There was less than a mile of woods between the Bissells' land and Bert and Betty's house. Ordinarily, it was a 15-minute walk, and it was impossible to get lost because Betty had made hatchet marks in the trees for the kids to follow. Also, the woods were divided into three sections, so you could always tell if you'd gotten spun around somehow. The first section of forest had been harvested for timber a while back-Zoe's mom preferred the term "raped and pillaged"-so the trees closest to the Bissells' house were new growth. They were mostly flaky gray lodgepole pines. They were planted so close together that they seemed to be huddling for warmth.
The second section was Zoe's favorite: giant larches and Douglas firs. They were Montana's version of skyscrapers. They were only a hundred years old, but looked dinosaur-old, like they'd come with the planet.
The trees closest to the lake had burned in an unexplained fire before Zoe was born. They'd never fallen, though, so there was a quarter-mile's worth of charred snags just standing there dead. It was a spooky place-and Jonah's favorite part of the woods, of course. It was where he played all his soldier-of-the-apocalypse games.
Walking to Bert and Betty's house meant following the path through new trees, then old trees, then dead ones. Zoe and Jonah had made the trip a thousand times. There was no such thing as getting lost-not for long. Not in decent weather or in daylight.
After Zoe had walked 20 feet or so into the young part of the forest, the world became quiet. There was just a low hum in the air, like somebody blowing across the top of a bottle. She felt sheltered and the tiniest bit warmer. She aimed the flashlight at the treetops and then at the surly sky above them, and she had a weird, dreamy impulse to plop down in the snow. She shook her head to erase the thought. The cold was already gumming up her brain. If she sat down, she'd never get up.
Zoe shone the flashlight in a wide arc along the ground, looking to pick up Jonah's tracks again. The beam was weak, either because of the batteries or the cold, but eventually she found them. Jonah probably had a ten-minute head start on her and because he was wearing snowshoes he'd be covering ground faster. It was like a math problem: If Train A leaves the station at 4:30 p.m. traveling 90 miles an hour, and Train B leaves ten minutes later traveling 70 miles an hour … Zoe's brain was too numb to solve it, but it seemed like she was screwed.
Jonah knew the path to the lake but he must have been following the dogs. Their paw prints were messy and wild. Maybe they were being playful. Maybe they were chasing grouse or wild turkeys, which sometimes rode out storms beneath the skirts of the trees. Maybe they were just flipping out because it was so cold.
Zoe could see Jonah's snowshoe tracks chasing the dogs every which way. She couldn't tell if he had been playing along happily or if he had been terrified and begging them to turn back. In her head, she repeated over and over: Just go home, Jonah. This is insane. Just leave the dogs. Just walk away. But she knew he wouldn't abandon the dogs no matter how scary things got, which made her angry-and made her love him, too.
So she just kept slogging through the woods. Which sucked. Drag right foot out of snow, lift it up, stick it in again. Drag left foot out, repeat. And repeat and repeat and repeat. Zoe was losing track of time. It took forever to go even a couple hundred feet-and much longer when she had to hike herself up and over a fallen tree. Her legs and knees began to ache, then her shoulders and neck. And she became obsessed with the hole at the top of her hat where the tassel used to be. She imagined it yawning wider and wider, and could feel the wind's bony fingers in her hair.
After Zoe had been in the woods for 20 minutes or so, her cheeks, which were partly exposed to the air, were scalding hot. She thought about taking her gloves off and somehow peeling the skin off her face-and then she realized that that was completely crazy. She and her brain had stopped playing on the same team. Which scared the hell out of her.
The ground started to level off and Zoe saw an enormous old fir tree up ahead. New trees, old trees, dead trees. She was almost a third of the way through the woods. She told herself to keep walking, not to stop for anything, until she could touch that first giant tree. That would make everything feel real again.
About ten feet from the fir, Zoe stumbled on something under the snow and belly flopped onto the ground. A bolt of pain tore through her head. She'd hit it against a rock or a stump, and could feel a bruise blooming on her forehead. She took off a glove and touched it. When she pulled her hand away, her fingers were dark with blood.
