We'd been driving in a grey tunnel of rain and gravel and darkness for the last hour. The rain was so heavy it was almost like snow. I turned the high beams off. They lit up the rain and made it difficult to focus on anything else. The road was in terrible shape. It was hard to believe it was the same road I'd driven down just a few days ago. Even with the truck in four wheel drive, I had to keep it in the centre of the road so it wouldn't slide into the ditch.
Tony seemed to love it. "This rain is fantastic! Are you sure we're going the right way? When do we get there?"
Whenever it got really hairy, he jumped up and down in his seat. "We're driving sideways! Holy shit! Are you sure this thing has four wheel drive? How'd you keep it on the road? You can't see anything. Maybe we're not even on the road. There's a river in the middle of the road. I don't know much about engineering but that doesn't seem right. Shouldn't there be better drainage?"
I just kept going forward. I was pretty sure no one else was going to be crazy enough to be on this road tonight and there was no safe place to turn around anyway.
Tony was still bouncing in his seat when I turned on to the side road that took us towards camp. "Almost there," I said. "Maybe ten more miles."
"Fantastic!" said Tony.
The road curved down towards a creek. The truck started to slide again. I knew if I hit the brakes we would just go into the ditch so I gave it a little bit of gas and kept it turned into the skid. We slithered a long slow ess down and then up towards a one lane wooden bridge. I suddenly had a sick feeling that there wouldn't be a bridge there. The approach to the bridge was slightly lower than the bridge itself. You couldn't actually see the deck of the bridge until you were almost on it. But it was all right. The bridge was there.
We slithered onto it at a slight angle. "No worries," I said.
"Holy Shit!" said Tony. "Look at that!"
I was looking down the length of the bridge, the way that I wanted the truck to go. The truck itself was pointed slightly off to the side. This meant the headlights were also pointed off to the side, and this is where Tony was looking.
I glanced in the direction of the headlights. They shone on whitewater that was maybe a metre below the bridge. The creek was now a river. Fallen trees and brush were trapped against the bridge supports. As the truck straightened out, I gunned the engine.
"I can't believe how small this bridge is," said Tony. "Who would make a bridge this small for a river like that? It's madness."
We made it across the bridge. There was no point looking behind us. There was nothing but blackness back there.
A few minutes later we pulled into camp. The dining tent was lit up from within with a warm yellow glow. We could hear music and laughter even over the rain.
"Wow!" said Tony. "It's beautiful!"
I pulled the truck up beside the front of the cookbus. I honked the horn a couple of times. Tony and I grabbed the bags of loot from the convenience store. I got out of the truck and ran to the door of the cookbus. Tony followed.
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