Drop City

ground leaching the vital heat from him, and he was in the process of trying to get a fire going. He'd collected some of the dead and yellowed inside branches and snapped them across his knee to make a whole tottering pyramid of kindling, and he'd dragged a few bigger sticks out of the snowheaps as well, and he did have matches and even a few odd scraps of paper in the bottom of his backpack--the only item of survival gear he'd managed to drag out of the plane before it went up.
    The moon was a terrifically heavy thing as he crouched there beneath it, baring his wooden hands for just an instant to strike a match on the uncooperative slab of the limp cardboard book--unsupportable, that moon, crushing--but though his hands were like catchers' mitts he was going to survive not only this but anything else the evil forces out there might throw his way because the match caught and the wind held its breath and the cluster of desiccated pine needles began to glower and crackle and get greedier and greedier still. He pulled on his gloves. Tore at the branches round him and built the fire till it leapt up and took over on its own. “Joe,” he said, “Joe, we got a fire here,” but Joe was unresponsive, Joe was cold, Joe was out for the count.
    Pan crouched by the fire, beat his hands together. No one was going to come to their rescue out here. Whoever it was in the sled couldn't have been far, but why would they bother? It was Sess Harder and his old lady, had to be, unless Joe had gone completely psychotic on him, and Sess would have paid admission, premium seats, to see Bosky dead. So it was up to him, up to Pan. What he would do was wait for morning, for the half-light and the glow painted round the hills to the south--that would give him direction, and he'd work his way east to the river and then go north for Drop City. He could do it. He was tough. He was young. He knew these hills, he knew the river. He'd have to build up the fire for Joe, build the bonfire of all bonfires, and leave a mountain of wood there too so when Joe came out of it, _if__ he came out of it, he could stay alive till Alfredo and Bill and the rest of them--_Reba__--could get to him.
    That was the plan. It was a lonely plan, a hard plan, but everything was going to be all right. The fire beat back the night. The cold began to slink away and back off into the shadows and though he couldn't feel his feet, his fingers had begun to tingle, and that was a good sign. When your core temperature dropped, the blood fed your organs to keep the machine going and the extremities were sacrificed, just another adaptation for survival, and where was that bear he'd shot the ear off of now? Hibernating, like all the moles and rodents in Drop City, and that was another way to survive. But he could feel his fingers and that meant there was no damage done, or nothing bad, anyway--he'd rather be dead than go around like Billy Bartro from high school with the two cauterized stumps on one hand and three fingers on the other because he was trying to make a pipe bomb in the basement and had to live the rest of his life wearing a pair of dove gray golf gloves like some kind of butler out of an English novel. No, he was all right. Everything was cool.
    It was then that he thought of the flask. He'd left the backpack up against a tree well outside the circle of the fire--didn't want to see _that__ burn--and now he pushed himself up and went back to retrieve it. A hit or two, that's what he needed. To warm him. Calm his nerves. He wasn't going anyplace, not till tomorrow morning, anyway, and it was going to be a long cold unendurable night--might as well get a buzz on. He fetched the pack, settled in again by the fire. He thought of Joe momentarily--maybe he should try forcing a little down his throat, like in the movies, see if that would bring him out of it--but he needed to tend to himself first. He'd really done something to his left arm, torn a muscle or something, and the pain of it shot all the way up into his shoulder socket and back down again when he tried to pin the flask to his chest so he could unscrew the top. The whole business was awkward, especially with his gloves on, but he managed--he had to, he had to get his _head__ clear here--and in the next moment he was holding the cold worked-metal aperture with the silver inlay to his lips and taking a good long hit.
    It was a mistake. And he knew it was a mistake in that instant. His throat seized and he doubled