Dawn doesn’t want to think about that. It will be violence; that’s all she knows. It will be violent and desperate and she’ll probably die.

Dawn doesn’t want to think about that right now. She shoulders her pack and quickens her stride. Digs into the snow and ignores the ache in her muscles and the fatigue behind her eyes.

From the howling behind her, she can tell that Brandon and Evan are near the top of the trench. Ahead of her and Lucas, the ridge climbs, and Dawn knows they’ll have to turn off it soon and descend down to the lake where they camped.

There is nothing to do but to get there.

One foot in front of the other.

They ditch the pack at the far end of the ridge. They have to. There’s no choice.

“We’ll be faster if we’re lighter,” Lucas tells her, drinking from the canteen and catching his breath. “We have to assume that the others aren’t wearing full gear. They’ll gain on us if we don’t shed some weight.”

(Lucas keeps his arm across the tear in the front of his jacket, so Dawn can’t see. She can see how he winces every time he moves. How he’s maybe a little bit paler than normal.)

(But every time Lucas catches her looking, he turns away.)

They ditch the pot and every spare piece of clothing. The stove and the pump, everything that’s weighing them down.

“We can make HQ by tomorrow morning if we push through the night,” Lucas says. “We can’t slow down to cook food anyway.”

They fill their pockets with energy bars and trail mix and refill the canteens from a meltwater stream. Dawn studies the pile of stuff they’re leaving in the snow, and none of it looks extraneous.

What if we get lost?

What if the snow starts again?

What if we don’t make it back by morning?

But Lucas is right. They can’t afford to slow down. They ditch both backpacker meals with the rest of the extra stuff.

Dawn sheds her backpack, and they make for the tree line.

Author’s Note

IF YOU’RE GUESSING that Dawn and Lucas’s ridding themselves of necessary supplies will have consequences?

You’re right.

Chapter 80

IT’S FASTER WITHOUT THAT WEIGHT.

Dawn leaves her gear behind and she and Lucas follow the cairns off the ridge along a trail through a boulder field curving down to their left. They’re dropping altitude again, and in the distance, Dawn can see the first of the lakes they’ll have to pass before they climb to the second and final ridge. Beyond that second ridge, headquarters is maybe a half a day’s hike, but just to get up on that ridge is another four hours’ hike and maybe two thousand feet of elevation changes.

They’re nowhere near safety.