by Stone, Kyla
“What? What is it?”
Quinn swept the light across the parking lot. The lot was overflowing with parked cars smothered in a thick blanket of snow.
Hundreds of cars, but no people.
No guests in parkas lugging skis, no staff members or lifties or Ski Patrol in their red vests. No EMTs, no police officers, no firefighters.
Not a single soul.
11
Noah
Day One
“Where did e-everyone go?” Milo asked.
“They left all their cars,” Phoebe murmured. “Why did they leave their cars behind?”
Quinn shone the flashlight beam in slow looping circles, like maybe they’d missed something the first time and help would materialize before their very eyes.
It didn’t.
Apprehension knotted in Noah’s gut. The whole scene was eerie and disconcerting.
Hundreds of vehicles sat in the same spots they’d parked in that morning. Back when it was Christmas Eve and everyone’s thoughts were focused on holiday fun, on the thrills of skiing and snowboarding, on presents and hot chocolate and family.
Before everything had to gone to hell.
How had it even happened? What was really going on?
He swallowed. “I don’t know.”
Quinn brushed the flakes collecting on her bangs and eyelashes from her face. “Cars have electronic stuff running everything now. Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said? Nothing with electronics or computers will work.”
Were Quinn’s science fiction theories actually correct? Faced with everything that had happened today, coupled with the stranded vehicles—he was beginning to believe that it might be true.
Did this eerie power outage thing affect only southwest Michigan? The whole state? Or possibly the entire eastern seaboard? Or was it even worse?
What did it mean for the future of Fall Creek? The state? The entire country?
Noah’s mind ran in panicked circles. He forced himself to shake the frantic thoughts from his head. Thinking like that wasn’t going to help anything.
He needed to stay focused and positive, remain clear-headed. Just because they were out of one mess didn’t mean they were out of danger.
“I’m going to check my car. It’s a 2008 Kia Rio.”
“It won’t work,” Quinn said.
“It’s worth it to check. Phoebe, what about your car? Can we check it?”
“W-we came together.” Phoebe’s shoulders hunched like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Brock has the keys.”
“It’s okay,” Noah said quickly, guilt pricking him.
He struggled to remember where he’d parked the Rio. It didn’t help that it was white, and every vehicle was covered in a thickening layer of white powder.
A few freezing minutes later, he found it. Phoebe and Quinn trailed after him. He set Milo down, fished his key fob out of his pocket and used the key to open the door.
The engine wouldn’t start. The radio didn’t switch on. The Rio was as dead as Quinn said it would be.
His stomach sinking, he grabbed the fanny pack on the passenger seat that contained Milo’s syringe and stress dose vial of glucocorticoid and clambered out of the car back into the freezing wind. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t work.”
Phoebe spun in a slow circle, rubbing her temples frantically with both hands. “H-how are we going to get out of here?”
“Otsego is about three miles east,” Noah said. “That’s the closest town.”
“I feel like I’m dying,” Phoebe said. “I can’t walk three miles! We’re going to freeze to death!”
“We need to stay calm,” Noah said, though he felt anything but calm. He could barely move, he was so numb and frozen. His thoughts were coming slow and sluggish. He picked up Milo and handed him the fanny pack. Milo buried himself against Noah’s chest.
Abruptly, Quinn turned and strode away, striding between two parked cars deeper into the parking lot, toward the road.
“Where are you going?” Noah called after her.
She didn’t answer, didn’t even show she’d heard him. Maybe she just needed a minute to herself to pull herself together.
“What are we going to do?” Phoebe wailed.
Noah looked around, scanning the parking lot in growing desperation. “We can hunker down in the Rio to get out of the wind for a few minutes while we figure out a game plan. It’ll still be cold, but without the wind chill. Walking miles in a blizzard is not a good idea. Lots of ways to get lost or hurt. Maybe we need to break into a few vehicles. Some people will have some extra sweatshirts, a jacket, or even a few blankets stashed somewhere.”
