I slap my hands on my thighs, willing my frozen muscles to move. As I take a step forward, a scraping sound—metal dragging across pavement—comes from behind me, accompanied by the roar of heavy engines. The rock canyon walls reflect strobing yellow lights. I turn as a pair of snowplows round the bend, their blades scooping snow off the pavement and throwing it in a high arc to the side of the road.
Never let them see you.
Especially them.
Government people. The worst kind of humans. They have all these rules telling people what they can and can’t do, even on their own land. And they’ll take that land if they want to, just like they took his grandpappy’s land and made him poor. Government people can’t be trusted, so never, never, never let government people see you.
Government people drive those big snowplows roaring down the highway, so I have to hide.
I turn to the side of the road in a feeble attempt to run for the camouflage of shadows, but my feet, numb from walking in the freezing snow, slip from under me. I slam to the ground on my belly, knocking the air from my lungs. The world goes gray, and the guardrail slips in and out of focus. I suck the frigid air into my lungs, desperate for strength, struggling to push myself up onto my hands and knees. Too cold, hungry, and weak, I collapse onto the ground and gasp for air. The bright lights of the approaching vehicles haven’t reached me, but my shadow is coming into focus on the boulders in front of me. I have to hurry. His command echoes in my brain:
Never let them see you.
I wriggle my fingers through the frozen layers of snow and ice to gain purchase on the asphalt below. Inch by inch, I drag my body forward. A nail rips off the middle finger of my left hand. I hold my arm up in the growing light, startled to see fresh blood dripping around the dangling nail. For seconds I feel nothing, my frozen body refusing to acknowledge the loss until a searing pain flashes up my arm. I wince against the agony, but it shocks my body into action and gives me the strength I need.
Kicking with my feet, I slide on my belly across the ground and under the guardrail. I roll into the weeds and land in a pile of discarded trash. Curling into a small ball and cradling my injured hand, I hide in the shadows and pray that the drivers of those roaring machines didn’t notice my escape.
The front-mounted plow scrapes across the road and clears a path, allowing the chains on the giant tires to clatter against the newly bare pavement. The sounds echo off the walls around me. The first truck roars past in the far lane, the ground vibrating as its blade rakes across the asphalt, hurling the offending snow into the near lane. It rattles off the metal guardrail with a deafening sound as the ice pings the metal.
I try to roll away from the falling debris, but my movement must have caught the attention of the driver of the second plow. We lock eyes, and his head swivels to keep me in his sight as he passes. His mouth forms a shocked O, and then I am pummeled with the slush falling around me. Chunks of ice ricochet off of the rocky cliff. A mixture of freezing cold water, ice, snow, and salt hammer my aching body and soak my clothes.
The truck brakes hard, stopping the small cluster of cars following him in the safety of the freshly exposed pavement. The driver jumps out of the cab and runs alongside the road, shouting and searching, but he can’t see me buried under the piles of snow. He and the driver of the other plow argue, but I can’t hear their words over the roar of the wind.
One of them grabs an orange cone off the back of his plow and settles it over the guardrail post. He then climbs back into his vehicle. I hear the air brakes and the grind of gears, the plows resuming their clearing of the road.
As the noise fades, I raise my head, snow sliding down the neck of my shirt, and watch the last of the taillights disappear around the next curve. Shivering, I slide back under the rail and onto the pavement. I stagger to my feet and stand, weaving in the wind. The sky remains pitch-black with no hint of a coming sunrise. I doubt I will live long enough to see it.
I wrap my arms around my body, my drenched clothing already freezing against my skin, and take another step down the road.