The whiteness was Granquist. She was dead.
Kells lay there awhile in the mud, on his belly, with his face close to Granquist’s face.
He could not think. He could feel the awful, barbed pain in his body; after a while, fear. He looked up at the light and a wave of panic swept suddenly over him, twisted his heart. He wanted to go into the darkness, away from the light. He wanted the darkness very much.
He kissed Granquist’s cold mouth and turned and crawled through the mud away from the light, away from the voices.
He wanted to be alone in the darkness; he wanted the light to please go away.
He whispered, “Please go away,” to himself, over and over.
The ground was rough; great rocks jutted out of the mud, and there were little gullies that the rain had made.
After a while he stopped and turned and looked back and he could not see the light any more. Still he crawled on, dragged his torn body over the broken earth.
In the partial shelter of a steep sloping rock he stopped, sank forward, down.
There, after a little while, life went away from him.