The White Thirst

The bone grated with a sound like grinding stones, and Jack’s scream was swallowed by the endless white wind.

The bone grated. A wet, grinding sound, like stones in a riverbed. I pushed harder, my bare fingers numb against the slickness of Jack’s skin and the freezing steel of the pry bar I was using as a splint. His scream was a thin, ragged thing, instantly stolen by the wind that hammered against our shelter. The sound didn't matter. Nothing did, except the alignment. Get it straight, get it tight. That was the job. The same as torquing a bolt on a drill head a mile underground. A problem with a solution. You just had to ignore the noise.

“Frank, for Christ’s sake…” he gasped, his voice a choked rattle. His breath plumed in the frigid air, each gasp a little ghost escaping his body. Sweat had frozen in his eyebrows, turning them into delicate, white arches of agony.

“Shut up,” I said. The words were flat, stripped of anything but function. “Breathe. Or bite on this.” I shoved a grease-stained glove near his mouth. He shook his head, teeth chattering so hard I could hear them clicking over the howl of the storm. The wind wasn't just a sound; it was a physical pressure, a constant shove against the thin wall of the overturned snowmobile and the tarp I’d wedged against it. It found every tiny seam, every pinhole, and drove needles of cold deep into my bones.

I wrapped the last of the electrical tape around the pry bar and the smaller wrench I’d used for the other side of his shin. A crude fix. The bone had snapped clean, a nasty compound fracture just above the boot. White bone, red muscle, dark blood that had frozen almost instantly into a black slush on the leg of his thermal overalls. The impact had thrown him clear of the sled. Lucky, I guess. I’d stayed with the machine, ridden it down into the gully like a coffin. My luck was a bruised hip and a ringing in my ears that hadn’t stopped for six hours.

“Is it… is it done?” Jack’s voice was watery.

“It’s set.” I didn’t say it was good. I didn’t know if it was good. I wasn't a doctor. I was a mechanic for a copper mine that paid us too much to work in a place God had forgotten to finish. My expertise was in hydraulics and diesel engines, not shattered tibias. But out here, you were whatever the situation demanded. Doctor, navigator, undertaker. I pulled the thin, wool blanket we had over his chest. It was already stiff with frost.

The space was impossibly small. The engine block of the Skidoo was a lump of frozen iron at my back. My knees were jammed against Jack’s good leg. Every movement was a negotiation. The world had shrunk to this coffin of steel and canvas, stinking of two-stroke exhaust and fear. I crawled over to the front, pushing aside the corner of the tarp to look out. There was nothing to see. The world was a churning vortex of white. Not snow, but ice crystals, hard and sharp, driven horizontally by a wind that had to be hitting seventy knots. It scoured the landscape, erasing tracks, erasing hope. It was like staring into static.

I let the tarp fall. The sudden dimness was a relief. Less to see, less to worry about. We had what we had. Half a pack of stale jerky. One protein bar, the kind that tastes like sweetened sawdust. A thermos with maybe three swallows of lukewarm, bitter coffee left. The emergency flare gun, with two shells. And a Zippo that was getting dangerously low on fluid. That was the sum total of our continued existence. It wasn’t much of a balance sheet.

Jack was muttering, his eyes closed. A prayer, maybe. Or just delirium setting in. Pain and cold did that to a man. Stripped him down to the core of his wiring. Some guys found God. Some found their mothers. Most just found a deep, dark well of fear. Jack had always been the religious one. Talked about his wife, his kid, the church bake sales. A whole other life, a million miles from this ice-dusted hell. I never talked about my life. Nothing to say. A string of rented rooms and jobs that broke you down one shift at a time. No wife, no kids, no god waiting at the end of the line. Just the job, the paycheque, and the silence in between.

The silence was gone now. Replaced by the storm. It was a living thing. It had a voice, a personality. Angry, spiteful. It wanted in. It was clawing at the tarp, shrieking in the narrow gap between the runner of the sled and the frozen ground. I huddled deeper into my jacket, pulling the fur-lined hood tight until my world was a small tunnel of my own breath. The cold was a patient predator. It didn't rush. It just waited. It sank into your marrow, slowed your thoughts, made you want to lie down and sleep. That was the trap. Sleep was the cousin of death out here.

I took out the protein bar. Broke it in half with a stiff crack. The pieces were like rocks. I crawled back to Jack and pushed one half against his lips.

“Eat.”

He shook his head, a weak, fretful motion. “Don’t… want it.”

“Eat,” I repeated, my voice harder this time. “You need it.” I wasn’t being kind. A dead man was dead weight. A sick man was a problem I had to manage. The cold math of survival didn't leave room for sentiment. He finally parted his lips, and I pushed the piece inside. He chewed slowly, a pathetic, cow-like motion. I ate my half in three bites, the dense, chalky substance scraping my throat. It wasn't food. It was fuel. And the tank was almost empty.

