Ashen Winter

“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?”

“Danny had a deal with them DWBs. T-t-to get vitamin tablets and food.” Elsa glanced at Alyssa. “She was part of the trade. When you all got away, Danny had to get more goods together. Had to include a girl. He sent Biter.”

“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.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. Why would Alyssa want to help me find Darla? But before I could ask her about it, Mom started up again.

“We’re going back to Warren. All of us. That’s final.”

“I don’t think Alex is going to Warren, honey,” Dad said mildly.

“We could make him.”

“I don’t know that we could. Even if I were willing to.”

Mom turned back to me. “Alex. I know you think-I know you love her, but you need to go back to Warren. With your family.”

“Darla is my family.”

Even by the lantern’s weak light, I could see the fury reddening Mom’s face, the tension in the cords on her neck. “We will talk about this later.”

I shrugged. She could talk about it all she wanted to. I was done talking.

“That’d be fine,” Dad said. “We’re going to need supplies. Help me search.”

We searched the room thoroughly. Under the desk, Alyssa found a whole stack of heavy canvas bags with Abilify and Bristol-Meyers Squibb logos on them. I stuffed one with medical supplies-bandages, a suture kit. I even found some antiseptic spray and a dozen aspirin.

We stuffed two bags with spare clothing we found in a closet. The men’s clothing was all huge-sized to fit the still unconscious patient. The only person it would fit well was Ben. The women’s clothing was the nurse’s and would fit the rest of us okay. I guessed cross-dressing beat freezing.

Mom found a lighter in a bedside table drawer. She flicked it and cracked a grim smile at the flame it produced.

Dad gave me the shake light. Then he grabbed the lantern off the desk and handed it to Alyssa. “Carry this. I want my hands free.”

“I need that lamp,” Elsa said.

“We need it more,” Dad replied, and we left Elsa and her patient behind in the darkness.

Ben led us on a devious, twisty route through the back halls and stairs of the prison. On the main floor, we