Survival?

Torc shuddered, gripping the thin aluminum blanket closer against his shoulders. He gazed out the lone window in his makeshift shelter and saw the same thing he'd seen for the past four days: pure white. The snow had covered the window in the first week, and was threatening to completely cover the door as well; the only thing stopping it was his regular sojourns into the outside world. The thermostat by the window told the whole story, outside it was a chilly -40, inside a rather comfortable -3.

It was the best he could hope for, really. He was warmer than outside, in the blanket it was probably closer to 4 degrees, and if he were to bundle up in the hammock he could probably get himself up to 15 degrees. But right now he wasn't interested in sleep, too much to listen to. The wind howling, the snow falling, and that vague noise at the edge of his hearing, that sounded like footsteps on the snow, like shallow breathing; something was out there. Something was surviving out there. And he wasn't sure what he should do about it.

Whatever it was, it wanted in. It wanted in so badly it knocked on the door. Torc sighed, watched his breath for a moment.

He opened the door. The young girl in a very heavy jacket stumbled in. He closed the door behind her. She was already beside the small heater on the floor, the one that put out plenty of heat when it wasn't -40 outside, fervently unzipping her coat to embrace the radiant warmth as close to her skin as she could. He watched her for a moment, unconcerned; his own blanket was warm enough, for him, and if she needed the heat that badly she was welcome to it. She seemed to ignore him completely as he walked behind her, opened a small cabinet, and took out an insulated bottle and a small foil packet. He tapped her on the shoulder with the bottle, gesturing with it; she took it greedily, opened it and poured the water down her throat, choking on it.

When she was done coughing it out, he repeated the gesture with the foil, and she repeated the show for his benefit, tearing the protein bar out of its wrapper and wolfing it down. He sat beside her while she ate, staring into the heater.

“Better?” he asked, finally.

Yrs dropped the foil to the side and leaned closer to the heater. “Yeah.”

“Find anything out there?”

“No,” she replied, glancing at him sidewards. “You?”

“Mmm.”

“That good, huh?”

They'd been trapped on the planet for the past few weeks, making regular trips outside for supplies from the abandoned settlements nearby; so far they hadn't seen a single living creature, lots of corpses, mostly quadrupeds but a few bipeds that could have once been indigenous. The ruined, snow-covered villages were probably not locals, some advanced scout party looking for a new world to populate that either got out while the getting was good or died in the snowfall. Torc and Yrs ended up there entirely by chance, an accident involving a portable wormhole generator and a general lack of concern for personal safety in the heat of the moment.

They knew they were going to die. It was a matter of how long they wanted to push survival, how long they were willing to keep going.