I took a sip from the thermos. The coffee was barely warm, but the bitterness was sharp, real. It cut through the fog in my head. I offered it to Jack. He took a small swallow and coughed, his body convulsing. A fresh wave of pain washed over his face, leaving it pale and slick. He slumped back, his eyes fluttering shut.

Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time had no meaning in the grey twilight of the storm. There was only the sound. The constant, deafening roar. I tried to think, to make a plan. When the storm broke, I’d try the radio again. But the battery was weak, and the crash had probably shattered the antenna. No signal. Just static that sounded like a softer version of the wind. Plan B: walk. But where? North was the mine, but that was sixty miles of nothing. South was the service road, but the snow would have buried it ten feet deep. And Jack couldn’t walk. He couldn’t even stand. So we wait. Wait for the storm to pass. Wait for rescue. Wait for a miracle.

I don’t believe in miracles.

I must have dozed off, a shallow, shivering state halfway between consciousness and oblivion. What woke me wasn't a change in the storm's pitch. It was the absence of a familiar rhythm. Jack’s breathing. It was shallow, ragged. I leaned close, my ear near his mouth. I could feel the faint puff of air against my cheek, but it was weak. His skin was clammy, despite the killing cold. Fever. Infection. Of course. The dirty pry bar, the open wound, the filth. It was inevitable.

“Jack,” I whispered, shaking his shoulder. He groaned, a low animal sound. His eyes opened, but they were glassy, unfocused. He was looking at something over my shoulder, something that wasn't there.

“So hungry,” he breathed. The words were heavy, thick on his tongue. “Could eat… anything.”

“There’s nothing left,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

“No. Listen.” He grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong. “Don’t you hear it?”

I listened. There was only the wind. A thousand different notes, from a low moan to a high-pitched scream. “It’s the storm, Jack.”

“No. Under it. A scraping sound. Like… like fingernails on ice.” His eyes were wide now, a frantic, terrified light dancing in them. “It’s been out there for hours. Circling.”

Paranoia. The fever was making him hear things. I pulled my arm free from his grip. “There’s nothing out there. It’s just us.” It was a lie. I wasn't sure who I was trying to convince. Him or me.

But I listened again. I strained my ears, trying to filter out the chaos of the blizzard. And then I heard it. It was faint, almost imperceptible. A rhythmic *scrape… scrape… scrape*. Not the wind. The wind was a wild, random orchestra. This was different. This was deliberate. It was the sound of something heavy being dragged across a rough surface. It was close.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of ice. I grabbed the flare gun, my fingers stiff and clumsy. The cold plastic felt alien in my hand. I checked the chamber. One shell loaded. One in my pocket. Two chances. Two tiny sparks against a universe of white.

The scraping stopped. The silence that replaced it was worse than the sound itself. It was a listening silence. The storm raged on, but now it felt like a curtain, hiding something just on the other side. I held my breath, every muscle in my body coiled tight. Jack was staring at the tarp, his mouth agape, a thin line of drool freezing on his chin.

Something brushed against the canvas. A soft, heavy thump. Not the wind. The wind pushed. This was a touch. A deliberate, testing pressure. I saw the tarp bulge inward for a second, a dark shape against the grey light, and then it was gone. I raised the flare gun, my arm shaking. I aimed at the spot where the bulge had been. My thumb rested on the hammer.

Don't waste the shot. Don't be an idiot. It's a bear. A wolf. Something drawn by the smell of blood. It’ll move on.

But the stories the old-timers at the mine told, the ones the local Cree guys whispered about when they thought the white men weren't listening… they weren't about bears. They were about a hunger that walked on the wind. A spirit of the cold places, drawn to desperation. The Thirst. The Wendigo. They said its heart was made of ice. They said it was tall as a pine tree, with skin the color of ash and eyes that burned like embers. They said you heard it before you saw it. A scraping sound. Like bone on stone.

“It knows we’re in here,” Jack whispered, his voice trembling. “It can smell us. It can smell the… the hunger.”

His words hit me like a physical blow. The hunger. It wasn’t just in our bellies. It was in the air, in the cold, in the growing darkness in my own mind. The way I’d looked at the last piece of jerky. The way I’d measured out the coffee, making sure my sip was bigger than his. The cold calculus. It was a language. And something outside was listening.

The night, or what passed for it, bled into the next day. The storm didn’t let up. It was a permanent state of being. The world was noise and cold. Jack’s fever worsened. He drifted in and out of consciousness, muttering about sunshine and his daughter’s laugh. Fragments of a life that felt like it belonged to another species, on another planet. During his lucid moments, he was quiet, his eyes following my every move. The trust was gone. Replaced by a raw, animal fear. He wasn't just afraid of what was outside anymore. He was afraid of me.

