The thing that Corporal Jones hated the most about the North was how silent the world became when the snows fell. She found that her thoughts would mingle with the snow and drift away until she was at one with the cold, numbing whiteness of her surroundings, which stripped away all her little outer thoughts until she could only think one inner thought over and over and over again.

I wish I were home.

Home. She could taste it on her parched lips. She would walk through the doorway and there would be Jon, bent over the stove and straightening up suddenly to sweep her into an engulfing embrace with a roaring laugh. There would be little Tina and Wendy with their inquisitive faces, looking delighted to see their mother, shrieking with joy and tugging on her sleeves. And there would be food—hot, sizzling meat dripping in fats, and bread, and soup...

Around her, the wind howled, as though it was responding to her hunger.

“There’s no other way,” said the Lieutenant coldly. “The last dogs are gone. A decision has to be made.”

“There has to be another way,” said Private Lasker with desperation. She was the youngest out of all of them, and hadn't yet bowed to the cynicism of reality like the Lieutenant. “It’s not that I’m scared. I’m not scared. But it’s not right. There needs to be another way.”

“We have to live.”

“Yes, but—”

Corporal Jones closed her eyes. “I’ve got children,” she said faintly.

“So have I,” said the Lieutenant.

“Well—” Private Lasker floundered. “That doesn’t make it right!”

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“None of this is right.” The Lieutenant sounded bitter. “They knew it would be a death sentence, deploying us out here. ‘Last hope for our country’, ha!” The sneer distended the Lieutenant’s lips into ugly, jagged things. “They knew exactly what they were doing. But we have to make it back. At least one of us needs to tell the world how it happened.”

Corporal Jones swallowed. “My leg,” she said.

The Lieutenant looked down with some sympathy at her mangled limb, which the dogs had nearly torn clean off in their attack. “I’m afraid it’s lost.”

Though Private Lasker had just started to cry, her tears were already leaving icy tracks across her cheeks. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re going to do it.”

“Yes.” The Lieutenant remained motionless.

“I’m… never going to be able to make it back,” Corporal Jones said, the realisation finally settling in. “I’m never going to see my family again.”

The snow continued to fall in silence.

The Lieutenant put a hand on her shoulder. “I promise that I will be there for your family, Corporal.”

Corporal Jones was suddenly filled with a blazing, furious heat which burned in every part of her except the cool metal pressed against her forehead. “I want to be there for my family,” she shouted into the swirling cold, her breath wisping away. “It’s not fair.”

“It’s never fair,” the Lieutenant said quietly, pulling the trigger.

In the silence, the gunshot shattered the world. Corporal Jones swayed backwards, and red blossomed out behind her as she hit the snow. The Lieutenant remained locked in place for a moment more, gun raised, and then Private Lasker shrieked and the world snapped back into motion.

“Oh God,” Private Lasker whimpered from behind the Lieutenant. “Oh God.” She covered her eyes.

The Lieutenant wordlessly produced a knife and began hacking into the lifeless Corporal’s arms and legs.

Around them, the bones of their sled dogs, which had been meticulously picked clean of meat, gleamed under the faint light.