Romie was still panting when she started talking—“The ice… It just ends there. One second—good footing. The next…”
Robby still wore his snowshoes strapped to his back. He removed one and began tapping out a line in the snow, scraping the powder away from the edge of the ice. He discovered the ledge of ice ran in the same direction as the highway they’d been following with their tractors. Beyond the ledge, the snow was so light and unpacked that it wouldn’t support any weight. He couldn’t even lay his snowshoe down on the loose snow without it immediately sinking in under its own weight.
Robby left one of his snowshoes with the women and he and Nate took the other to go find Brad and Pete.
They followed Brad’s footprints and were halfway up Pete’s sled when the lights ahead on Pete’s tractor went dark.
“What now?” Nate said, sighing.
Robby and Nate began to jog. They only slowed when the reached the front of the tractor. There they found Pete and Brad leaning up against the front grill. Their headlamps were out.
“What the hell are you doing in the dark?” Nate asked.
“Turn out your lights and see,” Pete said. He shielded his eyes against Robby’s light as Robby looked him in the eye.
When they switched their lights off, Robby’s young eyes adjusted quickly. Nate took several seconds longer to see. Far off on the horizon, on the far edge of the sky, a soft yellow glow lit up the clouds.
“Is it a fire?" Nate asked.
“Could be,” Pete said. “If there was anything to burn.”
“No,” Robby said. “Not fire. That’s where we’re headed.”
“If you like that, you’re going to love this,” Brad said.
“What?" Nate asked.
“One more second,” Brad said. “Keep watching.”
The blue light began as a far off glimmer. It looked like a blue shadow of the yellow light on the horizon, but it swelled and travelled towards them. It was barely visible. In fact, when Robby looked directly at the blue glow it seemed to disappear. He only saw it if he looked to the side and experienced the blue glow in his peripheral vision. But it was definitely there. He was sure because it was moving towards them.
“Oh shit,” Nate said when he realized the light was about to overtake their position. Nate scrambled back and pushed himself up on the grill of the tractor as it lit up beneath their feet.
“It’s the highway,” Pete said. “If you compare its path to the map, the glow follows the highway exactly. I think it’s coming from the ice.”
“It’s the circulatory system you described, isn’t it, Robby?” Brad asked.
“Yes,” Robby said.
“Is it safe to travel on the ice?" Pete asked.
“It’s not safe to leave,” Nate said.
Nate described Romie’s discovery at the edge of the highway.
Pete voiced a concern—“The GPS is only moderately accurate, and mine has been cutting out frequently…”
“Same here,” Brad said.
“And if we slip off the edge of the ice, we might just plunge fifty feet into loose snow. We’re going to have to send somebody out ahead on foot to make sure we stay on the ice.”
“We don’t have much time,” Robby said.
“Why?" Pete asked. “I don’t want to be out here forever, but what’s so pressing I have to risk my neck?”
“I’d rather not say,” Robby said. “I’ll take the front tractor.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Pete said. “I’d rather have none of us take the risk.”
“I understand,” Robby said.
“We can follow the light,” Brad said. “If the blue glow is coming from the ice, then all we have to do is turn off all our lights and follow the light.”
“It’s periodic, but it does come often enough. We might be able to follow it,” Pete said.
“I should still take the lead,” Robby said. “My eyes are sensitive. I have the best night-vision.”
“But I’m the best at driving these rigs,” Pete said.
“Pete drives and Robby navigates,” Nate said. “Brynn can drive alone. If we do want to navigate by the light coming off the ice, we better get it done while it’s still dark out. We don’t have time to lose, and we can’t afford to screw this up.”
“I don’t like it,” Brad said. “I can hang back a little so I’ll know if Brynn veers off course, but what can I do about it? What if he falls asleep?”
“Just jump on the radio,” Nate said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Brad said. “I still don’t like it.”
“Let’s top off the tanks while we’re stopped,” Nate said.
“Definitely,” Brad said.
AS THEY STEERED carefully north, the pulses of light from the ice increased in frequency, but the sky grew lighter with each passing mile, so seeing the road remained difficult.
“A little left,” Robby said.
He and Pete sat in the dark in the cab of the tractor. All the lights—inside and out—were off. The only illumination inside the vehicle was from the yellow glow on the horizon and the faint blue pulses of light from the ice on the highway. Robby took over the duty of starting the roll calls. Every five minutes he would announce his name and wait for each driver to respond. He listened to each of their voices, trying to detect if any were close to drifting off.
The blue glow of the ice was so faint that Robby invested all of his attention. Between pulses he imagined he still saw the light, like his retinas burned with its image. On the horizon, the glow either shifted color, or just appeared different, because it seemed almost white. A flat, horizontal line marked the horizon. Above the line, the clouds reflected the light; below it, the snow stretched out in a dusty gray plane, broken only by the pulses of blue from the ice. Robby concentrated on nothing but the path of the blue pulse. He must have been ignoring his other senses, because Pete surprised him with a question.
“What’s that noise, Robby? You hear it?” Pete asked.
Robby hadn’t heard, but now he did. The noise was rhythmic, and sounded like a crunch, like potato chips. Each second, in perfect time—crunch, crunch, crunch. After one more pulse to guarantee they were still on-course, Robby spun to look out the back window. His eyes, well-adjusted to the dark, picked out the movement. The sound came from the legs of one of the corpses; the crunch was the crinkling of the tarp as the legs thrust against it. Strapped down horizontally, the corpse appeared to be marching in place.
The radio erupted with Nate’s voice—“Hey guys, we got a problem.”
“Here too,” Romie’s voice chimed in.
Suddenly they were all talking. Robby was still looking out the back window, unable to take his eyes from the moving legs. Pete grabbed the radio and cut through the clutter of voices.
“One at a time, please,” he yelled. “Nate, go ahead.”
“I think some of these dead are starting to not be so dead,” Nate said. The radio chirped as he finished his statement.
“What the hell do you mean?” Pete asked over the radio.
“One of them has started to move around. He’s still strapped in, but he’s moving,” Nate said.
“Here too,” Romie said.
Christine, Lisa, and Brad all confirmed with their own observations. Brynn stayed silent.
Pete began to slow down the tractor.
“No! Don’t stop,” Robby said. “Go faster. We have to get them to the source.” He leaned forward and resumed his effort to spot the path.
Pete spared a glance at Robby and then lifted the radio. He thumbed the talk-switch. “We’re going to speed up and try to get this thing finished before everything goes sideways.”
He heard no response for a few seconds.
“Are you serious, Pete?” Lisa asked over the radio.
“Yes,” Pete said. He engaged the throttle and the tractor began to pick up speed. Their acceleration hitched unevenly—the tracks skittered on the ice as they tried to pick up speed. The blue streak of ice ahead took a long, sweeping curve to the right. They saw a slight shadow to the right of their path. The ice stood a little higher than the surrounding snow, making it easier for Pete to steer on top of the shelf of ice.