Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

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 emerged into a huge, industrial kitchen.
    Dad made a beeline for the walk-in freezer. I hung back, having some idea about what he might find. Dad cracked the heavy metal door while Alyssa held out the lantern. He turned back around almost