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the street. Cautiously she peeked around the door.
    In the middle of the road was a majestic maple tree. It lay broken and twisted in a sea of shattered branches. Dead – killed by the ice as surely as if it had been shot. The two biggest branches in its crown had buckled under the weight of ice and fallen in opposite directions, splitting the trunk right down to the ground. The heart of the maple had been violently torn apart, baring its dark interior surrounded by the broken bones of fresh yellow wood. Alice had never really taken much notice of the tree but had the weird feeling that she wanted to cry.
    The neighbours milled around the carcass. Where had they all come from? Had everyone been hiding inside their homes? One of them got a gas-powered chainsaw from his garage and revved it up. Alice couldn’t watch them further dismember the tree so she went back inside. She could hear the whine of the chainsaw even from the kitchen and it sounded worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. She went back to bed and pulled the covers over her head. This wasn’t an ordinary blackout.
    Alice was well and truly scared. Uncle Henri couldn’t come soon enough.
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    Henri was having a hard time staying on the road. The trip had taken three times as long as normal, but he was nearly to the bridge that led to the city of Montréal. On the radio, announcers talked about damage completely beyond Henri’s ability to imagine. How could two days of freezing rain do so much harm? How could so much of the power grid be down? The announcer talked about pylons being crushed by the weight of the ice, twisted and flattened into useless metal sculptures. Surely that was impossible. Pylons were transmission towers made of tonnes of steel, some reaching 175 metres into the sky. How much ice would it take to crush such a structure? Henri could only shake his head. The radio once more caught his attention.
    Breaking news: The major power substation in Saint-Hyacinthe has just failed.
    Henri had to concentrate hard not to slip off the road. So, they had lost their power too. It wasn’t an immediate problem for his family as they had a generator to use for backup power. But lots of his neighbours didn’t have one. Generators, at least the size you needed to run a dairy farm, were very expensive, thousands of dollars for something you might never need. But his neighbours did have cows. Cows that needed to be watered and milked, tasks that required power. Lots of it. He needed to get home.
    But what of petite Alice? All alone in the dark? He had promised to get her. Henri was torn. She was a good girl and her dad would be checking in as often as possible. Could she be brave? Or would she be better off at the farm? Probably. At least no one would have to worry about her there. He’d come so far, after all.
    Attention: We have just been informed that bridges to the island of Montréal are closing. Ice buildup has reached the point that there is a grave danger of injury and death from ice falling from the overhead structures of the bridges. We repeat: bridges to the island of Montréal are closed.
    The decision was made for him. There was no way to get to Alice that didn’t involve a bridge. She would have to be brave. Henri said a quick prayer for her and turned the four-wheel drive around.
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    Sophie hated playing video games with Sébastien. The games he liked were all about strategy, and Sébastien’s mind worked in such devious ways that it was like playing with a crazy person. Sophie had had to learn to be a good loser because winning was an impossible feat around her brother. And she didn’t like it – not one bit. Who likes to lose all the time? Sophie could think one, maybe two moves in advance. She generally expected her opponent to make the same moves she would, but Sébastien never did. And yet the ridiculous things he did always worked in the end, leaving her trapped with no power, no weapons, no spare lives and no way out. Sophie