by M K Dymock
Many a day Mina regretted buying a car with the ability to tow others. “Where are you?”
“Not that far, only the Junction.”
Mina checked the weather on her app. “It’s supposed to snow. Just spend the night with Casey.” Casey was her boyfriend.
“I can’t, I’ve got clients already in town. I’m supposed to meet them in the morning. If the storm hits like they’re saying, I won’t make it. If they get another instructor, I’m out $500.”
A few stars already appeared in the western sky, meaning the storm held off. It was about a thirty-minute drive to the Junction. They could leave Jenny’s car and return for it after the storm. Still, Mina hesitated. The southern winds blew hard, and the air hummed with anticipation.
“I’m coming now.” Mina should’ve known better, but she hit the gas down the canyon as the first snowflakes fell.
Mina cursed Jenny for her own stupidity. How many times had she watched the skies change in an instant? As Mina’s Jeep crept down the canyon, she muttered, “Flurries this isn’t.” She’d once bragged to a tourist who’d paid her $250 to drive him to the airport during a particularly bad snowstorm that she could drive this canyon blindfolded.
She was wrong. Never had Mina seen a storm descend with such speed and fury. Black roads turned white before her mind registered it was snowing.
Her beams highlighted each flake, making it seem like she drove in a snow globe. Only the needle of her speedometer, hovering below 10, proved she moved at all.
The snow tires and studs she’d spent a paycheck on gripped the road, and she felt no fear about a potential slide-off. Driving over a cliff in blinding snow, however, kept her body completely tense and leaning forward in her seat as if that would help her see better.
A few miles down she relinquished all hope of making it to the Junction. All she needed now was a wide enough place to turn around.
She passed a sign that read View Area Ahead, or at least it did in the summer. Now all that showed through was View and the d. She would’ve slowed, but any slower and she’d be stopped. Twenty more yards and she could turn.
The white expanse opened up, and she cranked her wheel to the right. Mina didn’t see the other car until she hit it. Or at her speed, nudge might be the more appropriate word. She let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding for several miles.
A gangly man crawled out of the front seat and another guy out of the passenger as she waved with a sheepish smile.
The second Mina opened the car door, her beanie almost blew off her head. She caught it and shoved it down over her ears. She met the men where their bumpers touched.
“Sorry,” she said by way of introduction.
The driver glanced down at her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how close I was to the road.”
“What road?” Her tracks were already filling with snow.
“It’s no problem,” the passenger said. “I knew living here would be hard on a car.”
“You live here?” Mina asked, eyeing him. His clothes were too new and unworn to be a local, too nice to be a seasonal worker, but not expensive or old enough to be a “second home for the winter” person.
“I rented a house for the winter.”
She would have to recalculate her assumptions about strangers. “Welcome. I’m Mina Park.”
He was average size with an age hard to pin down, maybe forty, maybe older. “Philip Griffith. This is my buddy Ryan Lehman, just picked him up from the airport.”
Mina reached out a hand, which he shook without making eye contact. She wondered how, with his barely there width and length stretching to the sky, he managed to stay tethered to the ground. “Nice to meet you.”
He mumbled something in return. It drove her nuts how weird guys could be about women, as if they were an alien race hell-bent on world domination. At least the alien part was untrue.
“Are you stuck?” she asked Phillip, deciding to ignore the tall one.
“Not so much stuck as blind. Hoping the wind will die down so we can keep going up.” He stuck his bare hands into his pockets. “What about you?”
“I was heading down but gave up. If you want, you can follow me up the canyon. Sometimes it helps to have a pair of taillights to chase.”
Ryan glanced back to the road and back to her, apparently debating. “I don’t know,” he said to Philip. “Maybe we should wait for a plow to go by and follow it up. What do you think?”
She didn’t respond, assuming he spoke to his friend. Both men looked to her for answer. “Probably the smartest thing to do,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.
“Probably?” Phil asked.
“If visibility gets too bad, the plows won’t be out, and you risk the roads being closed. The later it gets, the worse the storm is supposed to be.” The snow blew around them like it did the evening she should’ve found the skier.
She stomped feeling back into her feet, anxious to be on the road. She despised this feeling of unsafe. This was her world, her place. She should be able to handle a stupid storm.
“I’m going up,” she said with no idea if that was the brave or chicken thing to do. “You want to follow me, you can.”
Mina didn’t wait for an answer before climbing back into the Jeep. As she backed off the other bumper and pulled into what she hoped was the road, their headlights flipped on and they pulled out behind her.
14
Ryan knew the silence wouldn’t last long but still cringed when Phil broke it. “I like her.”
“She’s probably not single.”
“You don’t know that for sure. If I were you, I’d be finding out.”
“Anyone else coming for the hunt?” Ryan ignored the perpetual yenta.
“Plenty of folks. It’s close to Christmas break. People have the time off work.”
“For those poor suckers who work.” Ryan tried not to expend too much jealousy on his friend whose company went public in his forties and had retired early. Phil’s wife had died right before, and he suspected his friend would willingly trade the money to get her back. He also suspected the loneliness was what drove much of his friend’s matchmaking.
