Ice Run Read Online Free PDF

snow off the windshield again. I backed out and put my plow down for one more run. “I’m going. I’m going. I’m going.”
    I drove through town. There was nobody, no sign of life until I saw the lights on at Jackie’s place. I kept driving. My wipers were clogged with snow already, and I could feel my tires losing traction every few feet. I fishtailed and swerved and swore at the snow.
    There’s a stretch of road a couple of miles south of town—it runs along a narrow strip of land, with the lake on one side and a pond on the other. It was totally exposed to the wind, so I figured it would be a little tricky. As soon as I got close to it, the truth finally caught up to me.
    I wasn’t going any farther.
    I hadn’t turned my radio on since the day before, so I hadn’t heard it. I didn’t
want
to hear it. But now as I looked at the great expanse of snow—I couldn’t even guess where the snow-covered land lay, between the snow-covered ice of the lake and the snow-covered ice of the pond—I knew that there had to be a state of emergency all through the county. Even if I got through this stretch, and broke the law and tried to get to the Soo, I’d get stuck somewhere else. It was fifty miles if I stayed on the main roads, and even if most of M-123 was sheltered by the trees, as soon as M-28 broke out of the Hiawatha National Forest, it was all open ground. They wouldn’t even try to plow it until the snow let up and the wind stopped blowing.
    I hit the steering wheel with both palms, and then spent the next ten minutes trying to turn the truck around. When I was finally pointed north again, I drove back into town. There was no rush now. I went five miles per hour instead of my daredevil ten miles per hour. When I got to Jackie’s place, I looked in again and saw the lights and pictured the fireplace and a cold Canadian. I pulled into the parking lot.
    There were six people in the place, all locals who had walked down the road for a little company. They all looked up at me when I opened the door and cheered. It was that kind of night, when walking fifty yards was a cause for celebration.
    “Alex!” Jackie said from behind the bar. “Did you walk all the way down here?”
    “Can I use your phone?”
    “Help yourself,” he said, pushing the phone across the bar. As I got closer, he did a double take and stared at me.
    “What did you do?”
    “Huh?” I dialed Natalie’s number.
    “You did something.”
    I shook my head at him. Natalie wasn’t answering.
    “You did,” he said. “Something’s different.”
    I dialed the Ojibway Hotel again. I got the same desk clerk, and this time he told me, yes, Natalie Reynaud was there. I waited while he called her room.
    “Alex,” Jackie said. “You did something to your hair. That’s what it is.”
    Yeah, I thought. My hair. The box said it would look totally natural, and that nobody would notice. Totally natural, my ass.
    “It’s just a little thing for my gray,” I said.
    “Just a little thing? You look like a lounge singer.”
    I gave him a look and wondered how the day could get any worse. Then I heard her voice on the phone.
    “Alex, is that you?”
    “Yeah, it’s me.” I tried to pull the phone off the bar, but the cord wasn’t long enough. I waved Jackie away, but he didn’t move an inch.
    “Oh my God,” Jackie said. “Now I know.”
    “They said the roads are all closed out your way,” Natalie said on the phone. “I barely made it here myself. I think they closed the bridge right after I got across.”
    “This explains everything,” Jackie said. “I should have known.”
    If I could have reached him, I would have grabbed him by the collar and choked him.
    “I’m sorry,” I said into the phone, trying to wave him away again. “It was a bad idea.”
    “Don’t worry about it, Alex. It’s kinda nice here, eh? A nice hotel. It’s really good to be out of that house for a while. I was going stir crazy.”
    “I shouldn’t have