Black Ice Highway: Cold Start

The screen on Maren's phone flickered once, twice, then held at three percent. She pressed the power button anyway, holding it down until her thumb ached. Nothing. The glass remained dark, warm from the last embers of charge she had tried to squeeze from it over the past forty minutes. A faint smell of ozone rose from the device, a sharp chemical tang that cut through the cabin's thicker smells of cold vinyl and old coffee. Outside, the wind scraped across the roof of her rig in long, uneven passes, each gust trailing off into a hollow moan that sounded almost like a voice. Almost like someone trying to be heard over the static of a dying channel.

She turned the phone over in her palm. The case had a chip in the corner from the time it slipped off the dash near Slana. That was three months and six thousand miles ago. The crack had spread since then, a thin white line that now ran halfway across the screen, dividing the image of her father that served as her wallpaper. She could still see the curve of his smile, frozen in a photograph she had taken two winters before the funeral. His CB handle had been etched into the dash beneath that same smile. She had not been able to bring herself to cover either.

The temperature readout on the lower corner of the phone had dropped to twelve degrees. The phone had shut itself down in self-preservation, a thought that annoyed her more than it should have. She had kept it warm against her thigh, then against her palm, then under her scarf. She had turned the screen brightness down to almost nothing. She had closed every app she could find. None of it had mattered. The battery had given up the ghost somewhere between the last text she had sent to Toby Renner and the silence that had swallowed the rest of her night.

The text itself still glowed in her mind, each word a small, useless anchor. She had typed it with numb fingers, the cab swaying under her as she nursed the Peterbilt over a patch of glare ice near mile marker 93. Three messages. The first had been coordinates. The second had been a warning about something she still could not fully name. The third had been a single line that now felt both too little and too much: I think they are waiting for me to stop.

She had watched the little indicator at the top of the screen as the words sent. One bar of signal. Two. Then back to one. The read receipt had flickered in, dim and unreliable. Then nothing. The phone had warmed in her hand, then cooled, then warmed again as she pressed it to her cheek for a moment, just to feel something human against her skin. The cabin heater had been running on its lowest setting for the last hour, the kind of thin warmth that barely took the edge off the cold pressing in through the windows. Her breath still came out in pale plumes that the defroster fought to clear from the windshield.

She set the phone face-down on the bench seat beside her. The dead weight of it pressed into the cushion with the kind of finality she had learned not to trust. Things that stopped sometimes started again. Things that started sometimes never stopped. She had seen both kinds of ending during her years running freight up and down the Alaska Highway.

The clock on the dash read 3:47 a.m. The numbers glowed a steady green, indifferent to her situation. She reached out and tapped the face of the radio. The CB sat in its cradle beneath the dash, a heavy, square unit with a coiled cord and a frequency dial she had worn smooth with her thumb. She had tried every channel she could think of in the last half hour. Nineteen was the local trucker channel, usually alive with voices from Edmonton to Delta Junction. Tonight it hissed and popped with nothing. Fourteen was the emergency channel, monitored by the state troopers when they bothered to monitor it. Same nothing. Even the AM frequencies, which sometimes caught scraps of broadcast from towns she could not see, offered only the long, low drone of stations that had signed off for the night.

She keyed the mic anyway. The click of the button was loud in the cab, sharper than the wind outside. A small red light on the radio face blinked once, then steadied.

"Break, break. This is Maren Caldwell, rig 4481, eastbound on Route 7, mile marker 95. Anybody copy?"

The radio hissed back. The static rose and fell in slow, uneven waves, the sound of a frequency that had been left empty. She tried again, adjusting the squelch with a careful twist of the dial. The static quieted but did not vanish. There was nothing behind it.

"Break. Anybody hearing me, I am running low on heat and I have got company I cannot describe. Please respond."

She let the mic go. The coiled cord settled against her thigh, the spring inside it clicking faintly as it uncoiled. The cabin held the silence for a long moment, broken only by the slow tick of the engine as it idled and the distant complaint of the wind against the trailer walls. The rig was parked on a straight stretch of road, the trailer angled slightly to block the wind from the cab side. She had pulled off the lane when the engine temperature had started to drop, even though she had known it would cost her momentum. The heater drew from the same coolant. If she let the engine die, she lost the one source of heat she had.

