1


Teig snapped awake behind the wheel and hit the brakes, but the tires found only ice. Prentiss screamed as they slid across rutted permafrost. Teig turned into the skid and tapped the accelerator, heart thundering as he tried to get the treads to grip the road. He looked past the guardrail at snow-caked treetops, mountains in the distance. The drop off the edge would kill them, but at least it would be faster than freezing to death on the Kolyma Highway.

The tires caught. Teig gave the wheel a nudge, turned away from the drop, but momentum slammed them into the guardrail. With a crump of broken metal, the truck broke through, tilted toward the drop, and Teig bellowed in fear as he floored it. Metal shrieked as the broken guardrail dug into the UAZ’s side panel, but the truck leapt forward.

Veins pulsed at his temples as he pumped the brake. He dropped the UAZ into park, killed the engine, and stumbled out of the truck on an adrenaline high that made him want to roar. Instead he dropped to his knees and leaned over the guardrail, sucking in breath after breath of frigid air. The view might have been spectacular, but the drop would have killed them. Thirty feet to his left a small section of the guardrail had been punched through, and another dozen feet of it was now bent and mangled, all from the impact of the truck. How he had kept them on the road, he had no idea. Teig took another deep breath, mostly to prevent himself from puking up the sugudai he’d had for lunch.

A door slammed. Boots crunched on the snow. Teig heard his name being called but he hadn’t finished combating his nausea quite yet. The cold helped. Icy air seared his lungs and stung his exposed skin. His breath fogged in front of him. The only sounds were the wind and his pounding heart and the ticking of the rapidly cooling engine.

And that voice. Prentiss.

“—fuck are you doing?” he barely heard.

Prentiss shoved him with a boot, shouted his name. Teig grabbed the guardrail to keep from toppling sideways onto the snow, his head clearing at last. He turned to glare at Prentiss, saw the fury and fear on his friend’s face, and knew he had to get on his feet.

“Keys, Teig!” Prentiss snapped. “Give me the goddamn keys!”

Just past him, Teig saw the side of the once-orange UAZ Expedition, now dented and scraped, the metal perforated in two spots, as if the broken guardrail had clawed at the truck. The thing might be a barebones model, but it had been enough to keep them alive.

“Teig!” Prentiss barked. He thrust out his hand, palm up.

At last, the word keys registered in his brain. Teig launched himself from the ground, rushing to the open driver’s door. He’d left the keys in the ignition but Prentiss had naturally assumed otherwise. Teig reached in, turned the key, and the engine hummed and clicked, groaning. Trying to turn over.

The cold had seeped in already.

“Fuck!”

Prentiss grabbed Teig’s jacket from behind and shunted him aside. He climbed into the driver’s seat, tapped the accelerator, foot on the brake, and tried the ignition himself. It coughed but didn’t catch.

From behind the steering wheel, Prentiss turned to stare at Teig, eyes wide. “Felix, what the fuck did you do?”

Teig wanted to pitch him over the guardrail. Most days he and Prentiss were close friends, maybe best friends, but as colleagues they spent a lot of time virtually on top of one another, often in close spaces or on dangerous terrain. Prentiss might be a much larger man, but Teig had never let himself be bullied. Not by anyone.

Of course, most of the time he didn’t have it coming. Today, maybe he did.

“Try it again!”

“I don’t want to flood it,” Prentiss said. He might be angry, but his eyes were bright with the fear of a dog in the lights of an oncoming car.


Copyright © 2021 by Christopher Golden