She gets to her feet and grabs the pot from its perch at one end of the hearth. Karo rocks a little in her seat.

“Any minute now,” she says. “We should hear the purr of the plow engine. Isn’t that right?” She leans her head against the back of the couch and laughs.

Maeve pauses, watching her, then throws on her coat and goes to the back entrance with the pot to scoop snow. She’s careful to wedge herself firmly against the door, never breaking contact with it; there’s no telling if the lock will jam should the door fall closed, leaving Maeve stranded outside.

She straightens up, squinting at the trees. It’s the same view as the night before, although she’s peering into daylight this time. There are no shadows now, no moonlight. No hint of a bear’s huff or rough grunt.

She feels watched all the same.

Maeve sees the dusky room from Sadie’s video form again in her mind, another kind of dreamscape. The camera over Maeve’s bare shoulder. The light comes up, bleaching her skin. Sim crosses the room to meet her.

There is no sound at all outside of the wind, the creaking of the near tree branches, and the occasional rhythmic flap of an awning or a flag somewhere out of sight. The snow is falling heavier now.

Always snow.

There is no motor. No plow.

“You’re beginning to wish you’d gone with them, aren’t you?” Karo, still wrapped in her blanket, still unwilling to leave the couch.

Nothing, Maeve thinks, could be further from the truth. She doesn’t want to be here at all.

Maeve wishes to God she had never come.

Karo seems off, in a deeper way. Paralyzed for the moment, biting at her thumb. She had high expectations for rescue by sunup; now the sun is up, and nothing has changed. Maeve has already mentioned the ice forming in the upstairs toilets and the news landed poorly.

“There’s no reason to think we’ve been abandoned,” Maeve says. But she’s doing the math in her head—it’s been eighteen hours since the others left.

She gets up to check the melting snow, pulling off the lid and giving the pot a violent shake.

What could have gone wrong? They got to the village and no one was there. There were other, bigger slides; the slides multiplied on each other. The trip from the empty village down to where people are did not go as well. Did not go at all.

She looks back to Karo, smaller and harder than ever where she’s curled in place on the couch.

“I know Dan said—”

“Oh, fuck what Dan said.” Karo’s head snaps up. “If Dan doesn’t show up with his rescue crew in another day or two, it’ll be you on your own, trying your luck down the mountain,” she says. “How much longer do you think we can really survive here?”

The speed of the turn throws Maeve for a loop. She can’t quite respond.