Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

some wheat out of one of the barges without fighting.”
    “And we can make sure the river is frozen while we’re there.”
    “It is.”
    We walked toward the river, keeping the snow berm between us and the road. It was exhausting to push through the deep snow, so I wasn’t paying much attention to where we were going. We’d walked about fifteen minutes when I stepped out into thin air. I grabbed at Darla’s hand, trying to regain my balance, but all I accomplished was pulling her with me over the drop-off in front of us.
    We tumbled and slid down a steep slope. I lost hold of Darla somewhere along the way and slammed into a horizontal surface at the bottom, sliding a few feet before coming to rest. My shoulder and side hurt, but otherwise I thought I was okay.
    “Darla?” I whispered.
    “Yeah, over here.”
    I turned over and crawled toward her. The surface was hard and slick under my gloves—ice. “You all right?”
    “Yeah, I think so.”
    We’d fallen down a steep embankment onto ice. I didn’t think we were on the Mississippi itself—maybe one of the pools or inlets that I’d seen on the map, reaching out from the river’s banks like pudgy fingers.
    “Try to climb back up?” I asked.
    “No, let’s follow the embankment down here. We’ll be invisible to anyone up on the road.”
    Darla took my hand and led the way, walking on the ice. After a few hundred feet the bank started to meander. Tree limbs jutted from it beside and above us. For a while we moved through some kind of narrow frozen channel—in a few places it was tight enough that I could almost touch the trees on either side. I heard a faint roar of falling water growing steadily louder as we walked.
    The channel we were following opened up suddenly, and I saw a small pool of open water, beyond which stretched the wide expanse of the frozen Mississippi. On the far side, trapped by the ice and the steel jaws of the lock, was the barge we’d visited the year before. Dozens of soldiers swarmed all over it.

Chapter 15
    The soldiers were as busy as ants. Darla and I stood in plain sight, but a long way from them—maybe three or four miles across the river. I clambered up the snowy bank next to us. At the top, a grove of trees had caught the blowing snow, holding it in a deep drift. We dove in and hollowed out a foxhole, protected from the chill wind and suspicious eyes.
    I raised my head above the lip of our foxhole. The river was mostly frozen. The noise of rushing water came from a pool just below us, where water cascaded over the roller dam and crashed into the river, keeping a small section of it from freezing. Spray from the churning water had frozen around the pool, creating fantastical shapes that appeared to grow out of the ice.
    A red dump truck was parked on the ice, backed up against the barge at the far side of the river. The soldiers were loading the truck, passing grain along a line in five-gallon buckets—like an old-time fire brigade. Another line of soldiers was moving the empty buckets from the truck back to the barge’s hold. From our vantage point below the dam, we couldn’t see the other two barges that had been here last year, stuck in the ash and muck above the dam.
    “I told you the river would freeze hard,” Darla said.
    “I believed you. Well, until I heard the water. Then I wasn’t so sure.”
    “Pretty efficient way to unload the barges, I guess.”
    “We’re never going to get anywhere near that wheat with all those soldiers around.”
    “Forget about the stupid wheat already. Christ.”
    “We owe Uncle Paul. And besides, wheat might be good to trade—it’s got to be almost as valuable as kale seeds.”
    “Whatever. I think we should just focus on finding your folks.”
    I nodded, frowning, and Darla led the way out of the foxhole. We kept to the woods until we were completely out of sight of the barge. The river ice was still and quiet. We neither saw nor heard a sign of anyone else, though occasionally we could see the scuff marks we’d left earlier. The embankment where we’d fallen was a challenge. It was covered with a crusted, icy snow—too slick to climb easily. I kept sliding backward until Darla took the lead and started kicking toe holds in the snow.
    As we got closer to the guard shack, I heard a noise ahead—a low rumbling. “What’s that?” I whispered.
    “Engine. A big diesel.” Darla replied. “Let’s look.”
    We wormed our way to the top of the snow berm and poked