Phoebe turned to face him. “You want to break into cars? Aren’t you a sheriff?”
“A police officer,” he corrected. He felt guilty even saying the words, but Milo was now his greatest priority. “Our survival is more important than protecting private property. I’m sure these people will understand. And insurance will cover what we damage.”
“What about Brock? And Quinn’s grandpa? We can’t just leave them up there like that.”
“I’ll come back first thing in the morning. I’ll make sure the county picks them up and we contact you and the next of kin. I’ll take care of it.”
She nodded dully.
“Where do you live?”
“I’m home for Christmas break, visiting my parents in Dowagiac. It’s like, almost an hour from here.”
“I know. It’s close to Fall Creek. That’s where we’re from.” He patted her shoulder. “We’ll get you home. I promise.”
An engine growled to life.
After so many hours of silence, the sound was jarring. Noah and Phoebe whipped around. Noah tightened his grasp on Milo, his adrenaline spiking.
A pair of headlights lit up the night several rows in front of them. A truck. It was so covered in snow that Noah couldn’t discern the make or model, just the general shape of it.
The driver’s side door swung open. Quinn’s bright blue head poked out. “You guys coming or what? You’ve got two seconds before I leave your sorry asses behind.”
12
Quinn
Day One
The truck ran perfectly, the tank still three-quarters full. Just like Quinn knew it would. Gramps had let her drive here with her permit; luckily, she’d still had the keys in her coat pocket.
The others piled in, Phoebe and Milo in the back, Noah easing hesitantly into the passenger side. He didn’t look pleased to be relegated to passenger, but it wasn’t his truck.
“This baby is a bright orange 1978 Ford F150 Super Cab we call Orange Julius,” Quinn explained. “Old as hell, but it still runs. Four-wheel drive. Snow tires. Gramps keeps it in pristine condition. He’s always tinkering with it in his garage. He—”
Grief struck her like a punch to the chest. Stricken, she stilled. For a second, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t suck oxygen into her raw lungs, her burning throat.
Gramps was still up on that desolate hill. He was dead.
It hadn’t seemed real until this moment. His truck still smelled like grease and his favorite pho soup—it smelled like Gramps. She’d never hear his soft chuckle again, never eat bun cha dipped in fish sauce with him, never sit in the garage while he puttered with the engine and told her stories of his boyhood in Vietnam, his experiences as a Vietnamese-American soldier.
She couldn’t think about any of that now, couldn’t let the sorrow in. She swallowed, forced herself to focus. “He did, I mean.”
“I-I’m sorry, Quinn,” Milo said.
Her throat thickened. “Not your fault, Small Fry.”
She cranked the heat all the way up and switched on the defroster. She could barely see through the frost creeping across the windshield. At this point, she was willing to drive blind as long as they got the hell out of here.
She put the Orange Julius into reverse and gunned the engine. The truck didn’t move.
She cursed, banged th
e steering wheel, and tried again.
The tires spun uselessly in the snow.
“We’re screwed,” Phoebe said.
“We’re stuck, not screwed,” Quinn corrected. “Gramps keeps—kept—a shovel in the back. We have to shovel our way out.”
“You guys stay inside where it’s warm,” Noah said. “I’ll do it.”
Quinn glanced behind her. The little boy was huddled in the backseat against Phoebe, who sagged against the window. The cab wasn’t exactly warm, but it was getting there.
Bracing herself against the wind, Quinn clambered out of the truck after him. She slammed the driver’s side door and trudged to the rear of the Orange Julius.
“I’m not scared of work,” she huffed when Noah shot her a questioning look.
He managed a tight smile. “Good.”
There were two shovels in the truck bed. Gramps had added the second shovel when Quinn started driving with him.
She pointed at the supplies tucked into one corner. “Gramps and Gran always keep a sleeping bag, flares, a flashlight, toolbox, shovel, trail mix and water, and a battery-operated lantern in their cars. Oh, and kitty litter. Luckily, Gran always has extra with her five freaking cats.”
