Zoe made it to the edge of the fir trees—right up to where the forest died suddenly and gave way to fire-charred stumps and snags. She was carrying Jonah’s coat and gloves, hugging them against her chest in a bundle. Did she still think she could find Jonah, or was she just stumbling the last quarter mile to Bert and Betty’s house to collapse? She didn’t even know anymore. The cold had erased everything inside her. She was blank. She was a zombie, lurching forward because she didn’t know what else to do.
The flashlight found something: a dark clump, barely higher than the snow.
Zoe should have been excited at the discovery, but she felt terror wash through her instead. Whatever it was up there in the snow, it wasn’t moving.
She didn’t want to get any closer. She didn’t want to know what it was.
She didn’t want it to be her brother.
It took months to walk the next 15 feet. And even when Zoe was only a few steps away—even when the flashlight was shining right at it, bathing it in a sickly yellow light—she couldn’t figure out what it was. Her mind refused to take it in, refused to record it.
She forced herself forward. She hovered over it. She peered down. It was a dark, tangled mass. It looked lifeless and still. Zoe held her breath and willed her eyes to focus.
It was the dogs.
Since they were both black Labs, you couldn’t tell where Spock’s fur ended and Uhura’s began: they looked like a dark rug flung onto the snow. Zoe knelt down. They’d dug a shallow pit to shield themselves from the wind. She took off a glove and laid a hand on one, then the other.
They were breathing! Something that felt like birds’ wings flapped around in her heart.
The dogs were groggy, halfway between sleep and something worse. It took them a minute to notice that she was rubbing their bellies. Eventually, they began shifting in their icy bed. Spock snorted and sent a puff of fog into the air. Uhura craned her head in Zoe’s direction. She seemed to recognize her and to be grateful she was there. Zoe felt too wrung out to cry or she would have.
Spock and Uhura wriggled some more, trying to wake themselves up. And as their bodies untangled and parted, as they became two distinct animals again, she finally saw something she should have seen immediately, and what she saw made her hate herself for ever thinking they were idiot dogs. They were beautiful dogs! They were brave and glossy and gorgeous Montana dogs!
Because they were lying on something. On someone. They had dug a pit with their paws and pulled him into it—she could see where their teeth had torn his green hoodie—and then lain down on top of him. On top of Jonah. They had lain down on her brother to keep him warm.
two
Jonah was stiff as a mannequin.
Zoe wrapped him in his coat. She blew on his frozen fingers to heat them, though she could barely force any breath out of her body. And she took him up in her arms. She figured she’d have to go back for Spock and Uhura but they shook themselves off and waddled like ancient snow creatures out of the pit. Spock whined. He couldn’t believe what he was being asked to do. Uhura snapped at him, as if to say, “Get over it!”
And then Zoe ran. Through the dead trees, toward Bert and Betty’s. She draped Jonah over both arms and when her arms felt like they’d snap, she heaved him over one shoulder, and when it felt like that shoulder would break, she heaved him over the other. She was shaking too hard to aim the flashlight, so the beam bounced crazily in front of her. It was a miracle that she didn’t smash into a tree and bust both their heads. She was like an animal running. Her heart was pounding, not just in her rib cage but in her ears—loud, like someone drumming on a bucket.
The joke was, she was probably going a tenth of a mile an hour, staggering through the snow like a drunken yeti. But she was getting there. She was covering ground. When she could finally see Bert and Betty’s house through the trees, she totally lost it and cried. Even the dogs barked with something like happiness. Actually, Uhura sounded happy, and Spock sounded like he was yipping, “Are we there yet?”
Zoe laughed, and whispered to Jonah, “Oh my god, Spock is such a wuss.” He was too out of it to reply, but she could feel his little-boy body breathing against her chest—a wheezy but unmistakable in and out, in and out—and that was answer enough.