Her hands rested on the wheel. The leather cover was cold, the stitching worn smooth where her father had gripped it during his own years on this route. She could still remember the way the cab had smelled when she was a girl riding shotgun on summer runs, a mix of diesel and pine and the mint gum he kept in the glovebox. That smell was gone now, replaced by the colder, sharper scents of winter operation: dry ice, road salt, the faint metallic tang of antifreeze.

She glanced at the side mirror. The mirror was crusted with rime along its top edge, a white fringe that caught the light from her running lights and glimmered faintly. Beyond that, the road stretched back the way she had come. She could see the twin red markers of her trailer for a distance, then nothing. The dark out there was total, the kind of dark that made distance impossible to judge. The blackness could have been a hundred yards or a hundred miles. She knew from experience it was neither, but her eyes refused to give her a number.

She had been watching the mirrors since she had noticed the first set of headlights behind her near marker 91. At first she had assumed it was just another trucker running the same route, maybe one of the independents who hauled fuel or dry goods up to the villages. She had given a little wave with her marker lights, the old trucker courtesy. The lights behind her had blinked back. She had relaxed a fraction of an inch.

The fraction had not lasted.

The lights had matched her speed for a few miles. Then they had slowed. Then they had sped up. Then they had disappeared entirely, swallowed by a curve in the road or a low swell of terrain. She had told herself it was nothing. The mind played tricks on a long haul, especially on a run this cold. Sleep deprivation and the constant white noise of the road could turn a pair of headlights into a story. She had learned that lesson the hard way during her first winter alone on the route, when she had radioed in a report about a figure standing in the middle of the road outside Tok. It had been a snowdrift. The state trooper had been kind about it. She had not been able to look him in the eye for a week.

But this felt different. The headlights had come back. Twice more they had appeared in her mirror, each time a little closer than before, each time lingering a little longer before falling away. She had tried to make out the shape of the vehicle behind them. A truck would have been a square, solid silhouette against the glow of its own running lights. A car would have been lower, narrower. What she had seen had been neither. It had been a smear of brightness with no clear outline, the way a flashlight looks when it is pointed through fog.

She had thought about pulling over to let whatever it was pass. The road was narrow in places, and she had seen more than one new driver misjudge a meeting on a hill and end up in the ditch. But something in her gut had refused the option. Every time she thought about slowing, her foot found the throttle instead. The rig had groaned up grades that should have demanded lower gears, the engine note climbing as she pushed it harder than she would have on a clear night. The fuel gauge had dropped with each surge, the needle sliding toward the empty mark with the slow inevitability of an hourglass.

She did not know if they were still back there. The mirror showed nothing now, just the flat black of the road and the faint, shifting reflection of her own lights in the icy ruts that ran along the shoulder. The temperature outside, according to the small digital readout mounted near the rearview mirror, had dropped to twenty-two below. The number meant less to her than the way the air had begun to thicken against the windshield. Even with the defroster running, the glass wanted to fog.

She reached for the CB again. Her fingers knew the buttons without looking. She had been driving this rig since her father's funeral, had spent more hours in this cab than in any house she had ever owned. The radio was as familiar as the steering wheel, and she found the same comfort in its presence.

"Eli, if you are out there, this is Maren. 4481. I am eastbound on 7, past the 95. I have got nothing on the dial and I have got a problem I cannot put on a frequency. Copy if you hear me."

She waited. The static shifted, a low, throbbing sound that seemed to come from the speaker itself rather than from anywhere outside. She turned the volume up a notch. The static grew louder, then broke into a short burst of white noise that might have been a carrier signal from a distant station. She held her breath. The burst faded.

"Damn it," she said, the word barely louder than the wind.

She reached across to the bench seat and found the phone again. The screen stayed black. She pressed the power button once more, holding it longer this time, as if patience could will a battery back to life. The phone stayed dark. She set it down again, this time in the cup holder, where it would not slide if she had to move fast.

