Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

The beep-beep-beep was a reassuring sound that brought him back like the sing-along bouncing ball...

Broker was used to sleeping alone because his wife was in the army and, except for her pregnancy and a short maternity leave...

So, what do you think? Broker jerked a thumb at the low clouds.

Ahhouuu.
Milt gave a dare-danger howl as he and Allen sculled in place...

HOLYJESUSFUCKINCHRIST!
The ice water shattered his blood into red pins and needles.

Numb, Milt gawked into the storm. Allen stared at his trembling, useless surgeons hands.

The storm left behind gloomy flurries that stuck to their faces, melting and trickling down their cheeks.

Allen rode a police cruiser into town from the east as the blizzard moved in from the west.

Next stops the dock, the pilot yelled. I put her down upwind to try and drift into the sucker...

Milt lay in the ER room cubbyhole draped in a floral-patterned hospital smock with an IV...

Booop... Booop... Booop.
Shit! Call a code. Hes arrested in here! Amy yelled...

It was still snowing. But softer now, almost out of respect. Stop signs, huh, mulled Dave Iker.

Amy was not alone. Two snowmobile jocks, mistaking her troubled, fixed stare for an intoxicated cripple...

Nina Pryce.
If ever a name destroyed sleep. He lurched up, ducked...

Its all shadows now.
Sinking. Velvet suffocation.

I dont suppose anybody brought in the other canoe, did they? Id hate for it to sit out there all winter.

Directory assistance listed the number of Stovall and Hensen Associates in Timberry, a suburb east of the Twin Cities.

Jolene Sommer hung up the phone and paused for a moment with her palm on the plastic receiver...

Hed grown up fascinated with the war-soaked fiction of Hemingway, James Jones, and Norman Mailer...

Allen, almost jaunty, swung a black satchel bag in his left hand. It was an old-fashioned doctors bag...

When Amy wheeled into the parking lot, Broker, antsy, was pacing at the end of the boat dock puffing on a cigar.

The Buddhists say the mind is a monkey chasing its tail, suffering and desire going round and round.

Broker had always taken back roads and harvest fields for granted, but now he saw that Washington County...

Broker was not one to dream.
So the sudden flash of Sommers startling acetylene eyes jolted...

After breakfast Amy took off on her shopping errand and Broker had some time to kill before his coffee...

Broker drove east on I-94 and tried to see Jolene as a lush who was one drink away from insanity and death.

Hank toured hells he had knownDetroit got him ready for the hill, in the hammer shop at Huron Forge and Machine.

Most of the wood was split and stacked when Earl stepped onto the deck outside Hanks room and waved at Jolene.

Earl looked funny with shards of computer glass dusted in his hair and his eyebrows, so Jolene left him sputtering...

Amys shopping bags were stacked on the mud porch and she met him at the door. Before he could open his mouth...

The constellation Orion tilted on the horizon like a sideswiped road sign, and Broker was driving way too fast...

Jesus, it was a dump. A dump on Arcade on the east side of St. Paul where the mooks went to watch women get naked...

Something shook him and he opened his eyes.
Oh-oh.

Jolene slept through the alarm and missed turning Hank three times. Now, as a thin spoke of sunlight eased...

J.T. and his family left for Iowa before dawn, towing the trailer full of ostriches.

Amy left a note tacked on the door: WENT FOR A RUN . Her bags were stacked on the porch, ready to go.

Eyebrows.
Brokers nickname in the world of snitches...

After a solitary dinner in an overcrowded restaurant, Allen got away from people and drove toward his town house...

After getting Earl admitted to the emergency room at Timberry Trails, Broker used a pay phone in the waiting room...

Jolene savored Brokers brief phone message as she ate a quick Healthy Choice microwave dinner.

Broker was speeding down the back roads again. Remember, Allen Falken has a way of showing up over there, he said.

Allen had been kneed in the stomach once, coming down from a rebound in high school ball.

Earl had just lost an argument with a nurse about trading his Percocet prescription up to morphine...

Theyd folded down the rear seat and put in a futon mattress and blankets. Broker lashed Hanks wheelchair to the rack...

He was moving in the back of a car and it was all black outside the boxy windows. Not far away he sensed terrific cold.

Amy had screamed, Look out, but the man had already stepped across the doorway and struck Broker from behind.

Jolene had remained mostly quiet. Now she turned and studied Allens face, which looked haggard...

Hank was resolved to go out on his kind of play; hed bet it all on one gesture. Either hed get the needle or a response.

Jesus, what a night for cold-blooded murder.
Allen and Earl stood talking about how they were going to do...

There was this sleep-ocean and he was sinking to the bottom, down in the dark where he bumped into fish without eyes...

She had grabbed Hanks legs and hauled him unceremoniously off the daybed, through the kitchen...

The closest phone was at the lodge.
Annies truck headlights streaked down the driveway...

Survive Absolute Zero: The U.S. Army Guide