The Girl at the End of the Road
The medics would later say that Gus Carras had perhaps twenty minutes left when Nadine Frost found him.
Maybe less.
A sixteen-year-old girl gave him two miles.
She did it with almost nothing—no working phone, no vehicle, no help nearby, and no real understanding of who the dying man in the ditch was.
She only knew one thing.
He needed someone to stop.
It was the third week of October in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.
The maples had already turned red and gold, and many had begun dropping their leaves. The woods along the dirt roads were becoming increasingly bare. Cold air moved down from the north, carrying the smells of wet leaves, wood smoke, and the unmistakable promise of winter.
Far off Route 105, a narrow dirt spur disappeared into the forest.
That was where Nadine Frost lived.
Most people called her Deenie.
Her mother had been the last person to call her that.
Eight months earlier, Nadine had lost both her parents when black ice sent their truck off Route 114 near the Nulhegan River.
She had been sixteen.
There had been no close relative willing or able to take her.
So the county had allowed her to remain in the only home she had ever known—a small hill farm at the end of the dirt road.
The property was hardly impressive.
A leaning cabin.
A wood stove.
Forty acres of rough pasture, spruce forest, stone, and debt.
But it was hers.
Or as close to hers as a sixteen-year-old orphan could manage.
Every morning, Nadine walked two miles to the county road to catch the school bus.
Every evening, she returned alone.
She split her own firewood.
She repaired what she could.
She stretched every dollar.
There were only $211 in a coffee can hidden in the cabin.
A $940 property-tax bill was due in December.
The woodpile probably wouldn't last through February.
And there was another problem.
A neighbor named Merrick Sloan had made no secret of the fact that he wanted her land.
He knew Nadine was vulnerable.
He knew she was alone.
And he believed that eventually the county would remove her from the property.
Then the forty acres would be available.
Nadine knew all of that.
But she had learned something else during those eight lonely months.
When something heavy needed carrying, nobody was coming.
So she carried it herself.
That was why, when she heard the motorcycle, she ran toward the sound.
The Crash
The motorcycle came up the dirt road too fast.
Nadine heard the engine before she saw it.
A deep, rolling growl echoed between the trees.
Then—
Silence.
A violent impact followed.
Metal scraped across stone.
Then nothing.
The birds disappeared from the trees.
Nadine dropped her backpack.
She ran.
Around the next bend, she saw the motorcycle.
It lay thirty feet from the road near a washed-out culvert.
A black touring bike.
Broken front wheel.
Oil spreading into the leaves.
And beside it, half inside the ditch, lay the rider.
Nadine stopped for only a second.
He was enormous.
At least six foot four.
Maybe 260 pounds.
His leather vest had twisted across his back.
There were patches on it.
Hells Angels.
Massachusetts.
A winged death's-head emblem.
Nadine didn't know what any of it meant.
She only knew the man was bleeding badly.
Blood ran from high on his left leg.
There was another injury along his scalp.
His eyes were half open.