She decided it wasn't that bad.
She forced herself up onto her knees, then her feet. And, using that first fir tree as her goalpost, she walked the next few yards. When she got to the tree, she leaned against it and felt a wave of relief because, no matter how heinous things are, you gotta love a Christmas tree.
Zoe was in the second part of the woods now, with maybe half a mile to go. The trees were massive-they roared up toward the sky-and set far enough apart that what daylight was left trickled down to her. Here, Jonah and the dogs' tracks were clean and clear. They seemed to be sticking to the path now. She started off again, trying to think of nothing but the rhythm of her steps.
She imagined finding Jonah and marching him home. She imagined wrapping him in blankets till he laughed and shouted, "I! Am! Not! A! Burrito!"
Zoe had been outside for 30 or 40 minutes, and it had to be 25 below. She was shaking like she'd been hit by an electric current. By the time she'd made it halfway through the fir trees, every part of her ached and shivered like a tuning fork. And the storm seemed stronger now. The forest itself was breaking apart all around her. The wind stripped off branches and flung them in every direction. Whole trees had toppled over and lay blocking the path.
She stopped to rest against a tree. She had to. She swung the flashlight around, trying to figure out how far she was from the lake. But her hands were weak and she fumbled and dropped it in the snow.
The light went out.
She sank to her knees to search for the flashlight. It was getting dark so she had to root around in the snow. The shivering had gotten worse-at first it'd felt like she'd touched an electric fence, but now her nerves were so fully on fire that it felt like she was an electric fence-but she didn't care. And she didn't care about the bruise or the cut or whatever it was that was pulsing on her forehead. She didn't care that there were thorns and branches hiding under the snow and that they were tearing at the skin beneath her gloves. She could barely feel anything anyway. After a few minutes on her knees-it could have been two, it could have been ten, she had no idea anymore-her hand found something in the snow. She let out a yelp of happiness, or as much of one as she could manage, and she pulled it out. But it wasn't the flashlight.
It was one of Jonah's gloves.
The skull on the back glowed up at her, the empty eye sockets like tunnels.
She pictured Jonah stumbling through the woods, sobbing loudly. She pictured his hand frozen and raw and beating with pain. She pictured him pleading with the dogs to go home. (He must have started pleading by now.) His face came to her for a second. He had their father's looks, which still made her wince: the messy brown hair, the eyes you assumed would be blue but were actually a cool, weird green. The only difference was that Jonah had slightly chubby cheeks. Thank god for baby fat, Zoe thought. Because, tonight, it might keep Jonah alive.
She found the flashlight, and-miraculously-there was some life left in it. She got to her feet and started out again.
A few feet from the first glove, she found the second one.
Ten feet later, she found Jonah's coat.
It was a puffy black down jacket, patched with electrical tape-and he'd left it draped over the jagged stump of a tree.
Now Zoe imagined her brother dazed and wandering, his skin itchy and hot, like it was crawling all over him. She imagined him pulling off his clothes and dropping them in the snow.
Zoe was exhausted. And freaked out. And so unbelievably mad at those idiot dogs who didn't know enough to stay close to the house-who didn't realize that her beautiful brother would follow them and follow them and follow them through the snow. Until it killed him.
She had to erase that awful image of Jonah. She cast around for a happy thought. She remembered how Jonah used to hide in the exact same place every time they played hide-and-seek with their dad-the old meat freezer in the basement, which hadn't been used in years. She remembered how they'd act like they had no idea where Jonah was, even though they could see his little fingers propping the lid open for air. And she pictured the ecstatic look on Jonah's face when she and their dad pretended to give up and Jonah thrust the freezer open and revealed himself, like a magician at the end of a death-defying trick.
"It's me!" he'd shout happily. "It's me! It's me! It's me!"
For a few seconds that image of Jonah warmed her. Then it disappeared, like a star snuffed out forever.
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.