Ashen Winter Read online

  Drifts of snow had covered the ice here and there. I felt these as much as saw them—it got much harder to pedal, and Bikezilla rose and fell slightly, following the contours of the blown snow.

  Suddenly we burst out of the narrow confines of the creek onto another lake. Darla steered the bike in a broad left turn. We’d been following this new course less than a minute when I started to hear a faint new sound under the chatter of our rear track: the roar of falling water.

  I yelled, “Is that—”

  “The roller dam, yeah,” Darla yelled back. “We’re headed right toward the barge and all those soldiers. Look for a place to turn left.”

  “Up there?” I pointed.

  Darla was already steering toward the break in the trees I’d seen. We turned into the new channel, a broad, straight stretch of river. It would have been easy to pedal down it except for one thing: The Humvee was again accelerating across the ice, directly toward us.

  Chapter 18

  The Humvee was about a mile south of us but racing north fast. Both banks of this stretch of river were densely forested—I didn’t see any place we could get off the river ice. Darla braked hard and spun us into a tight turn, and we stood on the pedals, accelerating north away from the Humvee.

  “Darla, look!” I yelled and pointed.

  “I see it.”

  To the north, there was a break in the trees: a path barely big enough for Bikezilla, its opening flanked by two huge cottonwoods that would prevent the Humvee from following us. Darla steered straight toward it.

  My legs burned. We’d been pedaling flat out since we left the guard shack more than a half hour ago. My body was coated in cold sweat—from exertion or terror, I wasn’t sure which. I tried to coax one more burst of speed from my body, but I could barely maintain our current pace.

  Darla was exhausted, too. I could hear her gasping for air even over the clatter of Bikezilla. If anything, we were slowing down. But then I heard the Humvee’s engine revving behind us and discovered I did have some hidden reserve left.

  I bore down on the pedals and we shot forward, a missile homing in on the safety of the trees ahead. There were no tricks left, no fancy maneuvers. If we kept playing chicken with the Humvee, eventually we’d lose.

  There was no gunfire. Maybe I’d actually done some damage by throwing the pistol. The rumble of the engine behind us crescendoed. I looked back—we weren’t going to make it.

  I braced myself uselessly, thinking a collision was inevitable. But suddenly the gap between us and the Humvee widened. The truck braked, sliding toward us across the ice. We shot between the cottonwoods and up a snowy slope. The Humvee slammed into one of the trees with a shriek of tortured steel.

  We reached the top of the ridge we’d been climbing, and the trail leveled out, leading into a large clearing with a huge oak. Its branches spread so low we had to duck to pass beneath it. At the far side of the meadow the trail dove back into the woods, down the other side of the ridge toward the river.

  Blood rushed in my ears, and my breath came in gasps. But even over the noises of my body, I heard a roar ahead—water rushing over the roller dam.

  We came around a bend and the woods opened up, the trail suddenly ending at the frothing pool at the base of the dam. Darla slammed on the brakes, but Bikezilla slid inexorably toward the pool.

  “Darla!” I screamed.

  “Jump!” She swerved, trying to miss the open water. I jumped and landed with a thud in the snow on the hillside. The bike fell sideways, trapping Darla’s leg and dragging her in a rush toward the deadly, roiling water at the base of the dam.

  Chapter 19

  Without hesitation or forethought, I jumped. I stretched out in a flying leap, Superman-style, hurling myself down the hill toward Darla. I landed half on top of her, our arms entangled, both of us sliding toward the frothing water.

  Darla was digging her fingers into the snow, desperately trying to stop her slide. But the weight of Bikezilla, trapping her leg, dragged us toward the edge. I dug my toes into the hillside, groaning with effort.

  We slid to a stop. Bikezilla’s rear track hung out over the water. Ice from the spray was already freezing on our gear.

  “I’ve. Got. You!” I whispered through clenched teeth.

  Darla wrapped one arm around my shoulder. “Maybe you could pull me away from the water now, numbnuts?”