The wind had shifted. She could tell by the way the sound moved across the cab. It had been coming from the northwest for most of the night, a steady, insistent pressure that had pushed the rig slightly south of its lane even when she fought to correct. Now it was coming from due north, straight down the road. The change had brought a new sound with it, a low, rhythmic creak that she could not immediately place. It took her a few seconds to realize it was the ice on the roof of the trailer contracting as the temperature continued its slow, relentless fall.

She pulled her scarf tighter around her neck. The wool was rough against her chin, still warm from where she had tucked it under her collar when she had first climbed into the cab for the night. She had dressed in layers the way her father had taught her, a thermal against her skin, a flannel shirt over that, then a canvas jacket, then the parka that lived behind the seat. Even with all of it, she could feel the cold working its way in through the seams.

Her father had called this stretch the Long Stretch. It ran from the Canadian border to the junction at Tok, more than three hundred miles of road that cut through some of the flattest, most exposed country in the territory. In the summer it was a monotonous run, nothing but spruce and gravel and the occasional moose that refused to move. In the winter it became something else entirely. The wind had nothing to stop it out here. It could build for hours across the open ground, then hit a rig like a wall of moving ice. More than one trucker had been caught off guard on the Long Stretch and ended up jackknifed in the median.

Maren had grown up hearing the stories. Her father had known every treacherous bend of this road, and Eli March had known it longer. When she had taken over the route, Eli had been one of the few people who had not looked at her with that quiet, pitying doubt that so many others had offered. He had simply nodded, once, and told her to watch the temperature gauges and never, under any circumstances, trust a frozen mirror.

She tried the radio one more time. This time she did not bother to identify. She just keyed the mic and let it sit. The static came back, unchanged, uninterested. She released the button and sat with her hands in her lap.

The clock rolled to 3:52 a.m.

She thought about Toby Renner. He had been a steady presence on the other end of her phone for the last year, the dispatcher who actually answered when she called. He was younger than her by a few years, sharp and a little too eager, but he had a memory for detail that she had come to rely on. He had been the one to talk her through a brake issue outside Whitehorse when she had been too tired to read her own gauges. He had been the one to call the state troopers when she had reported the strange lights near Chicken. He had always picked up, even at three in the morning. He had never let a call from her go to voicemail.

She wondered if he was seeing her last text now, somewhere in the dispatch office in Delta Junction. She wondered what he would make of it. She wondered if he had tried to call her back, if his calls had been routed to the dead phone in her cup holder, if the sound of ringing had gone unheard in the empty cab.

The thought settled in her chest like a stone. She picked up the phone one more time. The glass was cold and dark. She held it against her forehead for a moment, eyes closed. The weight of it was small, but it felt heavier than the wheel.

She set it back down.

Outside, the wind found a loose panel on the side of the trailer and began to work at it. The sound was a low, steady clatter that rose and fell with each gust, the kind of sound that could wear a person down over hours. She did not have hours to spare.

She reached for the mic.

She keyed the mic and held it close to her mouth. The static that answered was familiar, a wash of white noise that came off the mountains and filled every dead spot between here and the next repeater tower. She waited three seconds. Four. Five.

"Breaker one-nine, this is freight hauler out at mile marker forty-six on the Taylor, looking for a roll call or any traffic. Come back."

The static hissed. Somewhere beneath it, the faint shape of other voices moved, but none of them resolved into words. She could not tell if she was even reaching the repeater. The aurora had been playing hell with the band for the last hour, and the cold did things to coaxial cable that no amount of insulation could fully prevent.

She waited another ten seconds, then keyed again.

"Any station, any breaker, this is Caldwell, Maren Caldwell, the Kenworth with the reefer, calling on nineteen. Come back if you can hear me."

Nothing. The static breathed against her ear, patient and indifferent.

She set the mic back in its cradle and let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. The cab was cooling in a way she could feel against her skin, not the slow drift of a healthy engine idling but the purposeful creep of a system giving up. She had maybe ninety minutes of auxiliary heat left in the bunk heater alone. After that, the cab would become what the trailer already was: a metal box, slowly becoming the same temperature as the air outside.

The clock read 3:58 a.m.

