Page 23 of Embers

There’s a small cardinal struggling on the grate, which was the flicker of color and motion I saw in the unrelenting gray and white of the world.

I rarely see small birds anymore. Nothing but crows and carrion eaters. So I slide my way over to investigate, finally seeing that the bird has somehow gotten his wing frozen to the metal of the grate.

He can’t pull free.

Poor little thing. He’s so pretty and red in a bleakly painful world.

Carefully I manage to break the ice and pull the bird’s wing free. He only loses a few feathers in the process.

He flies away, scared and ungrateful for my help, but I’m happy to have done something good.

As I turn back toward the driveway, I take a wrong step. There must be a hole in the ground, covered by the sheet of ice, and my weight breaks through the snow and into the hole.

I grab for the firepit to catch myself and end up pulling the loose grate toward me.

Unfortunately, it takes half the piled-up stones with it.

I fall hard, twisting my ankle so badly I cry out. I flail futilely and end up sprawled facedown on the freezing ground with the big stones from the firepit collapsed heavily on top of my injured leg.

Frightened and trying not to cry from the pain, I attempt to jerk my foot out. But it’s caught in the hole with too much weight on top of it.

I can’t get it out.

Panic sets in fast. I’m already shivering helplessly from lying facedown on the ice this way.

I could die out here.

It would take very little time for it to happen.

I fight through the fog of cold and fear to make myself think. I come up with a few different options for freeing myself, starting by trying to remove the stones one by one. But I can’t turn over onto my back or sit up, and my body won’t contort in the position that I need.

I’m really trapped.

I keep trying. I’m not sure how long I work on it, but I twist and struggle and stretch until I’m too exhausted and frozen to move anymore.

Then I just lie there.

Cal will find me.

Surely he’ll come looking when I don’t return.

But I was so mad at him. Maybe he’ll think I ran away on purpose.

He didn’t let me run away two and a half years ago after Derek died, and he won’t let me do it now. He’ll definitely search. But maybe he won’t be able to find me. I only occasionally could break through the snow and leave a footprint. And I left the driveway where I would have been easy to spot.

I shiver and chatter my teeth and keep trying to move my hands, but soon I can barely even feel them.

Typical, really. I survived an apocalypse only to freeze to death, saving an ungrateful cardinal while in a fight with an infuriating jackass.

It’s not long before I fall into a numb, blurry daze. I pray a little although I’m not sure there’s a god left out there who might hear me.

It feels like I’m going to sleep, but I’m not. It’s a weird state of frozen unconsciousness. I have absolutely no idea how much time has passed when a little part of my mind recognizes a faint voice.

Avoice. Cal’s. In the distance.

“Rachel!” There’s a pause. Then, “Rachel! Where the fuck are you?”

He did come look for me. I knew he would. But he’s still too far away to help me.

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