Shiver
Saying that it’s freezing would be an understatement. There was a rumble, and the next thing we know, we’re being swept up in this mass of sliding snow. There were eight of us. There’s six of us now. We found Dustin when we saw the red of his jacket poking up from beneath the white cascade that had engulfed us all. We dug all around him, calling his name in hopes that he could just hold on a little longer. I almost wish we hadn’t, because when we finally reached him, his body was so contorted that while he was on his stomach his head was still turned to look up at us. His face was still frozen in fear. Ryan vomited, and I would have too if I wasn’t in complete shock. We covered him back up and marked his spot with a stick and some torn cloth. We never did find June.
Thankfully, our backpacks had stayed with us through the tumbling, and we had each packed some small snacks and bottles of water. We were so sure that a rescue team would be coming any minute, that they would hear about the avalanche and immediately sound out aid. I guess we’d forgotten that we had chosen a route that was advised against for that exact reason. But it was Max’s birthday and that’s where he wanted to go, so we went. It had been ages since we’d heard of any mishaps on this trail, so we thought it would be okay, we thought the warnings were just from an outdated incident. We were so wrong.
In the first few hours, after everyone who’d made it out found each other, we would trek to the wood line, not far from where the site of the incident so that it wouldn’t be hard to spot us if rescue flew overhead. As the hours passed and the sun started to set, it became a harsh reality that there was no rescue coming. Juliet couldn’t stop crying and I remember just sitting quietly at her side, worried that she was going to dehydrate herself. Max couldn’t stop pacing, Eli was staring out across the snow, Eric had stormed off in despair that we couldn’t find June, and Ryan was holding my hand in his, at least as much as you can hold hands in the thick gloves we were wearing. I must’ve started shaking, because he put his arm around me and pulled me in tighter. Maybe he was just happy we weren’t experiencing what Eric was experiencing.
As night came, we all huddled together as temperatures dropped even further. I could feel the chill in my bones. Our teeth audibly chattered, and the sound was intermingling with the stifled crying of any given member of the group at any time. Howls echoed in the distance, and I couldn’t help but think of Dustin’s body still buried in the snow, and the fact that we hadn’t found June. Would the wolves come for them? Would they eventually come for us? These are the questions that would rack my brain as the night raged on, unrelenting in the snapping of twigs and the chill of the wind slicing at our skin. At the time, sleep was still something we craved, like drifting out of the nightmare of our reality. It wouldn’t be long before sleep became something that we feared, something that we realized might be something we might not awake from.
The next day the shock wore off, but the panic still remained. We hadn’t properly stored our water bottles, so they had frozen overnight. We were desperately dehydrated, sleep deprived, and terrified. We stuck the bottles into our coats, trying to use our body heats to melt them as quick as possible. It was mostly quiet, with the occasional attempt at reassurance from one of the guys, either Max or Ryan. Eric would continue to wander back into the woods, and we could hear his hoarse voice still screaming out June’s name. The silence in return was deafening and heartbreaking. Again, I thought about the howling that had echoed through the area around us. I knew we weren’t going to see June again; I think we all knew, but nobody could bare to tell Eric. He never did stop calling for her, not even after five days had passed. His voice became so strained that he couldn’t speak, and his calls were barely legible.
We were literally starving, burning calories as we shivered through each day and night. I guess maybe that’s why Eli snapped. He had been eerily quiet up until this day, and when he we burst up from the ground to tackle Eric, we were all too exhausted to stop him. We called out from our spots against the trees as Eli continued pounding his fists into Eric’s face, crying how he just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take hearing him scream her name into the ether day after day. It had driven him mad, and we hadn’t noticed until it was too late. Ryan tried to stand up, I felt his muscles tense against me, but I wrapped my hand around his arm before he could move any further.
The air was still when Eli’s blows finally came to an end. Max and Juliet were across from Ryan and I, and we all looked at each other not knowing what to do next. The red of Eric’s blood turned a shade of pink as it seeped into the snow and Eli’s breathing was ragged as he was still poised overtop of him. He continued panting as he looked around at each of us, huddled against one another looking at him in horror of what he’d done. Something in his eyes told us not to move a muscle. It was unhinged, glaring, and starved. Max gently called out his name, as tears silently slid down Juliet’s face. Slowly, Eli would come back to us, but when he looked down at what’d he done it was too much for him to take. He was fragile. We all were, but we were all friends, and we were supposed to stick together.
What came next still haunts me more than anything else. Eli had broken, and there was no fixing him. He was past the point of no return. That’s what we would tell ourselves after we watched as he struck his own head with a rock until he collapsed, his body laid still next to Eric’s. We were running low on water, and only had one or two bites left of the protein bars we had rationed out. We were too weak to move their bodies, so instead we moved to the tree line on the other side of the avalanched path, averting our eyes as we passed by the stick that marked Dustin’s resting place. The howls played once more in my mind as I thought about them laying there, exposed, but there was nothing we could do. With only four of us left, huddling for warmth became less and less effective, especially with the snow soaking into parts of our clothing. Max and Ryan would do everything to start a fire, and at one point they had even managed to get a spark that evolved into a flame. It was the most joyous minute of our time. Sometimes I wonder if that minute of warmth is what pushed me through to the end.
I had tried to pull my gloves off to look at my fingers, but I realized quickly that the gloves were frozen to my fingertips. Even through the numb of the cold, I could feel at the skin tugged with every pull of the glove. I kept repeating over and over in my head that I was not going to die here, that I was going to live and go home and hug my mother. I repeated it so much that I started saying it out loud, rocking to keep warm. Juliet did nothing more than mumble ever so often, though her words had stopped making sense and never reached beyond a whisper. It was at this point that Max and Ryan decided they needed to try and find help. They wobbled as they stood, and I pleaded with Ryan not to go, desperately memorizing the blue of his eyes. It would only serve to become another haunting memory.
They didn’t return. Juliet became totally silent as the day passed and I huddled against her. I almost didn’t notice when she took her last breath, the shuddering of her body mimicked the shivering. Night fell and there was no one left but me, and the wolves. I closed my eyes as I listened to the crunch of their paws in the snow, thinking that was it. I surrendered to it. Just as soon as I had, there came a burst of light in my face. Walkie-talkie static, and voices surrounded me, “We found them.”