9. Emilia #2
He crosses the kitchen in two strides and opens a storage bench by the door. Pulls out insulated hiking boots, thick wool socks, a down jacket compressed into a stuff sack. Women's sizes. Tags still on.
"You bought these."
"Yesterday. In town." He sets them at my feet without ceremony. "Get dressed. Layer everything you have. We move in forty minutes."
He turns back to the supplies. The crack in his mask is gone. He's a machine again, loading ammunition into a weatherproof case.
He bought them before the sheriff came. Before the lockdown. Before any of this.
He bought them because he knew.
I lace the boots with numb fingers. Double-knot them the way Justice showed me when he handed me the wool socks, pressing his thumb against the toe box to check the fit without a word.
The boots are half a size too big but the thick socks fill the gap and when I stand, my feet feel solid for the first time since I fled Los Angeles in expensive designer loafers.
Nine minutes.
That's how long it takes to erase our presence from the A-frame.
Justice moves through the cabin like a controlled demolition, wiping surfaces, bagging trash, killing pilot lights.
He pulls the battery from the security tablet, wraps it in foil, and buries it in the false panel behind the hallway closet.
The external cameras stay active, running on solar backup, feeding to a receiver he tucks into the side pocket of his pack. He can monitor them from the ridge.
I strip the bed. Roll the sheets tight and stuff them into a garbage bag.
The thought makes my throat close but I keep moving.
Shove the garbage bag into the woodstove, then grab the small plastic grocery bag holding my ruined clothes and my powered-off phone.
Justice lights a single match and the cotton catches.
He shoulders the military pack. Fifty pounds at least. Clips the duffel across his body. Picks up the cooler bag in his left hand and the rifle case in his right. He's carrying everything. Every ounce of survival we have hangs from his body.
"Stay behind me. Step where I step. Don't talk."
The back door opens onto a narrow porch that faces the north slope. No lights. The sky is a slab of granite, starless, heavy with something I can feel pressing against my skin. The air doesn't just bite. It enters my lungs like ground glass and I cough once, hard, before I can stop myself.
Justice glances back. Says nothing. Starts walking.
The first two hundred yards are manageable.
A gentle incline through old-growth pine, the ground carpeted in frozen needles that crunch under my new boots.
I match his footprints exactly, placing each step in the massive impressions his feet leave in the frost. His stride is nearly twice mine. I have to half-jog to keep pace.
Then the mountain tilts.
The grade steepens so abruptly that I pitch forward and catch myself on a root jutting from the exposed soil.
The trees thin. The ground becomes loose shale and frozen mud, every step sliding backward an inch for every two I gain.
My thighs burn within minutes. Five minutes later the burn becomes a scream.
My calves lock up, tendons straining against the angle, and I grab at rocks and branches to haul myself upward like I'm climbing a ladder that keeps breaking.
Justice doesn't slow down. He picks a line through the terrain with animal certainty, finding footholds on rock ledges and tree roots that I can barely see in the pre-dawn murk. The pack on his back doesn't shift. His breathing doesn't change.
I stop. Hands on my knees. Lungs heaving.
He's ten yards above me before he notices. Turns. Looks down at me from the slope with those calculating blue eyes and I see him measure the distance we've covered against the distance remaining and arrive at a number he doesn't like.
He comes back down. Drops the duffel and cooler bag. Unclips the chest strap.
"Arms around my neck."
"I can walk. Just give me a?—"
He bends and scoops me off the ground. One arm under my knees, the other around my back, and I'm against his body like I weigh nothing, like I'm a load of kindling he's ferrying from the woodpile.
He picks up the duffel by looping the strap over his forearm, hooks the cooler bag on two fingers, and starts climbing again.
Fifty pounds of gear. A hundred and fifteen pounds of me. The rifle case slung across his back. And he climbs.
I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against his collar. His pulse beats under my cheek, slow and steady, the heat rolling off his body cuts through the freezing air like an engine block left running all night.
He doesn't speak. His jaw is set, cords standing out in his neck, and each step lands with deliberate force, boots punching through frost and scree. I feel the effort in the bunching of muscle across his shoulders, the controlled exhale through his nose on every upward push.
The first snowflake lands on my hand.
I lift my head. The sky has dropped. Actual, physical descent, the cloud ceiling compressing against the peaks until the pine canopy disappears into white nothing above us. Flakes fall sparse at first. Dry and small, catching in Justice's dark hair like ash.
Then the mountain vanishes.
Snow hits sideways, horizontal, driven by a wind that comes from nowhere and everywhere at once. Visibility collapses to five feet. Three feet. I can't see the ground. I can't see the trees. Justice becomes the only solid thing in a world dissolving into white roar.
He turns his shoulder into the wind and pushes forward. Hunched. Relentless.
A shape materializes from the whiteout. Low. Dark. Angular. A rough-hewn structure no bigger than a garden shed, built from stacked logs and roofed with corrugated metal, nearly invisible under a blanket of old snow and dead pine boughs.
Justice kicks the door open and carries me inside. Drops the gear. Sets me on my feet on a plywood floor.
The wind screams against the walls. Snow pours through the open doorway until he shoulders it shut and drops a heavy timber bar across the brackets.
The sound cuts to a muffled howl and then there is darkness, total and absolute, and the two of us breathing hard in a space so small I can touch both walls without fully extending my arms.
We are buried.