The thought came unbidden, the way thoughts did in the small hours. She could see her father's hands on a wheel just like this one, the same cracked leather under his knuckles, the same ring on his finger she now wore on a chain around her neck. She could hear his voice on the CB, steady and unhurried, always with time to talk a younger driver through a stuck throttle or a frozen brake line. She had grown up in the passenger seat of a truck just like this one, her feet not reaching the floor, her father pointing out the names of creeks and pullouts as they rolled past.

She had been twenty-three when he died. A jackknife on the Alaska Highway, black ice and a load of pipe. The other driver had walked away. Her father had not. She had inherited the route, the rig, the CB handle etched into a brass plate and bolted to her dash: MAREN, KD9-CRL.

She touched the plate now with two fingers. The metal was ice cold.

Outside, the panel on the trailer clattered again. The sound was getting louder, or maybe she was just listening harder. She pulled her gloves back on, flexing her fingers to work blood back into them, and reached for the door handle.

The cold hit her like a wall.

It was not the dry bite of a windchill factor on a printed forecast. It was a presence, a weight that pressed against her face and found the gaps between her balaclava and her goggles. She felt her nostrils try to close. She felt the moisture in her eyes turn to a dull ache. She had been born in Montana and had driven the northern routes for fifteen years, and still the first breath of a real cold snap surprised her every time.

She dropped from the cab and found the ground with her boots. The packed snow crunched beneath her, the sound flat and dead in the still air. The wind had died, which was almost worse. Without the wind, the cold settled in layers, and each layer was a degree colder than the last. The aurora was still up, faint now and graying at the edges, the way it did before it finally faded.

She crossed to the trailer and laid a gloved hand flat against the side. The metal was cold beyond cold. The cold of a thing that had stopped trying to hold any heat at all. She could not feel the compressor cycling. She could not hear the fan. She pressed her ear to the panel and listened, and all she heard was the faint tick of contracting metal as it gave up its last few degrees to the air.

She straightened and looked back toward the road. The highway was a pale stripe in the dark, already drifting at the edges. The mile markers were invisible beyond the first hundred yards. Whatever had come down from the sky had not stopped. It had only slowed down enough to lie down and stay.

She thought about the heater in the sleeper. Ninety minutes, maybe less if she cracked the curtain to check the gauge. Ninety minutes to sit in the dark and wait for daylight, or for a plow, or for someone to answer on nineteen.

She did not want to sit in the dark.

She turned and looked down the road the way she had come. Six miles, Eli had said. Six miles to a locked utility she'd with a propane heater and emergency supplies. She tried to remember the last landmark she had passed. The bend in the road where the alders thickened. The culvert with the rusted grate. The low hill with the boulder on its shoulder that looked, in certain light, like the profile of a man lying on his back.

She could make out the shoulder of the low hill. It was closer than she wanted it to be, which meant she had been looking at the wrong landmark. The boulder on its shoulder was gone, buried under the new snow, but the shape of the hill was unmistakable.

Six miles, she thought. Maybe seven with the drifts.

She climbed back into the cab and keyed the mic one more time. The static answered, and she let it wash over her for a long moment before she spoke.

"Any breaker, any station. Maren Caldwell, mile forty-six Taylor Highway, calling any traffic. If you can hear me, I am walking south for the she'd at mile forty. Will keep mic hot on one-nine. Caldwell out."

She set the mic to monitor and let it rest against her shoulder. Then she pulled her parka from the hook behind the seat, shrugged into it, and zipped it to her chin. She checked her pockets. Lighter. Multi-tool. The foil blanket from the emergency kit. The protein bar she had been saving. She tucked her phone into her inner pocket, dead or not, because a phone was a phone and you did not leave them behind.

She pulled a second pair of gloves from the glovebox and put them on over the first. She wrapped the foil blanket around her neck and tucked it into her collar. She pulled on her spare hat and tugged it down over her ears. By the time she was done, she could barely bend her elbows, but she could feel the difference. The cold stopped finding the gaps.

She looked once more at the cab. The clock read 4:04 a.m. The bunk heater was still pushing warm air through the vent above the sleeper. In an hour, maybe less, that air would stop coming. In two hours, the cab would be the same temperature as the trailer.

