be needing it anymore.
“Race you upstairs,” Emily shouted. She was already running toward the door before her little companion could yell “Not fair” and chase after her to the accompaniment of Thor’s gleeful barks.
Twenty minutes later they were back at the SUV. Emily’s backpack was already in the backseat of the Cat, and Rhiannon was pushing the snow from the rear door of the Durango, trying to find the handle so she could open it. When it finally popped open, Emily made a quick assessment of everything they had. The food was not as important now that they were so near to their goal. Jacob had told them that he had months’ worth of provisions still, so they could leave some of it behind, as much as she hated to let good food go to waste. He had told her that the trip should take about two days to complete, so if she made sure they had enough food and water for five days, they should be golden. Besides, according to the atlas and Jacob’s instructions, there were a couple of small settlements they would need to stop at for fuel along the way. They could restock there if they needed to.
Their cold-weather clothing was the most important. They would be traveling several hundred miles farther north, and the weather would become even more unpredictable the closer they got to the Arctic coast. They transferred the remaining supplies across to the new vehicle’s backseat, making sure they left enough room so Thor could sit comfortably.
God, she hated to leave the bike behind, but where they were heading, there wasn’t going to be a need for it, and short of strapping it to the side of the Cat, nowhere to store it. She checked the panniers for anything that might be useful, but found only a gallon of water and a few cans of food.
It was going to have to stay with the SUV.
Emily helped Rhiannon climb back up onto the gantry, then returned to the SUV and clambered into the back, over the rear seats, grabbing the road atlas and a couple of energy bars stashed in the pocket of the passenger door.
After a final glance around, she dropped the keys onto the driver’s seat and climbed out, slamming the door closed behind her.
The James Dalton Highway was a four-hundred-mile stretch of road connecting Fairbanks to the town of Deadhorse, just a few miles shy of the Arctic Ocean. The twisting road covered some of the most extreme terrain and weather conditions in the world. Temperatures could drop to minus thirty degrees centigrade and storms could blow in seemingly out of nowhere, reducing visibility to nothing and freezing anything caught unprotected in the open.
“Thanks so much for that,” said Emily as she recalled the information Jacob had relayed to her.
“What?” asked Rhiannon, yawning and stretching as she woke from a two-hour nap.
“I said it looks like snow,” lied Emily.
Rhiannon gave her one of those withering looks that only an adolescent girl could deliver: a cross between utter disdain and pity. Emily smiled. Maybe it was better that the world’s supply of teenage boys was probably extinct. This one would do more than break hearts; she could turn them into mincemeat with a single glance.
“Go back to sleep,” Emily suggested.
Rhiannon shook her head and stretched. “Not tired,” she said. “How long have we been driving for?”
Emily glanced down at the display panel on the dash. A timer in the top corner of the screen showed they had been on the road for almost four hours now. She had kept the speed down to a manageable thirty miles per hour, occasionally even as low as fifteen when she had to navigate a particularly tricky corner. The tachometer said they had traveled a total of 107 miles. Just over a quarter of their trip was already behind them.
Rhiannon might not be tired, but Emily felt her own eyes beginning to ache. Even though the outside temperature was a frigid fifteen degrees, inside the cab, thanks to the superb heating system, the temperature was a balmy seventy-two degrees. Combine that with the sweeping sheets of white on every side and the occasional rhythmic beat of the industrial-size wiper-blades as they swished away the ice and snow that built up on the windshield, and you had as good a recipe for falling asleep at the wheel as was ever invented. If it wasn’t for her unease at driving this thing, she would have probably landed them in a snowbank or off the side of a mountain by now.
They had about another 150 miles of driving ahead of them before they reached the tiny encampment of Coldfoot. Jacob had assured her that they would find fuel and somewhere to spend the night there.
“It’s the only stop between Fairbanks at the southern end of the highway and Deadhorse, where you’re heading at the opposite end, that you’ll find fuel,” he had told her.
Ahead, the road curved up a steep slope that ran over and between a pair of hills before disappearing into a bank of fog or low clouds that obscured the top; it was hard to tell exactly which.
Emily slowed the Sno-Cat as they rumbled up the slope.
She had spent some time checking out the bank of switches and had identified what most of them did. As the white mist enveloped them, she switched on the powerful halogen lamps mounted on either side of the cab. The light helped a little, but it also gave the fog/cloud a weird orange glow that strained her eyes even more as the light bounced back at her.
Emily eased off the gas a little as the road rose higher into the hills, curving and dipping unexpectedly. Her heart was in her mouth for most of the next fifteen minutes as they climbed higher and higher; then suddenly they were out of it. Emily could see the road disappear again between two icy peaks about a mile farther up the road, so she picked up her speed a little, quickly chewing up the distance to the ridge.
She glanced over at Rhiannon, but the kid was curled up on the seat, her head resting against the passenger window, eyes closed as her chest rose and descended rhythmically. Asleep again.