“Thank goodness,” Noah said in relief. “We can wrap Milo in the sleeping bag.”
Quinn took one side, Noah the other. They quickly shoveled snow from behind the tires. Their breaths puffed out in white clouds. Quinn’s heart thudded in her chest, her ears.
Her stiff, freezing fingers fumbled several times. She dropped the shovel and had to pick it up to keep going. She refused to quit. The exertion sharpened her senses, kept her emotions safely at bay.
Finally, they cleared enough space. Quinn sprinkled the kitty litter for the wheels to grab traction. Quinn tossed the shovel in the truck bed as Noah reached in for the sleeping bag.
Instead of climbing back inside the Orange Julius, she hesitated.
The snow and the dark made everything look the same. She hugged herself, shivering, strands of blue hair whipping around her face. Her metal piercings felt like they’d frozen into her skin.
Noah put the sleeping bag inside the truck and came up beside her. “You okay?”
She felt shaken, rattled, and on edge. “Stellar,” she snapped. “Never better.”
“Okay, okay. Stupid question. Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Are you okay to drive the truck? I know today has been . . . rough for all of us.”
“That’s one way to put it.” She chewed on her lower lip. “It’s not my truck. It’s Gramps’s truck. He loves—loved that decrepit old thing. He never let anyone drive it, not even Gran.”
Except for her. He’d taught Quinn how to drive in that ancient rattling beast. She paused, sucked in a deep, searing breath. She almost choked as her lungs contracted. “It feels . . . wrong.”
She didn’t know why she was saying this out loud. She hadn’t spoken five sentences to Noah Sheridan before today, even though she’d known who he was for years. He was basically a stranger. But after the last several hours, he didn’t feel like one.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t save him. I really am.”
“I know.”
“I’m happy to drive,” he said. “It’s an hour to Fall Creek. We’ll drop Phoebe off on the way.”
He didn’t say he’d be a better, more experienced driver, especially in these conditions.
He was giving her an out. His next question would be to ask how old she was, if she had her license. She knew it, he knew it. Technically, she didn’t have her license, just her permit, though she’d driven with Gramps a thousand times.
She nodded and kicked defiantly at a snowdrift. She stared through the snow at the rows of vehicles like giant white boulders.
Something moved inside one of the cars.
13
Noah
Day One
“What is it?” Noah asked.
Quinn pointed silently at a car parked a few spots from the Orange Julius. Noah stooped and wiped snow off the driver’s side window of a dark-colored sedan.
A man slumped in the driver’s seat, shivering and gripping the steering wheel with both hands, like he was expecting to drive off into the sunset any minute now.
Noah’s hand instinctively strayed to his service weapon at his side beneath his coat. He knocked on the driver’s side window.
The man flinched. He turned toward Noah, mouth hanging open, eyes wide and bloodshot through the frosted glass.
Noah and Quinn stepped back as the guy opened his door.
He stared up at them, incredulous. “Where the heck did you come from?”
“From the chairlift, you idiot!” Quinn jabbed her finger at the Bittersweet Ski Resort staff badge emblazoned on his ski parka. “You left us up there!”
The guy blanched. “What?”
“We got stuck on the chairlift at the Rocket Launcher,” Noah explained, trying to keep his own voice calm, though the frustration, stress, and trauma of the day were taking their toll.
“No one came for us!” Quinn’s voice rose in fury. “My grandpa is dead!”
Beneath his straggly beard, the guy’s pale, acne-scarred skin was bluish. He looked to be in his late twenties, a granola-eating new-age hippie type. The whole car reeked of weed.
He raised his hands, palms out in a placating gesture, a joint tucked between the fingers of his right hand. A thin swirl of smoke spiraled toward the ceiling. “That makes no sense. That doesn’t happen.”
Noah gritted his teeth. “It did happen.”