She left the engine idling. There was no sense killing it. If the block froze, she would not be able to start it again, and even a cold truck was better than no truck. She left the bunk heater on. If she made it to the she'd and back, she would need somewhere to come back to.

She stepped down from the cab and pulled the door shut behind her. The latch caught with a solid thunk. She tested it once with her palm. It held.

She started walking.

The road was easier to walk than she had expected. The plows had packed a hard crust on the surface, and her boots found purchase on it without breaking through. The sound of her own footsteps was the only sound in the world, a soft crunch, crunch, crunch that she kept time to without meaning to. She did not hurry. Hurrying made you sweat, and sweat was death out here.

The first mile passed without incident. She kept her head down and her eyes on the road, watching for the places where the plows had left ridges she could trip on, watching for the ice that gleamed darker than the snow. The aurora faded behind her as she walked south. Ahead, the sky was beginning to think about getting lighter, but the thinking was slow, and the dark held on.

At the mile and a half mark, she passed the rusted culvert she had been looking for. It was half-buried in a drift that had crept up from the drainage ditch. She stopped for a moment and looked at it. The grate was gone. The opening was a dark mouth in the white.

She walked on.

At three miles, the wind picked up. It came from the north, from the direction she had come, and it found the gaps between her parka and her balaclava with a patience that felt almost intelligent. She turned her back to it for a few steps and walked sideways, then turned again when the road curved. The wind tried to push her toward the shoulder, where the drifts were deepest, and she let herself be pushed, because the drifts were softer than the ice and she would rather fall into a drift than onto the road.

At four miles, she began to feel the cold in her fingers. She had been flexing them every thirty seconds, but the cold was winning. She stopped and tucked them into her armpits for a minute, breathing hard, feeling her heart thud against her ribs. The foil blanket had slipped down around her collar, and she tugged it back up with her teeth.

She started walking again.

At five miles, she saw the shape of the low hill ahead. She could not see the boulder on its shoulder, but she could see the shoulder itself, a dark mass against the graying sky. She walked toward it because it was the only landmark she had.

She did not know she had closed her eyes until she opened them again.

The hill was closer. The shoulder was a black curve against the gray, and the sky was no longer gray but the pale, washed color of old snow in flat light. She had stopped walking at some point without meaning to, and her boots were planted in a drift that came up to her shins, and the foil blanket was twisted around her neck, and her hands were inside her sleeves, curled into fists she could not uncurl.

She made herself uncurl them. The fingers were stiff and slow, and when she flexed them, the joints cracked in a way she could hear through her mittens. She tucked the mittens under her arms and breathed, and the breath came in shallow pulls that did not fill her.

The hill was a quarter mile ahead. Maybe less. The distance was hard to judge in the flat light, but she could see the shape of it clearly now, and she could see that the shoulder dropped away on the far side into a long, gentle slope that ran down to the tree line. There was no boulder she could see, but there was something else, a dark shape at the base of the shoulder that did not look like a drift.

She took a step. Then another. The wind was still at her back, but it had gentled to a steady push, and she let it push her, and she watched the dark shape grow larger as she came closer.

It was a truck.

She stopped.

It was parked on the shoulder where the access road met the main, its front end angled into the wind, its headlights still on. The headlights threw two long white cones across the snow, and in the cones she could see the swirl of the driving snow, and the dark shape of the cab, and the long shape of the trailer behind it, and the plume of exhaust rising from the stack and being torn apart by the wind.

It was not Sutter's truck.

She knew that the moment she saw it. The trailer was too long, and the cab was the wrong color, a deep red that was almost black in this light, and the shape of the hood was wrong, and the stack was wrong, and everything about it was wrong. She stood very still in the drift and looked at it, and the wind pushed at her back, and the snow came sideways across the headlights, and she could feel her heart beating in her throat.

She took another step.

The truck did not move.

She took another step, and another, and the truck grew larger, and she could see the lettering on the door. It said Caldwell, in a script she recognized, and below it, in smaller letters, it said Overland Freight, and below that, in even smaller letters, it said Est. 1974.

