Absolute Zero Read online

  For Aunt Betty and Aunt Louise, the Siegrist twins

  absolute zero: Physics. The temperature at which substances possess minimal energy, equal to –273.15 degrees C or –459.67 degrees F.

  —The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

  Contents

  Definition of Absolute Zero

  Prologue

  The beep-beep-beep was a reassuring sound that brought him back like the sing-along bouncing ball. . .

  Chapter One

  Broker was used to sleeping alone because his wife was in the army and, except for her pregnancy and a short maternity leave. . .

  Chapter Two

  “So, what do you think?” Broker jerked a thumb at the low clouds.

  Chapter Three

  “Ahhouuu.”

  Milt gave a dare-danger howl as he and Allen sculled in place. . .

  Chapter Four

  HOLYJESUSFUCKINCHRIST!

  The ice water shattered his blood into red pins and needles.

  Chapter Five

  Numb, Milt gawked into the storm. Allen stared at his trembling, useless surgeon’s hands.

  Chapter Six

  The storm left behind gloomy flurries that stuck to their faces, melting and trickling down their cheeks.

  Chapter Seven

  Allen rode a police cruiser into town from the east as the blizzard moved in from the west.

  Chapter Eight

  “Next stop’s the dock,” the pilot yelled. “I put her down upwind to try and drift into the sucker. . .”

  Chapter Nine

  Milt lay in the ER room cubbyhole draped in a floral-patterned hospital smock with an IV. . .

  Chapter Ten

  Booop . . . Booop . . . Booop.

  “Shit! Call a code. He’s arrested in here!” Amy yelled. . .

  Chapter Eleven

  It was still snowing. But softer now, almost out of respect. “Stop signs, huh,” mulled Dave Iker.

  Chapter Twelve

  Amy was not alone. Two snowmobile jocks, mistaking her troubled, fixed stare for an intoxicated cripple. . .

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nina Pryce.

  If ever a name destroyed sleep. He lurched up, ducked. . .

  Chapter Fourteen

  It’s all shadows now.

  Sinking. Velvet suffocation.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I don’t suppose anybody brought in the other canoe, did they? I’d hate for it to sit out there all winter.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Directory assistance listed the number of Stovall and Hensen Associates in Timberry, a suburb east of the Twin Cities.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jolene Sommer hung up the phone and paused for a moment with her palm on the plastic receiver. . .

  Chapter Eighteen

  He’d grown up fascinated with the war-soaked fiction of Hemingway, James Jones, and Norman Mailer. . .

  Chapter Nineteen

  Allen, almost jaunty, swung a black satchel bag in his left hand. It was an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. . .

  Chapter Twenty

  When Amy wheeled into the parking lot, Broker, antsy, was pacing at the end of the boat dock puffing on a cigar.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Buddhists say—the mind is a monkey chasing its tail, suffering and desire going round and round.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Broker had always taken back roads and harvest fields for granted, but now he saw that Washington County. . .

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Broker was not one to dream.

  So the sudden flash of Sommer’s startling acetylene eyes jolted. . .

  Chapter-Twenty-four

  After breakfast Amy took off on her shopping errand and Broker had some time to kill before his coffee. . .

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Broker drove east on I-94 and tried to see Jolene as a lush who was one drink away from insanity and death.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Hank toured hells he had known—Detroit got him ready for the hill, in the hammer shop at Huron Forge and Machine.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Most of the wood was split and stacked when Earl stepped onto the deck outside Hank’s room and waved at Jolene.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Earl looked funny with shards of computer glass dusted in his hair and his eyebrows, so Jolene left him sputtering. . .

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Amy’s shopping bags were stacked on the mud porch and she met him at the door. Before he could open his mouth. . .

  Chapter Thirty

  The constellation Orion tilted on the horizon like a sideswiped road sign, and Broker was driving way too fast. . .

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Jesus, it was a dump. A dump on Arcade on the east side of St. Paul where the mooks went to watch women get naked. . .

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Something shook him and he opened his eyes.

  Oh-oh.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Jolene slept through the alarm and missed turning Hank three times. Now, as a thin spoke of sunlight eased. . .

  Chapter Thirty-four

  J.T. and his family left for Iowa before dawn, towing the trailer full of ostriches.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Amy left a note tacked on the door: WENT FOR A RUN. Her bags were stacked on the porch, ready to go.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Eyebrows.

  Broker’s nickname in the world of snitches. . .

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  After a solitary dinner in an overcrowded restaurant, Allen got away from people and drove toward his town house. . .

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  After getting Earl admitted to the emergency room at Timberry Trails, Broker used a pay phone in the waiting room. . .

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Jolene savored Broker’s brief phone message as she ate a quick Healthy Choice microwave dinner.

  Chapter Forty

  Broker was speeding down the back roads again. “Remember, Allen Falken has a way of showing up over there,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Allen had been kneed in the stomach once, coming down from a rebound in high school ball.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Earl had just lost an argument with a nurse about trading his Percocet prescription up to morphine. . .