  I heaved a huge sigh of thanks and started tugging Darla back toward the bank. A sound like a gunshot rent the air, and the ice under Bikezilla broke. I watched in horror as the whole sheet was instantly sucked under by the vicious undertow.

  Darla’s legs fell into the pool. She twisted, clinging desperately to me. I scrabbled backward, trying to stay on the unbroken ice. Bikezilla slid off her, sucked down into the gray, foaming water.

  The undertow pulled at Darla. It was surprisingly strong—I felt like I was playing tug-of-war with the river, with Darla as the rope and both of our lives hanging in the balance. I couldn’t get enough leverage on the icy bank to drag her out of the river. I tightened my grip on her. I would not let go. If Darla got dragged into the river, I’d go with her.

  Darla heaved her right knee up, trying to get it up over the ice shelf, but she bashed it instead against the edge of the ice. I plunged my left hand into the icy water and got a grip on the back of her knee. I howled and dragged her leg up onto the bank, and she rolled toward me, heaving her other leg free of the pool in a splash of freezing water.

  She lay on her back, gasping. I looked across the water and ice of the Mississippi—I didn’t see anyone at the barge. Maybe they’d left for the evening.

  Bikezilla was thrown to the surface. It slammed into the concrete base of the dam and was sucked back under. The churning water coming over the dam was tossing it around like a tennis shoe in a washing machine. I shuddered—if we’d fallen in there, neither of us would have survived.

  “S-s-so c-c-cold,” Darla said.

  She was sopping wet to her waist. The water was already starting to freeze in little icy patches on her coveralls. I moved my wet left arm experimentally—I could barely feel it. Flakes of ice fell off my sleeve. “We’ve got to get out of the open.”

  “All our s-s-supplies.” Darla stretched one arm toward the roller dam.

  “It’s hopeless. They’re gone.” I stood and helped Darla up. She was shivering violently. We had to hide. Had to get warm—and do it in a way that Black Lake couldn’t track us. “Come on. Try to stay in the tracks.” I pulled her back up the hill, trudging along the path Bikezilla’s rear track had made.

  Darla stumbled and fell. She lay shivering in the snow. I hauled her to her feet. “Can you jog?” I asked. “You’ve got to warm up.”

  “I’ll t-t-try.” Darla stumbled up the hill in a shambling half-jog. We were moving a lot slower than I would have liked, but at least we were out of sight of the barge.

  Darla started to fall, and I caught her again. I looked down and saw I’d stepped outside of Bikezilla’s track. We were leaving a clear trail despite our efforts to stay in the path.

  Darla fell once more before we made it to the top of the ridge. The woods were silent and still. On the mostly level ground at the top of the hill, Darla stretched out her pace, and we made better time. Maybe the jogging was warming her up, though she was still shivering. I rubbed my wet arm as we ran. I still couldn’t feel it.

  I stopped when we got to the massive, spreading oak in the clearing. “We can get off the path without leaving a trail here.”

  “How?” Darla asked.

  “That branch.” I pointed above our heads. “I’ll boost you up. We’ll crawl along it to the trunk, climb around, and crawl out another branch on the far side.”

  “G-g-good idea.”

  I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. If Darla fell and hurt herself, it would be a disastrously bad idea. And I’d never been much of a tree climber—I don’t like heights. “Can you do it?”

  Darla just nodded, shive
ring.

  I squatted and grabbed Darla by her thighs. Water squished out of her coveralls onto my coat. I lifted her high enough that all she had to do was flop her arms over the branch to hang by her armpits. She kicked out—I had to duck to save my head—and got one leg up over the branch. Then she swung herself up on top of it and started dragging herself toward the trunk, inchworm-style.

  I jumped and grabbed the branch in both hands, facing away from Darla. I swung my legs back and forth a few times, working up momentum, and threw them up and around the branch. Then I just had to roll over, pulling myself to the top of the tree limb. Darla was already about halfway to the trunk. I dragged myself along behind her.

  “There’s a great view from back here,” I said.

  “Q-quit looking!” Darla snapped, but I could hear a hint of a smile in her voice. Maybe my stupid joke had worked. I needed something, anything, to distract from the desperation building in my gut.

