Ashen Winter

Our argument ended suddenly when a distant scream pierced the air. No sooner had we started ru

We glanced at each other. “Go wake up the day shift!” Dad ordered.

“Right.” I reversed course, sprinting for the tents where the prefects slept. By the time I got back with reinforcements, the whole camp was in an uproar. A flood of refugees was pouring into the center of the camp, fleeing the crescendoing screams and chaos. Dad was yelling to be heard over the noise, dispatching teams of prefects to search for whatever or whoever was causing the ruckus.

Dad grouped me with two others, Jones and Altemeier, and told us to sweep the perimeter of the camp along the fence. We set off at a run.

By the time we got to the fence, it seemed like the commotion had mostly moved deeper inside the camp. I sca

As we passed the gate, I saw four Black Lake guys, double the usual contingent, leaning against the guard shack outside the fence. “Why don’t you do something?” I yelled. They laughed, and one of them pantomimed shooting me. I turned away, and we ran on.

A few hundred yards farther on, we heard a child screaming. Following the noise, we found a little girl, maybe four or five years old, sitting in the snow between two of the tents, screaming, “Mommyyyyy! Mommyyyyy! Mommyyyyy!” She paused just long enough between each scream to breathe.

We quickly scouted the adjacent tents. Nobody was there. I scooped up the girl in my arms, which only made her scream louder. “I’ll run her to the middle of camp, then catch up to you,” I yelled. Jones nodded, and she and Altemeier took off along the fence line.

I headed toward the center of the camp, slowing to a jog to conserve my strength. I had to detour once, to avoid a chaotic melee between three black-clad biker-types and five or six prefects. I would have been worse than useless in the middle of a fight with a squirming little girl in my arms.

It took more than ten minutes to find Mom in the chaos at the center of camp. She was organizing refugees who weren’t part of the prefect system into groups she designated ru

I couldn’t find Jones or Altemeier. I looked for a few minutes before I came across another fight. A group of three flensers armed with knives were fighting with a much larger cluster of refugees. I ran toward them, but by the time I arrived, the invaders had broken off, ru

A few minutes later, it was over almost as suddenly as it had started. The cries of rage died, replaced by the wails of the wounded and moans of the dying.

It took more than twelve hours for Dad to get a clear picture of what had happened. We’d been attacked by members of the Dirty White Boys. Something between fifteen and thirty of them, working in groups of three or four, had swarmed through the camp searching tents and stabbing anything that moved.

We had eleven fresh corpses. Eight refugees and three Dirty White Boys. Dozens more were wounded, including a few that might soon join the dead. Dad decided to deliver all the corpses to the guard gate along with a protest—not that either of us really thought it would do any good. The guards had let the DWBs in. They knew what would happen.

The little girl I’d grabbed in the middle of the night turned out to be named Lisa. Her mother had gotten pulled away from her in the crush of fleeing people. The only good tears I saw that day were the ones when mother and daughter were reunited.

Hoping for Black Lake to take action seemed futile, so we spent an exhausting day preparing for the night to follow. We organized more fighters, distributed captured knives, and made plans for refugees to flee to the protected zone at the center of the camp if the DWBs came again. I had no time to do anything about my escape plan amid the rush to prepare for another attack.

Dad pla

So of course they did.

Chapter 67

One of the prefects Dad had assigned to watch the gate sprinted up to us. I was out of breath myself, having just returned from ru

“DWBs, sir.” The woman was gasping, out of breath. “Just came through the main gate.”

“How many?” Dad barked.

“Just two so far.”

The three of us ran back toward the gate.

Trey was there, carrying one dirty plastic WalMart bag in his left hand and two in his right. A guy I didn’t recognize was with him. They sauntered toward the center of the camp like they didn’t have a care in the world, but I could see two separate groups of prefects shadowing them at a distance. I caught Trey’s eyes darting sideways and realized the truth: That huge muscle-bound dude was scared out of his mind.

“Stop!” Dad ordered them.

They stopped.

“You brought our radio?”

Trey lifted one of the WalMart bags. “Shortwave transceiver.” He hefted the other two. “Batteries.”

Dad strode up to them, his eyes shifting warily from Trey to the other guy. I followed along. He took the bags from Trey.

“You going to flense us now?” Trey asked. His eyes darted from me to Dad.

“Why’d you decide to hand over a radio?” Dad asked.

“You kicked our asses yesterday. If it was up to me, we’d come back with shotguns and street sweepers and wipe this latrine pit off the map. But it’s not up to me.”

“You’re not allowed to bring in guns, are you?”

“Nope. Some kind of candy-ass deal between the guards and Wolfe.”

“Wolfe?”

“He’s the captain. Guy who told me to bring you this here radio.”

“I’m surprised the guards let the radio through.”

“You bribe the right guard, you can get almost anything in. Except guns. So you going to skin us? Or keep your bargain?”

“What bargain?” I said. “By attacking us last night, you broke whatever bargain there was.”

“Told Wolfe not to trust the cattle.” Trey shrugged, making an effort at being nonchalant, but his shoulders were trembling.

Dad said, “Let’s see if the radio works.” Then he called out to the prefects, “Hold these two here for now.”

I carried the radio to our tent. Dad got out the flashlight and started shaking it while I dumped the bags on my bedroll.

When the flashlight was charged, Dad held it on the radio. I grabbed the pair of wires coming out the back: one red, one black. They were greasy, as if they’d been installed in a car at some point. “Does it matter which one co

“It matters,” Dad replied. “If it’s like jumper cables, the red wire is positive and the black is negative. Hook up the positive side first.”

“I can’t tell which side of the battery is positive.”

“Should be printed on the casing.” Dad aimed the shake light at the battery.

The terminal labels were embossed into the plastic battery case. There was no obvious way to co

I held onto the insulated part of the red wire, pushing the copper lead against the positive battery terminal. When I pushed the black against the other terminal, sparks flew, searingly bright in the dim tent, and I dropped both wires.