Within twenty minutes, four former prisoners were eating beef stew in Clara Bell’s kitchen.
The situation was so absurd she almost laughed.
Instead, she studied them.
Miles ate slowly and politely.
Ruben kept looking toward the dark windows.
Theo held his bowl with both hands as though trying to absorb the heat through his fingers.
Adrian barely ate at all.
“You’re worried about something,” Clara said.
He looked up.
“Our truck.”
“You said it went off the road.”
“It did.”
“Then forget about it until morning.”
Adrian exchanged a glance with Ruben.
Clara noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m eighty-two, not stupid.”
Adrian rubbed his jaw.
“We were carrying equipment.”
“What kind?”
“Emergency communications gear.”
Clara’s expression changed.
Before retirement, she had spent twenty-seven years working as a dispatcher for the county fire service.
“What equipment?”
“A portable repeater. Batteries. Signal amplifier. A few radios.”
“Where were you taking them?”
“Red Pine Nursing Center.”
Clara placed her spoon down.
Red Pine stood ten miles beyond the mountain pass.
More than sixty elderly residents lived there.
“They lost their backup communications system yesterday,” Adrian explained. “County maintenance couldn’t get anybody else through. Our crew volunteered.”
Clara looked at the patch on his coat again.
“Volunteered?”
Miles laughed quietly.
“We do occasionally volunteer for things.”
Clara ignored the remark.
“Where’s your supervisor?”
“Broken wrist.”
“The crash?”
Adrian nodded.
“Ambulance took him out before the road closed completely. We were told to turn back. Then the truck slid into the ditch.”
Ruben leaned toward the stove.
“We figured we’d spend the night inside the truck until Theo started losing feeling in his hands.”
Theo gave him an irritated look.
“I was fine.”
“You were turning blue.”
“I wasn’t blue.”
“You were blueberry blue.”
For the first time that evening, Clara smiled.
Then the radio on the counter crackled.
Everyone turned.
Clara crossed the room and adjusted the dial.
Static filled the kitchen.
Then a broken voice emerged.
“…any station… emergency traffic…”
Clara immediately became still.
Her years behind a dispatch desk returned as though she had retired yesterday.
She adjusted the antenna.
“Quiet.”
The men stopped talking.
The voice came again.
“…school transport seventeen… Glass Creek service road… eleven children aboard… driver injured…”
Theo slowly stood.
Clara turned the volume higher.
Static swallowed several words.
Then:
“…water rising… unable to move vehicle…”
Clara’s face drained of color.
Adrian saw it.
“What?”
“Glass Creek.”
“What about it?”
“The road follows the river.”
Nobody spoke.
Clara looked through the dark window.
“If the temperature dropped this fast, ice could have formed upstream.”
Ruben frowned.
“That sounds good.”
“No.”
Clara shook her head.
“Not if it formed a dam.”
A distant sound rolled across the mountains.
Not thunder.
Something deeper.
Something heavy.
Clara knew that sound.
She had heard it once when she was thirty-six.
A mass of river ice breaking loose.
Adrian moved toward the radio.
“How far is that bus?”
“Road distance? Maybe eight miles.”
“On foot?”
Clara looked at him as though he were insane.
“You wouldn’t make two.”
Miles stood.
“Our truck has chains.”
“You said it’s in a ditch.”
“We can dig it out.”
“In this?”
“We’ve dug out worse.”
Clara stared at the four men.
Theo was already putting on his jacket.
“Sit down,” she said.
None of them moved.
Adrian looked toward the radio.
“There are children on that bus.”
“The sheriff knows.”
“If anybody could reach them, they wouldn’t still be calling.”
Clara wanted to argue.
But she knew he was right.
Most county vehicles were trapped on the southern side of the pass.
The main bridge was probably closed.
And if an ice dam broke upstream, Glass Creek could rise several feet in minutes.
Then Clara remembered something.
“My snowcat.”
Adrian turned.
“Your what?”
“My husband bought an old tracked utility vehicle from the power company.”
Miles stared at her.
“You own a snowcat?”
“It hasn’t moved in four years.”
“Where?”
“Barn.”
The four men looked at each other.
Adrian pointed toward the back door.
“Show us.”
Ten minutes later, the barn was full of flashlight beams, frozen breath and shouted instructions.
The old snowcat sat beneath a gray canvas tarp.
Rust covered its tracks.
The windshield was clouded.
A mouse had built a nest inside one seat.
Miles opened the engine compartment.
“Oh, this thing is ancient.”
Clara crossed her arms.
“So are you, and nobody’s thrown you away.”
Ruben laughed.
“I like her.”
Miles looked into the engine.