2 BY MIDDAY I WAS OVERCOME BY A CHRONIC fatigue. Whether it was brought on by simple exhaustion, a lack of sustenance, or the middle stages of acute mountain sickness, I did not know. A deep, angry wind picked up in the north and barreled through the valley. On either side I was enclosed in tar-colored rocks, glossy with a coating of ice. My fever had returned full force, my forehead steaming and bursting with sweat. I stopped and bit down on my gloves, yanking them off with my teeth. Holding my hands to my eyes, I had twenty fingers. My vision would not clear up. I flexed my fingers and could hear the tendons creaking like an old rocking chair, the fingers themselves like hollowed tubing knotted at the joints and knuckles. Suddenly a low, motorized growl sounded in the distance. I looked around, but, being at the bottom of a valley, I could see nothing except the rising black walls around me. Yet the sound grew closer, closer … I jerked my head to the right just in time to see an old motorcar leap over one side of the embankment in a cloud of snow.
