Harsh

The weather was brutal, and that's being nice. It was nothing less than bone-beating, skin-soaking, finger-numbing cold. It was harsh- and for the boys trekking through the snow and ice, it was murder. The drifts were higher than the boys were tall. They each carried a shovel and a small pick in double-gloved hands, ready to fight their way through the ice if need be. They knew what they were doing was hopeless, but the four young men also knew that it had to be done. It was respectful and a loving gesture. It was a necessity, and they had volunteered.

The town was completely blanketed in snow. There were no buildings with lights on- the power had been knocked out days ago, at the beginning of the storm. The few townspeople who had managed to escape their houses had quickly made their way to the only heated place in town- the underground shelter. It was smaller than it could have been, but it was warmer because of it. The people who had not been able to escape their houses...those were the people the four boys were in search of. It was a tough job, one that no one ever wanted to do, but the young men had found that if they traveled together, they could keep each other warm if need be.

The boy in the lead stopped suddenly, and pulled his scarf off of his face for a brief moment. "Did you hear that?" he yelled into the swirl of snow.

The other three nodded slowly, straining to hear the sound again.

"What was that?" one of them yelled.

"I don't know!" the one in the lead said.

"We have to find it," the one taking up the end of the train yelled.

"Which way did it come from?"

"I don't know. That way?" The lead boy pointed to the left.

"I thought so. Let's go!"

The train started moving again, slower, still listening for the sound. It had been high and long, but oh-so-faint. It had sounded, each boy thought, a bit like the wail of a child or a hurt animal.

For twenty minutes, the boys trudged slowly toward the noise, pausing only when the sound came again, and then not for long. They glanced at each other, shuffling their feet, edgy. The sound was unearthly. They had never heard anything like it before, and it scared them.

After another few minutes, the noise grew so loud the boys knew they were on top of the sound. They glanced around warily and, seeing nothing, looked to the ground and the drifts towering above them. They split up and began to dig shovels and picks carefully into the deepest drifts.

A half hour passed in near silence, broken only by the wind and the sound of picks digging into the ice.

Suddenly a cry came from one of the boys- the one that had led the small troupe. The other turned to look and gasped at what they saw. A drift had collapsed, revealing a hollow spot that was occupied by not an animal but a girl. She was young, about as old as the four who surrounded her. She held in her limp arms a baby, only a couple years old. The baby was wailing and pulling at the girl- her sister, they boys thought. The girl, however, was not responding. She was alive- but she was freezing. She had wrapped herself around the baby, trying to keep them both as warm as possible.

The boys instantly started wrapping scarves around both of the people, hoping to somehow keep them alive for the walk back to the center of town.

They had arrived just in time to save two lives from the harshness of the cold.