Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

Snow was piled high on both sides of the road, and in some places new drifts reduced traffic to a single lane. Not that there were many other vehicles around: They passed only two-another Jeep Wagon with a plow on the front, and a Toyota Land Rover.

Near the end of the paved road, Charlie decided it would be a good idea to put the chains on the tires. Although a plow had been through recently, the drifts were inching farther across the pavement here than on the lower slopes, and there were bigger patches of ice. He pulled into a driveway, which ran across the face of the mountain and was level, stopped, and got the chains from the back. He required twenty minutes to complete the job, and he was unhappily aware of how fast the sunlight was fading from behind the snow-spitting clouds.

With chains clanking, they drove on, and soon the paved road ended in a one-lane dirt track. This, too, was plowed for the first half mile, but because it was narrower than the lower road, it tended to drift shut faster. Nevertheless, slowly but steadily, the Jeep clawed its way upward.

Charlie didn't attempt to keep a conversation going. There was no point in making the effort. Ever since they'd left Sacramento earlier in the day, Christine had become steadily less communicative. Now, she was almost as silent and withdrawn as Joey.

He was dismayed by the change in her, but he understood why she was having difficulty staving off depression. The mountains, which usually conveyed an uplifting feeling of openness and freedom, now seemed paradoxically restraining, oppressive. Even when they passed through a broad meadow and the trees fell back from the roadway, the mood of the landscape didn't change.

Christine was probably wondering if coming here had been a serious mistake.

Charlie was wondering, too.

But there had been nowhere else to go. With Grace's people looking for them, with the police searching for them throughout California, unable to trust the authorities or even Charlie's own employees, they hadn't much choice but to go to ground in a place where no one would spot them, which meant a place with few people.

Charlie told himself that they had done the wisest thing, that they had been cautious in the purchase of the Jeep, that they had planned well and had moved with admirable speed and flexibility, that they were in control of their destiny. They would probably be here only a week or so, until Grace Spivey was brought to heel either by his own men or the police.

But in spite of what he told himself, he felt as if they were out of control, fleeing in near-panic. The mountain seemed not a haven but a trap. He felt as if they had walked out on a gangplank.

He tried to stop thinking about it. He knew he wasn't being entirely rational. For the moment, his emotions had the upper hand. Until he could think calmly again, it was best to put Grace Spivey out of his mind as much as possible.

There were considerably fewer houses and cabins along the dirt lane than there had been along the paved road, and after a third of a mile there were none visible at all.

At the end of the first half mile, the dirt road was no longer plowed.

It vanished under several feet of snow. Charlie stopped the Jeep, pulled on the emergency brake, and switched off the engine.

"Where's the cabin?" Christine asked.

"Half a mile from here."

"What now?"

"We walk."

"In snowshoes?"

"Yep. That's why we bought 'em."

"I've never used them before."

"You can learn."

"Joey-',

"We'll take turns carrying him. Then he can stay at the cabin while you and I come back for-"

"Stay there by himself?"

"He'll have the dog, and he'll be perfectly safe. Spivey can't have known we were coming here; she's not around anywhere."

Joey didn't object. He didn't even appear to hear what they'd said. He was staring out the window, but he couldn't be looking at anything because the glass was fogged by his breath.

Charlie got out of the station wagon and winced as the winter air bit at his face. It had grown considerably colder since they had left the market down by the lake. The snowflakes were enormous and falling faster than before. They spun down from the lowering sky on a gently shifting breeze that became a little less gentle, more insistent, even as he paused for a moment to look around at the forest. The trees shouldered against one another and seemed to be crouching, ready to pounce, at the edges of the meadow.

For some reason he thought of an old fairytale: Little Red Riding Hood.

He could still remember the spooky illustration in the storybook he'd had when he'd been a child, a picture of Red making her way through a gloomy, wolf-haunted forest.

That made him think of Hansel and Gretel, lost in the woods.

And that made him think of witches.

Witches who baked children in ovens and ate them.

Jesus, he had never realized how gruesome some fairytales were!

The snowflakes had grown slightly smaller and were-falling faster by the second.

Softly, softly, the wind began to howl.

Christine was surprised by how quickly she learned to walk in the cumbersome snowshoes, and she realized how difficult-and perhaps impossible-the journey would have been without them, especially with the heavy backpacks they carried. In some places, the wind had almost scoured the meadow bare, but in other places, wherever the land presented even the slightest windbreak, drifts had piled up eight, ten, or twelve feet deep, even deeper. And of course snow had filled in every gully and hole and basin in the land. If you were to attempt to cross an unseen depression without snowshoes, you might find yourself sinking down into a deep well of snow out of which it would be difficult or impossible to climb.

The gray afternoon light, which had a disconcerting artificial quality, played tricks with snow-glare and shadow, giving a false sense of distance, distorting shapes. Sometimes it even caused a mounting ridge of snow to look like a depression until she reached it and realized she must climb instead of descend as she'd expected.

Joey found it more difficult to adapt to snowshoes than she did, even though he had a small pair suitable for a child. Because the day was fast fading and because they didn't want to finish unloading the Jeep entirely in the dark, they didn't have time for him to learn snowshoeing right now. Charlie picked him up and carried him.

Chewbacca was a big dog but still light enough so he didn't break through the crust on top of the snow. He also had an instinct for avoiding places where the crust was thin or nonexistent, and he could often find his way around the deepest snow, moving from one wind-scoured spot to another. Three times he sank in; once he was able to dig his way up and out by himself, but twice he had to be helped.

From the abandoned Jeep, they went up a slope for three hundred yards, until they reached the end of the meadow. They followed the snow-hidden road into the trees, bearing right along the top of a broad ridge, with a table of forested land on their right and a tree-choked valley on their left. Even though nightfall was still perhaps an hour away, the valley dropped down through shades of gray and blue and purple, finally into blackness, and there were no spots of light down there, so she supposed there were no dwellings.

By now she knew that Charlie was a considerably more formidable man than either his size or general appearance would indicate, but she was nevertheless surprised by his stamina. Her own backpack was beginning to feel like a truckload of cement blocks, but though Charlie's pack was bigger and heavier than hers, he did not seem to be bothered by it. In addition, he carried Joey without complaint and stopped only once in the first quarter-mile to put the boy down and relieve cramping muscles.