Snowy Start

John and Smith just arrived at their destination, a pile of rubble in the middle of nowhere.  The smell of fire is still fresh in the air and sadly for them the dry winter wind is blowing the ashes directly in their faces. 
"Six mile walk and we get this crap.  This better be worth it."
"Shut up John.  Lets get this over with and get out of here."
The two of them approach what used to be the east wing entrance to the three story mansion.  They are immediately greeted by two charred bodies with their abdomen and lower body crushed beneath the debris.  But nature does not care about these small details.  Already there are swarms of flies orbiting around the corpses, picking on their new food before sunrise and the rest of the forest wakes up.
"So where is that thing supposed to be?"
"They said it was somewhere in the third floor."
Smith pulls out a floor map of the mansion and lays it down on the floor.  His puts his right hand on the center of the map and holds it in place.
"Right there, looks like somewhere in the middle."
Smith points to a red dot on the map.
"Which means it's somewhere in the middle of all this garbage."  John sighs.
"Pay some respects, don't go around calling the dead garbage"   
John disregards Smith's remark and heads straight to the middle of the rubble.  He changes out of his leather gloves for some working gloves and begins to move the debris with his shovel. The two of them gets to work.
"Hey look what I found."
John holds up a burned painting by Arkmeids, a prodigy artist that revolutionized the art world with his realistic style.
"What a shame, this could fetch tens of thousands."
"Stop screwing around.  It's going to snow soon."
Smith looks up at the cloudy sky.  No moon.  No stars.  Just clouds.
By now they have moved most of the debris from the center area of the rubble to the edge and yet they still couldn't find the item.  Smith decides to move onto the east wing while John goes to the west wing.  As they uncover more bodies the foul stench grows unbearable for John, so he tosses the bodies on the flower field in the garden, hoping the distance and the flowers would dilute the awful smell.  However, for Smith this is nothing.  He has long desensitized himself to the smell of the dead.  The two of them continues to dig further into the rubble.
"Ah shit, snow."
John grunted.  Working in the cold is bad enough, now there is going to be layers of snow on top of everything.
"Quit complaining."
Still, Smith is just as unenthusiastic, if not more than John, about the snow.  He hates snow.
"Hey Smith, what if we can't find the thing?  Couldn't it have been burned to nothing in the fire?"
"If it burned so easily we wouldn't be here.  Don't worry about not finding it, just keep looking."
The prospects of finding anything are grim.  They have spread the rubble all over the estate and still nothing.  They could even see the ground now.  The three stories of unexplored rubble is no more.
The two of them gradually shifts their respective digging areas back to near the center of the rubble where they started. 
"Want one?"
John is exhausted from all this manual labor.  He holds out his pack of smokes and offers it to Smith.
"Thanks."
Smith takes a smoke and puts it in his mouth.  John takes out some matches from his coat pocket and lights the two smokes.  The two of them sits on top of a broken marble pillar covered in dust laying next to a couple of steps of stairs and enjoy their small break. 
"So what now?  Search through all that stuff we already went through?"
"There's still some left behind us.  Let's go."
Smith finishes his smoke and heads to the flower field.  He kneels down on the snow covered flowers and brushes the snow off the clothes on one of them.  Smith closes his eyes and murmurs something to himself.  Then, he starts searching the bodies.  John turns his head around and watches Smith until his smoke finishes.  Before long, John stands up and begins digging the remaining rubble that they haven't gone through.  Good thing the snow tonight is light, just enough to leave a thin sheet of white over everything.  White, it contrasts beautifully with the charred remains of everything.  That's probably what the heavens are thinking about this scenery.  John thought.