Once they pulled back onto the highway, Ryan halted all conversation to focus on the taillights ahead. It was all he could do to not let the woman on the roadside hear his fear. He’d slept alone in the Montana woods with wolves howling and something unknown rustling in the trees that he half hoped was a bear. But driving on these roads was something else.
With no sense of distance or time, he followed until Mina’s left red light blinked. He relinquished his grip slightly. Were they there? She pulled off and parked in a small pullout, not unlike where they’d been stopped earlier.
As he put the car into park, the adrenaline that had been coursing through his body flowed out. The muscles in his arms felt like he’d been lifting weights for an hour.
“Why’d we stop?” Phil asked.
The answer to his question lay before them under eight inches of snow: a small Audi, which should be sitting in a garage, not going up a mountain pass. A man climbed out of the car as they and Mina got out of theirs.
“…wanted to get up before the storm. Thought I had time,” the man said as they approached. He wore a ski jacket that Ryan had seen online for an easy grand when he’d been outfitting himself for the season. Ryan went with something less…well, less everything.
“We all did,” the woman replied. “I’m Mina.” She stuck her hand out to shake.
“James.”
“I’m Phil. This is my friend, Ryan.” He nodded in Ryan’s general direction, and Ryan nodded back, content to stay in the background.
“Sorry,” Mina said. Ryan glanced around before realizing she addressed him. “I shouldn’t have had you follow me in the car. These roads are…”
“We tried.” There weren’t words to describe how bad things had gotten. The snow was so deep, the grill on her Jeep skimmed it.
A lone streetlight po
wered by solar lit up the pullout. “I’ve been sitting here for an hour and can’t go any further in my car,” James said. He flashed a smile at Mina that communicated I can convince you to do anything. “Would you mind if rode up with you? My wife and kids are up there already—hate to make them worry.”
“Is your family on vacation?” Mina asked.
“No. My wife, Cate, got a job working for the town.”
Mina visibly relaxed. “I know your twins. I’ve been teaching them to ski.”
“I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “No, they’re learning fast. Surprising, considering they haven’t had much experience with snow.”
“It’s in their—”
“Not to interrupt,” Ryan said, “but those roads aren’t getting any better.” His hands, despite the gloves he wore, tingled in the cold.
Mina looked at him as if appraising him. “You’re right.” All levity dropped from her voice, and he felt a slight pang of guilt. “But I think we ought to wait it out, see if the storm clears out or a plow comes through.”
James took a step forward. “If you’re nervous about driving, I’m more than happy to drive your Jeep.”
Mina’s glare dropped about twenty degrees, and Ryan was quite pleased with himself for not being dumb enough to say that. “I can drive my own car.”
“What about you?” James asked Ryan. “Your ride looks like it’s got four-wheel drive.”
“If she says it’s better to wait it out, I’m inclined to agree.”
Mina shot him a look he couldn’t quite read. Not being able to read people wasn’t anything new to him.
“I’ve got $500 if you can get me up there tonight. I really hate that my family is in this storm by themselves.”
“$500 wouldn’t pay for my funeral,” Mina said. “And I know Cate; I think she’d rather have a live husband than a dead one.”
“You’d be surprised.” he muttered before climbing back into his car. Mina turned to her own Jeep, leaving Ryan and Phil standing in the snow.
“Let’s see what we’ve got in the car to wait this out,” Phil said.
The snow was already to the tailpipe; there’d be no running the engine. Phil rummaged through the back while Ryan pulled out his suitcase from the back seat and unzipped it to reveal enough warm clothes to cover him three times over.
They split the clothes, and Ryan pulled on his new snow boots, rated to zero degrees. If he had wood, he would’ve knocked on it to make sure he wouldn’t have to test that.
“Come get in!” Mina yelled from her Jeep
With a lift on her Jeep, her tailpipe was out of the snow and the engine running.
Ryan moved to climb into the back seat, but Phil beat him to it, gesturing to the front. “You take that; you’re taller.”
He should’ve used that height to kick Phil on his matchmaking shins.
Settled in, they all sat in silence for a moment, watching it snow. “We may be here a while,” she said. “I’ve seen this canyon close for a couple of days.”
“How far are we from the top?” Phil asked.
“A mile, maybe more. Do you have any food?”
“A bag of jerky. You?”
“A 72-hour kit with food and water…”
“Great.”
“…that’s several years old.”
Despite their situation, he couldn’t help but laugh. “Water might still be good.”
James knocked on the window. “Mind if I get in?”
They settled in with Mina passing around a few water bottles she happened to have, and no one mentioning the hunger pains their stomachs announced.
Within an hour, the snow covered the exhaust pipe, and they turned the engine off.
15
The snow never stopped falling. The cold became a part of Mina, interwoven into every atom of her body.
The men had retreated into themselves, and it fell on her to strike up some conversation to pass the night. “James, Cate said you were working out of the country, but she didn’t say where.”
“Did she?” He shuffled around in the back seat until his head popped through the seats. “I’m a consultant, so I’m constantly moving around. Some mornings I turn on the TV just to see what language they’re speaking.”
