Dipper shivered again. Plague and guilt and old sin seemed to curl about his soul as he trudged beside the Corduroys down the hill through the cold and snowy dark; down and down, ever downward, how far down did it go?
Their plan was first to find their packs and get their supplies together, but it quickly became apparent that this wasn't exactly realistic. Then the plan became to reach the bottom of a hill, get their bearings, and make their way back to the truck, but that gradually proved unrealistic as well. The plan was then just to find some shelter from the wind, some cave, some hollow tree, but when neither cave nor hollow tree could they find, they knew that they would settle for something as meager as a tall rock or an overhang in the cliff. Even as little as a pit in the ground, or the smallest corner. Anything and anywhere that would take the edge off the wind. Let them start a fire.
They didn't really talk about it. To talk about it would be to think about it. To think about it would be to despair.
Their feet were numb. Their hands were numb. Dipper tried to tuck his nose and mouth into his jacket to keep them warm, but he gave up after a few seconds, after finding the arrangement allowed the wind down his collar. For those few seconds though, he'd been able to feel the warmth of his own breath against his stinging nose. His nose was numb by now. He hadn't known that noses got numb.
Wendy was walking beside him, axe in one hand and rifle in the other, eyes searching for any sign of the monsters they'd seen earlier. Dan had a shivering Gus cradled inside his jacket, and with his other arm supported a stumbling Marcus, whose jacket sleeve was slowly turning red with the blood from the wound in his shoulder.
"This is your fault..." Dipper turned to see Kevin behind him. His face was blue and his voice was a whispered mumble, and before he could continue his accusation, Dan cut him off.
"DON'T SAY THAT! DON'T SAY THAT. WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER."
Wendy glared over at Kevin, felt in a moment as much hate as she'd ever held toward an enemy. Probably not healthy feelings to have toward one's own younger brother, and she should have known better, but mild hypothermia has a way of playing with the mind.
There was a minute of silence before Kevin attacked Dipper. His hands weren't as strong as they normally would be as they gripped his jacket, and his anger hurt worse. "IT IS YOUR FAULT! You talked to it, you made it mad, Gus and Marcus will die out here becau-!"
"HEY!" Dan barked.
"YOU LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Wendy jumped in and punched Kevin in the side of the head. "If it's his fault then it's MY fault too!"
"Yeah I know!" He let go of Dipper with one hand to throw some vague swing in her direction. "Your fault too for bringing along a little know-it-all milk-drinking-!"
"He's more of a man than you'll EVER BE!" She launched forward blindly, and all three of them toppled over in a tangle of limbs and teeth and billowing snow.
With a roar, Dan let go of Marcus and hauled both Kevin and Wendy out of the snow by the collars of their jackets. "NO FIGHTING!" The command in his voice was tainted by desperation he couldn't quite hide. "NOT HERE! NOT NOW! GET MOVING!" He gave them both a helpful shove in a forwardly direction, and they fell into line. He extended a hand toward Dipper. "...C-COME ON, SON. GET BACK UP."
Son?
"W-w-what good am I?" Dipper shivered, as he looked up into the huge man's face. "I blew up the forest and p-poisoned the moon and I made the spirits want to k-kill us a-all. I've... I've lied. I've slain. I've envied. I've lusted. I-I ride the coattails of greater men and evil men... W-what good am I? I'm not... Not a hero."
"COME ON AND GET BACK UP."
He took Dan's hand and got pulled to his feet. Dan brushed the snow off him with the knuckles of one hand, then pressed the hat down more firmly on Dipper's head, and gave him a pat on the back.
"Don't worry about it, dude." Marcus mumbled at him. "T-take it easy."
"H-h-how much f-further dad?" Gus shivered from within Dan's jacket.
"NOT FAR." Dan lied, and continued down the long hill into the dark. "Not far."
Dipper stood. A cloud of vapor jetted from his face. His knee trembled. His fist clenched. A bit of snow melted down his collar.
He saw Wendy's backside ahead of him, continuing forward. He saw her hair blowing in the wind, her knuckles shone white in the breachlight around the handle of her axe, her boots trudged onward. He saw her shoulders droop.
He felt his own droop.
He told his foot to take a step, and take a step it did.
