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For days Ivan had been slogging his way through the snow, the once-sharp black of his boots weathered to a grey gleam. His feet were frozen inside woolen socks, his nose redder than lava, and his breath came in dry gasps. Puffing his cheeks at the crest of a hill, the tiniest spark of energy leapt through his drained body.

The air was so cold it stung. The landscape was a grey tableau of wintriness - snow, packed tight and deep, covered all. The sky was a flat grey mass from which specks of snow spun dizzily down. The occasional tree would be draped and dripping with frost, and few and far between were the few green leaves stubbornly holding on under the onslaught.

In the distance, mountains gnawed at the silver sky, their jagged teeth seeming to tear into the clouds themselves. White-capped, they stood sentinel, guarding the valley which Ivan knew to be behind them. His heart sped up a little, like a drowsy wolf which has caught the scent of prey.

He glanced behind him, his breath fluttering impatiently. A slim stick-like figure slowly trudged up the slope of the hill, hood-wrapped head angled downwards. Their ghostlike breath was visible even from Ivan’s vantage.

He turned his eyes back to the ferocious mountains, warming his gloved hands on the heat of his exhalations. The dull crunch of snow under foot grew slowly behind him, until the figure stood beside him, warming her hands as well and dropping her rusted walking stick.

“Goddamn,” she said, her voice windy and quick. “Toldya we shouldn’t have left.”

Ivan ignored her, scanning the land between the hill and the promised mountains. Nothing he could see, but the twirling whirring flakes of snow could easily hide threats. There was no choice, of course, except forward, but it was good to check.

He gestured with his head, and began stomping down the hillside, his eyes once again roving over nothing more exciting than the endless expanse of snow. He heard a reluctant step behind him, and then more steps as his companion pushed herself back into motion.

The whistle of the wind rendered Ivan all but deaf, and so the rippling growls and throaty moans that usually served to warn him were gone. Instead he found himself suddenly knocked to the side, and before his mind had registered the change he felt something clamp itself on his arm. Heart drummed into a sprint, he ripped his arm away from whatever it was and sent his other fist flying in its general direction. His fist met brittle bone, and a firecrack snap echoed in the frigid air. Off-balance, he landed ass-first in the snow.

His vision blurry from the jolt of the fall, he squinted into the storm, dragging himself backwards with his hand. His shadow-painted attacker rose from the blow and lunged at him once again.

Using one of his hands to hold the thing back he searched frantically for his knife. The assailant, his peeling skin and fungus-crusted gums now revealed to Ivan as it snapped dog-like at him, scrabbled at his front and even got an overgrown nail through the fabric of Ivan’s coat.

Arm wobbling with the pressure of the snapping creature, Ivan felt fear douse his body as his frantic fingers failed to find his knife. The creature’s white-pupiled eyes were inches from his face. He turned his head away and remembered with dread that he had stashed his knife on the opposite side of his body –

A dull squelch reached his ears, and the creature suddenly lost its energy. Looking up, Ivan saw the rusted walking stick protruding from the thing’s ear, and quickly it disappeared and Ivan threw the creature off of him. Standing up, brushing himself off, his companion’s voice once again battered his ears.

“I toldya, I toldya. We could be fucking safe as buttons right now, sitting inside a heated cabin, but no-o-o.”

“Our supplies were limited and you know it,” Ivan snapped, finally looking his companion full in the face.

“Screw you. We had time,” she said, bitterness staining her tongue. He slapped her with one last glare and continued walking.

His own mind was spinning, whirling with guilt. They probably could have stayed for a while longer, maybe found a better solution, and he knew it. But the fences were coming apart and food was all but gone, he argued to himself. No use arguing, he told both sides. But still his mind fluctuated.

Another attack by the creatures came before they had gone half a mile. His companion’s muffled screams alerted him, and soon he was slamming his knife into the thing’s skull. The next attack was a mile later, and this time the walking corpse nearly got a tooth into his cheek. That one was dispatched with a kick to the side and a vicious stab in the eye.

Finally, however, the top of the stone archway appeared in Ivan’s vision, and the mountains loomed large over him. His breath quickened, crystallized water clouding his vision. This was it. So close now.

But the archway did not frame a long, clear-cut line through the rock as it was supposed to. It was, in fact, filled with rock.

Ivan stared with an awful sinking in his chest. The tunnel, which previously had bored through the mountain like a gopher through dirt, was stuffed full of collapsed stone and spilling the stuff out into the cold air. It was totally blocked off.

His companion was beside him in a minute, and then she too looked up and saw the failure of their quest. The first sound from her bluish lips was;

“Fuck.”

And then a shriek.

And Ivan turned to see one of the ungodly things sink its teeth into the back of his companion’s neck. With a choked cry he threw himself at it, pulling his knife from its sheath with a slick swish and plunging it into the creature’s head. He swiftly threw it aside and turned over his companion, who was in the midst of rapid-fire panting and sweating terror. Cradling her greasy blonde head in his hands he felt near her brainstem. Sure enough, his fingers trailed over torn skin and upwelled blood.

A babbled stream of no’s spilled from his mouth as he blinked away tears. Her eyes were already emptying, leeched of intensity and focus. Her face was dusted with snow, and her skin slowly lost its pinkish vibrance as barely-audible sputters issued from her dying lips. He leaned in close to hear;

“Don’t - ” and nothing more.

Something had lodged itself in his throat, like a block of ice, and he found he could no longer make sounds or even breathe. Tears finally dripped from his dried-out eyes and he hugged her face close to his. Then with practiced poise he thrust his knife into her temple, looking away as birdcalls fluttered in the distance. He looked back to the tunnel, his eyes already fading into depression.

And then he kept walking.