DAWN HAS NEVER SEEN a dead body before. Not in person.

Aside from that little scrap of jacket, Alex is almost completely buried in the snow. He’s buried enough that Dawn can almost fool herself that it’s only a jacket she’s seeing, not a body.

Almost, but not quite.

Dawn picks her way cautiously up to the scrap of yellow jacket, as if it’s somehow going to come to life and, I don’t know, attack her or something.

“Hello?” she says, and her voice shakes and she’s irrationally embarrassed about that, somewhere in the part of her brain that isn’t cold and really scared and still kinda has to pee. The scrap of yellow jacket that may or may not be attached to a body does not respond.

Dawn creeps up right beside the scrap of yellow jacket that may or may not be a body, and it doesn’t move, and there’s too much snow to tell straight away if it’s a body or not.

She nudges the snow with the toe of her boot and it doesn’t really give very much, but it certainly feels squishier than a rock.

It feels like a person who has been lying under the snow for a while.

Dawn tries to kick the snow away, but she’s uncoordinated and graceless and she nearly slips and falls onto the scrap of yellow jacket that may or may not be a body, so she stops trying to kick the snow away.

She looks around the bottom of the cliff as though someone is going to show up to make this any easier.

As far as she can tell, she’s alone.

She crouches down in the snow beside the scrap of yellow jacket that, let’s face it, is probably attached to a body. Holds her breath. Reaches out with a fair amount of, you know, trepidation, and wipes some snow off the jacket.

There’s enough give underneath the jacket that she knows it’s not rocks under there. Someone or something is wearing this jacket.

Dawn brushes more snow off, and there’s a zipper and a couple of pockets, which really sucks because it means she’s touching the front of the jacket, which means somewhere above where she’s touching, well…

There’s going to be a face.