“I don’t know about this,” Amber said.
“Yeah,” Vernon said. He gave the car’s horn two quick taps. Ricky looked back to them, but his mother didn’t flinch at all. Instead, she straightened up and then waved, like they should all come to her.
“Stay put,” Vernon said.
He put the car in gear and made a wide turn to pull up alongside the food truck as he lowered the window on Mary’s side.
“Get in the car, Mary.”
On the other side, Ricky was already commanding Tucker inside and he climbed in after the dog.
“There’s someone in there, Vernon,” Mary said. “And the sign says to knock for service.”
“Get in the car,” Vernon said again.
“Mom? Get in, okay?”
“Honestly,” Mary said, opening the door. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people.”
Vernon was using his switch to put her window up. He had the car in reverse and started rolling back from the food truck before she even shut the door.
“It’s just a food truck, for heaven’s sake. You guys all have your hackles up for no reason.”
“Wait, Dad,” Ricky whispered.
Vernon put the car in park and they watched the food truck, lit up by the headlights. Vernon reached forward and shut off the car’s lights so they could see the light coming out from around the door. Slowly, the door began to slide open and light spilled from the interior of the place. It stopped moving with about a four-inch gap between the door and the frame.
“I’m going to go look to see who’s inside,” Mary said.
The rest of them spoke all at the same time.
“No!”
“We still have that frozen pizza at home,” Mary said.
“Sold,” Vernon said as he put the car in drive.
# # #
Amber pulled off to the side in the Harpers’ driveway, just as Alan was coming out of the shed. She got out.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Instead of following you, do you think it’s okay if we take one car?”
She could tell by his expression that he wanted to immediately reject the idea. He was just pretending to contemplate it so she would feel heard.
“I looked it up,” Amber said. “From your map, the farthest we will be from a tow truck is forty miles. I get free AAA with my rental, and that’s priority service. The rental place has a strong interest in keeping this vehicle going. It has been serviced regularly. It couldn’t be more safe.”
“We need to tow the…”
“It has a tow hitch, and I checked to find out if it could tow your trailer. It can do two-thousand pounds. That should be more than enough, right?”
Alan thought about it and nodded.
“Why though?” he asked.
“It’s my eyes. They’re still pretty raw from yesterday. I didn’t want to call off the expedition, but I would rather not have to focus on the road all the way up there. If you could drive this car then I’ll have a chance to rest them.”
“Ah,” Alan said. “Maybe it’s just best we call it off.”
“Maybe. But then I was looking at your map.”
Amber pulled out her copy and unfolded it. He joined her as she pressed it against the rear windshield of her rented car.
“This one,” she said, stabbing the map with her finger. Right on the perimeter of one of Alan’s circles was a large rectangle indicating the footprint of a building. “I looked it up. I think it’s an old mill. It’s very close to where Ricky thinks the creatures originated, and it’s overgrown now. It has two floors that are subterranean, it’s abandoned, and it would probably be full of rats, assuming these things snack on other mammals.”
“From yesterday, I was thinking that these things hibernate alone.”
“Yeah,” Amber said, nodding. “It’s possible. But I looked up bats. I was thinking about how movies used to say that vampires could turn into bats, and I wondered if there might be… Anyway, there are some bats that hibernate in colonies, and some that hibernate alone. Just because we found one alone doesn’t mean that there isn’t a colony out there.”
Alan studied the map for a minute, tracing his finger over the lines of the roads that were near the structure she had highlighted.
“How far is the nearest tow truck to this one?”
“Twenty-five miles, and they’re open all day.”
“Okay.”
Amber folded the map and headed for the passenger’s seat.
Alan leaned against the back of the car and pulled out his phone.
Amber opened the car door and paused to watch Alan. “Have to get permission?”
He shook his head. “Not permission, no. But I’m not going anywhere unless Liz…”
He turned when his wife picked up. Amber got in the car. She didn’t want to eavesdrop on his conversation. Leaning back in her seat, she let her eyes wander over the house, shed, and connected barn. The Harpers had their own little compound. In the winter, the house would be a self-contained world, like a spaceship but surrounded by snow instead of a vacuum. Their son, Joe, would always carry with him the memory of that safe place. He could return there in his mind whenever he felt frightened or exposed.
The driver’s door opened.
“What did Liz say?”
“She told me not to stand too close to you if you have bear spray in your hand.”
Amber laughed.
“Does this thing have a backup camera? I have to line up with the trailer.”
They figured it out together and then Alan got out to hook everything up. Amber watched so she would know how to do it too. It turned out to be dead simple—an electric connection, two chains, and a pin to lock the hitch. When they had checked to make sure that the directional and brake lights worked, they were finally ready to go.
Amber settled in and closed her eyes.
Behind them, the trailer bounced and rattled when they hit a bad part of the road.
“I’m glad we’re bringing it, but I doubt we’ll even use the snowmobile today,” Alan said. “Based on
