I didn't sleep.
That wasn't unusual anymore. Sleep came in pieces now—ten minutes here, half a dream there—never enough to matter. My body learned to rest without permission, muscles going slack whenever I stopped moving for too long. I'd jerk awake with my heart racing, convinced I'd missed something important.
Like a sound.
The fire had burned down to embers sometime before dawn. I fed it one chair leg, listening to the wood complain as it caught. The house smelled like smoke and old dust, the kind of smell that sank into clothes and never left. I checked my fingers first thing, flexing them slowly, counting the ache. Still pink. Still mine.
Outside, the light was wrong.
Not darker—lighter. Too bright, like the snow had learned how to glow on its own. I stood by the window and wiped a circle clear with my sleeve. The world beyond looked untouched, smooth as if nothing had ever moved through it. No tracks. No wind marks. Just white stacked on white.
The scrape from the night before hadn't come back.
That should have made me feel better. It didn't.
I packed slowly. You rushed when you were scared; you moved slow when you wanted to live. I counted what I had left. Half a pizza wrapped in cloth. A dented can of peaches I'd been saving for a reason I couldn't name. Matches down to nine. Crowbar. Knife. Rope stiff with frost.
I left the house midmorning, locking the door even though it didn't matter. Habit. Proof.
The cold hit harder outside, a flat slap across the face. My breath came out thick, fogging the air so badly I had to stop walking just to see again. Every step made that familiar crunch, loud enough to feel like shouting. I paused often, listening between heartbeats.
Nothing answered.
The grocery store was only four blocks away, but four blocks meant time, and time meant exposure. I followed my own footprints back, careful not to stray. The snow swallowed sound fast. That was the worst part. You never heard things coming until they were close enough to matter.
Inside the store, the air felt heavier. Still cold—but insulated, trapped. I didn't like it. I moved aisle by aisle, crowbar ready, eyes low. The freezers were empty now, just my own boot prints and broken lids left behind like evidence of a crime no one would investigate.
I was halfway to the back when I saw it.
A shape at the end of the aisle. Human-sized. Still.
My first thought was body. That calm slid in automatically, the way it always did. Dead people were safer than living ones. Dead people didn't want what you had.
I didn't approach right away. I watched.
It stood slumped against a shelf, head bowed, arms hanging loose at its sides. No blood. No movement. Ice crusted its jacket, a thin glaze that caught the light. Frost clung to its lashes.
I'd seen this before.
People ran until they couldn't, then stopped. The cold finished the conversation.
I took one step closer.
The sound echoed too much. The figure didn't move.
Another step.
That's when I noticed the floor.
No drag marks. No collapse pattern. The body wasn't arranged the way gravity liked. It looked… placed. Like it had leaned there on purpose.
I stopped breathing.
The cold doesn't make you still like that.
It stiffens you. Twists you. Pulls you down.
This thing was upright.
I waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. My legs started to burn, blood slowing, nerves screaming at me to choose—forward or back. Standing still in winter was a mistake. Standing still near something you didn't understand was worse.
I leaned the crowbar against the shelf, just close enough to feel it vibrate through my glove.
The figure's head lifted.
Not fast. Not dramatic.
Just enough.
Its eyes were open.
They were wrong—not cloudy, not empty. Focused. Fixed on nothing I could see. The mouth hung slightly open, rimed with frost, lips cracked black at the edges. Its chest didn't rise.
It didn't blink.
I stepped back.
The sound of my boot seemed impossibly loud. The figure didn't follow. It didn't react at all. Just stood there, frozen in the middle of a decision it never finished.
I understood something then, quietly and all at once.
The dead weren't all done.
Some of them were just waiting.
I didn't touch it. I didn't test it. Curiosity killed people faster than hunger ever did. I backed away slowly, eyes never leaving its face, until the aisle bent and it vanished behind shelves.
Only then did I run.
Outside, the cold hit me like it was offended I'd gone inside without permission. I didn't stop until my lungs burned and the grocery store was a dark shape behind me again. I bent over, hands on my knees, breath tearing out of me in ragged clouds.
Nothing chased me.
That was worse.
I went home by a different route, marking turns in my head, memorizing corners. I barred the door when I got back, slid the couch in front of it, even though the house groaned in protest. My hands shook when I tried to eat. The pizza tasted like ash.
That night, the scrape came back.
Closer this time.
I didn't look out the window.
Some things, once you saw them move, didn't let you pretend anymore.
Winter had taught me how to starve.Now it was teaching me how to wait.