Ashen Winter (17 page)

“Sure, for mounting a rescue,” I said. “That deal’s still on the table.”

“I can’t.” Kenda pulled at her ear.

“Then you only get five packets.” I took the bundle from Rita Mae, counted out five envelopes, and held them out to Mayor Kenda. “Take it or leave it. Darla doesn’t have time for me to waste arguing.”

Mayor Kenda took the packets. She scrawled something on a scrap of paper from her desk and signed it. When she held the paper toward me, Rita Mae grabbed it.

“My lamp oil,” Rita Mae said. She handed the paper back to Kenda.

Kenda wrote something else on the paper and thrust it at Rita Mae. “Satisfied?”

“Yep. I’ll see that he gets everything he wants.” Rita Mae ushered me out of the office. As we left, she gestured at the bloody cloth tied around my right arm. “Should check on your wound.”

“I guess. Earl said it needed stitches.”

“We’d best visit the fire station, then. Paramedic there, Floyd, has a better hand for stitching up flesh than I do.”

Floyd did prove to have a deft hand with his needle. He worked fast, too, which was a blessing—getting stitched up without anesthetic isn’t much fun. The needle itself wasn’t all that bad, but the pressure it put on the gouge in my flesh sent flashes of pain up and down my arm and even into my teeth.

While Floyd worked on my arm, I tried to distract myself by thinking about the supplies I’d need. Skis, guns, a tent, a pack—the list seemed endless. “Can you write a supply list for me?” I asked Rita Mae.

“Paper’s dear. Just tell me; we’ll remember it.”

“Okay. Ow!”

“Sorry,” Floyd said, “almost done. Maybe just two more stitches will do it.”

Rita Mae and I talked through the supply list while Floyd finished up. He got the wound closed with just four stitches—one for the entrance wound at the back of my arm and three for the exit wound at the front.

Then Rita Mae led me around the town—starting from the fire station, we went back to City Hall and then to the small downtown business district. The piece of paper signed by Mayor Kenda magically produced whatever we asked for. At our last stop, St. Paul’s School, we picked up two five-gallon gasoline cans full of lamp oil. Mrs. Nance, the principal, was none too happy about giving it up. We were taking more than half her supply. But when she complained, Rita Mae shook the paper with the mayor’s signature under her nose. By the time we finished our tour of Worthington, I was equipped better than Darla and I had been when we left Warren on Bikezilla.

I had a big, internal frame Kelty backpack; set of Saloman XADV backcountry skis; boots and poles; a Big Agnes tent; an REI down sleeping bag; a plastic tarp; a coil of nylon rope; a working butane lighter (an amazing luxury compared to a flint and steel or the fire-by-friction set); three candles; a set of aluminum pans; a small first-aid kit; a needle and thread; enough cornmeal, dried meat, and dandelion greens to last for weeks; two changes of insulated winter clothes; a Bushmaster .308 hunting rifle similar to Uncle Paul’s; a Browning Hi-Power pistol I had no idea how to use; and a box of extra ammo for each of the guns. The weight of the backpack on my hips and shoulders amazed me. A handful of minuscule seeds had turned into this? It wasn’t too different from before the volcano, when wealth could be carried on a tiny plastic card. But the best part about the supplies—the only part that mattered—maybe they’d give me the chance to reach Darla.

Chapter 31

As we trudged away from the school, I heard a burst of far-off gunfire. I dropped both cans of oil, ducked, and swiveled. All I could see was the back side of the town wall. I looked at Rita Mae; she hadn’t even flinched.

“Who’s shooting?” I asked.

“Blasted bandits taking potshots at someone,” Rita Mae replied. “Happens almost every day. They never hit anyone; they’re just reminding us they’re still out there, waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“Waiting for us to let down our guard, maybe. Waiting for a chance to get inside the city walls. Waiting to butcher us all, no doubt.”

“And FEMA does nothing.” I heard another shot from closer by. Looking toward the wall, I pinpointed the source of the sound—a guy I hadn’t seen before on his belly atop the wall, returning fire with a rifle.

“Worse than nothing. Jumped-up peacock that runs that camp in Maquoketa came up here and offered to protect us. All we had to do was abandon Worthington and move into his camp. Mayor Kenda said anyone who wanted to leave with him could. No one left.”

Four guys carrying rifles ran past us on their way to the wall. “Should we do anything?” I asked.

“I’m certainly not about to go climbing up the steps in that ice wall. Now if the bandits made it to the door of my library, that’d be a different matter. Then they’d have me and a 20-gauge deer slug to deal with. You do what you think best, son.”

“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.

“We’ll go around back,” Rita Mae said. “The first step’s not such a doozy.”

Rita Mae fed me a huge meal. A dandelion-green salad drizzled with a bit of soybean oil. Then hasty pudding—her version turned out to be cornmeal mush flavored with dandelion flowers and tiny bits of beef. It tasted a little odd but was filling, so I ate three servings. She did all the cooking at the hearth in the living room over a small fire she fed with scraps of two-by-four. My offer to help was met with a dismissive wave. For dessert, she fried a hamburger only a little bigger than a quarter.

“Where’d you get the meat?” I asked.

“Some of the cows survived the ashfall. We slaughtered almost all of them not long after winter set in. We ran out of hay, and we can’t afford to feed them on corn. That’s most of my meat ration for the week.”

“Here.” I pushed my plate toward her. “You eat it.”

“Now what kind of hostess would that make me?”

“An alive one?” I shrugged and cut the burger in half with the edge of my fork. “Halvsies. Or I’m not eating it, either.”