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The big machine continued to edge forward as minute after minute passed, and still there was no sign of the building she had seen. Emily was convinced she had passed it. She was going to have to turn around.

“There it is.” Rhiannon’s excited cry was accompanied by the sound of her knuckles hitting the glass of the window. “There. On the right.”

Emily strained to see past the girl, who was still excitedly pointing into the white beyond the cab. There was…something…just…“Yes!” Emily shouted excitedly. She could make out a darker shadow in the swirling snow in front of them and off to the right. It had to be it.

She swung the Cat in that direction and edged forward until she was certain it was the building and not some weird trick of the storm.

Yes! There it was. A two-story box of a building with only the occasional narrow window sitting flush against the weatherworn outer walls to disrupt the absolute utilitarian functionality of the design.

“Hold on,” said Emily, finally aware that she had been biting so hard on her bottom lip she could taste blood. “I have to swing this thing around.” She needed to maneuver the Cat as close to the entrance on her side as possible, so she could hop out and make sure the doors of the building were unlocked. The Cat’s thermometer registered the outside temperature as minus fifteen degrees. If you factored in the windchill, it was probably another ten or fifteen beyond that. She would have only minutes to get them inside before the effects of that kind of low temperature began to affect them.

She pulled the Cat away from the building, then turned the wheel hard, disengaging the right-side tracks while the left continued to move, turning the vehicle while not moving it forward. When she thought she had the right angle of approach, she began to edge forward while slowly turning the wheel to the left a few degrees at a time. The taupe front of the office resolved into view, its narrow windows rattling as another blast of wind rushed past the Cat, hammering at the walls. Emily twisted the wheel a little farther and slid the Cat forward the few remaining feet until she was parallel with the building.

She found the entrance to the building farther along. It was a recessed area covered by a portico; icicles hung like fangs from the edges of the overhang.

Emily put on her jacket, pulled the hood fully over her head, and zipped it up.

“Are you ready?” she asked Rhiannon. The girl nodded affirmatively, a flashlight already cradled in her lap.

She waited for the next blast of wind to pass, then pushed open the door of the cab, leaped out, and slammed the door shut behind her, almost losing her balance as the wind flared up again and pushed her toward the edge of the metal gantry. She steadied herself, then beckoned to Rhiannon to follow her. The kid was out and beside her in a second, Thor close behind. Even he gave a shiver as the wind cut through the group huddling against the side of the big machine.

“Let’s go,” Emily yelled, her voice muffled by the material of the hood and the roaring of the wind ripping past the building.

They climbed carefully down to the ground and headed into the enclosed entrance area. Emily rattled the big door. It was locked.

“Shit. Stay here. I have to head back to the Cat,” she told Rhiannon.

Back at the vehicle, Emily opened the rear passenger door, pulled out the shotgun, and climbed back down again. The wind had gone from the occasional gust to an almost constant force against her now, bashing and pushing her as she staggered through the ever-deepening snow back to where she had left the girl and the dog.

“What are you going to do?” Rhiannon yelled over the wind when she saw the shotgun in Emily’s gloved hands.

“Unlock the door,” she yelled back. “Now, take Thor and get around the corner for me, okay?”

When she was sure both of her companions were out of harm’s way from any ricochets from the shotgun, Emily examined the door, inspecting where she thought the lock mechanism should be. Even with the cover of the portico, it was still almost impossible to see straight; the snow whirled and gushed around the recess of the entrance. When she was certain she knew where the keyhole was, she brought the shotgun to her shoulder and aimed, but her gloved finger could not fit through the trigger guard of the weapon.

Have to take it off, she thought. She leaned the shotgun against the door, unzipped the glove, and pulled off the Velcro flap that secured it around her wrist. Instantly she felt the freezing sting of the wind begin to whip her body heat away. It was like plunging her hand into an icy bowl of water; she could feel the blood in her arm begin to chill all the way up to her elbow already. She picked up the shotgun again and brought it up to the lock, the end of the muzzle just a couple of inches from the door, then slipped her finger onto the trigger. She gave a yell of pain and almost dropped the gun. The metal of the trigger against her finger felt like flame against her exposed skin. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she turned her head away from the door and pulled the trigger.

When she looked back, there was a gaping hole where the lock had been. She quickly fitted the glove back over her throbbing hand, grabbed the door handle, and pulled. It swung toward her.

“Rhiannon!” Emily yelled. “Let’s move.”

Rhiannon’s head appeared around the corner of the portico, closely followed by Thor’s. Emily held the door open and beckoned them both into the darkness of the building, then followed them inside.

* * *

Water fell from the ceiling ahead of them, caught in the beam of the flashlight as it drip-drip-dripped from the acoustic tiles, forming a semifrozen pool of slush on the heavy-duty carpet of the reception area. There were pictures lining the walls of oil rigs, dirty but happy-looking workers, construction crews hard at work, and big pieces of mechanical equipment that Emily had no idea what they did.

Dear God, it was freezing. Even with the thick coats, trousers, and gloves, she could still feel the insidious siphoning away of heat from her body. Is this what they were going to be condemned to? For the rest of her life would she be bundled up like this, always wondering when she would feel warm again? Wondering if she would ever see the sun, feel it against her skin? It was the kind of cold that, once it burrowed into the marrow of your bones, you would need to spend a month on a beach in the Caribbean sun to ever erase the memory of it. Emily pulled off her glove again and moved her trigger finger into the light of her flashlight. A red crescent moon–shaped welt had already formed on the soft pad between the knuckle and the fingertip. It stung like a son of a—

“Emily?” Rhiannon’s questioning voice pulled her back into the moment. “Are you okay?”

No. No, she was most certainly not okay. She was probably the furthest away from okay she had ever been. That’s what she wanted to say, but instead she said, “Yes, sweetheart. I’m fine. Let’s find a room to wait this out, shall we?”

“I wish we’d brought the supply bag with us. I’m starved,” the kid continued, as if this was just another day. And, Emily supposed, it was just another day for her now. She would probably forget the majority of her early life, the little luxuries that had made her life so very easy and enjoyable before all this shit fell to earth. Little Rhiannon would adapt, overcome, and move on. Assuming, of course, that she lived through whatever hardships and challenges were still headed their way. I, on the other hand, Emily mused, am too goddamn old for all this.

Emily fished around in one of her parka’s many pockets and pulled out a Mars bar she had stashed there at some point. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Rhia.

While the girl snacked on the candy, Emily checked out the rooms they were passing, pushing open doors and peeking inside cabinets. There was little point in looking around, she supposed, but what else were they supposed to do until the storm passed? They had been sitting for most of the past couple of days; a half hour of exercise wandering around this place would not do them any harm. If they had to, they would spend the night there, but there was still plenty of time for them to get to the dock Jacob had mentioned. He had said that the Stockton Islands were about a ten-mile ride northeast of Deadhorse by boat.