The wind scrapes across the snow with an almost hurried reluctance; it’s going to be dark, soon. The really dark nights are the coldest.

    He looks out the window with an entirely fake sense of calm. The generator that powers the heating system works--for all intents and purposes, anyway--but lately, the power output has steadily been decreasing. He can’t fix it, likely doesn’t have the parts to fix it even if he knew, and this stays in the back of his mind around the spot where he wonders, no matter how hard he tries to dismiss the thought, what’s going to happen when they run out of food.

    At the beginning of the first flash-freeze, around a dozen had been staying in the small, weather-ready complex. After a week, a group had decided to draw straws and chance the frigid wastes. Four people left the complex that day; none of them came back. By the time they were down to three people, they realized that to leave was simply suicide.

Not just the cold, he thinks to himself. It’s not just the cold.

They were two now. One day they just woke up and he was gone.

“I’m leaving, now,” a voice from behind him says. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even regard the voice behind him that may have, in better times, been his friend.

“Please,” the voice begs. The voice says more, he thinks, but the rest of it he has disregarded.

There was one. In short time, there was nothing.