He had a right to be. I could feel the change in myself. The part of me that was human was shrinking, freezing, cracking apart. What was left was something else. Something harder. Something that looked at Jack’s shivering form and didn't see a partner, or a man. It saw a collection of problems. A mouth to feed. A drain on resources. A broken machine that was slowing me down.

The scraping sound came and went. Sometimes it was distant, a faint whisper on the edge of hearing. Other times it was right outside, a loud, deliberate dragging that made the hairs on my neck stand up. It was toying with us. It was patient. It had all the time in the world. We didn’t.

On the third day, the last of the jerky was gone. I licked the salt from the inside of the empty packet, my tongue raspy. The thermos was empty. We were melting snow in the small metal cup from the thermos lid, holding it over the Zippo. It was a slow, agonizing process. A thimbleful of lukewarm water every hour. The lighter fluid was sloshing low. I could feel the weight of it, the lightness. Another clock ticking down.

Jack refused to drink. “It’s not enough,” he croaked, his lips cracked and bleeding. “Just a tease.”

“It’s all we have,” I said, my voice raw from disuse.

“Better to die of thirst than to be tortured by it.”

I looked at him, really looked at him. His face was gaunt, his skin the color of old parchment. The infection in his leg was angry and red, a dark line tracking up his thigh. Sepsis. He was dying. Slowly, maybe. But he was dying. And all his talk of God and prayer hadn't changed a thing. There was no divine intervention coming. No angels in the snow. There was just us, the cold, and the thing that was circling.

That night, it was different. The scraping was gone. Replaced by a new sound. A voice. It was a perfect imitation of a woman’s cry for help. “Please! Help me! I’m lost!”

It came from the north. A clear, desperate plea, weaving through the roar of the blizzard. Jack’s head snapped up. Hope, raw and idiotic, flared in his eyes.

“Did you hear that?” he said, trying to push himself up. “Someone’s out there! We have to help them!”

I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back down. “Stay still. It’s not real.”

“What are you talking about? It’s a woman! She needs our help!” The voice came again, closer this time. “Hello? Is anyone there? I’m so cold!”

“It’s the wind, Jack. It’s a trick.” My own heart was pounding. The mimicry was perfect. The inflection, the panic, the desperation. It was a work of art. A predator’s lure.

“You’re a coward,” he spat, his voice thick with contempt. “You’ll let her die out there.” He started struggling, trying to crawl towards the tarp. “I’ll go myself.”

I hit him. An open-handed slap across the face. The sound was sharp, shocking in the confined space. His head snapped to the side. He looked at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

“It wants you to go out there,” I said, my voice low and shaking with a fury I didn't know I had. “It’s smart. It knows what we want to hear. A rescuer. A lost child. Anything to make you open the door. You go out there, you’re dead.”

He stared at me for a long moment. The hope in his eyes died, replaced by something dark and ugly. Resignation. Hatred.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he whispered. “One less mouth to feed. More water for you.”

I didn’t answer. He was right. The thought had been there, lurking in the back of my mind. A cold, clean piece of logic. One person’s chances are better than two. Especially when one of them is broken.

The voice outside began to change. It warped, the woman’s cries twisting into the sound of a child weeping. Then it became the voice of Jack’s wife, calling his name. “Jack, honey? Where are you? I’ve been looking everywhere.”

Jack squeezed his eyes shut, his hands clamped over his ears. Tears streamed down his face, freezing on his cheeks. He was shaking his head, muttering, “No, no, no.”

The thing outside was feeding on his despair. It was tasting his soul. And I was just sitting here, watching. The Zippo felt heavy in my pocket. The flare gun was a cold weight in my lap. Tools. I had tools. But the real problem wasn't outside. It was inside. Here, with me.

The fourth day, the storm broke. It happened suddenly. The wind dropped from a scream to a sigh, and then to nothing. The silence was deafening. It pressed on my eardrums, a physical weight. I cautiously pushed the tarp aside and looked out. The world was remade. A pristine, glittering expanse of white under a pale, indifferent sun. The sky was a hard, cloudless blue. It was beautiful. And it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. There was nothing. No trees, no rocks, just an endless, rolling sea of snow, stretching to a horizon that was a razor-thin line. There was no sign of life. No tracks but our own, already half-buried, leading from the mangled wreckage of our descent.

And no tracks around our shelter. Nothing. The thing had moved without leaving a trace, like the wind itself.

“It’s gone,” Jack said from behind me. His voice was a dry rustle. “The storm’s over. They’ll find us now. The search planes…”

“They won’t,” I said, turning back to him. “They won’t fly in this temperature. The fuel would gel. And they’d be searching our planned route. We were miles off course when we hit that whiteout.”

