Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

Warren, maybe. And keep an eye out for him, okay?”
    I thought her request was a little ridiculous. If she got killed trying to rescue Darla, I’d almost certainly be dead, as well. But I said, “Okay.”
    “One other favor?”
    “What?”
    “You’ll be up on the roof with the rifle. . . .”
    “Yeah.”
    “Save a bullet for me.”
    “What!”
    “If things go badly, if this doesn’t work and I get captured, I want you to shoot me. I thought I’d do anything to survive, but I’ve gone that route before and it’s not worth it. I survived for Ben. But I don’t want to live that way again. I won’t become a slave again!”
    “No!” I was talking too loudly. Mom swiveled in the passenger seat to look at me. I dropped my voice. “Why would you even ask me that?” The answer came to me even as I asked the question. She was giving up. That’s why she’d proposed this crazy plan and put herself in this position in the first place.
    “Alex, please. I don’t want to live that way again. I can’t live that way again.”
    “There are no circumstances under which I would shoot you, Alyssa.”
    “You owe me,” she hissed. “I’m risking my ass going after your girlfriend.”
    “Yeah. I do owe you. If the DWBs capture you and I’m alive, I will get you out. Or die trying.”
    “But—”
    “But nothing.”
    She glared at me. “Then you don’t care about me, do you?”
    “And I retract my promise to look after Ben. If he needs looking after, then you’re just going to have to stay alive to do it.”
    “You’re no different than any other guy. You’re all messed up!” Alyssa folded her arms and turned away from me.
    I didn’t know how to respond. I was trying to be nice. There was no use talking more and making things worse. Maybe she was the one who was messed up. Or maybe she was right.
    I used the rest of the drive to unpack the ammo and first-aid kit we’d found in Anamosa. Even if we survived this, we might need those supplies in a hurry.
    We reached the outskirts of Iowa City and almost immediately saw the glint of a campfire burning in the distance. Dad pulled the truck over, Mom got behind the wheel, and Dad, Alyssa, and I approached the fire on foot, walking in the deep snow on the far side of the berm.
    When we got closer, we peeked over the embankment. A sentry was camped right atop the Highway 1 overpass over I-80, which sliced through the north side of Iowa City. He had a tent pitched near his campfire and a motorcycle next to it. It was a good spot: He’d be able to see anyone approaching from I-80 or Highway 1. But the campfire made him too obvious. I wasn’t complaining, though—the fact that we’d seen him first made this whole crazy idea possible. My role in the plan was to shimmy up onto the roof of the chiropractic clinic and get a drop on him.
    I pulled myself up with a gasp of relief, flopping in the deep snow. The roof was sloped so that I would be invisible from the far side until I reached the peak.
    Pushing through the snow was hard. I worked my way up to the ridge on my stomach so that only my head and the barrel of the rifle I carried were visible. The sentry was still there, sitting atop the overpass, silhouetted by his fire. I’m not very good with a rifle, but even I could probably hit him. That wasn’t our plan, though. We needed this guy alive.
    We weren’t even certain he was a member of the Dirty White Boys. But to survive this close to their base, he had to have some connection with them—a connection we planned to exploit.
    I looked backward at Dad and Alyssa waiting below. I gave Dad a thumbs up and turned back toward the sentry. I still thought I should be the one down there with Alyssa. I’d argued with Dad about it to no avail.
    I knelt and rested the rifle on the ridge, drawing a bead on the sentry. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dad and Alyssa walk slowly into view. Dad had his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Alyssa’s hands were bound behind her back, she was gagged with a strip of cloth, and a piece of shipping twine led like a leash from her neck to Dad’s hand.
    The sight made me queasy. I knew she had a paring knife in her back pocket. I knew the noose was tied loosely enough that she could duck out of it and the gag would slip over the top of her head once her hands were free. I didn’t want to believe this was the world I lived in now—one where it wasn’t shocking to see a girl treated like livestock. Before the