“Come on, Darla,” I said. “You’ve got to run now.”

She started to shamble into the snow at the edge of the foxhole. I threw an arm around her waist to stop her.

“No, just run in place. We’ve got to stay hidden until dark.” It wouldn’t be long. The day was already fading.

Darla lifted one foot and set it back down.

“Faster.” I wanted to yell, but I knew I shouldn’t. Black Lake might have people out looking for us.

Darla started stepping desultorily in place. She lurched from side to side as if drunk, her balance so bad that I kept both hands on her waist, ready to catch her if she started to fall over.

“That’s it. Faster, Darla, faster.”

She started moving more quickly. I concentrated on holding her upright and trying to jog in place without kicking her. When she started shivering again, I breathed a sigh of pure relief.

“W-w-what now?” she asked.

“It’s maybe an hour ’til full dark. We can sneak out of here then and head back to Uncle Paul’s farm.”

“N-n-no.”

“What do you mean, no? We just lost all our supplies. It’s going to get even colder after dark. I don’t even know if we can survive tonight. We might have to turn ourselves in to Black Lake. Better to wind up in a FEMA camp than frozen to death.”

Darla didn’t reply. Instead, she started running in place faster. She was shivering hard—her arms made unpredictable spastic movements. I backed off a little so I wouldn’t get brained.

We ran for fifteen or twenty minutes. Darla steadily picked up her pace, while I stuck with a comfortable, warming jog. Her shivering gradually subsided. She started pumping her arms instead of waving them around, and her teeth quit clattering.

Without any warning, she spun back toward me and quit running. “We are not going back, Alex. We’re going forward.”

“Bikezilla’s at the bottom of the Mississippi with all our supplies.”

“I know. You still have the kale seeds?”

“Yeah, and the wheat, but even if we ate all of them, they’d only last a few days.”

“Not to eat, to trade.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say. We hoof it back to Warren, trade the seeds, and get outfitted for another expedition.”

“No—we go forward to Worthington and resupply there.”

“How do you know anyone’s still in Worthington? They might all be dead—or locked in FEMA camps.”

“They might be.” Darla’s shoulders hinted at a shrug. “But they’re my people—I know them. They’re farmers, used to coming through hard knocks and bad weather. They were already well organized last year. They had water and were digging corn. If anyone’s still alive and free in Iowa, it’s the folks in Worthington.”

“And the bandit gangs, and Black Lake—”

“I never thought this trip would be easy.”

“Look, I don’t even know how we’re going to survive tonight, let alone get to Worthington.”

“You still have a hatchet and knife?”

“Yeah, on my belt. But we need a fire, and the flint went down with Bikezilla.”

“We’re okay then. With a knife and hatchet, we’ve got fire.”

“How?”

“Easier to show you. And we should wait for dark and get someplace farther away from the lock, so Black Lake won’t spot the fire.” Darla started jogging in place again as if the conversation were over.

I stayed still. “I don’t want to get us—get you—killed, Darla.”

“We’re only in this situation because you insisted on going after that wheat.”

Much as I hated to admit it, she was right. “I know. . . . I’m sorry.”

Darla shrugged. “It’s okay. We’re tougher to kill than you give us credit for. We’ve got money—kale seeds and wheat kernels—we’ve got a knife, a hatchet, and some clothes. We’ll get to Worthington, buy supplies, and then go break your mom and dad out of the FEMA camp in Maquoketa. We’ll be okay.”

Half an hour ago Darla had nearly frozen to death, and now she was trying to talk me into continuing our trek. She was certifiably grade-A, prime-cut crazy. “I love you.”

“Love you, too. Now get your ass jogging so you don’t freeze.”

“I’ve got to figure out something to do with these clothes.” I picked up Darla’s coveralls, thinking I’d wring the water out of them, but they were frozen solid. They crackled, and ice flaked off the legs.

I beat the coveralls on a nearby tree trunk to loosen them up and knock off more ice. I thought for a moment about how best to carry them. I could stuff the coveralls into my coat, but they’d melt and get my chest wet. We needed to keep the coveralls and dry them out, but I couldn’t afford to get hypothermic.

Finally I loosened my belt and tucked the coveralls through the back, so they dangled along the back of my legs. I repeated the process with Darla’s pants and long johns, beating them against a tree and tucking them into my belt.

Darla was still jogging in place, but now she had a silly grin on her face.

“What?” I said.

“You should see yourself—you look ridiculous.”

For a second I was annoyed, but then I realized that, yeah, I probably did. “What, you don’t appreciate my superpowers? I’m Clothesline Man! Faster than a tumbling dryer, stronger than the scorching sun, saving the day by flying across the snow to dry all your clothes.” I rotated my hips, making the clothing swing around me in an arc.

Darla was laughing now. The joke seemed pretty lame to me, but probably anything would have been funny after the past few hours.

“I can even dry these!” I picked her pink panties up out of the snow.

Her mouth curled at one side. “Usually you have the opposite effect.”

I thought about that for a moment and then felt my face heat despite the frigid temperature.

“Actually, forget about those. I’ll just go commando for a while.”

“Okay.” I pushed the panties into the snowbank to hide them, although I couldn’t have said why I bothered. Then I resumed jogging; I needed to warm up.

Despite our jogging, we both started shivering again as night fell and the temperature dropped. It got so dark I could barely see the piles of snow around our foxhole.

“How are we going to figure out which way to go?” I asked.

“Shh. Listen.”

I stood still, suppressing my shivering for a moment. I heard the susurration of rushing water very faintly in the distance.

“Which way is it coming from?” Darla whispered.

I pointed.

“Yeah, that’s about what I thought, too. We can use the noise to figure out what direction we’re going.”

“Lead on.”

Darla pushed her way out of the foxhole into the deep snow. I followed, watching the snow, trying to place my feet in her footsteps. After a few minutes of that, I looked up and felt a surge of panic when I couldn’t see her.

Our chances were bad enough together. If we got separated, I didn’t see how we’d survive. Well, Darla might, she knew how to make a fire. I fought down my fear—all I had to do was follow her trail.

I ran for twenty or twenty-five feet, high-stepping through the snow. I almost bowled into Darla’s back. She was trudging along, oblivious to my panic.

Another half hour or so brought us to a break in the trees. A steep slope led down to the frozen river. I heard the roller dam faintly to my right. I could see a little farther here without the trees overhead, but the other side of the river was completely shrouded in darkness.

Darla got down to the river by sitting down and sliding on her butt. I waited a moment for her to move out of the way, then slid to join her.

Walking across the Mississippi felt like exploring an alien planet. The darkness hid everything but the tiny circles of ice on which we planted our feet. Our boots made weird squeaks and crunching sounds. I feared we might walk through this dark limbo forever, slowing gradually until we froze in place, statues lost from their museum, admired by no one.

Chapter 22

I saw Darla’s shoulders trembling and said, “Let’s pick up the pace.”