Blake Crouch - Snowbound

The customs officer said, “Both of you step out of the car, please.”

Will had their Social Security cards and birth certificates in the sleeve of a notebook.

“Our documents and my driver’s license,” he said.

The man took the notebook and began to examine their papers as another customs officer emerged from the small Canada Border Agency shack, a long Maglite in his hand.

As he climbed under the Land Rover to inspect it, the first officer asked why they were coming into Canada. Where were they going? Coming from? Did they have any firearms? Alcohol? Tobacco? Pets? Plants? Anything to declare?

“Just my watch and a computer.”

The officer helped them fill out a B4 form while the other man opened a door and shone the flashlight inside the car. After a moment, he came over and joined them.

“All in order?” his partner asked.

“Almost.”

Almost?

The man who’d searched the Land Rover asked, “How long are you two planning to stay in Canada?”

“A week,” Will said.

“So where’s your luggage?”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Devlin said, “We had an accident in Montana.”

“What kind of accident?”

“We came over a mountain pass and I guess the air pressure blew two corks out of the bottles of wine in our suitcase. Ruined everything. We threw the suitcase away. We’ll buy new clothes and stuff in Calgary.”

The customs officers glanced at each other, gave a brief nod, then the man with the Maglite said, “Have a safe trip.”

They stopped in Lethbridge, four miles from where the Google map said Jonathan’s truck had been for the last fifty minutes.

Stayed at an inn outside of town, ate takeout in their room, and slept hard and without dreams until the computer woke them at three in the morning with notification that the truck was on the move again.

The next twenty-four hours were murder. They followed Alberta Provincial Highway 2 for three hundred miles, north through Calgary, Red Deer, all the way to Edmonton, where they picked up the Alaska Highway, spent the afternoon blasting northwest through Alberta, taking turns driving.

Whitecourt. Valleyview. Grande Prairie.

Near Dawson Creek, they came within a mile of Jonathan’s truck as it stopped in town to gas up.

Evening approached and they prayed, hoped, begged the truck would stop, both starving, their eyes burning after a second full day on the road.

But Jonathan didn’t stop. He continued on that northwest trajectory, driving right on into the night through the uncitied wilds of northern British Columbia, on the most desolate two-lane stretch of highway they’d ever seen, Will driving, popping NoDoz with a chaser of flat Mountain Dew or cold coffee, the computer now in the front passenger seat, angled toward him, Devlin having long since fallen asleep.

It wasn’t his mind that was the problem, but his vision. With the exception of a gas stop in Fort St. John, Will had been on the road for twenty-four hours, and there was nothing NoDoz could do to recharge his eyes.

They passed into Yukon as the sun breathed its first shot of warmth into the sky.

Devlin stirred, sat up suddenly in the backseat. “Dad? You okay?”

“I don’t even know how to describe how tired I feel right now. Worse than cramming for the bar.”

Devlin reached forward and lifted the computer into the backseat.

“He’s just ahead in a town called Whitehorse, Yukon,” she said. “I think he stopped.”

“Are you serious?”

“The icon hasn’t moved in the last ten minutes.”

“Thank God. You were about to pull driving duty.”

They stopped at the first gas station they came to, just past the small airport in Yukon’s capital city.

Will turned off the car and shut his eyes.

“Wake me when he’s on the move again.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Will had just begun to dream, when his daughter’s voice broke through.

“He’s moving, Dad.”

“You are fucking kidding me.” Will rubbed his eyes, felt like he’d been asleep less than ten minutes, but the sun was above the horizon now, early rays glittering on the waters of the Yukon River. Pretty country up here, he thought, looking out at rolling foothills covered with fir trees.

According to the dashboard clock, he’d slept for almost two hours, though the brief reprieve had barely made a dent in his exhaustion. He turned the ignition, drove the Land Rover slowly through town, letting the truck put a few more miles of distance between them.

“You need to talk to me,” he said. “I’ll nod off, end up running us off the road.”

“I can drive.”

“Not yet.”

“What do you wanna talk about?”

“I don’t care. Just engage me. Take my mind off how tired I am.”

Devlin was quiet for a moment, staring out the tinted glass as they passed through downtown Whitehorse.

“Okay,” she said finally, “do you think Kalyn’s pretty?”

Will straightened in his seat. “Well,” he said, “I think that did the trick.”

“No, you have to answer my question.”

Whitehorse was fading away in the side mirrors, and they had the Alaska Highway all to themselves, a corridor of pavement through a forest of black spruce.

“Sure, she’s pretty.”

“You like her?”

“Excuse me?”

“In school, we have this rating system. You can like someone. You can like like them. Or you can like like like them.”

Will laughed. “So what was your rating with little Ben over the summer?”

“We’re not talking about me right now, Dad.”

“I don’t know, Devi. What do you think? That these last few days have been one big date? This is an incredibly stressful time, and I—”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t like her.”

He caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Look, I’m not saying this to judge or be mean, but Kalyn’s a damaged person, Dev. Nothing against her. I’m just saying I think she’s had a really hard time since her sister disappeared.”

“Harder than us with Mom?”

“Yeah. Why are you asking me all this? You want me to like her?”

“I guess it’d be all right. I mean, you haven’t dated anyone since Mom. Aren’t you, like, lonely?”

“You don’t like it, just the two of us?”

“No, I do, it’s just—Dad!”

Will’s eyes cut from the rearview mirror back to the windshield.

An enormous bull moose stood straddling the dotted white line of the Alaska Highway, thirty yards ahead.

Will slammed down on the brake pedal, lunging forward, something shooting through the space between the front seats, smashing into the dashboard.

“Devlin!”

The Land Rover skidded to a stop, the front bumper five feet from the moose, which just stood there staring dully at will through the windshield. He looked in the backseat, confirmed that Devlin was buckled in, safe but rattled, tears streaming down her face.

“No, honey, don’t cry. It’s okay. We’re all right.”

She shook her head, and Will’s stomach fell. He glanced down. Near the gearshift, in the front passenger seat, on both floorboards, and on his lap lay pieces of the computer, and the portion of the screen still attached to the shattered keyboard was black.

“Oh God,” he said.

“We can still find her, right?”

“Oh God.”

“Dad?”

He drove around the giant moose and floored the accelerator.

It was midday before Will finally spotted Jonathan’s truck, pulling away from the border station into the state of Alaska.

He and Devlin spent fifteen agonizing minutes talking with the American customs official, Will thinking the officer had probably sensed his impatience and decided to ask more questions than he otherwise would have. By the time they were on the road again and passing a sign welcoming them to the “Last Frontier State,” Will figured Jonathan had at least a twenty-mile head start.