The snow fell harder. The road curved through dense forest, then opened briefly onto a stretch where he could see frozen marshland extending into the darkness. Then more trees. More curves. More darkness.
A gas station materialized out of the snow like a mirage—a single building with two pumps out front and a convenience store attached. The fluorescent lights inside were harsh and bright against the darkness. A faded sign read NORTHWOODS FUEL & FOOD. One other vehicle sat in the lot, a pickup truck with rust eating through the wheel wells.
Joe pulled in, killed the engine, and sat for a moment in the sudden silence.
The snow was already accumulating on the windshield. The temperature gauge on the dashboard read eighteen degrees.
He got out. The cold hit him hard and his breath plumed white in the air. Snow crunched under his boots as he walked toward the entrance.
Inside, the store was overheated and smelled like beer and coffee. There were aisles of chips and candy and motor oil and a hot dog roller turned slowly with three shriveled hot dogs that looked like they'd been there since yesterday.
Behind the counter sat a kid in his early twenties wearing a Green Bay Packers hoodie. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. He looked up when Joe entered, then looked back down at the magazine he was reading.
Joe walked to the coffee station, poured himself a large cup from a pot that had probably been sitting there for hours. The coffee was thick and bitter. Perfect.
He brought it to the counter along with a package of beef jerky.
"Four seventy-five," the kid said without looking up.
Joe paid cash. Then he said, "You sell maps?"
"Maps?"
"Yeah."
The kid thought about it. "Maybe. Lemme check."
He disappeared into a back room. Joe heard things being moved around, boxes scraping across the floor. After a minute, the kid came back with a folded map that looked like it had been sitting in storage since Vince Lombardi had coached the Packers.
"Five bucks," the kid said.
Joe paid. Then he said, "You know anything about old logging camps around here? Or mines?"
The kid stared at him. "What?"
"Logging camps. Mining operations. Anything abandoned or still operating in the area."
The kid's expression didn't change. "Dude," he said slowly, "I work here so I can get high every night before I have to go back to college. I don't know shit. And I don't want to know shit."
Joe nodded. "Fair enough."
The kid went back to his magazine that featured a woman in a bikini on the cover, somewhere in the tropics.
Joe took his coffee and map and walked out into the snow.
Back in the truck, he unfolded the map across the steering wheel. It was a local tourism map, the kind they gave away free at visitor centers. Badly photocopied, with hand-drawn annotations marking hiking trails and fishing spots.
But it showed the roads. The small towns. The general layout of the region.
Joe traced his finger north and west, toward the Porcupine Mountains. There were several small towns marked in that direction. Tucked into a fold in the map near the edge of the Porcupines, was a place called Ashford.
It looked promising. Small enough to be off the radar, but smack dab in the middle of the mountains.
Joe started the engine and pulled back onto the highway.
The snow kept falling.
He drove for another forty minutes through the darkness, through forest that seemed to go on forever, past frozen lakes and empty stretches of road where his headlights were the only light for miles.
