He became an animal, in his mind and in reality.
The cold sustained him. It forced him to keep his eyes open, forced him to take deep breaths, forced him to keep moving his legs. It diminished the pain.
From time to time, he heard them. Far away, distant echoes rolling through the mountains like thunder. He swore he heard them barreling through the trees behind him, but whenever he turned, all he saw were the branches shaking in the breeze. He heard their grunts, that repeated fist-to-the-gut sound, and yet never saw them. After a while, he realized his own mind was conjuring most of the noises and began to doubt his sense of hearing.
Every second of life was a gift, a gift endured in infinite agony, but a gift nonetheless. Each hour that passed brought him closer to help. He began to hope. He began to plan. He started to envision different scenarios: barging into a rancher’s house and awaiting Medevac while deputies radioed directions to field units; walking into the Sheriff’s Department, slamming Baumann’s head down on the desk, and flying up into the mountains on a chopper with a heavily armed SWAT team; leading a small army into the hills to wipe each and every one of those monsters off the face of the planet.
Day turned to evening and evening to night. Darkness fell and he made a wish on the lone star he’d seen through the cloud cover in days, and then sacrificed hope to wage battle with his fear.
They come at night.
And still he placed one foot in front of the other. Despite the pain, despite the sensation of bone grinding against bone, despite the rib fragments that prodded his lungs with each inhalation, despite the bitter cold and the frostbite gnawing at his bare skin, despite the fear and the loneliness and the isolation and the memories of his dearest friends being butchered. Despite it all, he endured.
One foot in front of the other.
Forward.
Down.
Help.
November 21st: Rocky Mountains
Today
A part of him knew that night had become day, but that part now resided in the darkness of his mind. His body was an automaton; a machine capable of little more than shivering and breathing. And walking. Walking and stumbling and falling and pushing himself back to his feet only to walk and stumble and fall again.
Forward.
Down.
Help.
He had no idea where he was, no idea how far he had traveled, or how far he had left to go. Every tree was identical to the last, every peak a twin to the one he just passed, every valley a bottleneck opening onto another just like it.
Forward.
Down.
Help.
His toes vanished for long stretches of time, only to announce their return when they caught fire inside his boots. His fingers did the same. Alternately freezing, burning, and vanishing.
Forward.
Down.
Help.
Dawn. Sunrise. Morning. Afternoon. Sunset. Twilight. Night. All irrelevant concepts, words to mark time when time itself, it seemed, had ceased to exist. Or at least ceased to matter.
Forward.
Down.
Help.
The him that was him was no longer him. The legs that supported him were no longer his. He was the river beneath the ice, flowing slowly and sluggishly, yet inexorably downhill.
Forward.
Dow-
Darkness.
Coburn regained consciousness with his face in the snow, vaguely aware that he had fallen yet again. He coughed out a mouthful of snow and pushed himself to all fours-
— only to awaken in the black world again. He couldn’t breathe. He panicked and pushed himself up on trembling arms. It took all of his strength to rise to his knees so that he could claw the snow out of his eyes and mouth.
A light.
A distant golden aura through the shifting branches and blowing flakes.
He bellowed in triumph, an animal sound that summoned a warm trickle of blood from his trachea.
He managed to create momentum and willed his legs to carry him onward.
Help.
November 21st: Pine Springs, Colorado
Today
Screaming.
All of the people in the diner are screaming.
The man sees them only as silhouettes, for the elements and the snow have blinded him. Red blebs float through his field of view, but his resolve is undaunted. He rolls onto his side and manages to prop himself up against the wall. He’s on a dirty black mat speckled with blue salt crystals from the sidewalk. There’s a tear in his jeans where the skin shows through. It’s marbled black and purple. One leg is crumpled beneath him at an angle that should be causing the snow-covered man pain, or at least significant discomfort, but he is oblivious. He just sits there with his blood-spattered jacket hanging open, the bloody impression of a face on his shirt like the Shroud of Turin.
People distance themselves from the Snowman, crowding toward the back of the restaurant where a dumbfounded cook is silhouetted in the window below the carousel of tickets. The griddle and the fryer sizzle and smoke behind him, forgotten. None of them want any part of what’s about to happen, yet they are helpless but to watch.
The silhouette of a tall man approaches. A star shape glitters on his breast. His hat has a broad brim. A cowboy hat. His boots make clomping sounds on the tile as he approaches the Snowman on the floor, who cranes his neck in an effort to better visualize the man with the star. The standing man tilts his head toward his shoulder and whispers. There’s a crackle of static and a woman mumbles a reply.
“Help,” the Snowman whispers, but it comes out as little more than a sigh. Again he tries, “Help.”
“Show me your hands!” the Starman shouts. He reaches for his hip, gives a tug, tugs again. His belt jangles. After an awkward moment punctuated by the sounds of crying and whimpering and snapping grease and clattering plates and silverware, the Starman is pointing at the seated man with both hands held together in front of him.
The Snowman smiles and fresh blood seeps from the cracks in his tattered lips. He nods to himself as though in answer to a question only he can hear.
“Help,” the man whispers again and starts to cry. He leans forward and makes a horrible animal sound that could be a sob or a laugh or in response to any of the myriad emotions that rapidly play upon his face.
He reaches out and picks up the severed head. The eyes are sunken into the sockets and the cranium is misshapen from the Snowman repeatedly falling onto it. The lips are pulped and the front teeth are gone. One of them is stuck to the blood on the Snowman’s shirt. It is obvious both by the sight and the smell that the head has been separated from the body for some time. And even more obvious, judging by the rictus of pain frozen to the man’s face, that his passing must have been a singularly excruciating experience.
The Snowman holds the head out for the Starman, presents it to him like a gift, an offering.
“Drop it!” the Starman shouts. “Don’t you dare move a muscle!”