  Darla stopped at the oak’s huge trunk. “There’s no way to climb around.”

  “What about up to that fork in the tree?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I might need a boost.”

  Darla wasn’t stuttering or shivering as much. I hoped that was a good sign. I let my legs dangle over either side of the icy branch and scooched over to help. She sat up and threw one knee up on the branch and reached to try to get a handhold in the fork of the tree. I held her waist, trying to keep her steady. Darla stood up on the branch so she could reach farther into the fork. “Push me up.”

  I put my palms under her butt and shoved. She pulled herself upward until her chest was wedged into the split in the tree. She rested there for a moment and then pulled herself the rest of the way up.

  “There’s a branch here that goes the right way,” Darla said. “We can get at least another thirty feet from the path.”

  “Okay, good. I’m coming up.” I pulled my knees onto the branch. Standing was tricky. I got one foot flat on the ice-coated branch, but I felt wobbly. I stood, trying to keep the unsteadiness in my knees under control and clinging to the trunk. I wasn’t that far off the ground—maybe ten or twelve feet. There was no real reason to be scared. I focused on the tree trunk and tried to get my breathing under control. In through the nose, out through the mouth—like I’d use for a sparring match in taekwondo.

  I reached and got a grip on the fork in the tree. I bent my knees to jump and give myself a head start on pulling myself up, but I slipped—and suddenly I was dangling, my feet clawing futilely at the air.

  Chapter 20

  I kicked out, bashing my toes against the tree trunk. Feet scrabbling against the trunk, I tried to pull myself onto the branch. I didn’t have a solid grip on the fork in the tree; my fingers were slipping on the icy bark. Darla’s hands wrapped around my left wrist and hauled upward. I strained, pulling myself up until my chest was wedged in the fork. Darla was sitting on a slightly higher branch, reaching down to help me.

  “Thanks,” I grunted.

  Darla turned and started inching away from the trunk on the new branch, saying, “I think this branch will work best.” I scrambled to follow her.

  The end of the new branch looked none too safe. It was more than fifteen feet above the ground, and we couldn’t afford to fall and sprain an ankle or worse. But as we inched outward, the branch sagged until it was only ten or twelve feet over the snow.

  Darla reached a spot where the branch forked into two smaller limbs that probably wouldn’t support both our weight. She grabbed the branch and swung off it, dangling for a moment. “Hold on tight,” she said. Then she let go, dropping into the snow below.

  Before I had a chance to adjust my grip, the branch sprang upward, trying to buck me off. I clung like a squirrel in a thunderstorm. When the motion calmed, I called down to Darla, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  I inched out to the fork in the limb and slid off, dangling by my hands. I bent my knees a little and let go. When I hit the snow, I let my legs crumple so I wouldn’t jam my ankles or knees. Practicing falls at the dojang, we used to roll or slap the floor to break our momentum, but the snow was so deep there was really no surface to slap. Still, for once I was glad for that deep snow—it cushioned my fall.

  Darla grabbed my hand and hauled me to my feet. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I looked around—we were at least sixty feet from the path. I hoped that would be enough of a break in the trail that nobody would notice our new track. With any luck, they’d assume we went into the river with Bikezilla and drowned at the base of the roller dam.

  I struck out on a course perpendicular to our old path. Pushing through the deep snow was hard, cold work. Soon both of us were shivering again.

  We left the clearing and entered a dense wood. The trees were all dead and leafless, so it didn’t offer much cover. I pushed onward for twenty or thirty minutes, breaking the trail for Darla.

  I heard a clicking sound behind me and turned. Darla was shivering violently.

  “Crap, I’ve got frozen peas rattling around where my brains should be. We’ve got to get you out of the wind.”

  “I’m ’k-k-kay,” Darla said around the rattle of her teeth. Her lips were turning blue, and the legs of her coveralls were crusted in ice and snow. She was definitely not okay. But even if our fire-starting kit hadn’t gone down with Bikezilla, we couldn’t afford a fire now—we were still too close to the barges and the Black Lake guards.

