Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Fifteen years ago, a few of my buddies and I went up to the Northeast to haul coal for a forestry farm.

That winter, the temperature dropped frighteningly fast. By the later stages of the job, we had already been through several heavy snowfalls.

So the locals wouldn’t freeze, we pushed those last few truckloads as hard as we could.

We loaded up before dawn and set out as soon as the sky began to brighten.

After working ourselves ragged for more than ten days, we were finally down to the last run.

We had just wolfed down a quick breakfast and were about to get into the trucks when the person in charge of the station stopped us.

“Don’t head out today. Take a day to rest. The sky looks awful dark to me. I’m afraid a blizzard’s coming.”

“Dong’an Forestry Farm is the closest to the old-growth forest, and the road conditions aren’t good either. If a whiteout kicks up, you won’t be able to tell one direction from another.”

The man in charge was Grandpa Wang, a warmhearted local in his fifties who had always looked after us out-of-town drivers.

I looked up at the sky. I couldn’t see any clouds, but I couldn’t see the sun either. Everything around us was a murky gray.

Mornings in the Northeast always seemed to be wrapped in a faint mist-dry and biting cold. Just parting your lips was enough to puff out a stream of white vapor.

“Don’t worry, Grandpa Wang. We’re driving heavy trucks. Whiteout or blackout, we’re not scared.”

The one who said that was Mao Hu. He was the same age as me and had always been the careless, bighearted type.

Grandpa Wang was about to keep trying to persuade us when our team leader, Xu Song, spoke up. “If we wait a day, I’m afraid the snow will get too heavy and block the road. Then we won’t be able to deliver these last few truckloads at all.”

“It doesn’t look like it’ll come down right away. Why don’t we hurry up and get going? As long as we deliver it before dark, we’ll be fine.”

Grandpa Wang still looked hesitant. Just then, a gust of icy wind swept in from who knew where, already carrying a few faint snowflakes.

Wu Si, the most timid of us, hunched his neck and said, “How about we listen to Grandpa Wang and wait a day? Last time it snowed hard, the truck nearly got stranded halfway.”

“What the hell do you know?”

Wu Da and Wu Si were brothers, but their personalities couldn’t have been more different. “When they asked us to come, they said the roads were perfectly fine. And then the weather turns cold just like that, and the snow starts falling just like that. For a special situation like this, they ought to pay us extra. If they make us sit around for a whole day for nothing, that’s another day of work delayed!”

After hearing Wu Da say that, Grandpa Wang’s expression soured a little. He was only in charge of the loading station; he had no say over anything else. At once, he waved a hand and said, “If you want extra pay, go talk to the manager. I can’t make that call. If you insist on leaving, then drive fast on the road.”

“And especially-on the way to Dong’an, you’ll have to pass through a stretch called Wild Ditch. On that part of the road… be extra careful.”