I was methodically checking our gear. The radio was useless, a brick of dead plastic. The compass was a faint hope. North. The mine was north. Sixty miles. Maybe seventy. A three-day walk for a healthy man with the right gear. For me, in this state? A week. Maybe more. Impossible.

But less impossible than staying here. Waiting to starve. Waiting for the thing to come back when it got hungry again.

I started packing a small go-bag. The flare gun. The second shell. The empty jerky packet, just in case there was a molecule of salt left to lick. The compass. The Zippo. And the thermos, which I planned to fill with snow.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked, his voice sharp with alarm. He struggled to sit up, his face a mask of panic.

“I’m going to walk out,” I said, not looking at him. “It’s the only chance.”

“Walk out? Are you insane? You’ll die in a day! And… and what about me?” The last words were a choked plea.

I finally turned to look at him. I saw the infected leg, swollen and purple. I saw the fever-bright eyes, the cracked lips. I saw a dead man. The only question was how long it would take.

“I can’t carry you, Jack.” My voice was flat. Empty. I was just stating a fact. An engineering problem with no solution.

“You can’t just leave me here!” he shrieked, his voice cracking. “Frank, please! We’re partners! You can’t leave me to die!”

He was scrambling for something, his hands patting the snowy ground around him. His fingers closed around the wrench I’d used for his splint. He held it up, his hand shaking. It was a pathetic threat, but it was all he had left.

“Don’t do this,” he begged. “We can wait. They’ll come.”

“No, they won’t.” I stood up, the go-bag in my hand. “And it will come back. You know it will. It’s not gone. It’s just waiting. It’s hunting. And you’re bait.”

The realization dawned on his face, a slow, creeping horror that was worse than the pain or the fever. He understood the math now too. My math.

“You son of a bitch,” he whispered. He lunged, a desperate, clumsy movement, swinging the wrench. It was slow, easy to dodge. I stepped back, and he collapsed onto the snow, sobbing, his strength gone.

I looked down at him. There was no pity. No remorse. Just a cold, hard emptiness. The hunger wasn't in my stomach anymore. It was in my head. It had devoured everything else. All the useless parts of me. Compassion. Loyalty. Hope.

The creature, the Wendigo, it wasn't the hunter. It was the catalyst. It didn’t need to kill us. It just had to wait for us to kill each other. To strip away the thin veneer of civilization until all that was left was the cold, selfish engine of survival.

I had a choice. I could stay here and die with him. Or I could leave him and have a chance to live. It wasn't a choice at all.

But just leaving him wasn't enough. He was noisy. His despair was a beacon. The thing would find him, and then it would find me. I needed a distraction. A head start. I needed him to be quiet.

I walked over to him. He looked up at me, his eyes full of terror and a dawning, animal understanding. He knew. He knew what I was going to do. He opened his mouth to scream.

I knelt down. The pry bar was still strapped to his leg. My hand was on it before I even consciously decided. The movement was fluid, practiced. Just another job. A problem with a solution.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” I said. And the strange thing was, in that last, cold moment, I think I almost meant it.

The sun is bright. It glitters on the snow, a billion tiny diamonds. The glare is blinding. The air is so cold it hurts to breathe. It freezes the moisture in your lungs, in your nostrils. Every breath is a gasp of ice.

Behind me, the overturned snowmobile is a dark scar on the perfect white. A tombstone. The silence is absolute. No wind. No crying. No scraping. Just the soft crunch of my boots on the snow.

I don’t look back. There’s nothing to see. I have the compass in my hand. The needle quivers, then settles on North. Sixty miles. Maybe seventy. I have one flare. Half a book of matches now, I’d used the Zippo’s flint wheel until my thumb was raw and the spark was gone. The Zippo itself was a cold, useless piece of metal I'd left behind. An offering, of a sort.

I feel nothing. Not guilt. Not relief. Not fear. It’s all been burned out of me, cauterized by the cold. I am a machine made of meat, and my only function is to walk. Left foot. Right foot. One step after another. That’s all there is.

The landscape is hypnotic. The endless white, the pale sun, the hard blue sky. It’s beautiful, and it’s empty. I feel like I could walk forever and never reach anything. Like I’ve walked out of the world and into a blank page.

I think about Jack. I think about the look in his eyes. I think about the sounds. But it’s like watching a movie about someone else. A bad dream that you can’t quite remember when you wake up. It doesn't feel real.

What feels real is the cold seeping through my boots. The gnawing emptiness in my gut. The weight of the flare gun in my pocket. These things are real. They are the new laws of my universe.

I am alone. I have survived. But I look at my hands, chapped and raw, and I don't recognize them. I listen to the sound of my own breathing, and it sounds like a stranger's. The man who crashed the snowmobile, the man who was partners with Jack, he died back there. I am what's left. I am the scavenger. I have become as cold and as empty as the land around me. The white thirst isn't just for water or food. It’s the emptiness that consumes you. And I am full of it.