Mama?
She found the lumbering figure southeast of her, glowing pink and yellow, and gaining distance. No other animals were in view.
With near-constant glances toward Mama’s shrinking glow, Minnie dug in with desperate gusto, scooping handfuls away from her chest. She placed her hands on either side of her and squirmed upward a few centimeters at a time, dug some more, pushed, until finally at thigh depth, she was able to kick herself completely free.
Her body was racked but her spirit renewed.
Beyond hundreds of overlapping gray-blue tree trunks and two low knolls, Mama was a featureless speck of yellow confetti. Minnie’s fone ranged the Hynka at 3.6K and still retreating. It was time to go.
Maintaining a steady (if slow) jog, Minnie headed due north. The camp was northeast of her, but distance from Mama still had priority over proximity to camp. And Minnie was fairly certain she was leaving behind a traceable scent trail.
The soil shifted from soft, saturated tree litter to dryer, pricklier bits. She cursed her dainty, callous-free station feet, and her absurd, defective glands.
Want to ditch your suit and boots? Pshh yeah. Who the hell needs all that crap?
She winced and paused, skipping on her drenched sock foot to pluck a sticker from its mate. Safety scan. Not even a blip of rootless life.
Unsure if it would make any difference for scent tracking, Minnie skittered up a leaning, semi-bare epsequoia trunk, hopped to a large snowcapped boulder, and slid down the other side. She continued on in this way, with random turns, and scaling unnecessary obstacles, until all of the skin below her shorts burned with the growing chill of sunset.
Three more kilometers behind her. No more snow-free soil patches to relieve her throbbing feet. Though her calves no longer seemed to offer heat, she stopped every twenty or so paces to alternate pressing the bottoms of her feet against them. Her jog had long since downgraded to a shabby hobble. On the bright side, the aching on the side of her head had subsided. Maybe the ear had frozen. Maybe it was now just acting as a pretty gross bandage.
No longer paying attention, route guidance surprised her with a ping.
She’d traveled to the same latitude as the camp. Less than 5K to go, due east. She might even be able to DC with John. Give him a heads up before she shambled into the site. Nope. Her looping DC request was still reaching out every ten seconds. He could be asleep. Hopefully he hadn’t sunk his paws into the med cookie jar again.
4K. Snow coming down from her left. Scary clouds overhead. Legs pattering along on autopilot. She’d probably move just as fast with long walking strides, but she was determined to keep her heart rate up. She fantasized about the heater. How outraged would John be if she brought it into her sleeping bag with her? “Fire hazard and rules and razzle frazzle grumple!” She smiled and felt her stiff cheeks tremble. A violent palm rub on the numb tip of her nose. She better not have frostbite on top of everything else. Man, her feet… how could they not be ruined forever?
2K. Safety scan. Still not even a blip of—
John?
No.
No life in thermal view. Gear was visible in mag. She could see the side of a skimmer. Cases. Her pace quickened.
There was zero sign of John. The outline of the tent was visible but no body inside, not even a dead one. As the distance closed, she noticed the missing skimmer. He’d left the site, gone out looking for her.
Dammit, John!
But how the hell had he managed that?
Two layers of fresh, dry clothes, envirocap, pairs of gloves and runners, and with a few teasing minutes of glorious heater time, Minnie hastily tore down the filled tent, stuffing the bundle between other gear on the second skimmer, and launching into a hostile sky. The blizzard had yet to reach its full fury, but visibility was already nil, and abrupt up- and downdrafts had the skimmer console insisting she immediately land.
“UNSAFE CONDITIONS! LAND WITHOUT DELAY!”
Repeated slaps failed to silence the obnoxious alerts. She tuned it out, instead training her thermag focus on the air all around her. The skimmer, too, maintained a constant watch for other active units, whether aloft or grounded.
The heater in the tent had been off but still warm. John couldn’t have been gone for long. Minnie’s main challenge was in not knowing the direction John had traveled. Her shoulders buttressed against the wind, deft snowflakes still slunk their way into her collar, trickling down her chest and back. Riding the skimmer like a surfjet over wild breakers, she oscillated her head and eyes for a near-360 view.
It didn’t take long to find a sign of John. He’d left a trail.
A mere half-K west of the camp, a stack of thin gold and salmon bands in an epsequoia revealed the scattered remains of their medkit—the case itself lying wide on a high pad, while its contents littered layers of lower pads below. They’d need all of it, but no time to land and gather it all now. Minnie placed a pin in her map and continued on, slower, following the line created by their campsite and the medkit location.
Not even 100m west, a splayed survival suit, half-buried in a snowdrift. It was Minnie’s suit with the boots still attached. Another pin.
Snow in her eyes. Incessant body shakes. She pressed her hips to the warm panel.
A sharp dodge around an especially tall, swaying tree.
“UNSAFE CONDITIONS! LAND WITHOUT DELAY!”
Her heart thumped. Three more glowing points quivered in thermag, laid out ahead in the swirling whiteout like landing lights on some remote runway. The farthest was the biggest. Accelerating, Minnie streaked past the first two without a glance.
She banked round with eyes fixed on the scene. One quarter through the circle, her life drew up into her throat, compressing and withering there all at once—an unrealized seedpod decaying atop rock.
John’s rugged skimmer had come out mostly unscathed, only splitting in two: pad and console assembly, still clinging to each other by outstretched cables and glistening fiber ribbons. Their pilot, however, lay twisted and broken, half covered by the skimmer pad. A dark crown of hair and a single gloved hand, draped on the overturned pad, were all that remained unburied by snow.
As she descended beside him, his remaining body heat dropped into single digits.
Her skimmer was pleased she’d finally complied. “NOW SEEK SHELTER!”
Slogging through deep snow to John’s side, she disabled enhanced optics for the grisly view beneath the surface it kept trying to show her. Now, there remained only a few orange knuckles and the back of his head, persistent flurries set to finish the job any minute.
She dropped to her knees and set a gloved hand on his head.
Tears freezing at her eye corners, she shouted over the wind. “You were right about my problem affecting us both. Can’t deny this is my fault.”
Minnie brushed loose snow off his shoulder and back, nudged her legs in beside his body, and set her cheek against the back of his icy suit. There was no warmth here, but she imagined there was. She slid her buried hand up to her chest, wedging it between them, then reached over him with her free arm to grab his stiff hand off the skimmer, pulling it in. A solid, unnatural tok sound she pretended she didn’t hear—a frozen finger or knuckle grazing the skimmer’s plastic corner bumper. No, none of that. This was all quite normal. She’d had a nightmare, crawled into Dad’s bed. He wouldn’t notice until morning. Eyes closed for bedtime.
tok
The haunting sound echoed in her head. A noise created by the impact of two inhuman things. No, an inhuman thing struck by flesh frozen so stiff it could pass for wood. It was how her own body would soon solidify.