We didn't run.
Running burns heat too fast, scatters thought, leaves mistakes behind like breadcrumbs. Instead, we moved the way winter teaches you to—steady, deliberate, quiet. Each step placed with intention. Each breath measured. Panic stayed caged where it belonged.
Behind us, the trailer glowed faintly through the storm, firelight smothered by snow and distance. The shapes we'd heard never followed immediately. Controllers rarely rushed a claim already made.
They'd collect Rowan later.
That thought tried to claw its way up my throat.
I forced it down.
Iris led, shoulders squared, pace relentless. Her silhouette cut sharp against the gray-white blur, coat snapping in the wind like a warning. She didn't look back. Didn't ask if I was keeping up. She knew I would.
Grief is heavy.
Movement is heavier.
The storm thickened as we put distance between ourselves and the trailer. Snow fell harder now, the flakes dense and wet, sticking to lashes, clinging to fabric until everything felt heavier than it should. My thighs burned. My lungs scraped. Hunger gnawed louder than pain.
I didn't speak.
Neither did Iris.
That silence wasn't empty. It was packed tight with everything we weren't saying. With Rowan's laugh. With the way his smile had held even as the cold hollowed him out. With the truth we'd both seen too late.
Waiting kills quietly.
After an hour, maybe two—I couldn't tell anymore—Iris slowed. Just a fraction. Enough for me to notice.
She raised a fist.
We stopped beneath a skeletal overpass half-buried in snow, concrete ribs jutting up like the remains of something too big to bury properly. The wind tore through the open space, screaming low and constant. No shelter worth trusting.
Iris scanned the ground, then the shadows, then the sky.
"We can't stop long," she said.
I nodded.
She crouched, pulling her pack around, hands moving with mechanical precision. She didn't look at me when she spoke again.
"You shouldn't have lit the fire."
I flinched anyway.
"I know," I said.
A pause.
"You saved him," she added. "For a minute."
That was worse.
"I killed him," I said.
She looked at me then. Really looked. Her eyes were rimmed red, but dry. Sharp. Focused.
"No," she said quietly. "Winter did. You just chose how loud it would be."
I swallowed.
That wasn't absolution. It wasn't accusation either. It was something colder. Something truer.
She stood and started moving again.
We walked until the light shifted again—subtle, but enough to signal dawn trying to claw its way through the storm. The sky turned from black to bruised gray. Visibility shrank. Sound flattened.
That's when the shaking started.
It hit me all at once, violent enough to steal my breath. My hands spasmed. My jaw locked. I staggered, nearly went down.
Iris was there instantly, grabbing my arm, hauling me upright.
"Don't," she said. "Don't you dare stop."
"I'm not—" My teeth chattered too hard to finish.
She dragged me forward, forcing movement, forcing friction, forcing blood to remember where it was supposed to go. She didn't coddle. Didn't comfort. She saved me the only way winter allowed.
After a while, the shaking eased. Pain took its place. I welcomed it.
Pain meant awake.
We found shelter in the husk of a bus half-swallowed by a drift, its roof collapsed inward but walls still intact enough to break the wind. Iris cleared it quickly, efficiently. No bodies. No signs of recent warmth.
Good enough.
We crawled inside and sat with our backs against opposite walls, knees drawn up, space between us like a wound neither of us knew how to close.
Time stretched again.
But this time, it wasn't tempting.
It was just empty.
Iris broke the silence first.
"He shouldn't have offered his food," she said.
"I should've forced him to eat," I replied.
"We both should've left earlier."
"Yes."
She nodded once, sharp.
"That's the lesson," she said. "Not trust. Not kindness. Timing."
I stared at the frost forming along the inside of the bus windows, delicate and cruel.
"I don't want to forget him," I said.
She didn't hesitate. "You won't."
"How do you know?"
"Because forgetting is heavier than remembering," she said. "It takes more out of you."
That landed deep.
She shifted, then reached into her pack and pulled something out. A strip of cloth, frayed at the edges. She handed it to me.
Rowan's scarf.
I stared at it, throat tight.
"He dropped it yesterday," she said. "I picked it up. Didn't think I'd need to give it back this way."
I folded it carefully, fingers clumsy, and tucked it inside my coat, close to my chest.
"Thank you," I said.
She nodded.
Hours passed. The storm screamed itself hoarse outside. We ate the last of what we had, sparingly. Iris insisted I take more than half. I didn't argue this time.
When the light finally strengthened enough to matter, Iris stood.
"We move south," she said. "No more stops like that. No waiting unless the alternative is death."
I rose with her, joints protesting.
"What about burying him?" I asked.
Her jaw tightened.
"The snow will," she said. "Better than we could."
I didn't argue.
We stepped back into the storm, the wind slicing through us, the cold eager and intimate. As we walked, I felt something inside me settle—not heal, not harden. Align.
Winter didn't care about intention.
Only outcome.
Rowan had burned bright.
I would not.
Iris walked beside me now, close enough that our shoulders brushed occasionally, sharing just enough warmth to matter. Not enough to be dangerous.
That was new.
By midday, the storm began to break. The wind faltered. The snow softened. The world widened again, revealing the long, empty stretch of land ahead.
I kept moving.
I always would.
Because somewhere behind us, heat was fading. Bodies were freezing. The infected were learning.
And winter, relentless and patient, had marked us both now.
Not as survivors.
As debts not yet paid.