“Do you really believe that, Ron?”
-17-
They walk up a side street lined with quaint Victorians buried under loads of powder, not a light in operation as far as they can see.
Ron opens the gate of a picket fence, and they trudge through snow to the front porch.
“What are you gonna say?” Jessica whispers.
“Tell them the truth. We need help.”
He grasps the brass knocker, raps it three times against the door.
A moment passes.
No one comes.
“Let’s try another house,” Ron says.
They try five more on that street, three on the next one over, but despite the vehicles in the driveways, proximate tracks in the snow, and other signs of habitation, every house they approach stands vacant.
-18-
Ron’s watch beeps 11:00 p.m. as they come to the corner of Main and 12th, he and Jessica both shivering, the snow still dumping, and little to see but the impression of buildings and storefronts with the streetlamps out.
“We’re gonna die if we stay out here,” Jessica says, her teeth chattering.
Ron looks up and down the street, well over a foot of snow now on the pavement, the tire tracks completely covered, just a smooth sheet of snow across the road, the sidewalks, everything.
“Ron?”
A block down, on the outskirts of perception, he thinks he sees movement—figures draped in white.
“Ron! I’m freezing to death standing—”
“I have an idea.”
They cross the street and start south down the sidewalk.
“I can’t feel my feet, Ron.”
“Then you’re lucky. Mine are burning.”
Four blocks up, they cross 8th, and Ron stops under a canopy with “Out There Outfitters” in block letters stitched into the facade of the canvas, the snow having blown against the cloth, covered most of the words.
“Why are we here?” Jessica asks.
“If we don’t get out of the elements, we’re going to die. I figure it’s better to break into a commercial space than a private residence, right, counselor?”
She stares at him like he’s lost his mind.
“Honey, you got a better idea?”
“No.”
“Then keep a lookout and pray this place doesn’t have an alarm.”
Ron lifts the chrome, cylindrical trashcan topped with a little cigarette butt-filled sand pit over his shoulder and runs at the storefront glass. The first strike sends a hard recoil back through the trashcan, which flies out of Ron’s grasp and smashes into the snowblown sidewalk, the glass still intact, unblemished. He lifts the trashcan and goes at it again, the next impact causing crystalline-shaped fractures to spread like a virus through the tall window. This time, Ron steps back and hurls the twenty-pound trashcan at the cracking glass.
It punches through, the window disintegrating.
Ron and Jessica wait ten seconds, eyes locked.
She says finally, “No alarm.”
“Or maybe it’s disabled ‘cause the power’s out.”
-19-
They climb down out of the storefront and walk past the cash register. Up ahead, a group of figures congeal Ron’s blood and he freezes, lets out a tiny gasp.
Jessica says, “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Just a trio of mannequins outfitted in fly-fishing gear.
They move on past the display cases containing rock climbing hardware and an array of ice axes.
Against the back wall, mummy bags dangle from the ceiling, flanked by dozens of external and internal frame backpacks.
They pass through a rear doorway into a dark, narrow hall. Jessica tries the door to the bathroom, but it’s locked.
“Damn.”
“You gotta go, babe?”
“Yeah.”
“You should squat right in front of the cash register.”
“You’re a child, Ron.”
They head back into the store.
“There it is,” Ron says.
“Where?”
The darkness makes it nearly impossible to see, but in the middle of the room, between racks of overpriced Patagonia shirts and Columbia down jackets, a diorama has been constructed—dormant campfire ring, mannequins in sandals and tank tops cooking dinner in a camp stove, their backs to a two-man tent.
Ron and Jessica untie their shoes and strip out of their wet jackets and pants and crawl into the tent, into the sleeping bags, zip themselves up.
After several minutes of intense shivering, Ron notes the return of warmth—the electricity of pins and needles in his extremities, the burn of mild frostbite on his cheeks.
“You getting warm?” he asks.
“Little by little.”
He scoots his bag toward Jessica’s until he feels her breath in his face.
“How’s the pain?”
“Quit asking.”
“Sorry, I’m a doctor, it’s in my—”
“You’re a plastic surgeon.”
“Ouch.”
“I didn’t mean that. I’m just in a ton of pain here.”
“You think this is one of those experiences we’re gonna be able to look back on and—”
“Are you kidding?”
They lie in the dark, listening to the low moan of wind pushing through the broken glass of the storefront.
At length, Jessica sits up, says, “I can’t sleep. I’m too thirsty, Ron. All that wine and walking around—I just got dehydrated.”
“All right, you know that pot sitting out there in the fake campfire ring?”
“Yeah.”
“Take it out onto the sidewalk and fill it with snow. You’ll have to pack it in really tight. I’ll see if I can fire up the camp stove.”
-20-
Before starting his practice thirteen years ago, Ron was an avid outdoorsman, spending countless weekends in the Cascades, even squeezing in a weekend a month outdoors during the slog of med school. As he kneels by the fire ring in the dark and fumbles with the camp stove, he realizes how much the gear has changed in over a
