Ashen Winter

“You think the guys on the wall need help?”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a firefight.”

The shooting died down to an occasional pop. I picked up the gas cans and trudged along the road beside Rita Mae. The weight of the can tugged at the stitches in my right arm. I bit my lip and ignored the pain—the least I could do in return for Rita Mae’s help was carry the oil to the library.

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 cleaned 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.