Green Coolant

The logging road was a trench of brown slush. Spring in Northwestern Ontario did not mean blooming flowers or gentle breezes. It meant the earth gave up. The frost heaved out of the ground, leaving behind a soup of clay, melting ice, and rotting pine needles.

Ken stood knee-deep in a rut, jabbing a flathead shovel under the rear tire of his 2011 Silverado. The shovel struck a buried rock. The shock reverberated up the wooden handle, jarring his wrists. He dropped the shovel and leaned against the truck bed. His chest heaved. Sweat stuck his cotton t-shirt to his back, freezing the moment the cold air hit it.

"Come on," Ken muttered.

He climbed back into the driver's seat. His boots left clumps of gray mud on the floor mats. He shoved the gearshift into drive and pressed the gas. The engine roared. The tires spun, whining against the wet clay. Blue smoke drifted past the window, carrying the sharp smell of burning rubber. The truck sank another inch.

Ken slammed the wheel with the base of his palms. He cut the engine.

The silence of the forest rushed back in. It was a heavy, suffocating quiet. Just the drip of melting snow from the pine branches hitting the hood of the truck.

Ken’s internal clock was running too fast. His heart hammered a steady rhythm against his ribs. He checked the rearview mirror. Nothing but the long, curved track of torn-up mud he had just created. He was ten miles off Highway 17. No cell service. No passing traffic. Just him, a dead truck, and the glovebox.

He looked at the glovebox. It was locked. Inside was a zip-top bag containing three hundred oxycodone pills. They weren't his. They belonged to Toby. Or, more accurately, they belonged to the people Toby owed money to. Ken had taken them because Toby was going to eat them all and end up dead, or sell them for pennies and end up dead anyway. Ken thought he was being smart. He thought he could move them out of town, get the cash, and pay off Toby's debt before the real bad guys came looking.

Instead, he was stuck in the mud.

A sound cut through the dripping water.

Ken froze. His hand hovered over the door handle.

It was a high, thin whine. A two-stroke engine. It sounded like an angry mosquito miles away, but it was getting louder. Fast.

Ken stepped out of the truck. The cold water instantly soaked through the canvas of his boots. He squinted down the road. The road dipped into a hollow, hiding whatever was coming, but the sound was bouncing off the trees. It wasn't a logging skidder. It wasn't a forestry truck. It was light. It was fast.

An ATV.

Ken reached into the cab, popped the glovebox, and shoved the plastic bag of pills under the driver's seat. He slammed the door shut and grabbed the shovel. He didn't know why he grabbed it. It was a terrible weapon. But his hands needed something to hold.

The ATV crested the hill.

It was a rusted red Honda. The fenders were cracked and held together with black zip ties. The rider wore a faded safety-yellow hoodie, stained with grease and dirt. The hood was pulled up over a baseball cap.

Toby.

Ken’s stomach turned over. He tasted bile in the back of his throat.

Toby slowed the ATV, letting the tires find the high ground between the deep ruts. He pulled up ten feet from the front bumper of the Silverado and cut the engine.

The sudden silence was worse than the noise.

Toby sat on the idling machine. His face was hollowed out. The skin around his eyes was bruised purple, thin as paper. He hadn't slept in days. Maybe weeks. His jaw worked back and forth, grinding imaginary glass.

"You're stuck," Toby said. His voice was raspy, stripped of any warmth.

"Just a little," Ken said. He leaned on the shovel, trying to look casual. His knees were shaking. "Mud's deep this year."

Toby didn't look at the mud. He looked at Ken. Then he looked at the truck. Then he reached down to the rack of the ATV and pulled loose a Winchester .30-30 lever-action rifle. He rested it across his thighs. The blued steel was scratched, the wood stock chipped.

"Where are they?" Toby asked.

"Where are what?"

"Don't do that. Don't play stupid. I went to the trailer. You tossed my place. You took the bag."

"I didn't toss your place, Toby. I was trying to help you."

"Help me?" Toby laughed. It sounded like a dry cough. "You stole my stash. You stole my life, Ken. Those were spoken for."

"You were going to use them," Ken said. He kept his voice low, steady. A dog trainer talking down a pit bull. "You were high out of your mind when I got there. You didn't even know your own name. If I left them there, you'd be dead by Tuesday."

"I need them back. Now."

"I don't have them."

Toby racked the lever of the rifle. The metallic clack echoed off the trees. A brass cartridge flew out and landed in the slush. A fresh round slid into the chamber. Toby raised the barrel, pointing it at Ken’s chest.

"Bullshit," Toby said. "You're running. You got your truck packed. You got the bag. Give it here."

