My feet thudded down the ramp so fast I thought I might trip and roll the rest of the way down the defunct jetway in a ball. When the tunnel ended in nothing but blinding white and a wall of cold, I didn’t even pause to process the height. I jumped.

That wild luck allotted to fools and babies was with me then: the drift piled against the north face of the terminal was substantial enough to break my fall. I thrashed my way upright, no time for reflection or gratitude, and began to wade out into the desolation. The bite of the air in the shade of the building was far worse than anything I’d been able to imagine, but I was committed now. I’d made my choice.

Running through snow is difficult enough, and growing up in Phoenix hadn’t given me a childhood of winter wonderlands in which to practice. Nor did my gross lack of surface hours after the disaster. Now as I stumbled and flailed my way through knee to waist-high drifts, my lack of experience showed. And worse, it was slowing me down. He was out here. Somewhere. I just needed to find him.

Muffled yells from the crowd and the softened pounding of fists on the glass windows now overhead came at me still as I floundered my way out into the open. Perhaps they thought to holler some sense into me. That I might hear them and turn back. But we had turned back too many times already. Everyone in that building, myself included, had paid the price of fear.