Mike Mullin - Ashen Winter

Drifts of snow had covered the ice here and there. I felt these as much as saw them-it got much harder to pedal, and Bikezilla rose and fell slightly, following the contours of the blown snow.

Suddenly we burst out of the narrow confines of the creek onto another lake. Darla steered the bike in a broad left turn. We’d been following this new course less than a minute when I started to hear a faint new sound under the chatter of our rear track: the roar of falling water.

I yelled, “Is that-”

“The roller dam, yeah,” Darla yelled back. “We’re headed right toward the barge and all those soldiers. Look for a place to turn left.”

“Up there?” I pointed.

Darla was already steering toward the break in the trees I’d seen. We turned into the new channel, a broad, straight stretch of river. It would have been easy to pedal down it except for one thing: The Humvee was again accelerating across the ice, directly toward us.

The Humvee was about a mile south of us but racing north fast. Both banks of this stretch of river were densely forested-I didn’t see any place we could get off the river ice. Darla braked hard and spun us into a tight turn, and we stood on the pedals, accelerating north away from the Humvee.

“Darla, look!” I yelled and pointed.

“I see it.”

To the north, there was a break in the trees: a path barely big enough for Bikezilla, its opening flanked by two huge cottonwoods that would prevent the Humvee from following us. Darla steered straight toward it.

My legs burned. We’d been pedaling flat out since we left the guard shack more than a half hour ago. My body was coated in cold sweat-from exertion or terror, I wasn’t sure which. I tried to coax one more burst of speed from my body, but I could barely maintain our current pace.

Darla was exhausted, too. I could hear her gasping for air even over the clatter of Bikezilla. If anything, we were slowing down. But then I heard the Humvee’s engine revving behind us and discovered I did have some hidden reserve left.

I bore down on the pedals and we shot forward, a missile homing in on the safety of the trees ahead. There were no tricks left, no fancy maneuvers. If we kept playing chicken with the Humvee, eventually we’d lose.

There was no gunfire. Maybe I’d actually done some damage by throwing the pistol. The rumble of the engine behind us crescendoed. I looked back-we weren’t going to make it.

I braced myself uselessly, thinking a collision was inevitable. But suddenly the gap between us and the Humvee widened. The truck braked, sliding toward us across the ice. We shot between the cottonwoods and up a snowy slope. The Humvee slammed into one of the trees with a shriek of tortured steel.

We reached the top of the ridge we’d been climbing, and the trail leveled out, leading into a large clearing with a huge oak. Its branches spread so low we had to duck to pass beneath it. At the far side of the meadow the trail dove back into the woods, down the other side of the ridge toward the river.

Blood rushed in my ears, and my breath came in gasps. But even over the noises of my body, I heard a roar ahead-water rushing over the roller dam.

We came around a bend and the woods opened up, the trail suddenly ending at the frothing pool at the base of the dam. Darla slammed on the brakes, but Bikezilla slid inexorably toward the pool.

“Darla!” I screamed.

“Jump!” She swerved, trying to miss the open water. I jumped and landed with a thud in the snow on the hillside. The bike fell sideways, trapping Darla’s leg and dragging her in a rush toward the deadly, roiling water at the base of the dam.

Without hesitation or forethought, I jumped. I stretched out in a flying leap, Superman-style, hurling myself down the hill toward Darla. I landed half on top of her, our arms entangled, both of us sliding toward the frothing water.

Darla was digging her fingers into the snow, desperately trying to stop her slide. But the weight of Bikezilla, trapping her leg, dragged us toward the edge. I dug my toes into the hillside, groaning with effort.

We slid to a stop. Bikezilla’s rear track hung out over the water. Ice from the spray was already freezing on our gear.

“I’ve. Got. You!” I whispered through clenched teeth.

Darla wrapped one arm around my shoulder. “Maybe you could pull me away from the water now, numbnuts?”

I heaved a huge sigh of thanks and started tugging Darla back toward the bank. A sound like a gunshot rent the air, and the ice under Bikezilla broke. I watched in horror as the whole sheet was instantly sucked under by the vicious undertow.

Darla’s legs fell into the pool. She twisted, clinging desperately to me. I scrabbled backward, trying to stay on the unbroken ice. Bikezilla slid off her, sucked down into the gray, foaming water.

The undertow pulled at Darla. It was surprisingly strong-I felt like I was playing tug-of-war with the river, with Darla as the rope and both of our lives hanging in the balance. I couldn’t get enough leverage on the icy bank to drag her out of the river. I tightened my grip on her. I would not let go. If Darla got dragged into the river, I’d go with her.

Darla heaved her right knee up, trying to get it up over the ice shelf, but she bashed it instead against the edge of the ice. I plunged my left hand into the icy water and got a grip on the back of her knee. I howled and dragged her leg up onto the bank, and she rolled toward me, heaving her other leg free of the pool in a splash of freezing water.

She lay on her back, gasping. I looked across the water and ice of the Mississippi-I didn’t see anyone at the barge. Maybe they’d left for the evening.

Bikezilla was thrown to the surface. It slammed into the concrete base of the dam and was sucked back under. The churning water coming over the dam was tossing it around like a tennis shoe in a washing machine. I shuddered-if we’d fallen in there, neither of us would have survived.

“S-s-so c-c-cold,” Darla said.

She was sopping wet to her waist. The water was already starting to freeze in little icy patches on her coveralls. I moved my wet left arm experimentally-I could barely feel it. Flakes of ice fell off my sleeve. “We’ve got to get out of the open.”

“All our s-s-supplies.” Darla stretched one arm toward the roller dam.

“It’s hopeless. They’re gone.” I stood and helped Darla up. She was shivering violently. We had to hide. Had to get warm-and do it in a way that Black Lake couldn’t track us. “Come on. Try to stay in the tracks.” I pulled her back up the hill, trudging along the path Bikezilla’s rear track had made.

Darla stumbled and fell. She lay shivering in the snow. I hauled her to her feet. “Can you jog?” I asked. “You’ve got to warm up.”

“I’ll t-t-try.” Darla stumbled up the hill in a shambling half-jog. We were moving a lot slower than I would have liked, but at least we were out of sight of the barge.

Darla started to fall, and I caught her again. I looked down and saw I’d stepped outside of Bikezilla’s track. We were leaving a clear trail despite our efforts to stay in the path.

Darla fell once more before we made it to the top of the ridge. The woods were silent and still. On the mostly level ground at the top of the hill, Darla stretched out her pace, and we made better time. Maybe the jogging was warming her up, though she was still shivering. I rubbed my wet arm as we ran. I still couldn’t feel it.

I stopped when we got to the massive, spreading oak in the clearing. “We can get off the path without leaving a trail here.”

“How?” Darla asked.

“That branch.” I pointed above our heads. “I’ll boost you up. We’ll crawl along it to the trunk, climb around, and crawl out another branch on the far side.”