Blake Crouch - Snowbound

He pushed the Land Rover to eighty-five, speeding along the Alaska Highway, passing RVs at the rate of one every couple of miles. In the nowhere town of Tok, Alaska, ninety-three miles west of the border, Will came to what he’d dreaded more than anything—a fork in the road. Stay straight on Alaska 1, head west to Fairbanks. Or make a left onto Alaska 2 and head south toward Anchorage.

“Which way, Dad?”

Will pulled onto the shoulder, shifted the car into park.

“Fairbanks is two hundred miles that way,” he said. “Kind of in the middle of the state. I don’t know much about it. Anchorage is in the south, on the coast.”

“How close do you think we are to the truck?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dad—”

“Just give me a minute here, Dev!”

After thirty seconds of the most excruciating deliberation he’d ever put himself through, he finally shifted into drive and stomped the gas.

“Anchorage?” Devlin asked as the Land Rover accelerated to ninety miles per hour.

“It’s a shipping city. Lots of ports. I have a feeling they’re putting Kalyn on a boat.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, baby girl. Nowhere close to sure.”

TWENTY-NINE

When Kalyn woke, the truck was still and silent. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but the boredom and emotional heft of recent days had overtaken her again. She had no idea how long she’d been inside the trailer, though it felt like weeks. She sat up from the thick yellow foam, stared at the shiny metal ceiling, the two remaining jugs of water, the dwindling box of food. The metal pail in the farthest corner reeked of her piss and shit.

Strangely enough, she felt closer to her sister than she had in years, just knowing Lucy had spent time cramped in this little space.

Lucy was four years younger, and Kalyn had often lied to herself, insisted her sister was a brave, fearless person, that whatever had happened to her, she’d handled it with grace and courage. But locked in the trailer of this eighteen-wheeler, Kalyn knew that wasn’t the case. Lucy had awakened here confused, disoriented, and more terrified than she’d ever been in her life.

Kalyn heard something beyond the walls—impossible to tell what through the soundproofing.

A piece of yellow foam turned back, the door to her cage opening. She stood up, her feet bare, the rest of the trailer dark and the flickering lightbulb above her head doing nothing to illuminate whoever was out there.

A pair of handcuffs flew through the door and dropped on the yellow foam.

“Put ’em on.”

Flat voice, white male, no accent.

She picked up the handcuffs and closed them around her wrists.

“Come on out.”

Cold air swept through the trailer.

“Where am—”

Someone reached in, dragged her out, and then she was being lifted, hands gripping her arms above the elbows. She smelled day-old cologne and remnants of cigarette smoke.

They came to the end of the trailer and she was lowered into the arms of a tall man with blond hair, eyes the color of sea ice, but with less warmth.

THIRTY

In the late afternoon, Will pulled the Land Rover onto the shoulder at the junction of Alaska 1 and Alaska 4, yet another split in the highway.

Devlin read the mileage sign: “Anchorage, one eighty-seven. Valdez, one seventeen.”

Will let out a deep sigh, his head resting on the steering wheel. “We’ve lost her,” he said.

“Maybe the truck’s up ahead.”

He couldn’t bear the hope in his daughter’s voice. “I’ve been doing ninety for the last hour and a half. If he’d come this way, we would’ve caught up to him by now.”

“Where else could the truck have gone?”

“Where? Maybe he stopped in Tok and we didn’t see him. Probably he went on to Fairbanks.” He lifted what was left of the computer out of the front passenger seat and stared at the destroyed screen.

“Is Kalyn going to die?”

“I don’t know, Devi.”

“But probably she is?” Will punched the gas, spun the car around. “What are you doing, Dad?”

“Only thing left to do.”

THIRTY-ONE

They were passing through a city big enough to boast a pathetic skyline—meager collection of ten- and twelve-story buildings—the tall blond driving, a man on either side of Kalyn in the backseat of the new Suburban. The man to her right was young, twenty at most, and he kept eyeing her, fidgeting with his hands, his hair long and black, drawn back into a greasy ponytail. He’s nervous. The man to her left was perhaps ten years older—buzz cut, light brown hair, heavily freckled. They both wore black jeans and long-sleeved button-ups with down vests over the top, fat with pocket bulges—knives perhaps, or cell phones. She fought the urge to glance back, dying to know if the Land Rover was tailing them.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

The driver turned up the radio—NPR, “Talk of the Nation.”

It was 2:46 P.M., and they soon left the city, passing now along quiet residential streets, then stretches of forest, the houses more scattered, only a few per mile, then no homes or power lines and the road gone to gravel, narrowed into one lane, with tall spruce trees on either side. The Suburban was kicking up substantial clouds of dust, so she couldn’t see in the side mirrors if Will was following them.

Another five miles and the dirt road ended on the shore of a long, skinny lake.

The tall blond turned off the car. They waited, parked parallel to the lakeshore, affording Kalyn a view of the road as it disappeared into the trees. The dust of their passage had settled. Something’s happened. He isn’t coming.

“Would you please tell me where I am?” Kalyn asked.

The man behind the wheel looked in the rearview mirror, said, “Shut up.”

“I have to pee.”

“Hold it.”

“Seriously, my bladder’s about to rupture. I don’t know if I can hold it much longer, and I don’t want to pee all over your seat.”

The blond said, “Take her, Marcus.” She hoped he meant the younger of the two, but the freckled man opened his door instead and helped her out of the car.

He walked her twenty feet from the Suburban to a cluster of saplings, and Kalyn pulled her panties down, lifted her skirt, and squatted.

As her piss hit the ground and steamed, Marcus did exactly what she’d hoped for—looked away.

Kalyn came quietly to her feet, stepped out of her panties, and slipped her hands over Marcus’s head, squeezing them back into his neck for all she was worth. He was a few inches taller, much stronger, but that didn’t matter, because Kalyn had the edge of the metal cuff digging into his carotid artery, the bone of her forearm crushing his windpipe, and it only took five seconds for his knees to go.

She dragged him behind the saplings, ripped open his vest, calculating that she had maybe ten or fifteen seconds before the other men started to wonder where they were.

She found a .357, broke open the cylinder—six rounds—snapped it closed and started toward the Suburban, her bare feet freezing as she moved low and fast across the grass and rocks. She crouched behind the Suburban and peeked around the left rear taillight, spotted the side mirror on the driver’s side, the tall blond in the reflection, his head turned, talking.

She glanced back toward the cluster of saplings, Marcus already sitting up, trying to climb to his feet.

Kalyn crawled past the gas tank, the rear passenger door, stopping finally at the driver’s door.

You can do this. You have to do this. For Lucy.

She thumbed back the hammer, stood up, Marcus shouting in the distance, the whine of another car coming up the road.