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Bennie’s feet are on fire. They’re telling him to sit the hell down, unwind. They’re also telling him he’s getting frostbite. If he keeps up with this sort of behaviour, they’ll have no choice but to turn black and fall off. Deidre’s doing no better. She ran out of food fifteen miles ago and is only ahead of Bennie because he has no clue where they are.

This is what you get when you sign up for an extreme endurance race in the middle of winter and are a bit lax on your training schedule.

The blizzard shrinks their world to a suffocating ten foot bubble.

‘There should be a rest station up ahead,’ Deidre yells over the roar of the wind.

‘Thank God!’

They hurry over a rise, snow settling on their clothes, freezing sleet slicing, biting red raw edges into their skin. Instead of respite they find more fields, snowdrifts, dry stone walls and obstinate empty countryside.

‘I can’t keep this up,’ Bennie says.

‘Neither can I. We need to get warm.’

They can’t stay still, can’t go back, so they keep walking. Mile after mile, weariness seeping into their tendons like rot, permeating everything. Each step becomes torture.

‘Deidre! Ahead!’ Bennie howls into the gale.

The pair see a dark mass, and slowly it comes into focus out of the white. A farmhouse. Bennie pictures a roaring fire, sizzling sausages and somewhere to crash in his sleeping bag for a few hours. A smile even cracks his crusty lips apart in anticipation. Deidre fancies a nice cup of tea.

They tumble through the unlocked door and bring in a wedge of winter. It takes both of them to force the door shut against the wind. Inside is dead quiet. Click click, the electric’s out.

‘Hello?’ Bennie calls.

No reply.

‘They must be out,’ Deidre says.

‘I don’t like this.’

‘At least it’s dry.’

‘Something stinks.’

They forage candles and a gas stove, use their own supplies to get the fire in the living room started and take off their shoes and socks to dry.

‘I’ll fetch some water,’ Bennie says. He keeps his face covered while moving through the house, the smell getting stronger. He spots the kettle, fills it, then sees another room. A large lean-to greenhouse. He has to look.

By the light of the flickering candle and in a state of extreme fatigue, Bennie is not the bull-headed hard nut he normally is. In fact, he screams at a perfect high C and drops the kettle with a smash onto the tiled floor. Someone stares back. Someone propped against the corner of the greenhouse, slumped on a bamboo garden chair with a newspaper on his knee and a face like a pumpkin three months after Halloween.

Deidre rushes in, then dry heaves over the sink.

‘He’s been there a while,’ she manages.

‘Listen, we just need an hour, maybe two. We dry our gear, get our bearings and make for the nearest rest station. We can’t be far off course. Then we tell whoever’s there about the body.’

‘Agreed.’

Deidre rescues the kettle, dented but serviceable, and the pair huddle back in the living room.

‘Did you find any food?’ she asks.

‘The corpse distracted me.’

‘Can’t we share one of your packs?’

Bennie rummages in his bag but finds only wrappers and disappointment. They must have walked thirty miles since they last stopped, and that was only for a Cuppa Soup and a mug of tea.

‘There must be some food in this place,’ Bennie says, and they get up, both bare-footed, and scour the old man’s house. Every cupboard is empty, the fridge is full of mouldy veg and grey meat. The produce in the greenhouse, however, is very much alive.

‘We gotta move the body,’ Deidre says.

‘Go ahead.’

‘You know, there’s competitiveness, then there’s petulance.’

‘I can’t do it. I’ll be sick.’

‘Then I can’t help you find the course again.’

‘I’d like to see you try and outpace me.’

Bennie continues his protestations but has no choice, so they kick open the back door, rusted shut, and drag the body outside. It’s eerily lightweight and when they toss the body, it travels a good distance from the house, collapsing into a heap in the snow.

Now the owner isn’t watching them, they can see what they’re left with.

‘Well, shit.’ Deidre whispers.

There are dozens of plants, some wilting in the cold, others happily slurping on the irrigation system still flowing through the place. Brilliant banana yellow, burnished red, lustrous brown. On the table there are piles of dried pods, gnarly, round, long or squat, a dozen mounds ready to grind into powder to sell, or enjoy over a nice steak dinner. Every square inch of space is dedicated to chilli peppers. Rows of carefully curated hot sauce line the back wall, chosen for uniqueness, flavour and Scoville heat, tinctures for ferocity and all the weighing, drying and bagging equipment more familiar in a drug lab than an old farmhouse in North Wales.