  “Crap, crap, crap,” I whispered. First things first—I could take care of the wind and wet clothes—maybe. I looked around for the deepest drift, a spot where a cluster of trees had captured and held the blowing snow. “Come on.” I took Darla’s hand and led her toward the drift, using my body as a plow.

  When we got well into the drift, I dug a foxhole, shoveling away the snow with my hands and arms. Darla tried to help, but her arms were shaking so badly she could barely control them. My wet arm in particular was freezing, and I was shivering, but Darla had nearly been dunked. I had to get her dry somehow. Now.

  As I finished digging, I hit the ash layer under the snow—a grim reminder of the cause of this abominable winter, of the volcano’s eruption ten months ago. Some of the ash came up with the last few armloads of snow and left dirty gray blotches on the white ramparts of my foxhole.

  We squatted in the foxhole for a few minutes. I wrapped my arms around Darla, hugging her from behind and rubbing her arms. The foxhole kept us out of the wind, but it wasn’t warming up Darla—if anything, she was shivering more.

  “Stand up,” I said. “Let’s get these wet clothes off.” I unlaced her boots and gave one a tug. It came off with a crackle of breaking ice and squelch of wet sock. When I finished with both boots, I reached up, unzipped her coverall, and started pulling it down off her torso.

  “I’m n-n-not really in the mood,” she said.

  “Yeah, me either,” I said as I pulled the coverall down over her legs.

  “That’s a f-f-first.”

  I forced myself to smile. I was terrified she’d freeze to death as I watched, helpless. I started stripping off her jeans. Water had gotten through her coverall at the waist and ankles, so only the knees of her jeans and long johns were dry. When I got her long underwear off, I put my hands on her hips against her pink panties. They were sopping wet with river water.

  With both my hands against her icy skin, I realized she wasn’t shivering as hard. I took that as the worst kind of sign: When the body quits shivering, it’s preparing to die.

  Chapter 21

  I stripped off Darla’s panties and socks, so she stood bottomless in the frozen air. Her bare feet were porcelain white, streaked with blue. She set them in the snow without protest—obviously she couldn’t feel her feet at all. I had maybe a minute before she started to get frostbite, and not much longer than that before the hypothermia would kill her.

  I stripped off my boots as fast as I could and squatted on them to keep my socks dry while I pulled off my c
overalls.

  I jammed Darla’s feet into my coverall. She was so far gone now I had to lift each foot and put it in the pant leg for her. I had two pairs of socks on, a wool outer pair and some nylon liners. I stripped off my wool stocks and forced them over Darla’s feet. My boots didn’t fit right without the thick wool socks and my toes hurt terribly, but I figured that was a good sign. If they quit hurting, I’d know I was in trouble.

  I thought about what to do with Darla’s feet. If I left her in socks, her feet would get wet from the snow. But her boots were sopping. I wrapped my hand in the dry part of her long johns and pushed it up into her boots to try to dry them. I don’t know if it helped much, but it was the best I could do. I put the wet boots back on her feet and tied the laces.

  “Come on, Darla,” I said. “You’ve got to run now.”

  She started to shamble into the snow at the edge of the foxhole. I threw an arm around her waist to stop her.

  “No, just run in place. We’ve got to stay hidden until dark.” It wouldn’t be long. The day was already fading.

  Darla lifted one foot and set it back down.

  “Faster.” I wanted to yell, but I knew I shouldn’t. Black Lake might have people out looking for us.

  Darla started stepping desultorily in place. She lurched from side to side as if drunk, her balance so bad that I kept both hands on her waist, ready to catch her if she started to fall over.

  “That’s it. Faster, Darla, faster.”

  She started moving more quickly. I concentrated on holding her upright and trying to jog in place without kicking her. When she started shivering again, I breathed a sigh of pure relief.

  “W-w-what now?” she asked.

  “It’s maybe an hour ’til full dark. We can sneak out of here then and head back to Uncle Paul’s farm.”