“Patrol spent hours clearing the lifts. We had to go old school and use haul ropes and harnesses, do it all by hand. We-we’ve got safety protocols . . .”
“Not today, you didn’t,” Quinn snapped.
His eyes widened. “You’re serious?”
“Where the hell do you think we just came from?” Quinn rolled her eyes. “You think we fell from the sky?”
The guy stared at her, bleary-eyed. He’d probably smoked every joint he had. Dismay—and chagrin—finally filtered into his features. “I’m so sorry.” He shook his head. “I . . . I guess I’m really out of it. Today, man. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
“You?” Quinn sputtered. “You think you’ve never experienced—WE were the ones trapped thirty feet off the ground in a freezing snowstorm! My grandpa had a heart attack. One guy even jumped, he was so desperate! He’s dead, too!”
“More people died?”
“Brock snapped his tibia,” Noah said. “He went into shock and we . . . there was no way to save him.”
The man licked his chapped lips. He took a drag off his joint with quivering fingers. “Oh man, oh man. I didn’t know. We didn’t know. I swear. We had nineteen people die on us down here. Nineteen! It was so intense, just b-beyond anything . . . with the fire, the helicopter crashing . . . everyone was panicking. We had people burned, their limbs busted in the crash. It was chaos, man.
“And then when people tried to drive away and their cars wouldn’t work . . . I sent Tim and Max to clear the lifts. I assumed they did. One of ’em must have cut a corner, did a visual check instead of hiking all the way up the hill. Sam said the Rocket Launcher lift was malfunctioning. We only had one working snowmobile. A junker we should’ve trashed years ago. Nothing else was working. It was like God Himself just flipped a switch, and bam. No lifts. No electricity. No snowcats or cars.”
His gaze briefly met Quinn’s furious eyes and flickered away. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you not—” Quinn started, still enraged, but Noah interrupted her.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The guy blinked rapidly. “C-Chris. Chris Doenges.”
“How did everyone get home, Chris?” Noah asked.
Quinn glared at him, but he ignored her. Screaming at this poor shmuck would do nothing to change this night’s events. Nothing could undo the terrible hours they’d just endured.
“A few hours a
go, they brought in buses, old diesel school buses. Justin drove the Ski-Doo into Ostego to get help. Everyone’s freaking out, but they came. A few deputies, firefighters, EMTs. They’re going around rescuing stranded people all over the county. They were talking about working out a rotation with the snowplows that still function to keep the main roads clear.”
“Why are you still here all alone?” Noah asked.
“The last bus was too crowded. They couldn’t fit another human body in there and I . . . guess I kinda panicked, you know? Don’t like enclosed spaces.” He waved his arm feebly. “That’s why I work here, right? No cubicle, man. Just open sky and fresh powder.”
He stared off into the darkness, working his jaw like he was going to say something else, but he didn’t.
“We’re headed south to Fall Creek,” Noah said.
Chris’s gaze shifted past them. “You’ve got a car that works?”
“You didn’t hear the truck’s engine? You didn’t notice the headlights?” Quinn asked, incredulous.
“Tell us where you live,” Noah said evenly. It didn’t matter how he personally felt about this useless pothead. As an officer of the law, he couldn’t just leave him behind to freeze to death. “We’ll take you, too.”
Chris nodded gratefully. “Thanks, man. I was totally starting to think I was gonna die out here.”
“So did we,” Quinn said.
Ashamed, Chris dropped his gaze to his lap and said nothing.
“Let’s go,” Noah said, “while we still can.”
14
Noah
Day One
Noah leaned forward, his hands gripping the old Ford’s steering wheel, every muscle tensed, his heart thudding against his ribs. The truck drove at a crawl.
The snow was thick, the roads slick and slippery, a steep ditch on the left Noah could barely see but knew was there, just waiting for him to make an error and slide over the edge. It was difficult to drive in ski boots, so he’d removed them and drove in his socks.
