Mike Mullin - Ashen Winter

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 planned for everyone on defensive patrols to sleep in the late afternoon. We would need our sleep if the camp got attacked again. But organizing and getting cleaned up took far longer than it should have. By nightfall, neither Dad nor I had had so much as a nap. We were drunk with exhaustion. If the DWBs came again that night, we’d be useless.

So of course they did.

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 running orders to a patrol on the far side of the camp. What the scout said made further orders irrelevant.

“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 connects where?” I said, eyeing the terminals on the battery.

“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 connect the wires to the battery. They terminated in a strip of bare copper wire-there were no alligator clips.

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.

“Least we know the battery’s good,” Dad said wryly.

“Is it supposed to do that?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Try the other battery. And just hold them there a minute so I can see if the radio works.”

The black lead sparked again, but once I had it firmly against the terminal, it quit.

“Here goes nothing,” Dad said, pushing the power button. Nothing happened.

“Bum radio?”

“Don’t know.” Dad pushed down the button again, holding it a couple of seconds this time. The radio crackled to life, and a staticky hiss filled our little tent. He dialed through the channels quickly but picked up nothing.

He pulled the mic off the side of the radio and depressed the lever. “Any idea how to check if this thing works?”

“Not a clue,” I said. “Ben might know. It looks like some kind of military radio. He’s gaga over anything military.”

“That meltdown the other day didn’t inspire my confidence.”

“You got a better idea?”

Dad spoke into the mic, “Hello, hello, anyone there?” When he let up on the lever, the staticky hiss resumed. He shrugged. “Let’s get some sleep. I’ll take you off the patrol rotation tomorrow. You and Ben can try to raise someone on this thing. Might be more likely to reach someone during the day, anyway.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Jones!” Dad yelled. “Round up all the DWBs we’ve got and march them to the front gate. Let ’em go, and then keep a sharp watch to make sure nobody else comes in.”

“Yes, sir!” Jones yelled from outside the tent.

Dad started pulling off his boots. “G’night, son.”

“’Night, Dad.”

The next morning, I searched out Ben and told him about the radio. He practically ran back to the tent Dad and I shared. Alyssa and I trailed along behind him.

When we caught up to him, Ben had folded his arms and was giving the radio a dubious stare. “That’s not a military radio.”

“It says Yaesu FT-897,” I said, reading the label at the top of the transceiver.

“That is not a military designation.”

“Okay, Ben, but can we contact someone on it?”

“Maybe. It looks a little bit like an AN/PRC-70.”

“Can you run it?”

“Run it?”

“Operate it?” Alyssa said.

“Maybe. I read the operator’s manual for the AN/PRC-70 once. But this doesn’t look exactly the same.”

“Can you try?” I asked.

“I do not think I should,” Ben said.

“Why not?”

“An AN/PRC-70 will be damaged if the operator attempts to transmit without an antenna.”