  Chapter Forty-three

  They’d folded down the rear seat and put in a futon mattress and blankets. Broker lashed Hank’s wheelchair to the rack. . .

  Chapter Forty-four

  He was moving in the back of a car and it was all black outside the boxy windows. Not far away he sensed terrific cold.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Amy had screamed, “Look out,” but the man had already stepped across the doorway and struck Broker from behind.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Jolene had remained mostly quiet. Now she turned and studied Allen’s face, which looked haggard. . .

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Hank was resolved to go out on his kind of play; he’d bet it all on one gesture. Either he’d get the needle or a response.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Jesus, what a night for cold-blooded murder.

  Allen and Earl stood talking about how they were going to do. . .

  Chapter Forty-nine

  There was this sleep-ocean and he was sinking to the bottom, down in the dark where he bumped into fish without eyes. . .

  Chapter Fifty

  She had grabbed Hank’s legs and hauled him unceremoniously off the daybed, through the kitchen. . .

  Chapter Fifty-one

  The closest phone was at the lodge.

&
nbsp; Annie’s truck headlights streaked down the driveway. . .

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  HarperCollins Special Feature

  Survive Absolute Zero: The U.S. Army Guide

  Other Books by Chuck Logan

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The beep-beep-beep was a reassuring sound that brought him back like the sing-along bouncing ball; if he were safe at home the sound might be the soft cricket in the clothes dryer downstairs signaling that the load was through. If only life had not speeded up . . .

  But it had, and now they’d put the pain on mute, along with everything else—the up, the down, the light—and they’d set him adrift in the dark with nothing but the beep. So he tried to scan along but the rhythm kept slipping away. Which figured, because he’d been thrown out of high school band—alto sax—on account of he couldn’t keep the beat.

  Then he coughed and sparks lit up a corner of his mind, enough to get him oriented and he knew that he was waking up, and he understood that the dogged beep was the pulse of his heart hooked to a machine.

  Which meant he was still here.

  He was alive and laid out flat on his back with his eyes shut tight and he didn’t have the strength to open them, so he’d just lay back for now, all alone in the dark, waiting for the lights to come up.

  Surfacing, he flashed on chemical nondreams and artificial sleep. His lips were gummed together, and when he parted them a parched numbness puffed his mouth and his throat and it felt like he’d been French-kissed by the creature in Sigourney Weaver’s Alien. Then a sharp electric pincer prodded his right wrist four times—jit-jit-jit-jit—and made his fingers jump.

  Now he was being moved because he felt the stale hospital air slide over his face, and he heard splashes of sound like underwater voices that became clearer until distinct words spilled down and trickled on his face.

  “Train of four,” the first female voice said.

  “Doesn’t that hurt now that he’s coming around?” a second female voice asked.

  “This guy, with his neck; I want to make sure he’s back before we medicate for pain.”

  Then they splashed away and there was more motion and then they came back.

  “He’s breathing well, sats are good, rhythm is good.”

  “Okay, let’s rouse him, get him to raise his head, squeeze a finger, swallow. And wait for the eyelids; the littlest muscles are always the last to come back. Who’s got the Narc keys?”

  “Got them right here. I’ve got everything today.”

  “Sign out twenty-five milligrams of Demerol and give it IV.”

  The voices faded, the shapes acquired edges, then fluttered away, and tile-lined the walls and was dotted with stainless steel, and it all shimmered in and out of focus. Latex fingers carried a slender plastic syringe with green markings across his vision. A fluorescent light hovered overhead, and from its center materialized the face of a blue-gowned young woman with white-blond hair. She had serious gray eyes and copper freckles on her cheeks and she smiled.

  He enjoyed the colors of her face and her hair. He found them vital, feline. He thought: a happy lynx.

  “Hello there,” said the happy lynx. “Can you squeeze my finger?”

  He squeezed the cool finger in his hand.

  “Good,” she said. “Now can you raise your head?”

  A stiff sensation laced tight up his middle and warned him not to move, but he made the effort and got his head up a little. Which was a mistake. Oh, wow.

  “Take it easy.” The nurse patted his forearm with long, cool fingers. “You’ve got a few stitches in your belly.”

  Pain jogged his memory and he tried to talk but no spit came. All he managed to get out was a single cotton word: “ ’peration.”

  “That’s right. You’ve had an emergency operation that went just fine and now you’re in the recovery room,” she said.

  “High,” he said slowly, finding some spit.

  “Hello, yourself.”

  “No. Stone . . .” He took a breath, wheezed, “Grog . . .”

  “Yep, we gave you something. We’re about to give you some more of the good stuff.”

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Right. Stoned, huh?” she said.

  “No. Hel . . . lo. You’re . . . pret . . . pretty.” His eyes probed around on the front of her blue tunic and focused on the laminated picture ID alligator-clipped to her pocket, and he read the printed title: Amy Skoda CRNA. “You’re pret . . . ty, Amy,” he said.

  “Thank you, and you’re lucky to be alive.”

