Dave bolted upright, going from a shallow, uneasy sleep to full wakefulness like a shot of adrenaline had been plunged directly into his heart. He sat up, letting out a startled “What?” as he felt the right side of his face bumping into the stretched nylon wall of the tent where he had been sleeping, as his mind frantically worked to find its bearings is a space that felt unfamiliar and strange.

The first cry was a small one, feeble and slight, hardly more than a grunt pushed out through tightly clenched teeth. Each pain-fueled shout that came after that first one was louder, the jaw letting go of its tension in pursuit of something less restrained, less focused. Over still more time the screams turned from something recognizable, turned away from something human, and slowly began to stretch and twist into something that no longer had a name. It started as just the sound of rage, the grunts and breathing of a mind fighting back at the growing pain, and as the cries continued they became something that collapsed under the weight of his torment. It took almost no time at all before the grunts and cries became the sounds of madness, the sounds of a mind that had been freed from the walls erected around consciousness and existed only to feel. That was when the cries became the sounds of unrelenting experience, just pain, distilled and pure, unending and unsympathetic.

Pat closed his eyes, just for a moment, and when he opened them again it was morning, as if the world itself operated on a light switch, in one instant going from the deep, inky, cold darkness of night to the brightness of the early morning. The young man laying before him was sleeping now, wrapped like a mummy in bandages around his face, his hands, and although they were hidden from sight by blankets, Pat knew his feet were also covered in layer upon layer of rust-stained gauze.

Stacey woke with a start, her second day of snapping into an abrupt consciousness that was as disorientating as it was sudden. Like the previous day, she realized that she wasn’t alone, light breathing coming from the other side of her tent, a shallow, steady rhythm of breaths that greeted her ears at the same time her eyes were greeted by the dim illumination of sunlight filtering down through the thin, colored nylon walls of her tent.

Dave was panting as he finally crested the lip of Rollins Pass, dragging Chase’s limp body behind him. This was the second time that day that he had to pull one of his fellow survivors up the steep slope to his mountain camp and his back and shoulders screamed with pain with every inch of progress he made, his lungs crying out for air with each exertion. His legs groaned and creaked under him as he staggered through the snow, each step strained, clumsy, every bit uncooperative and difficult.

Dave pushed his hand down the stock of the hunting rifle he held, before clumsily sliding it back again, bringing his hand closer to himself. He couldn’t find a way to hold the weapon that felt good in his hands, a position that felt natural. Instead, he wrestled with the weapon’s weight, both literal and symbolic, as he pushed through the snow towards where he expected that the movement he and Pat saw on the horizon would finally reveal itself.

Gus lifted his chin, pulling his dirty tennis ball out of reach of Dave’s extended hand, craning his thick, muscular neck to the right, then jerking it to the left, his black eyes watching the man that frowned back at him.

“I can’t throw the damn thing if you won’t give it to me,” Dave grumbled, his arm still extended.

Stacey pressed her open hand against Owen’s forehead, first her bare palm, then flipping her hand over, using the backs of her fingers to test the man’s temperature. Under her gentle, faint touch, Owen was swimming within the confines of his sleeping bag, moving his arms and legs within the folds of the bedding like he was trying to escape it. He tested his limbs, concentrating on the way they moved and sometimes stuck as his muscles worked, trying to reacquaint himself with their usage.