Ashen Winter Read online

  The roads had all been bulldozed clear, although icy patches of packed snow and frozen ash clung to them here and there. I had to move slowly and watch my step. “You were smart not to let FEMA put you in a camp. Darla and I got locked in the camp outside Galena for a couple of weeks last year. It was hell.”

  “The colonel who runs the Maquoketa FEMA camp came back a few weeks after his first visit. Had a bunch more men with him. Said we had to relocate to the camp for protection whether we wanted to or not.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Showed him the business end of our rifles. The people still here who’ve survived—they’re tough. Rather be killed than locked up in some camp or made slaves, I reckon.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “So how did you and Darla wind up in a FEMA camp?” Rita Mae asked.

  “We were trying to get to my uncle’s farm near Warren, Illinois.”

  “You got picked up by FEMA on your way there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what happened? Tell me about your trip.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it. The trip itself had been bad enough—we had encountered humanity at its sublime best and its savage worst. I would excise parts of that trip from my mind forever if I could. But the worst part was thinking about Darla. That she might be—I didn’t even want to think the word. I wanted to curl up in the icy road and cry until my tears froze me to the pavement. But that wouldn’t help Darla. And she was alive. She had to be alive.

  “Are you all right?” Rita Mae asked. “You look like you just heard your best friend died.”

  “Darla,” I choked on her name.

  “Oh. Of course. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forgive me.”

  I put down the gas cans and adjusted my grip.

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “No, it’s okay.” And for some reason, it was. I told her about our trip. About how Darla had saved my life, first in the icy stream and again at the FEMA camp. I told Rita Mae about our life at Uncle Paul’s farm: how we’d managed to survive so far, about our plans to build more greenhouses to raise wheat and outlast the volcanic winter.

  By the time I finished, we were at the library. Rita Mae unlocked the door and showed me where to stow the cans of lamp oil. “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why you came back. Why didn’t you stay in Warren? Sounds like you had a decent chance of surviving.”

  “We were looking for my parents. A bandit gang attacked my uncle’s farm. We beat them off, killed two. One of them was carrying my dad’s shotgun. Darla and I tracked down another member of the gang and found out that the shotgun probably came from the Maquoketa FEMA camp.” I lapsed into silence for a moment. The enormity of what I’d done—dragging Darla back into this mess—fell over me like smoke, choking me.

  Rita Mae broke the silence, “I can—”

  “I’m too stupid to live. I should never have dragged Darla back out here, not for anything.”

  “Bad things are happening everywhere. You weren’t safe on your uncle’s farm, either—you just said a bandit gang attacked it. Darla could have gotten hurt anywhere, anytime.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what I was trying to say was that maybe I can help, at least where your parents are concerned.”

  “How? What do you mean, help?”

  “Just because a supervolcano erupts, it doesn’t mean the library’s business stops. I’m still developing ‘my collection,’ like those modern librarians say.”

  “What does that have to do with my parents?”

  “I’m getting to that, keep your horses reined. Ever since FEMA opened the camp in Maquoketa, Kenda and I have been trying to get a copy of their roster. Folks want to know if their missing friends and relatives are locked up in there.”

  “You got one? A roster?”

  “Yep.” Rita Mae pulled a huge stack of worn and dogeared copy paper off the bookcase behind her desk. “We bought it off a gleaner, Grant Clark, two months ago.”

  “A gleaner?”

  “Yep. Gleaners are groups of people who roam around scavenging and trading. At least they used to be—we haven’t seen any of them in five or six weeks. Gangs might have gotten them all.”

  “How do you know it’s real?”

  “We don’t. Not for certain. But Grant said he got it from a guard at the Maquoketa camp. And he’s always been reliable before.”

  My hands shook. A memory flashed through my head: Mom scolding me for leaving my bike in the middle of the garage; Dad’s distracted half-smile as he listened. I’d mostly tuned Mom out then, but now I desperately wanted to hear her again, regardless of how much we had fought. My brain was alight with hope—I felt dizzy and realized I’d forgotten to breathe. After ten months of searching for them, news of my mother and father might be only an arm’s length away.

