Free Absolute Zero by Chuck Logan

he rolled his eyes. “It’s like these Yuppie jerks come up here and tell us how to live. They run up the real estate and open Starbucks and bean sprouts. They tell us where and how we can fish. They want to take our snowmobiles and rifles away. They love the wolves from Minneapolis or Chicago or wherever the fuck they live, never mind the fuckin’ wolves eat our dogs on our porches. Then, when they get their asses in a sling they expect us to hang our balls over the edge and pull them out. And who foots the bill for all the overtime? Them in their gated fuckin’ suburbs? No, we pay it out of our dwindling fuckin’ tax base.”
    Sam’s rant broke the tension in the Tahoe and they burst into deranged frontline mirth. The truck accelerated, slipped, and sideswiped a mass of overhanging spruce branches. The swerve brought them out of their laughing jag.
    “Where’d you get this beast, anyway?” Iker asked, suddenly realizing they weren’t in a county vehicle.
    Sam grinned. “Tell ’em, Shari.”
    The paramedic smiled. “The ambulance couldn’t handle the drifts. The Suburban was down and we saw this thing parked in front of Vertin’s Cafe, had the chains on and everything. So we went in and liberated it off this swampy from the Cities.”
    They were still wiping tears from their eyes when they saw the fluorescent glow of a deserted Amoco Station, and it looked like somebody left the door open to an empty freezer the way the lights burned white on white. Soon they glimpsed chimney smoke flapping over the rooftops of Ely like tattered sheets and abandoned cars loomed up, mired in knee-high drifts. Nothing moved except the Tahoe and the banshee wind and the reeling shadows of the trees.
    Finally they approached Miner Hospital, an obstinate red-brick relic of mining-company medicine that vanished and reappeared in whirlpools of snow. They came closer and saw a bright orange wind sock whipped out rigid as metal sculpture from a corner of the flat roof. And a double garage door opened and the Tahoe lurched inside and the doors closed.
    The engine quit and for the first time in three days Broker was in an enclosed, dry, quiet place that smelled securely of radial tires and clean concrete, only more so because it was a hospital with a red cross.
    The rear door jerked opened and a woman, a man, and a haggard Allen Falken reached in. The woman wore jeans under her plum-colored smock. Allen and the man wore hospital blue. Broker and Shari helped them lift Sommer’s stretcher and transfer it onto a wheeled gurney cart.
    In the flurry of movement, Allen looked at Sommer, then called to Milt who did not respond. He turned to Broker.
    “Milt said the lump went down an hour ago. Sommer felt better, then he got delirious,” Broker said.
    Allen shot a look at the other man. “We’re up shit’s creek for time if he perforated; where the hell’s that anesthetist?”
    “She’s coming.”
    Then Allen, who seemed taller now, commanded Broker. “You’ve got to get another gurney and load Milt yourself, the storm caught them at shift change and they’re way understaffed. C’mon people, let’s hustle,” he urged everyone as Brecht, the nurse, and the paramedic rushed Sommer up a ramp, through heavy swinging doors, and into a corridor.
    Iker followed them, returned with a gurney, and helped Broker load Milt. Sam the driver stayed behind the wheel, talking into a snarl of static on his police radio.
    They wheeled Milt into a small equipment-packed alcove with two treatment tables on the right. Shari came down the hall and supervised while they heaved Milt on the table. Then she waved them away and cut off Milt’s wet clothes.
    Broker followed Iker down the hall and focused on a wall poster that diagramed potential fishhook accidents and the proper first-aid procedures. Dizzy at the heat in the building, he steadied his arm on a wall, and saw that his cheap wristwatch was still running. The time was 9:45 A.M. They had dumped in