She knew the name. Her father had hauled for Caldwell before she took over the route, and the name had been on the bills of lading she had filed in the office at home, and the name had been on the side of the truck that had pulled out of the yard at Sutter's place an hour after she had arrived. The truck had been parked in the lot at Sutter's when she had gone in to warm up. The truck had been there, and the driver had been in the diner.

Maren Caldwell.

She stood in the drift and looked at the truck, and the headlights shone across her, and she did not move. She could feel the cold in her face now, a deep ache that had settled into her cheekbones, and her hands were numb inside the mittens, and her legs were heavy, and she could not make herself walk toward the truck or away from it.

The door of the truck opened.

A figure stepped down from the cab, a tall figure in a dark parka, and the figure took a step toward her, and then another, and then stopped. The figure was maybe twenty feet from her, and the headlights threw the figure's shadow long across the snow behind it.

Carla Pham.

The voice was a woman's, low and clear, and it carried across the wind without effort.

Carla Pham. Is that you.

It was not a question. It was the kind of statement that expected an answer, and it held something under it that she could not read. She stood in the drift and looked at the figure, and the figure looked at her, and the snow fell between them.

It's me.

The words came out before she could think about them, and they were thick in her mouth, and she was not sure the figure had heard them. The figure took another step, and another, and then the figure was close enough that she could see the face inside the hood, and the face was a woman's face, middle-aged, with lines at the corners of the eyes, and the eyes were looking at her with an expression she could not read.

Maren Caldwell.

The figure stopped a few feet from her. The wind pushed at the figure's parka, and the figure did not flinch.

You are a long way from the rig.

She opened her mouth to answer, and nothing came out. The cold had settled into her throat, and her jaw felt locked, and she could not make the words. She tried again, and what came out was a sound that was not a word.

The figure took a step closer. The figure reached up and pulled the hood back from her own head, and the face was clearer now, and the eyes were steady.

I have been looking for you.

She could not speak. She stood in the drift and looked at Maren Caldwell, and the headlights threw their long white cones across the snow, and the snow fell across the light, and the wind pushed at her back, and she could feel the cold in her fingers and her toes and her face, and she could feel her heart beating, and she could feel the weight of the foil blanket around her neck, and she could feel the ground under her boots.

I saw your rig at Sutter's.

The words came out in a rush, and they were slurred, and she could hear the slur in them.

I saw your rig. I saw it in the lot.

Maren Caldwell looked at her for a long moment. The wind pushed at the parka, and the hood fell back against her shoulders, and her hair was short and gray, and her eyes were the color of the sky in this light.

I have been looking for you since yesterday.

She did not understand. She stood in the drift and tried to understand, and the cold was a weight in her chest that made thinking slow.

There was a call on the CB.

Maren Caldwell's voice was steady.

There was a call on the CB last night, from a rig on the Haul Road. The driver said he had seen a woman walking on the ice road in the whiteout. He said she had no truck. He said she was alone.

Carla Pham closed her eyes. The cold was in her face, and the wind was at her back, and the headlights were bright even through her eyelids.

I came out from Sutter's this morning. I had a load for Prudhoe, but I turned back when I heard the call. I have been driving the side roads since midnight, looking for you.

She opened her eyes. Maren Caldwell was looking at her, and the expression on her face had changed, and it was something Carla Pham could read now. It was the expression she had seen on the faces of the drivers at the diner, the drivers who had looked at her when she had come in from the cold. It was the expression of someone who had been afraid, and was no longer afraid.

You are a long way from the rig.

Maren Caldwell said it again, and this time there was something in the voice that was not steady, and the something was under the words, and Carla Pham could hear it.

My rig.

She tried to say the words clearly, and they came out thick.

My rig is on the Haul Road. The windshield is gone. I have been walking since last night.

She said it, and the words were a weight that came out of her, and she felt lighter when they were out. She stood in the drift and looked at Maren Caldwell, and Maren Caldwell looked at her, and the snow fell between them.

I have a phone in the truck.

Maren Caldwell's voice was quiet now.