The weather had been clear for most of the drive so far, except for the occasional squall that blew in seemingly from nowhere and disappeared just as quickly. Now as they crowned the valley between the peaks, looking down onto the plain below them, she could see for miles ahead of her. It was breathtakingly beautiful. An unspoiled white canvas. In the distance, mountains rose into the air, crowned by thick waves of cloud, their dark outline providing an elegant border to the sheer simplicity of nature’s perfection.
Emily guided the Cat down the opposite side of the hill’s winding road, the same band of fog/clouds blanketed the descent for several miles ahead, completely obscuring the road from view. Emily switched the lamps back on as they penetrated the mist and slowed the Cat to a more manageable speed, edging it around a hairpin bend that dropped rapidly and then curved again in the opposite direction.
If Emily had taken her eyes off the road for even a second she would not have seen the eighteen-wheeler splayed across the road. When it materialized from out of the bank of fog there was less than ten feet left between the Cat and it. Emily slammed her foot against the brake pedal. The tracks instantly locked, bringing the machine to an almost immediate stop as its treads dug into the snow. Rhiannon tumbled off the seat with a cry of fear, hitting the console and falling in a pile of waving arms and legs to the floor.
“What was that? What was that?” she demanded as she pulled herself back into the seat. She screamed again when she saw the huge glinting curve of the tanker just feet from the front of the Cat’s engine.
“Where did that come from?” she demanded.
“I have no idea,” answered Emily. “Are you okay?”
Rhiannon, pouting just a little at the embarrassment of the spill, nodded that she thought she was. The only thing bruised was her dignity.
The lamps cut through the space between the Cat and the tanker, and Emily grabbed the handle of the one on her side of the cab, panning the light through the mist along the length of the other
vehicle. The driver’s cabin of the truck hung over the right edge of the road, its back wheels the only thing keeping it from falling into the space beyond, snapping the cab from the trailer like a broken neck. The rest of the truck, a huge cylinder trailer of brushed silver, cut diagonally across the road, blocking most of the path.
Emily panned the light left, then back to the right again, but even the powerful beam of the spotlight could not penetrate very deeply into the bank of mist. There was nothing else for it; she was going to have to get out and see what kind of room there was for her to maneuver.
Shit! If this tanker blocked the entire road, they were screwed. They would have to head back to Fairbanks and figure out some other way to get to Jacob’s location.
“Stay here,” she said to Rhiannon. “And lock the door behind me.” Emily saw the look of fear spread over the young girl’s face at the thought of being left alone. “Don’t worry,” she told her. “I just need to look around. Besides, Thor will keep you company. Won’t you, boy?” Thor laid his muzzle on the center console between the two front seats and whined quietly, his tail beating a subdued rhythm against the upholstery.
“I’ll be right back,” she continued as she manipulated the floodlight until it illuminated the majority of the length of the trailer. It would give her some light at least.
She pulled on her parka and zipped it up tight before slipping the hood over her head. The shotgun was hard to handle with the thick gloves, but she took it anyway. Emily opened the door quickly and stepped outside before the heat of the cabin could escape. Slamming it shut, she saw white condensation begin to collect on the window. She tapped the glass and mouthed “Lock. The. Door” to the wide-eyed Rhiannon. She waited until she saw her reach across and click the lock into place, then turned and maneuvered carefully along the ice-covered access gantry, stepped down onto the front track, and hopped the last few feet down onto the snow-covered road. The snow was less than a foot deep here, she noted, as her boots sank down into it with a crunch like dry autumn leaves.
Through the narrow vision of the hood of her parka, Emily could make out the cold steel of the tanker ahead of her. She crunched over to it and leaned a gloved hand against it as she oriented herself with the light from the Cat. Even through the thick pads of her glove, she could feel the cold of the frigid metal permeating to the tips of her fingers.
The mist reduced visibility down to about fifteen feet; her own breath added to it as it swirled around her. She moved as close as she dared to the cab. The rock-strewn curb leading over the edge had no guardrail to protect drivers from the plunge to the valley below. It was probably best to stay back from the edge—the lip of the road looked loose and crumbly. No point putting herself in danger; besides, the driver’s cabin was too far over for her to reach, anyway.
Doubling back, Emily followed the trailer toward its rear, walking carefully alongside it. Ten steps beyond that and the truck had completely disappeared from view. The panic that flooded her system was almost paralyzing. Getting lost out there, with no visual cues to orient herself by, could be deadly. Panicking, on the other hand, would be disastrous.
Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe.
She looked down at the snow; the outline of her tracks, crisp and fresh, were easily visible. Unless it started snowing again, they would act as bread crumbs. All she would need to do was follow them back to the Cat.
She started walking again, measuring each step as she watched for some indication of the end of the road. Five more steps and she could just begin to make out a dim form through the mist; another step and the edge of the road materialized, flanked by an embankment that rose up above her before disappearing into the mist. The embankment, an almost sheer face of rock, was too steep for even the multitracked Cat to climb, but she was pretty sure that if she was careful, she could slip the Cat through the space between it and the back end of the tanker. The Cat was about nine feet wide, and she had marked off about sixteen feet from the end of the tanker to the embankment. If she took it slow, they would be okay.
