Chapter 7: The Cold Night

The blizzard hit at dusk and took out the power in the valley by seven.

Ben stuck his head in my cabin door, white to the eyebrows, and shouted that the feeds were dead and everybody was to stay put.

"All four cameras?" I asked.

"All of them. Even the sky drone is sitting in a tree somewhere."

"Then go sit by a stove."

"I'm going." He backed out, grinning. "Don't do anything I'd have to not film."

He took his rig with him, and the door slammed.

I fed the stove another split of larch and listened to the wind scour the walls.

At nine, somebody pounded on the door.

It wasn't a knock. It was a fist, and then a shoulder.

Keir Halverson fell into the cabin with snow packed in his collar and ice in his eyebrows.

"The truck's generator died," he said, through his teeth. "The crew is bunked in the mess. I couldn't stay in there. They keep looking at me."

"Come to the stove."

"I'm fine."

"You're blue."

He crossed the cabin in three steps and dropped into the chair, and I saw how badly his hands were shaking.

It wasn't only the cold.

"It's the cold," he said, before I could ask. "Cold wakes it up. All of it."

"All of what?"

"My back."

He did not like saying it.

I looked at the term he had set. *Hands only.*

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