Ken looked at the black hole of the barrel. His mouth went completely dry. He calculated the distance. Ten feet. Mud. He couldn't rush him. He couldn't run. The heavy slush would drag him down before he took three steps.

"You shoot me, you're stuck out here too," Ken said.

"I got the bike."

"The bike is running on fumes. I can smell it from here. You won't make it to the highway."

"I don't care about the highway. I care about the bag. Get it."

Toby’s hands were shaking. The barrel of the rifle drew tiny circles in the air. He was strung out, desperate, and operating purely on the reptile part of his brain. Logic was gone. Friendship was gone. There was only the chemical hunger.

Ken had to change the channel in Toby's head. He had to break the loop.

"This is exactly where Dean flipped his rig, isn't it?" Ken said.

The words hung in the cold air.

Toby blinked. The gun dropped half an inch. "What?"

"Mile marker fourteen," Ken said, his voice hard now. Relentless. "Right at the bottom of the dip. He was hauling timber, but he was high. Just like you are right now. He hit the ice, rolled the truck, and crushed the cab flat."

"Shut up," Toby said. His voice cracked.

"You remember what he looked like at the funeral?" Ken pushed. He hated himself for doing it, but he felt the power shift. He used the memory like a crowbar. "They couldn't even open the casket. Your mother just sat there staring at a wooden box. And now you're out here, holding a gun on your best friend, ready to die in the exact same mud."

"I said shut up!"

Toby stepped off the ATV. His boot hit the slush. He stumbled, his balance wrecked by the drugs and the uneven ground.

That was the opening.

Ken lunged. He didn't swing the shovel; he dropped it and threw his entire body forward. The mud sucked at his boots, slowing him down, making the movement feel like a nightmare where you try to run underwater.

Toby brought the rifle up, but his reflexes were shot. Ken slammed into him. The impact knocked the breath out of both of them. They crashed into the slush. The freezing water shocked Ken's system, sharpening his focus.

He grabbed the barrel of the rifle with both hands and pushed it away from his face. The metal was freezing cold. Toby screamed, a feral, desperate sound, and twisted his body. He was thin, but he had the wiry, terrifying strength of a cornered addict.

Toby shoved a knee into Ken's ribs. Ken grunted, tasting copper. He shifted his weight, trying to pin Toby's arms, but the mud made everything slick. They rolled in the dirt. Brown water splashed into Ken's eyes, stinging and blinding him.

"Let go!" Toby screamed, ripping his hand free from the stock and clawing at Ken's face. His dirty fingernails tore a track down Ken's cheek.

Ken ignored the pain. He kept both hands locked on the barrel, pulling it up, trying to rip it out of Toby's grip. Toby yanked back.

Ken's boot found a rock under the mud. He planted his foot and drove his weight forward, slamming Toby's back against the front bumper of the Silverado.

Toby’s finger was still inside the trigger guard. The sudden jolt against the truck forced his hand shut.

The rifle fired.

The sound was deafening. It wasn't a movie sound; it was a physical blow to the ears, a violent crack of displaced air that left a high-pitched ringing in Ken's skull.

The recoil tore the rifle out of both their hands. It clattered into the mud.

Ken scrambled backward on his hands and knees, breathing hard, waiting for the pain. He patted his chest, his stomach. No blood. He wasn't hit.

Toby was slumped against the bumper, staring at his empty hands. He looked confused.

Then came the hiss.

It was a loud, angry spray of pressurized steam.

Ken looked up at the front of his truck. The heavy chrome grill was shattered. Behind it, a ragged hole had been punched directly through the radiator.

White steam billowed up into the cold spring air, carrying the harsh, sweet chemical smell of boiling antifreeze.

Ken watched in horror as a thick stream of neon green coolant poured out of the truck's guts, splashing onto the brown slush beneath the tires. It melted the snow around it, pooling in the mud like toxic blood.

"No," Ken whispered.

He pulled himself up using the fender. He stared at the leaking fluid. The hissing was slowing down as the pressure dropped. The engine block was bleeding out. The truck was dead.

He turned to Toby.

Toby was still sitting in the mud, staring at the green puddle. The fight had completely drained out of him. The adrenaline crash hit him hard. He pulled his knees to his chest and shivered.

"You shot the truck," Ken said. His voice was flat. Empty.

"I didn't mean to," Toby mumbled.

Ken looked down the logging road. Five miles to the main branch. Ten miles to the highway. The temperature was dropping. The shadows from the pine trees were growing longer, stretching across the slush like dark fingers. The sun would be down in two hours. Below freezing.

Ken looked at the rusted ATV. He looked at the dead truck. He looked at the man shivering in the mud.

The sweet chemical smell of green coolant mixed with the mud, and the silence of the woods rushed back in to trap them both.