Ashen Winter

“I don’t know,” I said. Darla tried to pull away from me, but I held her close. “My uncle said we might grow apart, and I know he was right—”

“We won’t—”

“That’s not what I mean. He was right that most relationships don’t last long—my friends hardly ever dated anyone more than a month. The only other girlfriend I had, Selene, lasted two months. I’ve never had a girlfriend as long as you.”

“Me, either. A boyfriend, I mean.”

“And I think I love you more now than I did the first time I said it.”

“Me, too.”

We were quiet for a moment. I knew what I wanted to say, but it was bound to come out all wrong. Or hopelessly corny. Eventually, I gave up thinking about it. “If we’re all going to die anyway, I want to die with you. And if we live, I want to live with you.”

“Like, get married?”

I hadn’t really thought about it that way. But wasn’t that what I’d just said? That I wanted to live with Darla? Forever? The idea of it was thrilling. And terrifying. “I don’t know. I’m only sixteen.”

“It’s hard to make plans.” Darla wrapped one arm around her shoulder, hugging herself. “I mean, who knows if we have a future, if we’ll survive that long.”

“We will.” I peeled her hand away from her shoulder and held it. “I mean, if there’s no future, what’s the point of trying? We’ll find my parents. Things will get better.”

“I used to love to daydream about growing up. About what my kids might look like,” Darla said wistfully. “I always thought I’d have a farm. A big red barn, fields of corn and soybeans, maybe a few head of milk cows. Five or six kids ru

“Five or six?”

“Yeah, being an only child sucked. So I always wanted to have lots of kids. Now . . . I don’t know.”

“Before, I never really thought about kids much,” Well, to be honest, I’d thought about the process of making them a lot. But not the result. “Now I don’t want any. Not unless things get a lot better.”

“I’ve wanted a big family since I was a little girl.”

“Well, if things do get better,” I said, “you’re going to need someone to take care of all those kids while you work on the farm. And to, um, help make all those kids.”

“You don’t get out of farmwork that easy, buster,” Darla said. “You can watch the kids some days, but some days you’re going to have to drive the tractor. You don’t do your fair share, and I’ll make those kids with a turkey baster, see if I don’t.”

“Do I even want to know how that works?”

“Duh, you—”

“No, I really don’t want to know. It’s just that the problem with me driving a tractor is, well . . .”

“You have no clue how to, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I always imagined marrying someone who loved farming, not some city slicker.”

I shrugged. “Well, you can’t always get everything you want.”

“If I can’t have everything I want,” Darla said, “then you can’t, either.”

“Huh?”

“Well, like getting married and having kids—we can do all that someday. But you remember what you said you wanted when we started this whole conversation?”

“Um, no.”

“Good, ’cause you can’t have it.” Darla poked me hard in the shoulder with one finger. “You said you wanted to sleep!” She pushed herself up on her arms and kissed me. I decided sleep could wait—at least for a while.

Chapter 14

Early the next morning we set to work repacking Bikezilla. By the time we were ready to go, everyone else was up. So we had to say goodbye for the second time in three days. Coming back to the farm had its disadvantages, though when I thought about the night before, I decided the benefits outweighed them. Not just the making out, either, although that was fun. After our talk the night before, I felt closer than ever to Darla. Closer than I’d ever felt to anyone.

We finished our goodbyes and set out, staying on the route we’d mapped out with Uncle Paul. I’d fully expected to spend the day dodging bandits or FEMA patrols out to catch us and stick us in a camp. They got paid by the government according to the number of refugees they housed, so they were always looking to put stray people in their camps. Thankfully though, the roads were deserted.

Early that afternoon, we turned off South River Road onto the access road that led to Mississippi Lock and Dam #12. We biked up onto a railroad embankment, and Darla slammed on the brakes, bringing Bikezilla to a sliding stop.

Across the road ahead, I saw the chain-link gate we’d climbed over during our trip last year. But behind it there was something new: a guard shack about eight feet square with light pouring from its windows. Black Lake’s eagle logo was stenciled next to a window on the shack’s side.

Darla whipped Bikezilla into a turn, and we took off again. We’d gone about a mile when Darla finally quit pedaling and craned her neck to peer behind us. I looked, too—the road was deserted.

“You think they saw us?” Darla asked.

“I du

“Let’s not and say we did. Just go around and avoid the lock.”

“I want to know if they saw us—if they’re going to be looking for us. And we promised Uncle Paul we’d try to get some wheat.” I got off the bike.

“You promised, not me.”

“Right.” I got the bolt cutter off the load bed.

Darla scowled but helped me hide Bikezilla on the other side of the berm. We trudged back to the shack, taking cover behind the berms and railroad embankment. When we got close, Darla stopped to cover me with the shotgun, and I dropped to my hands and knees. I crawled up to the fence. If anyone came out of the shack, they’d see me for sure. But if they were just casually glancing out the windows, the corner of the shack would block me from their view. With the bolt cutters, I opened a hole in the fence just big enough to slither through on my belly. The snow rasped against my coveralls as I crawled to the building and hid beneath one of its windows.

Slowly I lifted my head to peek over the windowsill. Inside, two guys in camo sat at a small table playing cards. They’d slung their assault rifles over the backs of their chairs. Three piles of wheat kernels lay between them. I felt a stab of envy—the seeds they were pushing back and forth so casually across the table were worth a fortune. If we could grow them in the greenhouses, we could have real bread again instead of corn bread and corn pone.

A bottle of Grey Goose vodka sat on the table between them, about half empty. The guards were wholly absorbed in their game—not even glancing out the windows. I crawled back to Darla.

“Two guards,” I whispered. “Playing cards. They’re betting with piles of wheat. Might be drunk—we could take them easy.”

“Let’s see what’s going on at the lock. Maybe we can get some wheat out of one of the barges without fighting.”

“And we can make sure the river is frozen while we’re there.”

“It is.”

We walked toward the river, keeping the snow berm between us and the road. It was exhausting to push through the deep snow, so I wasn’t paying much attention to where we were going. We’d walked about fifteen minutes when I stepped out into thin air. I grabbed at Darla’s hand, trying to regain my balance, but all I accomplished was pulling her with me over the drop-off in front of us.

We tumbled and slid down a steep slope. I lost hold of Darla somewhere along the way and slammed into a horizontal surface at the bottom, sliding a few feet before coming to rest. My shoulder and side hurt, but otherwise I thought I was okay.

“Darla?” I whispered.

“Yeah, over here.”

I turned over and crawled toward her. The surface was hard and slick under my gloves—ice. “You all right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

We’d fallen down a steep embankment onto ice. I didn’t think we were on the Mississippi itself—maybe one of the pools or inlets that I’d seen on the map, reaching out from the river’s banks like pudgy fingers.