No moon.
No stars. Just the tunnel of his headlights cutting through falling snow and the occasional reflective marker that confirmed the road still existed beneath the accumulation.
Every breath hurt.
The ribs on his left side didn’t feel great, to say the least. He'd taped them as best he could with duct tape he'd found in the truck's toolbox, wrapping it tight around his torso over his shirt, but tape only did so much.
It held things in place.
It didn't stop them from hurting.
His face had seen better days, too. He could feel it without looking. The left side of his jaw was swollen, tender to the touch. His right eyebrow had split open at some point, probably when his head hit the salt pile, and the blood had dried in a crusty line down his temple.
What really bothered him was the note.
I saved you once. This is the second time. There won't be a third.
He had to admit, it sort of sounded like something Kinsman would say. Very matter of fact.
It pissed Joe off, though. As if Kinsman was God and Joe had no say in the matter. It was disrespectful.
Joe wasn’t used to being underestimated and he didn’t like it.
He slowly, even in the dark, perceived the landscape was changing. It was gradual, the way you noticed the air getting thinner as you climbed. The road had been rising for the last twenty miles, the grade gentle but persistent.
The trees were different now. Less hardwood, more pine.
The snow was deeper here, piled high on either side of the highway where the plows had pushed it. The drifts had a sculptural quality, wind-carved and frozen solid.
The bluffs were higher too. He caught glimpses of them when the road curved—dark masses rising against the slightly less dark sky, their tops lost in cloud and snow. It was rugged country, the kind of terrain that had broken loggers and miners and anyone else who thought they could tame it.
And beneath it all, he could feel the presence of something massive.
Lake Superior.
He couldn't see it. Couldn't hear it. But he knew it was there, close now, maybe a mile or two away. The air had changed. It was colder, yes, but it was more than that. It was heavier. Denser. The kind of cold that came off deep water. The lake was the largest body of fresh water on the planet, and it had a gravity all its own. You could feel it even when you couldn't see it.
He checked the fuel gauge.
Three-quarters full.
Whoever had been driving this truck before him had filled it recently. Lucky. He wouldn't have to gas up.
His ribs flared again as he shifted in the seat, trying to find a position that didn't make breathing feel like swallowing glass.
There wasn't one.
The road narrowed.
Two lanes became one and a half. Frost heaves had turned sections of it into washboard. The truck's suspension wasn't great to begin with, and every bump sent a fresh jolt of pain through his chest.
He didn't slow down.
A sign appeared in his headlights, reflective letters on green: COPPER CITY - 5 MI.
He was close.
The UP was full of towns that had died when the mines closed, places that had boomed for twenty years and then collapsed into nothing when the copper or iron ran out. Ghost towns, most of them. A few hung on with populations in the dozens, sustained by nothing but stubbornness and nowhere else to go.