“Can’t be easy with a family.”
“No, but I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical. We moved to Lost Gorge as a break from the rat race.”
“It’s not permanent?” Cate had told Mina she wanted to make Lost Gorge home.
“Maybe a year or so. Cate likes to think longer, but my career won’t allow it.” He moved his attention back to Phil, who’d curled up in the corner. “What about you? In for the winter?”
Phil hadn’t said much since meeting James on the roadside. “Yeah, my kids are all in college, and I didn’t want to live in an empty nest.”
“You retired?”
Phil hesitated a moment, liked he’d fallen asleep, before offering a quiet “Yes.”
“Congrats on being early. No way you’re 65.”
Mina, who would be paying off student loans until 65, swallowed the jealousy, or tried to. “What about you?” she said to Ryan. “You retired as well?”
“No, I’m a software developer. This is the first week off I’ve had in several months.”
“What brought you up? The snow?” Mina didn’t remember seeing skis on his roof or poking through the seats.
“Yeah.” He glanced to the back seat. “Phil said it would be awesome skiing.”
Funny, he didn’t strike her as a skier.
The streetlight maintained its vigilance through the night as they tried and failed to sleep. A coyote howled, and she wondered why it ventured out in the storm.
“Is that what people are saying killed the skier? A coyote?” James asked.
“Didn’t you hear? It was Bigfoot,” Mina said with an edge in her voice.
“Did they find any tracks?” Ryan asked.
“Nothing definite.” She decided it was time for a change of subject. “What do you do for a living that keeps you on the road so much?” she asked James. “Roadie with a rock-and-roll band?”
“No, I’m a straight-up groupie.” He said it in such a deadpan way, it took her a second to get the joke.
She chuckled. “That can’t pay well.”
“It’s more about the perks than the money. No, I’m kidding; I’m a business consultant. I specialize in transportation improvements, which means I spend way too much time in India.”
“It must be hard to be gone so much,” Ryan said.
He said this as Mina offered an opposing opinion. “How fun, traveling all over the world. I spent a month in India a few years ago. What cites were you in?”
“It is hard, and the most of any city I saw was the inside of an office or a hotel, so I’m fairly unfamiliar with the country.” James took a deep but ragged breath.
She turned around in the seat. His brow glowed with sweat in the soft glow of the streetlight. “Hey, you okay?” It took a moment of fumbling to find the cargo light before she could switch it on.
James’s face had paled in the last few hours, and sweat slicked back his hair. “I’m okay.”
“You can’t be hot.” Her words appeared as clouds in front of her.
Ryan turned in his seat. “You sick?”
“No, I have…” He took a breath. “…I have a heart condition. I ran out of pills, but I figured I could fill a prescription when I got up there. I can usually skip a day without it affecting me too much.”
“How long has it been?”
“Tomorrow morning, or I guess today, will be three days?” His statement sounded more like a question. “I got caught up in work, trying to clear things out. It’s no big deal; I’ll take it when we get up there.”
“What happens if you don’t?” Mina didn’t like how quickly he’d changed in a few hours.
“My heart rate goes up, and I get lightheaded.” He paused. “Look, it’s nothing th
at hasn’t happened before. I can handle it.”
“But it could lead to a heart attack?” Ryan asked.
“Worst-case scenario, yes. But we’re a long way from there.”
Mina awoke at the first hint of dawn struggling through the storm. A light she sensed more than saw as a foot of snow covered the hood and the side windows were plastered with ice.
Ryan stirred when she did, and both their glances went to James in the back seat. He’d fallen asleep across the back seat, leaning against Phil, who sat wide awake. “A few times, I swear he stopped breathing,” Phil said.
“James,” Ryan asked, “how you doing?”
Without opening his eyes, he whispered, “Just peachy.”
Mina pulled out her phone, which refused to turn on in the cold. It took taking off two gloves and pulling back the sleeves of four layers until she could read the time on her watch—7:22.
Ryan tried to open the door, but it had frozen shut during the night. Mina yanked on her door handle, releasing the latch. With a twist in the seat, she positioned both feet against the door and kicked. Nothing budged.
She kicked again—still nothing.
Ryan stopped her mid-kick with a hand on her shoulder. “Let me.” He unhinged his long legs from their cramped position and stretched them across her lap. One kick broke the ice coating the crack; the next kick pushed the door a few inches into the snow.
The snow measured in feet. “I’ve got a shovel in the back,” Mina said.
Phil rummaged through her stuff and pulled it out, passing it to her.
It had a sharp end on it Mina used like a pick. With several jabs, she managed to push open the door enough to reach her head out. “Crap.”
“That bad?” Phil asked.
The road, or what had been the road, looked more like a snow-covered field. Drifts formed like waves, and even the trees had bowed down to the power of the storm. A cracking sound broke through the stillness as somewhere a branch broke under the weight.
And the snow still fell, not with the same fury but at a never-ending pace.
“It’s worse. The road can be accessible by snowmobiles, but it will take at least a day until a plow manages to get this far.”