Jeff stopped slogging his parka bundled pine green self and stood stock still, which would have been fine if the wind hadn’t been blowing and the chill threatening to turn my cheeks pale to grey and my gaze had been down on account of those things, all the while leaving me wishing for a scarf that none of us had. I was focused on doing the not-ass-over-teakettle dance, looking at my feet instead of his Levi-denimed butt. There wasn’t much to look at there, not that I swing that way anyhow.

He risked the wind-penetrating cold to point with his mitten ahead. Knowing Jeff, he held a single forefinger extended inside, though no one could see it no how. That’s just the kind of guy he was, pointing at things when it made no sense to point.

There was that razor crust of snow, curled to sculpture by the wind, polished and shaped to stone. Alone, that wasn’t all that interesting or, honestly, something we hadn’t seen a thousand time in our cold trek seeking some kind of shelter from the long winter. I almost slugged the S.O.B. for wasting time for us to get out of the storm. Then I saw what he saw and wondered if they might not let us back if we went back to the stadium, made our mea culpas and offered to pay for the damages neither of us was responsible for except by way of association.

Below that iced blade of frozen snow was blood.

A lot of blood.

And I fancied I saw some boots that might otherwise be worth corpse-robbing to acquire, but all that black, already frozen sanguis was a mite discouraging, if I am being entirely honest.

Those growls coming from the neighborhood of those boots help none either.