The Fourth of July.
Emmit stopped dead in his tracks, wearing a stinging expression of confusion as the biting wind rippled his thin clothing. It had been July, a particularly hot July. How the hell had he lost track of four months, if not more?
He whipped his head from side to side, as if looking around fast enough might cause the scenery to change. Of course, it did not; on all sides of him, there was nothing but tree upon black tree, and little snow tornadoes that danced and whirled among the trunks. And that roar, that god damned constant roar.
Something is very, very wrong here.
It was strange, the strangest thing he had ever experienced in his short life, but it still didn't change his present situation. Perhaps he had been skiing (did he know how to ski?) and had struck his head. Perhaps he was still suffering the effects of that head injury. But that didn't explain why he was dressed for a sweltering summer day and not a frigid winter afternoon.
Maybe I'm not even awake yet.
"Fuck... it..." he stammered, and continued walking. The pain he was feeling felt real enough, and dreamscape or not, he needed to keep moving. For warmth, and hopefully, for rescue. The answers would come later when he was safe and toasty inside somewhere. Right now, he needed to walk until his feet fell off.
Emmit lowered his head, rubbing his reddening arms as if he were trying to start a fire on his flesh. The wind was a constant enemy, ruffling his short hair and sucking the air from his lungs. His legs were throbbing; trudging through the thick snow was wearing him down, fast. He watched his own feet as they plunged through the snow, sinking up to his shins. He knew he was going to die very soon if—
A tree trunk, one that appeared to be about three feet across, was suddenly in front of him. He looked up just in time to face plant into the hard black bark.
"Ugh!" He cried, stumbling backwards and falling on the thin padding of his ass. His glasses were knocked askew on his nose, throwing him back into the dizzying world of the blind. He touched his forehead with hands he couldn't feel. He would probably have a scrape and a knot, but no blood came away on his fingertips.
Getting loopy. Clumsy.
He didn't even bother to stand. He just needed to rest and recenter himself. After he caught his breath, he would trudge on among the trees. He was so cold that the snow he sat in almost felt like a warm blanket, and he suddenly felt the ludicrous urge to lay down and burrow into it like a squirrel digging for a buried nut.
There's a name for that, and it's hypothermia.
Again, he passed his fingers over the lenses of his glasses, feeling for cracks as he looked up at the tree that had assaulted him. Through the whirling veil of ice and snow, he could see the dark trunk stretching up so far that the haze in the sky hid the canopy of branches. There was something strange about the shape of it; it looked like two branches jutted out to either side of the trunk, like the tree wanted to give him a nice cold hug. But the branches were fat, and they were square. For a second it appeared as a towering crucifix, backlit by the heavenly white glow of the afterlife.
When the glasses were secure on his nose again, he saw that it was a crude wooden sign, lashed to a knot on the tree with what looked like a multicolored rope. It swung gently in the wind, rocking from side to side and coming to rest again with an almost inaudible tap.
Emmit struggled to his feet and approached the sign, pushing his glasses closer to his eyes. The rope was not really a rope at all. It looked like strips of clothing had been shredded and braided together, handmade by someone.
Tap.
There were words scrawled on it in runny red ink or paint that had dried to a dark maroon. The bottoms of each letter stretched down into long drips of dried liquid. It looked like it had been written in blood, an almost comically creepy sign that someone might have made for a carnival spook house. But there was nothing fun about this place.
Tap.
This is something right out of a scary movie, and I'm going to do exactly what scary movie characters do. I'm going to follow it when I should be going the opposite direction.
The sign read:
SURVIVOR
CAMP
<——
Emmit's drying eyes followed the direction the painted arrow was pointing, and although the snow drifts were piled high around them, he could clearly see two tree stumps with small piles of rocks on top of them. They looked like crude gargoyles adorning the front gate of some old manor house. As he squinted through the makeshift gate, he saw two more chopped trees further off in the distance. These were also capped with rocks, although one pile looked like it had recently fallen over.
There's your path. You don't have a choice. Follow it.
Emmit did, shuffling through the driving snow, hunched over and folded in on himself like an old newspaper. His skin had begun to turn a deep angry red, and he was growing more and more certain that if he survived, he would be short a few fingers and toes. As he passed by a squat tree, he leaned on it for support, taking some of the strain off of his tired legs.
Look for smoke. If there's a survivor camp, they'll have fire.
That was when