Emily turned to retrace her steps back to the vehicle as a gust of wind swept down from farther up the hill, buffeting and jostling her as she followed her footprints back the way she had come. A sudden, powerful crosswind pummeled her back, sending a flurry of blinding snow into the air. Off balance and disoriented by the sudden pounding wind, Emily fell forward, arms windmilling and then disappearing into the snow up to her elbows. The wind continued to buffet her even as she tried to struggle back to her feet. Every time she managed to raise herself to her knees, another gust of wind would knock her down again. It was futile to try and fight against it, she realized after her third attempt. Instead, she sank back to the ground and pulled her legs up to her chest, dipping her head down to her knees to limit the amount of cold air that could be blown into the hood of the parka. She’d just have to wait until the wind died down rather than risk being blown over the edge of the road.
Seconds dragged into minutes as she was rocked back and forth; clumps of snow lifted from the embankment face, bouncing off the protective coating of the jacket. In the darkness of her hood, the wind sounded like a wolf, baying for her blood.
Slowly, the wind began to die away. When she was quite sure it had stopped, she slowly lifted her head from her knees and looked around. The mist had disappeared, too, dragged away by the wind and revealing the rest of the road as it wound down the hill.
“Oh, shit!” The expletive tumbled from her mouth as she struggled to her feet and pulled the hood from her sweat-soaked head, oblivious to the chill.
Stretching out below her, lining almost every foot of the road, was a procession of frozen vehicles winding the remaining two miles to the bottom of the hill.
To Emily, as she gazed out over the line of trucks, flatbeds, snowplows, tankers, Sno-Cats, and even a snowmobile or two, it seemed as though she had stumbled across some long-lost convoy.
It looked like they had been moving in formation together. Maybe they had been evacuating from the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay when the red rain caught them out in the open? The majority of the dead vehicles consisted of either heavy-goods or commercial-size transportation, suggesting they must have come from one of the support sites that supplied materials and assistance to the oil rigs that plundered the Arctic. Maybe these were even from Deadhorse?
Her own Cat was just fifty feet away, its engine billowing plumes of exhaust into the air. She could see Rhiannon, her nose pressed against the glass of the cab, staring at her and then at the snaking trail of frozen metal glinting in the sunlight.
Emily motioned to her that she was okay—not so easy to do when your hands are hidden in gloves. But she was a smart kid; she could figure out that she was all right.
The jackknifed big rig that had caused them to stop was the lead vehicle of the convoy. Behind that was another rig, which had come to a stop about ten feet or so from its rear end. The second vehicle’s flatbed was empty, but when Emily climbed up onto the cab’s footplate and wiped away the snow from the passenger window, she could see the cabin was not.
“Jesus!” Emily exclaimed.
Where she had expected to find the frozen body of the rig’s driver, she instead found an alien pupa. It was stretched across both the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and a light sheen of frost covered the outside of the dark-red shell. It was at least twice as big as the pupae she had seen in her newspaper’s offices back in Manhattan, and Emily wondered just how many people had been crammed into this cabin when the red rain had claimed them.
She dropped to the snow and moved to the next truck. There were two more pupae inside. Each resting on the seat where the human host had died.
It was the same for the next ten vehicles she checked. Every seat filled. Everyone inside dead.
But some of the convoy’s refugees, either trying to escape or maybe stepping outside to see why the convoy had stopped, had not been changed. They lay frozen on the ground, their still-human outlin
es barely visible beneath the layer of snow that had settled over them, a shroud of pure white. Some had not managed to make it any farther than their open doors and now lay face-down in the snow, their torsos covered by a white veil while their bottom halves remained inside their vehicles.
That was strange. It was as though the extra insulation provided by the closed-off vehicles had allowed the transmutation to progress to its later stages, while for those who made it outside, the lower temperature had arrested the development into the alien pupa form.
It was only after Emily wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead that she realized how warm it had become. She exhaled heavily. There was no white fog of breath. In fact, she could feel the air warming around her, tingling against her ears and her cheeks.
How could that be?
A minute or so later, as she checked for a clear route between a tanker and what looked to be a decommissioned school bus, she had to unzip her parka. The temperature must have risen at least three degrees in that time. She could feel a warm breeze blowing against her face and hands, like a car heater turned to low. It was sweeping down from the mountainside above her, and, as she looked up the mountain toward the peak, she could see rivulets of water beginning to run down the mountain as the snow began to melt.
She glanced around her at the maze of metal. It was thawing down here, too. The windshield of the school bus that had just a minute ago been covered in a crispy frost was now completely clear, exposing the dim outline of another pupa in the driver’s seat. A continual drip, drip, drip of melting ice water ran off the hood.
Emily headed back to the waiting Cat.
There was a sudden loud crack like split wood off to her left.
She started at the noise. It had come from the inside of a Toyota SUV, stopped near the edge of the mountain pass. She paused, listening, then when the noise did not come again, crunched over to the Toyota. A large chunk of snow and ice that had collected on the roof slid off and fell to the ground as she approached.
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