***

One hour, maybe two, turns into four as the cold intensifies. The pair suit up and, having determined a compass bearing based on half an hour of intense arguing and a lot of wishful thinking, brave the weather. They make it two hundred yards before the pain in their extremities and sheer exhaustion drives them back.

‘Now we’re even worse off,’ says Bennie.

‘We need food or we’ll never make it to the checkpoint.’

‘You going to eat some of those peppers?’

‘I don’t see any gastropubs round here, so yeah, Bennie, the peppers.’

‘Good luck finishing the race with explosive diarrhoea.’

‘You scared?’ Deidre flings off all her winter gear again and re-lights the stove.

‘I like spicy food.’ Bennie sets their wet clothes drying and puts the kettle back on to boil.

‘They’re not just any chillis in there, he was growing superhots.’

‘You an expert?’

‘Don’t need to be. Besides, they’re full of Vitamin C, antioxidants, all the stuff we need to give us some pep once the blizzard clears.’

‘I need some CARBS!’

Deidre rolls her eyes and pads through to the greenhouse, gathers some fresh peppers into a bowl, some from every plant, and grabs a couple of bottles of sauce for good measure.

‘You first,’ Bennie says.

‘No, please, after you.’

‘You were ahead in the race; it’s only fair.’

Deidre relents and takes the first pepper from the top of the bowl. It’s bright orange, reflecting the light of the fire, shaped like a huge wad of balled up chewing gum, an Orange Gusher. She bites it off the stalk whole, chews twice, then swallows.

‘Kinda fruity,’ Deidre gasps, eyes tearing, pale face flushing pink for the first time in days. She coughs, ‘like citrus.’ Her voice sounds like it aged several decades.

‘Can’t be that bad,’ Bennie grabs a jolly looking one, smooth, tapering to a delicate point, a 7 Pot Yellow, then bites it off the stalk and does three quick, open-mouthed chews before swallowing.

Deidre watches, wiping the sweat from her upper lip.

Bennie puckers every possible muscle in his face, pursing his lips into a tiny O. He hyperventilates, lungs already gassed from the hike, grabs his chest, heaves.

‘I think I’m having a heart attack!’ he chokes out, and lies back on the sooty rug to flail around.

‘Just breathe in and out, Bennie, think Zen thoughts. You’re one of the fittest people in the country. You’re not having a heart attack.’

‘I’m not making it up,’ Bennie hiccoughs, eyes squinting against some imagined incandescence. He has his arms and legs in the air like an upturned beetle.

‘You just have a lower pain threshold than me.’

Bennie forgets momentarily about his burning mouth and ear-popping pain. He sees red.

‘Not as tolerant? I’ve done this race three times!’

‘Never finished it though, eh?’

‘Gimme another one.’

Bennie grabs one without looking, a mahogany-coloured morsel, the Chocolate Primotalii. He chomps, snarls, and for a split second wonders at the floral bitterness before he is overwhelmed. He yelps, gets to his feet, glances towards the door and to the snow outside. Then he makes a break for it.

‘No, Bennie! You’ll get hypothermic!’ Deidre tackles Bennie to the floor and they wrestle, both sweating, tearing, mucous flicking about as they roll around.

‘Just a bit of snow! You don’t understand the pain!’

‘I’ll get one too. See, it’s not so bad,’ Deidre sniffs and mops her face, keeps one hand gripping Bennie’s thermal undershirt as she routes round in the bowl for another chocolate-brown chilli. She eats it with her back towards the fire, and visions suddenly flash behind her eyelids. Blistering skin, barbecuing meat, radiation burns, lava, lava, lava.

‘Aaaaaargh!’

‘Told you,’ Bennie coughs, taking Deidre by the shoulders and shaking her. She slaps him across the face.

‘We gotta get out! We gotta run!’

Deidre jumps up and down, like her feet are dancing on white-hot coals. Bennie laughs in agreement, in that conspiratorial tone taken when one sees someone they dislike embarrass themselves. They grapple towards the front door. Bennie wants to jam his head in the first snowdrift he sees; Deidre wants to shove fistfuls into her searing mouth. They slam into the door together, rattle the knob, it gives a little and they push with the maniacal strength of an animal evading a predator, teeth bared and whites of the eyes flashing. The door rams up against two feet of fast fallen snow and doesn’t budge. They tug and yank and race to the back door. Their fingers are still clumsy and stricken with the needling pain of circulation trying to return to damaged flesh. They manage to wrench the door open and both stick their heads out into the storm.

