Brad chose the hump on the right and steered for the center. The highway beneath was two lanes with generous shoulders on both sides, but the top of the hump looked dangerously small to keep his snowmobile centered on. Brad thought about how easily the back end would slide if he missed his mark and aligned with either edge of the hump. He started slow, but as the banks fell away on either side he found himself speeding up, trying to get across faster. The bridge straddled the five hundred feet of the river, plus a bit extra on the sides where the banks swept down to the edge.
Through his weeks of battling the snow, Brad learned how to stay warm. He left no skin exposed. His flannel-lined pants were tucked into his waterproof boots, which kept the snow from reaching his wool socks. Over the pants and over the boots he wore snow pants bought years earlier for snowboarding. On his torso, Brad wore layers. The top jacket snapped into his snow pants. A special, breathable scarf wrapped his lower face and tucked under his hood. Goggles covered his eyes. The yellow lenses gave definition to the snow shadows and the tight band around the hood made it move with his head as he turned. Two-part gloves covered his hands—the inner for warmth, and the outer for the waterproof layer extending with cuffs over his forearms.
Because of all this protection, Brad didn’t notice the strength of the wind until about a third of the way across the bridge. A gust rocked his snowmobile and caused the back end to slip left, towards the cleft between the lanes of the highway.
Brad slowed, trying to get the snowmobile under control. He immediately recognized the mistake. With no power driving the snowmobile from the back, the skid intensified. Brad stood and shifted his weight to the right—that kicked the rear end even farther to the left. Brad goosed the throttle, but with his weight shifted to the right, he couldn’t steer into the skid. When he pushed the right handlebar away, he moved his weight to the left. He had a high center of gravity because of the backpack full of food. The snowmobile rolled up onto the left ski and threatened to tip over.
Brad didn’t have any choice. He lowered his weight down to the seat and steered to the left to regain control and keep the snowmobile from rolling. The sled straightened out and shot down into the cleft. Brad felt like his heart would beat right out of his chest. He pictured the bridge in cross-section. As he remembered it, the northbound and southbound lanes of the highway shared nothing in common except perhaps foundations at the river’s surface. Between the two humps of snow covering the traffic lanes, the snow and ice must be suspended above nothing. Perhaps the wind created a drift held up by nothing more than melting and refreezing ice until after weeks the drift spanned the gap. Then, maybe ice capped the whole delicate structure, giving it the illusion of a solid surface.
Before Brad reached the lowest part of the cleft, he heard the first crack. It sounded like a rifle shot echoing in a canyon. Worse than the sound, he felt the crack send a shockwave up through his snowmobile. Brad hunched lower behind the windscreen and opened the throttle all the way. The back end of the snowmobile danced as the tracks tried to drive the skis faster over the ice. Brad didn’t try to steer—the machine headed for the upslope to the northbound lane and he let it go. He figured he would try to regain control just as soon as he wasn’t hovering on thin ice over a chasm of death.
The slope up to the northbound bridge broke under the pressure of his skis. They dug into the ice and turned the front of the sled away. Brad reengaged his arms and tried to steer against the rebuff, but the skis wouldn’t bite. Behind him, another rifle shot crack cut through the noise of the engine and made the hair on the back of Brad’s neck stand up.
Brad steered back to the right, to try to climb back to the southbound lane. He was about two-thirds of the way across the river at this point, but had no thoughts about reaching the other side. He just wanted to reach the safety of pavement somewhere beneath his snowmobile.
With the third echoing crack, Brad saw evidence of the damage to the ice. A jagged white line shot out like lightning from beneath his snowmobile and ran down the length of the cleft. He felt the ice sag as he tried to climb the slope back up to the southbound hump.
The rear end of the snowmobile jumped to the left when a chunk of ice gave way. Brad looked back over his shoulder to see the snow and ice falling away, revealing a white hole which disappeared into blue depths. Somewhere down there he knew he’d find the black if he fell. He would find the night-sky black in that cave, and he would find out if something lived down there.
Brad leaned to the right to balance out his sled as he tried to climb the side of the hill while still moving forward. His right hip floated just inches over the ice, but he kept the snowmobile from rolling.
He never made it back to the top of the southbound bridge’s hump.
The hump had a slight lip on it, and every time Brad tried to angle the snowmobile to crest it, the back end of the sled would skid.
Brad panted and sweat soaked through his shirt as he fought the machine, but before he could summit the hump, it disappeared. The ridge line marking the lip simply faded into the snow, and instead of climbing back up on the hump of the southbound bridge, Brad found himself on a flat stretch of ice with no hump to fight. Brad looked back and saw the bridge behind him.
He let the snowmobile slow to a stop. In between the lanes, giant holes opened up in the ice leaving snowmobile-eating chasms. Brad took a deep breath and it shuddered out of his chest. His breath felt thick. He clawed the goggles from his face and wiped the corners of his eyes with his glove.
“That sucked,” he said. He giggled into the back of his glove while looking at the holes through the ice. The edges of each hole looked blue, but even at this distance he thought he could see the black down there somewhere.
“Guess I’ll come back over the bay,” he said.
Brad put his goggles back on and turned his attention south. Since he’d found the highway, he thought following it would be fairly easy. He could see the dip of the center divider and then the banks on either side of the lanes. Plus, farther down the road, he could see the next overpass. The outline was subtle, but trackable.
Behind him, another crack rang out and made Brad flinch. He turned, expecting to see another hole opening up, but it still looked the same. Brad kept watching as he eased the snowmobile back into motion. He glanced back several times until the bridge passed out of sight behind a hill.
THE OVERPASSES BECAME Brad’s best landmarks. They gave him an opportunity to pin down his exact location on his map. The big one, where the two-lane entrance from Route 1 crossed over and integrated with the highway, cost Brad about an hour to navigate around though. The underside of the bridge stood filled with snow, and the slope to the top stood too steep to climb. Brad needed to find his way around. He used the exit and entrance ramps, eventually.
The highway turned due south just before Freeport. Brad dug out a can of orange marking paint he’d packed in one of his bags. He tucked the spray can inside his jacket to warm it up. Then, after Brad found a way around the overpass for Route 125, he kept his eyes open for any landmarks on his left. In Freeport the high school sat in a lot which basically abutted the highway, and Brad wanted to test his theory that the schools might be emergency housing for storm survivors.