Chapter 4 - The Frozen Mill
The North Ridge Logging Mill had been abandoned for over fifteen years. It sat on a jagged cliff edge overlooking a three-hundred-foot ravine, its rusted iron roof groaned under the immense weight of the accumulating snow.
Nathan cut the snowmobile’s engine two hundred yards down the trail, coasting silently into the dense pine trees to avoid detection.
Through the thick, falling snow, he saw Marcus’s black truck parked outside the main timber framing shed. The driver’s side door was open, and fresh footprints led toward the heavy double doors of the central office building.
Marcus had arrived just minutes before him.
Nathan unholstered his pistol, holding it close to his chest as he crept through the snow toward the side entrance of the mill. The freezing air burned his lungs with every breath, but he ignored the pain, his focus entirely consumed by the urgent need to find his sister before her core body temperature dropped past the point of recovery.
He slipped through a broken side window into the vast, dark interior of the mill.
The air inside smelled of rotting timber, motor oil, and ancient sawdust. High above, the storm rattled the corrugated metal roof sheets with a deafening, rhythmic clatter.
Nathan moved silently along the upper catwalk, his headlamp turned off, navigating by the faint red glow of an emergency exit sign at the far end of the hall.
Below him, on the main floor of the mill, a bright yellow industrial floodlight cast long, eerie shadows across the rusted saw machinery.
Marcus stood beside a massive, concrete subterranean hatch in the floor, holding a heavy five-gallon jerrycan of gasoline. His coat was covered in snow, his face twisted into a mask of frantic, venomous rage.
"You should have stayed quiet, Sarah!" Marcus shouted down into the dark open hatch, his voice echoing loudly through the cavernous mill. "You had a comfortable life! You had everything money could buy! But you just couldn't stop digging, could you?!"
He unscrewed the cap of the gas can, pouring a thick, smelling stream of clear fuel down into the basement opening.
"Marcus, please!" Sarah’s voice echoed weakly from deep within the dark pit below. She was coughing violently, her voice thin, raspy, and dangerously slurred from advanced hypothermia. "The children... where are my children...?"
"They're dead in the snow, Sarah!" Marcus lied viciously, aiming to break her spirit completely in her final moments. "Your arrogant brother left them outside his gate! Nobody is coming to save you!"
Marcus pulled a silver metal lighter from his pocket, flicking the wheel. A small, bright orange flame danced in the dark air.
Nathan’s blood boiled. He stepped out onto the center of the catwalk, raising his weapon with both hands.
"Marcus!" Nathan’s voice cut through the cavernous space like a thunderclap.
Marcus whipped around, his eyes widening in utter disbelief as he stared up at the catwalk. "WHAT?!"
"Drop the lighter!" Nathan commanded, his voice cold and unwavering.
For a split second, shock held Marcus frozen. But then, a look of desperate, psychotic fury flashed across his face. Instead of dropping the lighter, Marcus dropped his hand toward the gasoline-soaked rim of the basement hatch.
BANG!
Nathan squeezed the trigger.
The heavy bullet struck the concrete floor less than an inch from Marcus’s hand, sending razor-sharp concrete chips flying into his face. Marcus screamed, stumbling backward, dropping the lighter onto the dry wooden floorboards three feet away from the gas pool.
"Next one goes through your shoulder, Marcus!" Nathan shouted, running down the metal spiral staircase toward the main floor. "Get away from that hatch!"
Marcus clutched his bleeding cheek where a concrete shard had sliced his skin. He looked at Nathan, then looked at the heavy iron lever of the overhead lumber crane hanging directly above the catwalk.
With a sudden, violent movement, Marcus reached out and slammed his hand against the crane’s emergency release lever.
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CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
A massive, three-ton bundle of heavy pine timber suspended forty feet above the floor snapped from its rusted steel cables, plummeting downward straight toward the staircase Nathan was descending!