I have a phone in the truck. I can call for help. I can call Eli March. He is at Sutter's. He has been asking about you since last night.

Eli March.

The name came to her from a long way off, and she said it out loud, and the sound of it was strange in her mouth.

Maren Caldwell took a step toward her, and then another, and then Maren Caldwell was close enough to reach out, and Maren Caldwell reached out, and the hand inside the glove was strong and warm when it took her arm.

Come on.

Maren Caldwell's voice was low.

Come on. You are done walking.

She let herself be led. The drift was deep at her shins, and the wind pushed at her back, and the ground under the drift was hard, and her boots slipped, and Maren Caldwell held her arm and did not let her fall. They walked toward the truck, and the headlights threw their long white cones across the snow, and the snow fell across the light, and the truck grew larger, and the shape of it was clear now, the deep red cab, the long trailer, the stack with the plume of exhaust rising from it.

They reached the cab. Maren Caldwell opened the door, and the heat came out in a wave that smelled of diesel and coffee and something else, something warm that Carla Pham could not name. The heat touched her face, and she felt the cold in her face break, and the pain came in, a deep ache that made her eyes water, and she climbed into the cab without thinking, and Maren Caldwell climbed in after her, and the door closed, and the wind was gone.

The cab was warm. The cab was so warm that the warmth felt like a weight, and she sat down in the passenger seat and her legs gave out, and she sat there, and the heat came up from the vent, and the smell of the coffee was strong, and the dashboard was lit with the glow of the gauges, and the CB was on, and the CB was quiet.

Maren Caldwell was in the driver's seat, and Maren Caldwell was looking at her.

Drink this.

A thermos was pushed into her hands, and the thermos was warm, and she unscrewed the cap, and the smell of the coffee was strong, and she drank, and the coffee was hot, and the heat of it ran down her throat and into her chest, and she coughed, and then she drank again.

Maren Caldwell watched her drink, and then Maren Caldwell turned and picked up a phone from the console, and Maren Caldwell dialed a number, and Carla Pham sat in the passenger seat and drank the coffee and felt the heat of the cab settle into her, and the cold in her fingers began to ease, and the cold in her face began to ease, and the cold in her chest began to ease.

The phone rang. Maren Caldwell put it on speaker, and the voice that came through was rough and gravelly, and the voice was Eli's.

Eli. It is Maren. I have her. She is in my rig. She is cold, but she is okay.

There was a silence on the other end. Then:

Where are you.

The voice was rough, and the words came out short.

I am on the access road, about five miles west of the yard. I am coming in.

There was another silence. Then:

I will be at the diner. I will have a room ready. Tell her to drink something warm.

Maren Caldwell looked at her, and Carla Pham looked at Maren Caldwell, and the coffee was warm in her hands.

I will tell her.

Maren Caldwell said it, and then she ended the call, and the cab was quiet except for the hiss of the heater and the low mutter of the engine, and the snow fell across the windshield, and the wipers were on, and the wipers threw the snow off in long arcs.

Maren Caldwell put the truck in gear. The engine rose, and the cab moved, and the snow fell away from the windshield, and the road was a white line ahead of them, and the headlights threw their cones across the snow, and the snow fell across the light.

Carla Pham sat in the passenger seat and held the thermos in her hands, and the thermos was warm, and the cab was warm, and the coffee was warm inside her, and the cold was leaving her, and she could feel it leaving, a slow retreat that started in her fingers and her toes and moved inward, and she sat in the seat and felt it leave, and the road ahead was white, and the wipers threw the snow off, and Maren Caldwell drove, and the truck moved through the snow, and the heater hummed, and the CB was quiet.

She did not speak. Maren Caldwell did not speak. The truck moved through the snow, and the road ahead was white, and the snow fell across the windshield, and the wipers threw it off, and the headlights threw their cones across the white, and the cab was warm, and the coffee was warm in her hands, and the cold was leaving her, and she sat in the passenger seat and held the thermos, and she did not speak, and Maren Caldwell drove, and the snow fell across the windshield, and the wipers threw it off, and the truck moved through the snow toward Sutter's, toward the diner, toward the room that would be warm, toward Eli, toward the end of the walking.