He'd been careful, mostly; he'd kept his head down, cap pulled low to shield his face, worn gloves to hide his hand. In one of the little towns, he'd broken into a hunting and camping store in the middle of the night and collected supplies while the alarm rang. By the time the town cop had arrived, he was long gone. To his estimation, he'd only been seen once: a woman, unexpectedly outside in the cold streets late at night. She'd seen his face, but it was dark. She probably hadn't seen enough to tell anyone anything that would identify him, if he was being tracked. Besides, he'd be long gone before anyone got there to ask.

The problem was he had no direction. There was no mission. He was cut off, adrift in the world with no anchor or compass. It was easy to exist, to keep himself alive and hidden, taking what he needed; the hard part was the doubts, the questions. His mind kept returning to those fragments, worrying at them, fraying their edges. That cold wind, was it falling or flying? When had it happened? Had it even happened at all? The sound of a tiny plane overhead as he walked through the forest that skirted yet another town brought him the ghost-echo of artillery and the taste of mud between his teeth.

A storm was rolling in, thick clouds graying out the sky. There would be more snow. The temperature was already plummeting. He welcomed it: anything to fix his attention to. Anything to blot out those confusing, distorted memories, even temporarily.