Ashen Winter

“Only the cellblocks will be locked down,” Ben replied.

As we reached the staircase, Dad pushed past us both. I caught his arm and tried to pass him again, but he blocked me, stopped, and shook his head. He pointed me to the rear, but when he started up the staircase I crowded his heels. Darla might be at the top of these stairs. If I could, I’d be in the front, taking them at a run. Maybe that was why Dad had wanted me to take rear guard.

The distant boom of a shotgun echoed through the stairwell. The squelching sounds our boots made ended before we reached the third floor, but the coppery stink of blood followed us.

We emerged from the stairwell into a wide corridor. Ben led us right, and we passed through double doors set into a heavy steel gate. The flashlight’s beam landed on a wide, hospital-style door. The doorplate read INMATE INFIRMARY.

Dad and I burst through the doorway side by side. An oil lamp at the far side of the room lit up rows of hospital beds. One held a large man with a wild, unkempt beard and mustache. He was asleep or unconscious, and despite the cold room, his skin gleamed with sweat.

A weathered woman in her fifties stood leaning against a Formica desk at the back. It took me less than a second to take in the entire room and focus on the single thing that really mattered: the muzzle of a rifle, pointing directly at us.

Chapter 73

The woman raised the rifle to her shoulder. I dove right and Dad dove left, seeking cover behind the beds. Mid-leap, I realized that I was leaving Ben, Alyssa, and Mom completely exposed.

The woman pivoted into a shooting stance, sighting down the barrel.

Alyssa shouted, “Elsa! Don’t shoot! You owe me.”

“Don’t owe nobody nothing,” she said.

I peeked over the top of the bed. Alyssa was striding down the aisle toward the woman. Ben and Mom had retreated into the hall outside.

“Those weren’t your tears splashing on my stomach? The first time you stitched me up? And then you sent me back to them!”

“Weren’t nothing I could do,” Elsa replied, her voice still gruff but softer.

“Well, there is now.” Alyssa was only ten feet from her.

“You stop there,” Elsa ordered, gesturing with the rifle.

Alyssa stopped, her palms outstretched. “That girl they brought in here, with the wound on her shoulder. Darla. Where is she?”

“You mean Biter? Don’t know nothing about no Darla.”

I stood up. “Biter?”

“Yeah. Crazy girl. Had to strap her to the bed, she fought so hard. Beeyotch bit my thumb.” Elsa took one hand off the rifle and waved her thumb. A crusty, dull-red scab encircled it.

“You tied Darla to a bed?” I was up and striding toward Elsa before I had time to think about it.

Elsa’s hand slapped back into place on the rifle as she leveled it at my chest. “Had to gag her, too, so she wouldn’t bite none of our fingers off.”

“You . . . you gagged her? So help me God if she was raped. . . .” I passed Alyssa and kept walking.

“Alex . . .” Dad whispered.

I strode directly toward the gun until my chest was pressed against the barrel so hard I could feel the circle it made in my flesh. This was my fault. I should never have stood up on that overpass. Warning Earl and his guys about the ambush had been a horrible mistake. Darla had told me, over and over, that we had to look out for each other first. If I’d listened, if I hadn’t screwed up, she wouldn’t have been a prisoner. Wouldn’t have been . . .

“Where is she?” I yelled.

“You back off or I’ll pull this trigger,” Elsa said. Her voice quavered, and her hands shook.

“You’d best not,” Alyssa said, her voice soft and menacing.

Elsa took some of the slack off the trigger. I didn’t care. I pressed my chest harder against the barrel, forcing Elsa to step back. Her legs were pushed against the desk now.

“Where’s Darla!” I whipped my hand out, slapping the barrel of the rifle in an open-handed strike. It flew from Elsa’s hands and clattered against the wall ten feet away. Pain flared in my hand. I didn’t care. More fuel for my rage.

“Sh-she’s not here.” Elsa’s hands were in front of her face, palms out, as if warding off an angry demon. She backed up farther, sitting on the desk now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dad pick up the rifle. I stepped forward. My thighs touched Elsa’s knees. “I see that. Where. Is. She?”

“Da

“Her name is Darla.”

“O-kay. Darla.”

I noticed my fists were balled and chambered to strike. It took a real effort of will to unclench them. “So you sent Darla to the DWBs. Where are they based?”

“When we Peckerwoods kicked them DWBs out of Anamosa, they went to Iowa City. Later we started trading with them.”

“So Darla’s in Iowa City?”

“Might be. I heard they trade stuff all over, though.”

“Stuff?”

“Drugs, guns, girls . . .”

My fists had clenched again of their own accord. “Darla is not ‘stuff.’ No girl is.”

“Ain’t the same world now,” Elsa whispered.

I brought my fist up. Elsa flinched. At that moment, hitting her would have brought me a vicious, unclean joy. But she wasn’t worth bruising my knuckles over. She shrank into the corner near her unconscious patient, and I turned away.

Dad kept the rifle trained on Elsa. Ben had moved up beside him and was staring at the gun, muttering about Remington 700s, M24s, and M40s.

“See if you can find some ammo,” Dad said.

“I’ll look,” Alyssa replied and started sifting through the desk drawers.

I heard a moan. Mom stood straight and stiff as a board in a corner of the room, clutching the rails of a bed. She looked white as snow. I stepped over to her. “You okay?”

She turned to face me, and her right hand shot out, slapping me so hard that my head rocked back and I saw colored lights. I was so shocked I almost didn’t notice when she raised her left. I blocked her blow, catching her wrist and holding it. She drew her right back, and I caught that wrist, too.

“Do not ever do anything like that again!” she yelled. “Do you think I want to see my only son blown to bits? What were you thinking?” She pulled on her arms, trying to free her wrists.

Mom and I had fought often over the last three or four years, but verbally—she’d never struck me before. I easily held her wrists. It had never occurred to me that I was stronger than she was. “Are you done hitting me?”

“Yes.” She didn’t look the least bit apologetic.

I dropped her wrists. “I will do whatever it takes to find Darla. Take any risk. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“What I understand is that you’re with me and you’re alive. I want it to stay that way, Alex.”

“Getting killed doesn’t scare me half as much as returning to Warren and never finding out what happened to her. How would I live with myself if I abandoned Darla now? If I have to become as callous as the flensers, why would I want to survive?”

“You don’t even know if Darla is still alive.”

“No. But all the same, I’m going after her.”

“Doug,” Mom said, “talk some sense into your son.”

“If it were you, Janice, I’d go,” Dad replied calmly.

“That’s different, and you know it,” Mom said.

“Maybe not.”

“We’ve got no food, no supplies—”

“Got extra rounds for the rifle.” Alyssa lifted a box of ammo from the file cabinet she’d been searching.

“We need to get back to Warren. Rebecca’s all by herself,” Mom said.

“My brother and his family will keep watching over her,” Dad said.

The argument was pointless. For me, there was no decision to be made. “I’m going to Iowa City.”

“I’ll help—if you want,” Alyssa said softly. “Look for Darla, I mean.”