I slept in my parents’ bed that night, fully clothed. Under the oppressive smell of sulfur, I caught a hint of my mom—a faint whiff of the Light Blue perfume we bought her every year for Mother’s Day.

Lately I’d been so consumed with fighting with Mom that it never occurred to me what my life might be like without her. Without Dad’s benevolent disinterest. Without the brat, my sister. Who would I be, if they were all gone?

I clenched my eyes shut and refused to cry. Would I see them again? Yes, I decided. If they were alive, I would find my family. There was no way they could come home to get me. Nothing short of a bulldozer would be able to move in all that ash. And if the gang that had invaded Joe and Darren’s house was any indication, Cedar Falls would only get more dangerous. Tomorrow, I’d set out for Warren to find my family. The journey might be impossible, but I had to try. I had to find my mother. With that resolution, I drifted off to sleep.

I slept badly. Sweat-soaked nightmares featuring Tire Iron woke me a few times. Baseball Bat invaded my dreams, too. Morning announced itself with a shift in the darkness, from pitch black to merely dark and gloomy. I rolled over and went back to sleep, the first solid sleep I’d had in days.

A coughing fit woke me for good. No blood this time, thank God. I needed water, so I got up and found a cup in the bathroom. I took the lid off the toilet tank and scooped out some water. It smelled okay. I sipped it. It tasted fine, sweet even. I drank that cup and dipped myself another.

I brushed my teeth with my dad’s toothbrush and rinsed my mouth with a tiny sip of water. My freshly brushed teeth felt heavenly. Maybe it was the normalcy of getting up and brushing my teeth, or maybe it was just having one part of my body clean, but I felt much better.

Breakfast was wilted lettuce and two more apples.

After breakfast, I searched for supplies. If I planned to honor the promise I’d made the night before, to find my family, then I needed to get prepared.

My backpack was buried in my room with everything else. But I needed a way to carry supplies, so I dug through my dad’s closet. Way in the back, I found an old knapsack from back when he used to hike and ski. I wished it were bigger, but it would have to do.

I got one extra change of clothes out of my dad’s closet, but I couldn’t afford the space in the backpack for any more clothing than that. I did take two T-shirts though—I might need the cloth to make breathing masks. I also snagged a pair of Dad’s work boots. They fit okay if I wore two pairs of socks.

We had six bottles of water in the fridge—I packed them all. Then I threw in all the food that would fit: cans of soup, pineapple, and baked beans, as well as all the cheese and ham from the fridge. I found an old, manual can opener in the back of the knife drawer. I dug a few packages of peanut-butter crackers out of a cabinet and packed those, too. It didn’t seem like very much food. If it took longer than a week to get to Warren, I’d be in trouble.

I tossed in a spoon, three books of matches, and a couple of candles. I figured I’d want a knife, both to use as a weapon and to eat with. I thought about the butcher knives, but they seemed like they’d be too clumsy. I grabbed Mom’s favorite knife instead, a five-inch mini-chef’s knife that she kept honed to a wicked edge. I tested it on one of the T-shirts, cutting a strip about the right size to cover my mouth and nose.

I didn’t want the knife in my backpack—too slow to get at. So I took off my belt and cut a horizontal slit in the leather. That worked okay as a makeshift sheath; it kept the knife at my hip with the blade angled away from my body.

In the mudroom, I got the biggest rain poncho I could find, one of my dad’s. It had a hood and enough extra girth to cover both me and my pack. I also grabbed the spare garage key Mom kept there on a hook. All my keys were gone, another casualty of my collapsed room.

Then I trekked back upstairs. I scooped water out of the toilet tank and drank until I felt I might be sick. I wet down my cut T-shirt bandanna and tied it around my face. I was ready to go.

I got as far as the back door on the first try. The door itself pulled open fine, but there was ash piled at least a foot and a half deep against the storm door. I couldn’t force it open. I gave the screen door a frustrated kick and then closed the back door and locked it. (As I turned away, I realized there was no point to locking the door, but whatever.) I climbed out a window instead.

Slogging to our detached garage through the ash was painfully slow. I sank three or four inches with every step and had to struggle to wrench my feet free. If I had to cover the 140 miles to Warren like this, it might take a year, not a week.

The pedestrian door to our garage opened inward, thankfully. When I pushed it open, the ash flowed in, so I couldn’t close the door behind me. I saw a folded plastic dropcloth on a shelf and thought about using it as a makeshift tent. Of course it wouldn’t fit in my pack. I moved some stuff to outer pockets and took out a couple cans of food to make room.

My bicycle was leaning against the garage wall next to my sister’s. I wheeled it out into the ash-covered backyard. I mounted and put my feet to the pedals—I was on my way to Warren!

Chapter 9

I didn’t even make it out of the backyard.

As soon as I stood on the bike, both tires sank into the muddy ash. It was slick, and within a few feet I was stuck. The back wheel just spun and carved a trough. I stepped off the bike, wrenched it free, and tried again. Same result. It was hopeless. I could make better time hiking, not that hiking would get me to Warren this year.

I pulled the bike free again and wheeled it back into the garage. Even that short trip had left it coated in nasty white-gray goop.

I shrugged off my pack and sat on the garage floor to think. There had to be a better way to travel. I hadn’t seen any cars moving—they’d probably get stuck instantly. Plus, I wondered what the ash would do to a car’s engine. Nothing good. Walking was horrid because with every step my feet were swallowed by the stuff, and biking didn’t work because the wheels sank and couldn’t get traction due to the surprising slipperiness of the ash. It was sort of like a deep snowfall. Snowshoes might have worked if we’d had any. Maybe a couple of boards strapped to my feet? Or skis . . .?

When I was little, my dad had been an exercise nut. He’d run in the summer and ski cross-country when there was enough snow. Then he hurt his knee and got kind of pudgy. But his skis might still be in the garage somewhere.

I hunted for a couple of minutes and found them, stacked out of sight on a shelf above my head. I dragged everything down to the floor of the garage. Two skis, a pair of boots, two poles, and a pair of ski goggles. Everything was covered in dust, but that was okay. It’d get a lot dustier the moment I stepped outside.

I took off my boots, tied them to the outside of my pack, and slid into the ski boots. I put on the ski goggles and everything turned pink. Typical Dad: Even his ski goggles were rose-colored. At least they’d keep the ash out of my eyes.

I carried the skis and poles outside. The poles stood upright when planted in the muck at least as well as they would have in snow. The skis barely sank at all when I stood on them to snap the boots in place. That was encouraging—maybe this would work.

I’d only skied cross-country twice, on family vacations when Dad had rented skis for all of us. But I sort of remembered how. The skis didn’t glide over the wet ash the way they would have in snow, but the ash was slippery enough that I managed a decent pace by shuffling forward.