Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

Her eyes made a pair of black holes in her face. She was yawning almost nonstop.
    “Go to sleep,” I said. “I’ll take first watch.”
    “We can both sleep if we build up the fire first.”
    “What if Black Lake finds us? We’d better take turns.”
    Darla used a couple of small logs and one of her scarves to make a crude pillow, and then she lay down beside the fire. Within seconds her breathing slowed as sleep claimed her.
    I wanted nothing more than to curl up around her and sleep, too. But I knew it wasn’t safe. I sat in the volcanic ash beside Darla and watched her chest slowly rise and fall. The firelight played in her hair. I reached out to stroke it but thought better of it and pulled my hand away—I didn’t want to wake her.
    I felt suddenly morose. What was I doing, dragging Darla back into Iowa? Her parents were dead—she had no particular reason to want to find mine. Already she’d been injured. If I got Darla killed on this insane trip, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

Chapter 23
    I struggled to stay alert, trudging back and forth beside the fire. When I saw the first hint of dawn in the east, I shook Darla awake. “I gotta sleep,” I said. She mumbled something and pushed herself upright. I was fast asleep before my head fully settled on the log.
    It seemed like no time at all had passed when Darla pushed on my shoulder, saying, “Alex, wake up.”
    I startled fully awake, sat up, and looked around. “Something wrong?”
    “No, everything’s okay. But we should get going.”
    “What time is it?”
    “I don’t know. Around noon, maybe.”
    Darla was dressed in her own clothes, and my coveralls were laid out on the tripod by the fire. I slipped my toasty warm coveralls on, struggling to pull the legs over my boots.
    Darla fiddled with a bundle of wood. “What’s that?” I asked.
    “I worked on the fire-by-friction set while you were asleep. Made a new thunderhead out of oak, so it won’t burn through. We’ve got two extra spindles now, too. Here’s your shoelace.”
    I started relacing my boot while Darla tied all the fire-by-friction stuff into a neat bundle using a drawstring she’d cannibalized from her jacket. We kicked snow over the fire, tore down the tripod, and set out.
    “Which way?” I asked.
    “Maybe follow this creek upstream? Easier to walk on the ice. Hopefully we’ll hit a road.”
    “How far is it to Worthington?”
    “I don’t know, exactly. We’re near Bellevue. It’s about thirty miles from Worthington to Dubuque, but I think Bellevue is farther. Maybe forty or forty-five miles?”
    “That’s going to take forever if we have to walk through deep snow. And I’m already famished.”
    “Let’s see what the roads are like. If they’re bad, maybe I can improvise some snowshoes.”
    We’d walked along the creek until we reached a railroad trestle that passed about twenty feet above the ice. Beyond that, I saw the concrete pylons and steel girders of a highway bridge.
    We walked under the railroad trestle and turned to fight our way up the bank between the two bridges. The bank wasn’t steep, but the snow was so deep that it was difficult to force our way upward. For every step we managed, we slid back a half step.
    Finally we got to the top, only to confront an enormous berm of plowed snow alongside the road. I led the way up the berm, thrusting my hands into the snow to make tenuous grips and kicking footholds into the side of the pile. The snow here was a filthy blend of volcanic ash and ice plowed off the road.
    We hid near the top of the berm, watching the road for more than an hour. Nothing moved. There was no sound but the chattering of our teeth. I was worried about patrols, but it would take too long to get to Worthington traveling cross-country.
    I got down the far side of the berm to the road by sliding on my butt. We were on a two-lane plowed highway.
    “You think all the roads are this good?” I said.
    “I hope so.” Darla stood and dusted the snow off herself. “We’ll make good time on this. Maybe get to Worthington in two, two-and-a-half days. Before we starve, anyway.”
    “I guess there is one advantage to FEMA being in Iowa now.” Last year none of the roads on this side of the river had been plowed.
    “That’s the only good those ass-puppets do.”
    “Yeah.” I looked up and down the highway. “Which way?”
    “Right. North. Worthington is northwest of us somewhere.”
    “Won’t that take us closer to