  Chapter 32

  Rita Mae was already flipping through the papers. “Goodwin . . . Hailey . . . Halprin . . . Doug?”

  “Dad,” I whispered.

  “Janice?”

  “Mom.” I planted my hands on the table, holding myself up. I had to remind myself to breathe again—they were alive!

  “They were alive two months ago, anyway.”

  “And they’re in Maquoketa.”

  “They were when this list was printed—that’s all we can say for certain.”

  I collapsed onto a bench. My backpack jammed against the wall behind me. I scooted forward and put my head between my knees, trying to think.

  My parents might be alive . . . and close by. Darla might be . . . dead. Dad. Darla. Mom. Darla. I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. I had to try to rescue my parents; I had to go after Darla. And I had no idea how to accomplish either of those things. A shiver passed down my spine, making me sway involuntarily.

  I felt an arm across my shoulders. Rita Mae had sat down beside me on the bench and pulled me toward her. I flopped right over, my head cradled in her lap. She smelled of book dust and mildew—not entirely pleasant, but somehow comforting.

  “I can’t do this,” I moaned. “I can’t handle it. Everything’s gone to ash. I don’t know how to make it right again.”

  “None of us can handle it, sweetie. We just do the best we can.” Rita Mae gently stroked my hair.

  “Earl says Darla’s dead. She can’t be dead. Earl’s got to be wrong.” I rubbed my fists against my eyes. “What do you think?”

  “Are you asking me for reassurance or for the truth, Alex?”

  I thought for a moment. My mother used to say never to ask for the truth unless you were prepared to handle it. I swallowed hard and said, “The truth.”

  “She’s probably dead. Either the bullet killed her or the Peckerwoods did.”

  I choked back a sob.

  “If she is alive, that might be worse,” Rita Mae said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Grant told us the gangs are trading in slaves. Young girls, mostly.”

  “So Darla could be alive.”

  “Not a life such as I’d want to live—a slave to bandits and rapists.”

  “But—” I pushed myself out of Rita Mae’s lap. “I’m going after her.”

  “Your parents—”

  “Have been in that camp for months and have each other. They can wait. Darla can’t. I’m leaving now.”

  “There can’t be much more than four or five hours of light left in the day. Won’t do her any good if you get killed. Best you go at first light, rested and with a full stomach.”

  Every muscle in my body was tensed, as if screaming at me to get moving—now! But Rita Mae was right. I was sleepwalking through the day in a fugue state, dead to the world, dead even to my body’s needs. At least I could force down some food before I left. I breathed in. “Okay,” I muttered.

  Rita Mae closed up the library and took me to her home. It looked different than it had the year before. Back then, the front porch had been a collapsed wreck. Someone had clea
ned up the mess, removing the jumble of joists, rafters, and shingles. They hadn’t rebuilt the porch, though; long scars marked where it had been attached to the house. The front door was about three feet off the ground. I saw a new structure behind the house: a small outhouse built of unpainted gray boards.

  “We’ll go around back,” Rita Mae said. “The first step’s not such a doozy.”

  Rita Mae fed me a huge meal. A dandelion-green salad drizzled with a bit of soybean oil. Then hasty pudding—her version turned out to be cornmeal mush flavored with dandelion flowers and tiny bits of beef. It tasted a little odd but was filling, so I ate three servings. She did all the cooking at the hearth in the living room over a small fire she fed with scraps of two-by-four. My offer to help was met with a dismissive wave. For dessert, she fried a hamburger only a little bigger than a quarter.

  “Where’d you get the meat?” I asked.

  “Some of the cows survived the ashfall. We slaughtered almost all of them not long after winter set in. We ran out of hay, and we can’t afford to feed them on corn. That’s most of my meat ration for the week.”

  “Here.” I pushed my plate toward her. “You eat it.”

  “Now what kind of hostess would that make me?”