From then on, most of the hike became something of a blur, with none of them really fully remembering the path they'd come and the shape of the landscape or the things they'd passed.
Which is not to say that it was entirely uneventful.
One time, a short distance away through the trees, Dipper thought he saw a brilliant blue light, moving uphill, and traveling faster than a human. They did not follow it.
One time a voice called out to them from far away. "ZHOFRPH WUDYHOHUV!" It was shrill and harsh and thrilled, like the cawing of a crow, and the language was not English. "ZHOFRPH WUDYHOHUV WR WKH KDNURP HPSLUH, DQG GR QRW WDUUB LQ BRXU WUDQVFHQGHQFH!" They did not call back to it.
One time, from the North, they heard a loud noise like the clanking of steel, a clatter and creaking. Dan thought it sounded like the workings of a piece of logging equipment, a skidder or a feller, but there was no engine noise, and no working lights. It stopped after a second or two, just as suddenly as it had started. They did not seek out its source.
The monsters from earlier filled the night periodically with their howling, and every time they howled they sounded ever-so-slightly more human. Every time Dipper took a breath he though he sounded ever-so-slightly less. The monsters didn't attack again.
There were other things too.
Strange things.
Their journey downhill reached an impasse.
It seems that some kind of landslide had carved a chunk out of the hillside below them; there was a sheer overhung drop, a hundred feet down into a bed of rocks, such that the ground they were standing on was being held together by only the roots of nearby trees. A small piece of it gave way beneath Wendy's feet as they were approaching it, before they'd even noticed it, and she would surely have fallen to her death if it wasn't for Kevin right next to her, who caught her. And his numb grip would have failed or dragged him over too, if Marcus hadn't dived forward and caught her other hand. And with his injured arm, he wouldn't have been able to lift her back up without Dan's help.
Dipper had been taking up the rear, to keep an eye on a chair-sized 12-legged spider that had been following them for the past hour, and hadn't even realized Wendy was in peril until she was already back to safety. He felt bad for not being there. Felt like a bad boyfriend. A bad friend. Nobody spoke a word during the whole event.
"How you doing?" He tried to ask.
She tried to answer.
They had to move laterally across the hill to make it around the drop off, and they were making good enough progress until the avalanche. Looking back on it later, Dipper realized that it was probably the line of their footprints that had undercut the weight of the snow uphill, and thus technically sort of their own fault. But at the time, it just seemed like such needlessly cruel bad luck, that by the time they'd dug themselves out of it a minute later, he'd started to cry. There was snow squeezed down every crack and crevice of their clothes, and whatever body heat remained to them was melting it and letting it soak through.
He could barely think straight. He couldn't feel anything. He stopped shivering. Some far-back part of his brain realized that he was supposed to be shivering, which made this a decidedly troubling development.
It was beginning to seem unrealistic that they would be able to keep moving much farther at all.
"Don't die." Wendy tried to pick him up and carry him onward.
"I won't." He agreed, and tried to gain his footing.
"Not now." She stumbled herself.
"Not here." He tried to keep her upright.
"Not again." They held each other, and gripped each other harder than they could feel, and continued on, and endured.
"Promise."
"Promise."
They reached the Southern end of the landslide, but just before they went to continue downhill, Dan called a halt, and led them to circle around, up underneath the overhang. For a while they walked along directly beneath their last path.
And they found an alcove.
Dan set Gus and Marcus down, and reached into his pockets for matches and moss to use for tinder. He snapped at Wendy to guard against anything that may approach, and at Dipper and Kevin to find sticks and branches. They obliged as well as they were able; Wendy managed to cock the gun, while Dipper and Kevin struggled at breaking dead branches off a nearby tree. A monster appeared around the edge of a nearby boulder. In the pale, brightish light of the breach, its eyeless, toothy face was clearly visible for the first time. It seemed to be looking at Marcus. Maybe it was waiting for him to die. Wendy shot at it, and it ran off.
Dan finally built up a small bed of kindling and moss, and then he struck a match, and the flame was tiny. Tiny and yellow. Their eyes all turned to watch it with rapt attention as it flailed and struggled in the wind until finally, it found a dryish corner of the moss, and began to consume it.
And it grew.
"Merry Christmas." Dan said.