  He blinked at the blue shapes circling around him. “Where?”

  “It’s all right now. You’re in a hospital.”

  He nodded and the beep speeded up and he caught a panic flash of jagged black sky coming down, and frigid gray water rising up in ranks of whitecaps. He swallowed and muttered, “Storm.”

  Amy nodded. “Mister, you’ve had quite an adventure.”

  “Others?”

  But she disappeared and the question hung unanswered. He waited and waited as it all slowed and went dim. Then the blue shapes above him startled and retreated. He heard shouts.

  “Heads up, gang! We got another one!”

  “C’mon, they need help.”

  The blue commotion surged away.

  Then someone.

  A hand appeared and held up a syringe. This syringe was thicker, a dull gray plastic, not skinny like the other. It moved up and out of sight.

  “There you go,” a voice said—a different voice. “It should be better now.”

  Jesus God. No. Ow. Not better. They’d jacked him back into the storm. Black waves flooded from his arm, into his chest, drowning him on the inside. His lungs . . .

  “Oh, fuck, oh, no,” said the voice, backing away.

  Hey, come back . . .

  . . .

  He felt his thoughts seep away like the last bubbles of oxygen escaping his brain. And the commotion in the hall faded off and all he heard was the bleat of the heart monitor until it slipped off key: Beep beep . . . boop.

  Boop.

  Boooop.

  Boop.

  And he lost the goddamn beat . . .

  And his eyes took one last picture of muscles undulating down his arms, and just like he thought, the relentless waves from the storm had followed him right into this hospital room and were rolling under his skin.

  Then he just—stopped. Nothing. Nothing erasing him line by line.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  “Oh shit! Call a code. He’s arrested in here.”

  Chapter One

  Broker was used to sleeping alone because his wife was in the army and, except for her pregnancy and a short maternity leave, she had been absent on deployments to Bosnia during most of their marriage. And he was used to waking up in a freezing sleeping bag because he’d grown up in Northern Minnesota. What he was having trouble adjusting to was waking up alone in the cold bag and seeing the pale stripe on the third finger of his left hand where his wedding band had been.

  So he coughed and rubbed his eyes, and the absent ring cued up the agnostic rosary in the back of his mind: You just never know . . . never know . . . never know . . . and it was, yeah, yeah, and he was talking to himself and his lips moved to dismiss the thought, but he had to appreciate the irony. Mister Serious Student of the Unexpected.

  Didn’t see it coming, did you, dummy?

  She’d left two weeks ago and took their three-year-old daughter, Kit, off to army day care somewhere in Europe.

  She said he could come along and take care of Kit. He said she could quit the army and stay home. So it stuck there between them. Their daughter watched nervously as Mom and Dad agreed to take an informal time-out, removing their rings and st
oring them in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser.

  His reaction to the standoff was to exile himself from people he knew and retreat into the North woods. He’d purge himself with fresh air and hard work. Specifically, Broker volunteered to close down his uncle Billie’s outfitting lodge at the end of the canoeing season.

  And now, as he greeted the ice-water dawn, the subject was still fragile as glass. Carefully, he held it by the stem and tucked it away.

  So.

  Uncle Billie and his golf clubs had hopped a Northwest Airlines flight to Broker’s parents’ condo in Arizona. Broker had hung a closed sign across the driveway of the small resort he owned in Devil’s Rock, north of Grand Marais, on the Lake Superior shore. Then he’d driven down Highway 61 to Illgen City, turned on Highway 1 northwest to Ely, in the Minnesota Iron Range. Arriving at Billie’s Lodge, he found a list of instructions next to the telephone. The canoe trip was at the top.

  Broker had looked over the permits and perused the clients’ backgrounds. He’d be playing wilderness guide to Milton Dane, a lawyer; Allen Falken, a surgeon; and Hank Sommer, who called himself a writer. All three were from the Twin Cities area.

  Broker told himself guiding was no big thing, that he’d done it lots of times.

  But that was more than twenty years ago.

  In the intervening time the canoes had been upgraded from aluminum to lighter Kevlar and fiberglass. The freeze-dried food and camping gear were much improved. But otherwise, the drill was the same. He studied the itinerary, selected the proper maps, and packed for a party of four, going in by canoe to shoot a moose among the lakes of the Boundary Water’s Canoe Area, BWCA for short.

  And now it was the third morning of the trip.

  Broker blew on his chilled hands and rubbed them together. He’d gone to bed breathing in damp lake water, lichen, and pine needles moldering on granite bedrock. A mild rain had tapped on the tent walls and eased him off to sleep. Now a loud winter silence replaced the patter of raindrops and his breath clouded in the chill air.

  Hank Sommer bumped him as he rolled over in the narrow tent and snored. He lay on his back, half out of his sleeping bag, with his mouth open. He had buckteeth and a receding chin disguised under a short, unruly beard. When Broker reached over and jabbed him in the ribs, Sommer rearranged himself and stopped snoring. His cell phone, which had caused so much debate on the trip, was nestled next to his cheek.