The Dodge’s dashboard clock said the time was 5:30 p.m. Sundown for late April in Glens Falls, New York State, should have been around 7:50 p.m. He saw taillights flicker on and the shadow of a figure move towards the truck’s headlights.

Nathan was about to ask Freeson what the hell he was playing at when he caught it.

With the truck stopped, he tried to follow Freeson’s finger out into the whirlpooling night.įor a few seconds, all he could see was the blizzard, the air filled with fat white flakes, which danced across his vision like God’s dandruff. Who knowshow thick the ice is over the blacktop, Nathan thought. The ice beneath was treacherous enough already without the added application of fresh flakes. There was a slight lateral slide before the tires bit into the fresh snow. To stop the tires fully, Nathan had to go down through the gears rather than by the application of the discs. Without any real visibility, the 1981 Dodge Power Wagon W300 4x4-with driver’s cab, a four-person custom-sized crew cab behind that, a wrecker boom, and a spectacle lift-grumbled deep in its engine as Nathan slowed the truck. The cone of light thrown out by its headlights only illuminated the blizzard itself, making it look like a messed up TV channel. He thought they were on the spruce-lined Ridge Road running between Lake George and Glens Falls but he couldn’t be sure. Nathan squinted through the swirling snowflakes peppering the glass, but the wipers were struggling to give meaningful vision beyond the red expanse of his Dodge’s hood. “What’s that?” Freeson asked, pointing beyond the wrecker’s windshield. But with dangerous conditions and roving gangs, getting there seems like an impossible dream. When an old friend of Nathan’s tells him that Detroit has become a paradise, with greenhouses full of food and plenty of solar energy for everyone, it sounds like the perfect place to escape. With an asthmatic young son and a new baby on the way, they’ll have to find a safe place they can call home or risk freezing to death in this harsh new world. His wife, Cyndi, has diligently prepped food and supplies, but it’s not enough to get them through a never-ending winter.

Nathan Tolley is a talented mechanic who has watched his business dry up due to gas shortages following the drastic tectonic shifts. Shifts in the Earth’s crust have led to catastrophe and now the North Pole is located in the mid-Atlantic, making much of the eastern United States an unlivable polar hellscape. No one could have predicted the terrifying impact of human interference in the Arctic. In the dawn of a new Ice Age, families everywhere are taking to the road to escape the frigid landscape-but you can’t outrun the cold.

Freezing Point by Grace Hamilton