Heat. Food and safety. Although it had been scarcely
noticeable at the time, they must have gone over the
pass an hour or more ago, because the road was definitely descending now, although not steeply.
But it seemed, if anything, that the snow was falling
harder. Or perhaps her eyes were just so tired, she was less
capable of seeing through that driving veil of white. Her
neck and shoulders and arms were rigid. Somebody would
probably have to pry her fingers from the steering wheel.
Her frozen fingers, she thought morbidly. After the van
disappeared into a snowbank and its tracks filled in. Or
perhaps her fingers wouldn’t be frozen anymore, if
nobody found the missing teacher and her pupils until
spring.
“Wait a minute!” Dieter jerked. “Did you see that?”
She braked. “What?”
“I think…wait. Let me get out.” He reached back
for his parka, grabbed the flashlight from the glove
compartment and sprang out, disappearing immediately in the dark.
Fiona just sat, too exhausted to move. Too exhausted to worry, even when he didn’t come back for several minutes.
“Where’d he go?”
“Why are we stopped?”
One of the girls, voice high and rising, “Are we stuck?”
Fiona was too exhausted to answer, as well.
The passenger door opened again, and Dieter said
exultantly, “There’s tire tracks. And a turn here. I think
there’s a sign. I bet it’s Thunder Mountain Lodge.
Remember how I told you my family comes up here?”
Tire tracks.
“What if whoever made the tracks came out? ” Kelli
asked. “And they’re, like, gone, and even if we find the
lodge it’s cold and dark?”
A lodge. Fiona’s mind moved sluggishly over the idea.
“We could build a fire,” she said.
Voice pitched so only Fiona would hear him, Dieter
said, “If this is Thunder Mountain, the next town is
something like another hour. And that’s when the road’s
plowed. I don’t remember much in between.”
The others were offering opinions, but she ignored
them.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to back up. Can you
guide me?”
He left the passenger door open and talked her
through backing up ten yards or so. Then he shone the
flashlight on the tracks in the snow. Now Fiona could
see them, too. A vehicle had come from the other direction and turned into an opening between trees.
Please God, she thought, let the driver have known
where he was going. Don’t let me follow someone else
as desperate as we are.
“See?” Dieter turned the beam on a dark bulk to the
right as she turned into the road or driveway or whatever
it was. “Let me go look.”
She watched as he plowed his way through and took
a swipe at whatever it was with his bare hand. Clumps
of snow cascaded down, exposing writing that the dim
beam picked out.
He yelled, “It is Thunder Mountain Lodge. Cool!”
When he got back in, Fiona asked, “Please tell me
it’s not another five miles.”
He laughed exultantly. “Nope. It’s like…I don’t
know, a quarter of a mile. Half a mile?”
“Okay,” she said. “Here goes.”
Whatever vehicle had gone before her had obviously
passed by a while back; it was a miracle that Dieter had
spotted the tracks, vanishing fast under fresh snowfall.
She kept losing sight of them in the white blur.
The kids in back were talking excitedly now that salvation was at hand. Dieter started telling them about this great old lodge, the ancient trees and the river just
below.
“There’s this huge fireplace,” he was saying, when
the van lurched and the front end seemed to drop.
One of the girls screamed. Fiona braked, out of
instinct—they had already come to a dead stop. Dieter
jumped out again, coming back to shake his head.
“I don’t know if we can get it out.”
“Can you still see the tire tracks?”
He looked. “Yeah.”
“It can’t be that far. We’ll walk.” She turned.
“Everyone, bring your stuff, especially if you have any
food left over from lunch or dinner.” They had stopped