Two wet noses, four red eyes and a pair of incredulous jaws face the blast of freezing air. Night has fallen, and beyond is the vast black void of certain death.

‘Who was the one who went out of his tent to die in the Antarctic?’ Deidre asks, as they slink back into the living room and sit cross-legged by the stove.

‘Scott.’

‘Well, I’m not doing that.’

‘Yeah, they’ll come get us soon, and I’m still starving.’

The internal burn rages on. Bennie feels it from his lips to his heart and down into his guts. Tomorrow is vague, out of his grasp, much like the finish line of the race. What’s concrete is the pulsing in his temples, the stabbing in his fingertips, the weird sense of euphoria broiling in his brain.

Deidre grabs another pepper, red, wrinkly like it’s already been deep-fried. She chomps it down, then lays back, reclines into the pain, revelling in it, dopamine receptors popping like corn kernels.

‘Shit, I think that was a Carolina Reaper.’ Deidre gasps, then whoops, eyes closed, stretching, contorting, punching the air with limp wrists, fingers too damaged to close.

‘Where the hell did that guy get all these?’

‘Don’t care, I want more. I’m getting high on these things.’

Bennie bats her away from the bowl and takes one for himself.

He plunges back into the vortex of steaming heat, a burn-mirage, a self-induced labour of fire. Even as his toes go numb and the constant sweating lowers his actual body temperature even more, all his senses tell him he’s burning. The damp air threatens to sputter out the stove and send them into darkness. He laughs, face stinging like he got slapped by a box jellyfish, but it’s all good. He’s floating, heading for shore, blazing sand ready to strip layers of skin free.

Deidre eats another, then another, unable to taste, tongue pickling in its own juices. It hurts so bad it feels good. She starts banging her head against the floor, mania growing, fever rising. Her stomach cramps, high-grade capsaicin shooting into her system and tying her innards in knots. A beautiful blistering macramé.

One way or another, the bowl empties. The stove extinguishes itself, the gas burner dies. They strip the plants clean, hobbling through the house on broken feet, blood bubbling at the capillaries, fingertips necrotic. They gobble up the dried pods, sprinkle them on their tongues like sherbet, keeping eye contact, trying to gauge a winner. If they can’t get back onto the course and finish the race, then someone has to win right here in this draughty farmhouse, smelling strongly of perspiration, wet socks and a partially decayed pepper-grower. They use their head torches for light as gale force winds continue to batter the windows.

‘Time out, Ben, you’re kinda looking eight feet tall with green skin right now.’

‘I am bloody eight feet tall, Dee, I’m blazing!’ Bennie beats his chest like a gorilla and jumps up onto an armchair to cast a longer shadow. Teetering back and forth over the line of hypothermia, Bennie misjudges the step back down and falls, twisting awkwardly, and there is a hellish snap.

Deidre gags when she sees Bennie’s femur jutting out from a tear in his leggings. There’s a notable lack of blood. They would sober up if they were drunk, but their systems are still overloaded with capsaicin, the half-life of which is many hours away. Instead, Bennie props himself up, taps the floorboards like a gentleman at a bar requesting another drink.

***

The last head torch dims. Deidre restarts the fire and burns newspapers, then books in the log-burner. Her fingers are rigid.

‘No one’s coming, Bennie.’

‘They will.’

‘Not in time.’

Bennie’s complexion is reminiscent of an oyster mushroom, lips white like old plaster and eyes shot with crimson veins. His breath is shallow, ragged, fast. He swears he’s still hot, a trail of magma lining his stomach down his duodenum and into his intestines.

‘I’m not even cold,’ he says, as the last of the sweat evaporates from his brow and his heart patters to a stop.

Deidre’s metabolism races ahead, firing like the ovens in a French boulangerie. Whatever sustenance she gained from the pepper plants is gone. She’s starving. She looks at the bottle of hot sauce in her hand, then at the log burner stove currently eating up decades old Reader’s Digests, then at Bennie. Then back at the hot sauce.

***

Search and rescue locate the farmhouse after a widespread mission. Medics carrying supplies and equipment trek up the path, still blocked with snow. There can be no mistake that there’s someone home – the chimney’s smoking. The first medic tugs open the front door an inch, takes a sniff.

‘Do you smell barbecue?’