He takes my hands in his. His skin feels rough, calloused, impossibly cold, but his grip holds steady. He starts rubbing my hands, creating friction, forcing blood back into the capillaries.
“Listen to me. We’re going to move to the ridge. Gives us the high ground. Forces them to come up. Forces them to expose themselves.”
“And then?”
“And then I break their formation.”
“You only have one gun.”
“I have twelve rounds.” He cuts through the objection. “And darkness. And you.”
“Me.”
“You hide. The rocks at the base of the ridge. Get behind them and stay low. Cover your mouth with your scarf to mask the heat of your breath. Thermal sees everything. Become a rock. Become ice.”
The implication hangs in the air. He isn’t planning onusfighting together. He’s planning on fighting alone.
“Boyd—”
“If I go down,” he cuts in, the intensity of it silencing me. He leans closer, his breath clouding in the narrow space between us. “You run. You don’t look back. You don’t try to help. You head due north until you hit the river. The water hides your tracks. You go until you find a road.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
The refusal comes from instinct. The rebellion of the survivor.
“Iris.” He reaches out, cupping my face. His thumb brushes the bruise on my cheek, a tender, startling touch in the middle of the nightmare. A touch belonging in a bed, not a battlefield. “This is what I do. I’m the shield. You’re the life. That’s the deal.”
“I didn’t agree to that deal.”
“You did when you got in the truck.” He stands, breaking the contact. The warmth vanishes. He pulls me with him. “Time’s up. Move.”
We leave the shelter of the overhang and plunge back into the storm.
The hike to the ridge unfolds as a nightmare.
The snow sits deeper here, reaching my mid-thigh. Every step fights a battle against physics. I have to lift my leg, heave it onward against the resistance of the drift, and stomp down to find purchase. My muscles scream. Lactic acid floods my thighs, searing hot. I want to stop, letting the snow take me, letting the darkness have me.
But Boyd powers forward. A relentless force of nature. He breaks the path. He pulls me through the drifts. He doesn’t let me fall. He’s the engine keeping us both moving, burning his own reserves to fuel mine.
We reach the rocks. Massive boulders tumbled together by some ancient avalanche, forming a natural fortress on the slope.
He shoves me into the crevice between two of them. Tight, cold, and dark.
“Stay down. Don’t make a sound.”
He moves away.
He doesn’t stay near me. He separates himself, crouches behind a massive pine tree twenty feet to my left, bracing the pistol against the bark. He becomes part of the wood, silent and deadly still.
We wait.
Minutes stretch into hours. The cold deepens, settling into the hollows of my body. I shiver in violent tremors rattling my teeth, threatening to give away my position. I wrap my arms around myself, burying my face in the wool scarf, trying to holdonto the memory of warmth. Trying to hold onto the memory of the fire and his hand on my neck.
Then, beams of light cut through the trees.
White, spectral fingers groping in the dark. They sweep back and forth, illuminating the falling snow like static on a dead channel. They move in silence, with discipline.
Their silhouettes emerge.
