It's strange the way that one bad decision just seems to amplify itself until you feel completely trapped in a long string of missed opportunities, failed projects, and wrong turns.   Tim Kenney was facing a string of wrong moves late one night (or early one morning) up on Bower's Road, his white K-5 Blazer stuck in 3 feet of snow with no likelihood of going much farther.   Tim decided he had made a good run of it and pulled the trigger.

Miles had seen dead people before, but this guy in the Blazer was the first one he didn't expect.   When you go to a funeral, you know there's gonna be some stone cold ex-human there, the mortician's make-up slowly sliding off her face, and you can bet plenty of people will be too horrified to even think about crying.   The sweating horrid face he saw through the window of this white truck was not entirely different, except it had no make-up, and instead it looked like the skin itself was melting off.   The first thought he had was how (if?) to call the cops.   He was up on Bower Mountain because he had figured the snow had melted enough that he'd be able to get over, and even if it didn't save any time, it was a hell of a nice ride, and the view from the gap was worth the chance of getting stuck and walking the 5 miles to the closest cabin.   That five mile walk wasn't something he was looking forward to from up here, because once you leave the dirt roads and start churning mud on the jeep trails, the miles get a whole lot longer.

Miles would call the cops though, from the other side of the mountain, the first time he saw a cabin.   There would be no one there, and the door would be padlocked shut, but he figured this was probably important enough to break a law or two, and so he'd get out the crowbar and leave a five dollar bill in a kitchen drawer to pay for the lock.

The Frowntown sheriff knew who Miles had found even before Miles did, and even before Miles had finished talking, the sheriff was getting together his tire chains and mud boots.   Tim Kenney was still wanted on a murder charge, and if this kid in the mountains had found him dead, it'd be a good bit of comfort to a great number of people.   Sheriff Hutchins asked Miles to meet him back at the truck, and to make sure that if anyone happened along, they didn't touch anything.   Miles reminded him that there was still a foot of snow on the ground, and that he was probably the first one up that road since the dead guy in the Blazer.

Tim had been running a small mechanic's garage in Frowntown for the last ten or so years, and though he wasn't perfect, he had enough repeat customers to make some of his mortgage payments on time, even if he had to pull a check from his inheritance now and again.   Kenney's Garage had lost its state inspection license in September because Tim couldn't afford the new emissions testing machines the state was now requiring for all registered vehicles.   Didn't matter much though, Tim made most of his money fixing the old trucks that the dealership boys didn't understand anymore: the four wheel drive monsters that ate gas and shat torque.   Frowntown teenagers would bring him some ten year old F-150 that had pulled one too many horsetrailers and it'd leave his shop able to climb right up a wall.   He had unwritten contracts with most of the construction guys in town that had to haul crushed gravel and 2 tons of plywood twice a week.   Tim was the guy to talk to when you needed the ability to push your truck farther than anyone expected it would go.  

Problem was, big trucks require big gas budgets.   Tim had been watching the massive four door V-10 pickups in town turn into two door 4 cylinders with two wheel drive.   The war was killing not only soldiers, but his business as well.   The money his father left him 10 years ago was all but gone, and didn't stack half as high as the debts he had piled up against the shop.   Tim had tried taking classes to figure out these tiny new engines, but he hadn't sat in a classroom for 10 years now, and just couldn't keep still long enough to remember anything on the exams.   If this war didn't stop, Kenney's Garage would follow the Blazers and J-10s into the good ole days.

That Friday afternoon the insurance company had called to say they were canceling his auto insurance because they hadn't been paid in two quarters.   If Tim could pay them today, he could keep driving, but both his business and personal credit cards had been denied the last couple times he tried to use them.   Once he killed the lights in the garage, he emptied the register into his pocket and headed to The Three Mares on the other side of town.

Tim must have had five or six beers in him before he even knew what he was doing, and three or four after that before that college kid ended up dead with Tim's knife in his chest.   He was pretty hazy on exactly how the kid ended up there, or why the table got thrown, or who started the whole mess, but he knew he had to split before John Hutchins showed up and put an end to the night.   Tim found himself sobering up at 30 miles an hour, sliding his way deep into the woods, in the middle of a snow storm, without warm clothes, boots, or a full tank of gas.

Once he realized what was going on, he decided there were two choices: blow over this frozen mountain and into Johnson county, then the freeway and find his brother's house somewhere in Texas, or back into town and find a warm cell for the rest of his life.   Tim pulled the transfer case shifter and felt the truck shudder into four wheel drive.  

30 miles up in the woods is no place for foolishness in the middle of January, but enough beer convinced Tim he could take the jeep trails straight over the hill and make sure that no one followed him.   There were likely only a few trucks in Frowntown that could make this climb in 3 feet of snow, and Tim had built all of them.   He hadn't seen any sheriff's lights behind him in the last hour or so, but that didn't mean they weren't back there - just waiting for him to slow down or slide off the road before they'd come up behind and pull their guns.   Of course, the state boys would be putting up roadblocks right now at either end of this main road - they knew they couldn't catch him up here, but they weren't about to let him go.   The jeep trails led way out into the woods though, and emptied into backyards and parking lots; not even the local cops knew all the exits and switchbacks he had built his truck for.

Bower's road was one of those, hardly wide enough for a single truck in one direction, and closed at either end with a yellow metal gate - easy enough to tear down with a chain on the bumper - and steep enough that more than one teenage redneck had rolled his lifted pickup over backwards when trying to accelerate too hard.   Tim locked both axles and put the truck in 4WL as he headed straight up the mountain. He knew, somewhere, that he wasn't coming back down.