Mike Mullin - Ashen Winter

“This is Darla,” Mom said, “Alex’s girlfriend.” She freed one arm and gestured at Alyssa.

“My name’s Alyssa. And this is my brother, Ben.”

Mom looked at me. “But you said-”

“The Peckerwoods got Darla. Shot her.” Something caught in my throat, making my eyes water. “I’m going back for her as soon as we get out of here.”

“What?” Mom said. “You can’t go charging into the middle of a gang. That’s not safe.”

Before I could even start to protest, Dad said, “She might not be alive. There’re rumors all over camp about those gangs. Say they’re eating human flesh.”

I dropped my arms from behind their backs and leaned out of the embrace. “Yes, Dad. They are eating people. They deal in slaves, too. But Darla was alive three days ago. Alyssa saw her.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Mom protested. Okay, maybe I didn’t miss the mothering all that much.

“If the Peckerwoods had Mom, would you go after her?” I stared my father in the eye.

“I would.”

I nodded and tried to fold my arms. Just the attempt hurt my right, so I picked up my shirt instead and started trying to struggle into it.

“I’ve known your mother twenty-six years. I owe her a different kind of loyalty than you owe a girlfriend.”

I couldn’t get my right arm jammed through the shirt-sleeve. “Piece of junk!” I tossed it aside.

“It’s a hard world we live in now,” Dad said mildly.

“It is the same,” I said. “Exactly the same. If you knew what we’d been through, you’d understand.”

“Guess you’d better tell us,” Dad said.

“How’s Rebecca?” Mom asked.

“She’s okay. Darla and I left her at Uncle Paul’s place. That was, um, almost two weeks ago.”

Alyssa plucked my shirt out of the snow and helped me get dressed. Ben wanted to watch the guards, and Alyssa didn’t want Ben to be alone, so when she finished helping me, they left. Mom sent Flash with them, instructing him to return in time for dinner. The fact that she’d mentioned dinner was heartening. When Darla and I had been imprisoned in Camp Galena, we’d gotten only breakfast-and not much of that.

Mom, Dad, and I ducked into one of the tents out of the wind.

“My brother’s still making out okay?” Dad asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Doing great. We grow and trade kale-it’s worth a fortune. Get pork from Warren in return.”

“Why did you leave?” Mom asked.

“We found Dad’s shotgun. But I’d better start at the beginning.” I told them about the house fire in Cedar Falls that had started my trek over ten months ago. About my thirsty trek across northeastern Iowa. About skiing into Darla’s barn, and how we had come to depend on each other, to fight together for survival. About the times I’d saved her life. The times she’d saved mine. A year ago, death meant I’d have to get my armor repaired in World of Warcraft . Now it was an all-too-real shadow lurking behind the veneer of my daily life. I still wasn’t entirely sure how I’d survived. My parents didn’t interrupt much, but it still took hours to tell the whole story. I finished by telling them about Alyssa and explaining Ben’s autism, which they seemed to take in stride.

“Ten months.” Dad had clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “It seems like a miracle that you survived all that.”

“I wouldn’t have without Darla. I’m going to find her. Even if I get killed trying.” I held his eye, making an effort not to blink.

Dad stared steadily back at me. His eyes were hollow, dark and gaunt, as if the father I’d known had been replaced by a shadowed replica chiseled from the same stone. “It’s going to be hard just to get out of here. We’ve been here, what, four-and-a-half months?”

“Almost five,” Mom said.

“Why haven’t you left? Rebecca and I didn’t know if you were even still alive.” I ground my teeth-at Black Lake, at the volcano, at my parents. They clearly weren’t getting enough to eat. Mostly I was angry at myself-why hadn’t I come sooner?

“You didn’t notice the fence? And guys with guns?” Mom said.

“We did try,” Dad said. “Twice. Right after we got here. We got caught. Thrown into a punishment hut. I thought they’d let us starve to death in there, but Lester bugged the guards so much that they almost threw him into a hut of his own.”

“Lester got us released,” Mom said. “He’s very persistent-and a little crazy.”

“I noticed,” I said.

“Four days without food and water when you’re already weak is no picnic,” Dad said. “I wasn’t sure we’d survive much longer. So we didn’t try again.”

“We can’t leave now,” Mom said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“The girls need us. People started disappearing a few months ago. Not long after I organized the school. Mostly young girls. Every three or four days, we’d get up in the morning and discover more people missing. Whole families sometimes. Sometimes just the girls. I had to do something.”

“Your mother created a camp organization, civil defense, I guess. They call her The Principal. Talked me into helping.”

“People are still disappearing,” Mom said. “But not as many as before. And we keep the girls safe.”

“And the guards tolerate it? Your civil defense organization, I mean?”

“We’re not sure why. Maybe there’re two factions of guards. One taking girls, and one supposedly in charge. We keep a low profile, but they have to know what’s going on.”

It all fit. Alyssa being kept as a slave. Darla kept alive, instead of being flensed. The girls disappearing from the camp. I balled my left hand into a fist and punched the floor of the tent, getting nothing but bruised knuckles for the effort. I wanted to punch flesh, feel bones crack under my hands-preferably the bones of whoever was responsible for this whole cursed-to-ash situation. “I’ve got to go after Darla.”

“I can’t leave,” Mom said. “These girls are depending on me.”

“We patrol at night and guard the cleared zone around the girls’ tents,” Dad said. “But we can’t watch the whole camp.”

“Who’s we?” I asked.

“The prefects,” Dad said. “That was your Mom’s idea.”

“And I convinced him to be Head Boy,” Mom said.

Dad sighed heavily. “You’re the only one who calls me that, Janice.”

“You’ll always be my head boy,” Mom said with a coquettish smile.

Dad leaned over and smooched her.

“Um, gross. I’m thrilled to see you and all, but I do not want to watch you make out,” I said. “Who’s taking the girls?”

Dad broke their kiss. “We don’t know.”

“It’s got to be the guards,” Mom said.

“Probably. It’s time for dinner, I think.” Dad pushed himself up into a crouch and shuffled toward the tent flap. Mom got five worn Styrofoam bowls and plastic spoons from a stack in the corner of the tent.

“They feed you much?” I followed them out.

“Just enough food to keep us alive, not enough to give us the energy to fight.” Dad kicked a clump of snow.

“They’ve passed out vitamin pills three times since we’ve been here,” Mom said.

I shrugged.

We walked across the camp, rehashing the stories of our individual journeys as we went. A row of field kitchens was set up outside one of the fences. Black Lake mercenaries wearing winter camo were filling bowls and passing them through hatches in the fence in front of each kitchen. Unlike Camp Galena, the refugees here were organized in neat lines. Flash waved at us from one of the other lines, and Mom beckoned him to us.

Alyssa and Ben came over with Flash. Mom gave each of us bowls and spoons. “Be careful with these,” she said. “It’s hard to get more. I’ve got to go be The Principal.” She walked off to talk to people in the other lines.