How They Were Found Read Online Free

fire from his machine pistol prevents us from asking too many questions, from arguing against even his harshest orders. We all have our sidearms, but he's the only one who still has bullets, having convinced us to surrender our own to his care some time ago, when our troubles first began.
    After silencing our protests, the captain orders Dughall and some of the other dims to carry what is left of Camran down the stairs and out into the courtyard. The rest of the men go back to their work, but not me. I climb to the roof, where I watch the dims stack Camran atop the pile of our other dead, our frozen and forgotten friends.
     
     
    X
     
    The captain is in a foul mood today, in response to our persistent nagging about Camran, and to our continued speculation about the chances of making it to the coast if we were to try as a group. He rants at us for planning to abandon our posts without leave, then decides to make an example out of two of the long-time dim, Onchu and Ramsay, both so far gone they can barely speak. He dresses them in their furs, then hands them packs already provisioned to the point of bursting, as if the captain knew this day was coming. He pushes them both out the door, kicking at them and threatening with his pistol when they protest. He points toward the south, which I myself only know because it is the opposite of where I see the auroras over the mountains, then forces them across the courtyard, through the gate and out onto the ice. Within minutes they're out of sight from the ground, but from the roof we watch through our night scopes as they wander against the wind and blowing snow, unable already to remember which direction they've come from or where they're going.
    Only a few hundred yards from the gate, Onchu sits on the ground, facing away from the tower, too far to see or hear us above the howl of the wind. We scream anyway, begging him to get up, to keep moving, to make for the coast, to save us all, only he doesn't move. He draws his limbs in, hanging his hooded head between his knees. By morning, he will be frozen to death, and then, some time after, we will forget his name.
    Later, Ramsay somehow finds his way through the dark and the blowing snow back into the courtyard, where the captain shoots him dead, as he has so many others who have refused to go into the wastes, who have returned without his leave.
     
     
    XI
     
    Eventually, there is a meeting at which I wait alone until dawn before returning to the barracks. With no one to tell stories to, I walk the rows of bunks instead, watching my men slumber, their gray heads full of dim dreams. A week later, I find Lachlann dead by his own hand, hanging from the rafters in the supply closet. The captain cuts the body down himself, has it dragged outside and stacked with the others. He asks if anyone would like to say a few words in Lachlann's memory, shakes his head when we cannot.
     
     
    XII
     
    I wait until it is night again—true night, not just dark, as it always is—and then stuff my backpack with foodstuffs and bottles of water, with chemical torches and the thickest blankets I can find. I am leaving, but first I consider murdering the captain in his sleep, perhaps smothering him with one of his own battered pillows, or else choking him with my hands. I sneak easily past the sleeping, dim guards outside his quarters, then through the creaking door of his bedchamber.
    Once inside, I stand beside the captain’s bed and watch his creased, stubbled face until I experience an unexpected moment of doubt: If it is only he and I who still remember anything, then who will be left to lead these men after he is dead and I am gone? If one day the signal does come, who will be here to lead them out of the receiving tower and across the ice?
    What I have to admit is that, in the face of my pending abandonment, perhaps even this captain is better than no captain at all.
    Instead of killing him, I wake him up, and for the last time we talk. Seated