  “An alive one?” I shrugged and cut the burger in half with the edge of my fork. “Halvsies. Or I’m not eating it, either.”

  “Okay.” Rita Mae speared her half of the hamburger with her fork and lifted it to her mouth. The beef was delicious—hot and crispy and juicy.

  When we finished cleaning up from our huge late lunch, I picked up my backpack and struggled to force my aching right arm through the straps.

  “You leaving already?” Rita Mae asked.

  I nodded.

  “Won’t make it to Cascade before dark.”

  I shrugged.

  “Going to stick out like a sore thumb with that bright blue backpack.”

  I thought about it a moment. The insulated coveralls Rita Mae had helped me procure were light brown—not too bad. But the backpack would be painfully obvious against the snow.

  “I guess you’re right. I need some kind of camouflage,” I told Rita Mae. “Something that won’t stand out against the snow.”

  “A ghillie suit,” Rita Mae said.

  “A what?”

  “It’s a suit with lots of cloth strips hanging off it made to blend in with underbrush. Snipers use them. I read about them in Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy. Good book.”

  “Can we trade for one?”

  “They’re usually made in brown-and-green camouflage. What we want is a white-and-gray version to blend in with the snow.”

  “Yeah. That’d be perfect.” I put down my backpack.

  “I’ll see if we can’t make something that’ll work.” Rita Mae dug through some cabinets, coming back with two old white bedsheets, a fat black Sharpie, and her sewing kit. We spent the rest of the evening tearing strips from the bedsheets, streaking them with the marker, and sewing them onto my coveralls, backpack, and ski mask.

  I tried on everything when we were done, posing in front of a full-length mirror in Rita Mae’s bedroom. I looked completely ridiculous, like a survivor of an explosion at a sheet-making factory. Still, the strips of fabric hid most of the bright colors of my clothing and pack. It wasn’t like I was a contestant in some postapocalyptic fashion show. It’d do.

  By the time we finished, we were working by lamplight. I still wanted to leave but knew Rita Mae was right about waiting for daylight. I might get lost wandering around in the black, postvolcanic night and never get close to wherever Darla was.

  We put away the sewing supplies and started dinner. I tore up dandelion leaves for a salad, while Rita Mae fried cornpone pancakes in soybean oil. The aroma of cooking brought my hunger back powerfully, despite the huge lunch I’d eaten. I ate everything, fueling my body for the coming fight. After dinner, Rita Mae made up a bed for me in the living room near the fire and said goodnight. I lay awake for a while, knowing I needed to sleep but unable to shut off my mind. Unable to stop thinking about Darla.

  • • •

  When I awoke, Rita Mae was already up. The dim yellow-gray light in the eastern windows told me it wasn’t much past dawn. We had leftover corn pone pancakes for breakfast—Rita Mae ate just one, but I wolfed six of them. I would need the energy.

  I double-checked my gear and finished packing. “You sure you want to head out there?” Rita Mae asked as I worked. “Seems like a good way to get killed.”

  “Yes,” I said and then hesitated. Was I answering yes, I wanted to go, or yes, it was a good way to get killed? Both, I decided. “If Darla’s alive, she needs me. If she’s dead, I need to know.”

  Rita Mae nodded and gently took hold of my left arm.

  “And if I get killed . . .” I shrugged, “at least I’ll have died trying to help the girl I love.”

  Rita Mae pulled me into a hug. “Guess I’ll see you as far as the gate.”

  I had to keep my pace slow to match Rita Mae’s, but I didn’t mind. I’d spent enough time with her last year and again over the last twenty-four hours that she was familiar and comfortable. I didn’t even feel the need to speak as we walked toward the south gate.

  Walking with Rita Mae brought my mother back to mind. I couldn’t remember ever just walking with Mom in comfortable silence like this. Sure, I usually hadn’t said much when we were together. But Mom always kept up a steady stream of chatter: plans, information, and admonitions that I got remarkably good at tuning out. I took Rita Mae’s hand and squeezed it once before letting it drop. She looked at me and smiled, maintaining the easy and precious silence between us.

