BY THE END OF THE FIRST WEEK, with no sign of rescue, we began to solve our most pressing problems. Roberto devised ingenious hammocks for the most injured and improvised flimsy blankets from the plane's thin nylon seat covers. Thirst was not an issue, thanks to Adolfo "Fito" Strauch, a quiet, serious former player who had improvised snow-melting basins from square aluminum sheets he found lining the bottoms of the seats.

But we were beginning to starve. One of the first things Marcelo had done was gather everything edible from scattered suitcases or the cabin. There wasn't much—chocolate bars and other snacks, some wine and a few bottles of liquor—and on the second day, he began to ration food. Each meal was nothing more than a small square of chocolate or a dab of jam, washed down with a sip of wine. It wasn't enough to satisfy anyone's hunger, but as a ritual it gave us strength.

One morning, I found myself standing outside the fuselage, looking down at a single chocolate-covered peanut cradled in my palm. This was the final morsel of food I would be given, and with a sad, almost miserly desperation, I was determined to make it last. I slowly sucked the chocolate off the peanut, then slipped it into the pocket of my slacks. The next day I carefully separated the peanut halves, slipping one half back into my pocket and placing the other in my mouth. I sucked gently on it for hours, allowing myself only a tiny piece now and then. I did the same on the third day, and when I'd finally nibbled the peanut down to nothing, there was no food left at all.

We became obsessed by the search for food, but what drove us was nothing like ordinary appetite. When the brain senses the onset of starvation—when it realizes that the body has begun to break down its own flesh for fuel—it sets off an adrenaline surge of alarm as powerful as the impulse that compels a hunted animal to flee an attacking predator. Again and again we scoured the fuselage. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that because of the chemicals they'd been treated with, they'd do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw but found only inedible upholstery foam. My mind would never rest. Maybe there was a plant growing somewhere or some insects under a rock. Had we checked all the pockets of the dead? Sometimes I would rise from a long silence to shout, "There is nothing in this fucking place to eat!"

There are some lines, I suppose, that the mind is very slow to cross. Of course there was food on the mountain—there was meat, plenty of it, and all in easy reach. It was as near as the bodies of the dead lying outside the fuselage under a thin layer of frost. It puzzles me that, despite my compulsive drive, I ignored for so long the obvious presence of the only edible objects within a hundred miles. But when my mind did finally cross that line, it did so with an impulse so primitive it shocked me.

It was late afternoon and we were lying in the fuselage, preparing for night. My gaze fell on the slowly healing leg wound of a young man lying near me. The center of the wound was moist and raw, and there was a crust of dried blood at the edges. I could not stop looking at that crust, and as I smelled the faint scent of blood in the air, I felt my appetite rising. Then I looked up and met the gaze of other players who had also been staring at the wound. In shame, we quickly glanced away, but for me something had happened that I couldn't deny: I had looked at human flesh and instinctively recognized it as food. I was horrified by what I was thinking, but once that door was open, it couldn't be closed. Finally, one night I confided in Carlos Páez, one of the team's supporters and a friend I trusted.

"Carlitos," I whispered, "are you awake?"

"Yes," he muttered. "Who can sleep in this freezer?"

"Are you hungry?"

"Puta carajo," he snapped. "What do you think?"

"We are going to starve here," I said. "I don't think the rescuers will find us in time."

"You don't know that," Carlitos answered.

"I know it and you know it," I replied, "but I will not die here. I will make it home."

"But what can you do?" he said. "There is no food here."

"There is food," I answered. "You know what I mean."

Carlitos shifted in the darkness.

"Fuck, Nando," he whispered.

"There is plenty of food here," I said. "Our friends don't need their bodies anymore."

Carlitos sat silently for a moment before speaking. "God help us," he said softly. "I have been thinking the very same thing."