I find myself staring at the snow, getting breath, as they go. I almost see the shape of the pieces of the plane from here, like I could put it together. I look another half a minute, maybe and I see them getting ahead of me and I get going, dragging my load of wood. After a minute or two more I feel like I’ve been walking in snow for a year, added to the haul I did before, added to falling out of a plane, maybe, and now I’ve got a blanket full of wood that weighs more the further I drag it. Far from the fire like this, even with the wind getting up, it’s surprisingly peaceful. Snow is coming in still heavier and more clouds are coming over too I think, we’re on a giant white slab, getting buried by the hour, all new snow. Sounds hopeful.
I pass a dead guy, a little ways off, and another, I don’t know if I passed them on the way out, my eyes are adjusting more. I look further out to the sides, I see a big flat shadow of cloud moving away across the snow letting more moon down, and I see more and more dark clumps, more dead, a field of dead, even more than I’d seen before.
I stop walking, again, for a moment, looking at the bodies. Without my footsteps in the snow or the others’ it’s incredibly silent, somehow, even with the wind. The buzzing’s gone from my ears, I realize, the pounding too, or I think it is.
I think I hear snow moving behind me. I turn, look back, I don’t see anything, just dark dead dots in the snow, but I keep looking back, another second, a little further into the dark. One of the dead is moving, it looks like, now, trying to get up or worse, shaking, he looks bad. I let go of the load of wood and start walking back to him. Then I start running.
“Hey!” I’m shouting, “I’m coming—I’m coming!“
I shout and run, as hard as I can, because he’s shivering, convulsing, it looks like, some kind of spasm. He’s dying his last, maybe, but he still looks like he’s trying to get up, it’s hard to see, just this dark clump shaking in the snow, the sight’s frightening, I don’t know why, but for some reason I want to get to him before he dies, if that’s what he’s doing, so I keep lunging and huffing through the snow, yelling to him, and he keeps shuddering, retching or something, fighting to stand, convulsing, I can’t tell.
“Hey—” I yell again.
Then he seems to split in two, or I see something jumps off him, half a second, looks up, then jumps back on him. Some fucking thing, an animal.
“Hey!” I yell as loud as I can, as if this guy, who I realize is dead, probably, cares. But I yell, and run faster.
“Get the fuck off him!” I yell.
Its head comes up, looks at me. It’s a wolf, ripping at the guy, and I see, now I’m closer, the guy is dead, if he was alive at all. It was the wolf I saw moving. The wolf just stares at me.
I charge at it, screaming. I don’t know why I’m charging, but the wolf looks up and stares at me and just watches me come at him. I’m thinking he killed him, he was alive and this fucker killed him, or he was dead and he’s got food on him, or he’s at his guts, I don’t know, but I’m charging, yelling, and expecting him to twitch or flinch and turn tail and jump off but he isn’t fucking moving, he’s just watching me.
Then I’m hit sideways. I think I’ve been hit by a piece of plane, I’m in a blur, slammed, and I’m in the snow with my eyes open getting snow jammed up my nose and under my lids again and something’s digging and dragging into my fucking back and dragging me, and somewhere in getting tossed upside down I think it’s the wolf, but it can’t be, and I understand it’s another wolf, locked onto the back of my jacket, or my back, I can’t tell, but it’s tunneling into me, the best it can, and I’m face down in snow now and I get half up off the snow, almost standing, but he hangs on, I pick him up with me, or most of him, by his teeth. I hear him growling.
Then I’m hit again, at the back again but the other side, up under my arm, the other one’s hanging off me now. I’m standing with two of them hanging on to me by their jaws, and they aren’t letting go, and I’m trying to swat with my elbows and grunt and I can’t see them but I think one drops, I think there’s only one now, behind me where I can’t see him or get at him but as I twist I smell fur and his breath and I finally get around enough to see the top of his head and his ears, and I smell more fur, more hot breath, he’s buried in my armpit burrowing his teeth in. Now I see the other is off me. He’s bouncing left and right behind me looking for the next place to latch on while I spin the one on me around, I’m swinging, frantic, trying to shake him.
I can’t tell if the one still on me’s really got his teeth in me or he’s mostly eating jacket. I feel his teeth crunching in, but I don’t know how far they’re in me, or if they’re in me or just hurting. I’m still swinging and trying to stop him getting leverage to really bite, I’m trying to smash him all the harder now that I can see something and I try to twist further and I pull his ear and I bash and bash with my elbow at his head, as hard as I can, like I’m trying to crack his skull. I’m waiting to hear a cracking sound, as if I’m going to be able to hit as hard as that. I hear jacket ripping and I feel muscle or something tearing under my arm and he seems to come loose, but he bounces up again, gets a new bite on my back. I’m still praying he’s getting more jacket than me and he’s snorting, growling, but he is not flinching except to get a better and better grip and try to get the damn jacket out of his way or get more muscle. It’s hurting enough, stabbing, sharp, I think that he must be in me by now.
I look up as the other one hits me again, on my leg, and I kick as hard as I can before he can sink in too deep. He gashes me, feels like, but he comes loose. He took a piece or didn’t, I don’t care, if he’s off me. It hurts, but in the cold it all does, he’s got my whole leg for all I know and I’m nothing but spinal cord on my back, for all I know, I’m a meatless stack of bones fighting when I’m already gone into something’s mouth, nothing to save, but still fighting as if there is.
The one I kicked off jumps up at me, again, and I get my arm up in time, barely, and he locks on my arm in front of me, I get a face-full of his teeth. His breath’s hot. I spin again, the other still on my back, and I get my other arm up and smash him as hard as I can again. He lets loose and tries to get another hold but he misses the bite this time, and drops, and somehow the one who came at my face drops, I think I finally pulled his ear half-off, something came loose, maybe fur. He drops and I spin, and I’ve got the two of them in front of me, and I can see them both for the first time.
I don’t think of running because I know they’d run me down and in the half-second I thought that, I’m thinking, ‘OK, we’ll calm down now, we’ll look at each other and we’ll settle,’ and as I think that they come at me again. I realize I can die now or do otherwise so I charge at one in front and roar and try to seem big and threatening like they tell you to do with other animals, and he leaps right up and goes for my side but he misses. I turn in time and step after him and kick at the side of his head as hard as I can. He backs off a step and I charge again because I can’t run and I can’t stand there, and he almost gets my whole leg in his jaw this time but I snap back and he grazes off, I get my leg out, he doesn’t get a hold, and I kick at his face again, harder, somehow, and he hesitates this time. He doesn’t come in at me, for a second. But the other one jumps right up over my arm and closes his mouth on my face, over my eyes.