  Perhaps I thought of my mom because it was too terrifying to think about Darla—that she might be dead or worse. Still, I had to focus. Darla first. If I survived looking for her, then I’d resume the search for my parents.

  We reached Worthington’s south gate, the one I’d entered through the day before. Two guards sat on stools beside it, four more arrayed at the top of the nearby walls. All of them were armed with rifles.

  “Open up,” Rita Mae called. “Crazy boy wants to leave our fine upstanding town.”

  One of the guards stood up. “No can do, Miz Rita.”

  Chapter 33

  “What do you mean?” Rita Mae said. “Lift the bar and pull that gate open. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t do that. Mayor says he’s got to stay inside the city walls.”

  I strode toward the gate, figuring I’d just climb over it. One of the guards sidestepped, putting himself in my path. I butted chests with him—the top of my head barely reached his neck.

  “What right do you have to keep him here? Get out of his way and open the gate this instant, Roger Thornton!”

  “Orders are orders,” he replied. “I can open the gate and let you out, Miz Rita. Heck, with how much you fuss with the mayor, I might not be allowed to let you back in. But if he tries to leave, I’ve got to stop him.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Rita Mae muttered. She yanked on my right arm, clearly forgetting about the gunshot wound.

  “Easy. That hurts,” I hissed under my breath.

  “Sorry. Let’s go talk some sense into Kenda.”

  The leisurely pace Rita Mae had set in reaching the gate was now replaced with a walk so brisk I had to jog to keep up, the pack thumping rhythmically against my back. We crashed through the reception room at City Hall and barged into the mayor’s office without knocking.

  “What is this nonsense about imprisoning this young fellow who’s done us no harm?” Rita Mae yelled. “In fact, he’s done us considerable good by bringing those kale seeds.”

  “Rita Mae, he’s just a kid,” Mayor Kenda replied.

  “I’m sixteen,” I said.

  “Exactly. How can I in good conscience let you go wandering around in that mess outside? You’re going to get killed.”

  “How can you in good conscience keep him
locked inside the city?” Rita Mae retorted. “How are we any better than those FEMA goons locking people into their refugee camps, if we do the same thing?”

  “He’s a child, Rita Mae,” Kenda yelled. “Without children we don’t have any future.”

  “Without freedom,” Rita Mae yelled back, “why would we want a future?”

  “Look,” I said, trying to alleviate the shouting match, “can we—”

  “Come on.” Rita Mae grabbed my arm and towed me out of the mayor’s office. She slammed the door so hard the whole wall shook.

  She led me back to her house, muttering all the way about “damn bureaucrats” and “interfering do-gooders.”

  “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “I know. I’m making a plan.”

  “What?” I asked as we stepped into her living room. I hoped it was a good plan—I didn’t really relish a sixteen-foot drop off the outside of the icy wall.

  “Never mind that. Help me untie this clothesline.”

  A nylon rope was tied just above head height in Rita Mae’s living room, zigzagging five or six times in front of the fire. Rita Mae started taking clothespins off the line while I struggled with the knots. “You know, I have rope in my pack.”

  “You might need that later. Best we use mine for this.”

  “Won’t the guards see us? I don’t want to wait ’til dark.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  I shrugged and got back to work on the knots. When we finished, we had a coil of good nylon rope about fifty feet long. Rita Mae led me out of the house and to the southeast corner of town, out of sight of the south gate.

  The ice wall ran right through the backyard of a one-story house. A path led to a staircase carved on the inside of the wall. Not far from the staircase a man lay atop the wall, scanning the horizon through his rifle sight.

  Rita Mae pushed through the deep snow near the base of the staircase, whispering, “It was here somewhere. I know it was.” After a minute or two of that, she gestured for me to join her and started digging in the snow. I helped her uncover a hidden tree stump. Rita Mae tied one end of her rope around the stump and tugged hard on it, making sure it was secure.