The air was stale and redolent of wood shavings and motor oil. It was dusky, and Clyde could barely see, even with his glasses on. Shelves lined both side walls. He dragged a metal toolbox into place and stood on it to search them: He found a tarp, an old flashlight whose beam was dim and sickly, and a first aid kit empty save for a bottle of Tylenol that expired in 2013 and some cotton balls. Good enough, he guessed.

Ronnie Anne was lying supine on the dirt floor, her breathing ragged. He went to her and knelt down, feeling for the pulse in her neck the way he had learned in the first aid class he took the summer before last. It was strong but a little fast. Her flesh was still cold to the touch. He felt along her body and her legs. There were no obvious breaks, lumps, or nasty sprains. She was soaked, though, and even though he didn't really want to, he started undressing her, taking her boots first, then her saturated socks. He pulled her snow pants down slightly, and sighed with relief when he saw jeans underneath them. He took those, then her jacket. Her sweat shirt was damp along the front and around the hem, but he decided to leave it on.

He grabbed the tarp, draped it over her (making sure to tuck one of the ends under her body to keep it in place), then hurriedly stripped off his own wet clothes. His jeans and long-sleeved shirt were dry, but flimsy: The deep, frigid chill pervading the shack total, and he shivered as he slipped under the tarp. He worked to tuck in all the edges, trapping as much body heat inside as he could. When he was done, he laid back and listened to the roar of the storm, and to the soft sound of Ronnie Anne's breathing. The temperature started to rise almost immediately, but the wet heat was cloying, and every so often he had to stick his head out and breathe. Along with his many phobias and anxieties, he was claustrophobic as well. Go figure.

The atmosphere seemed to affect Ronnie Anne too, because shortly she stirred and let out a long, low moan.

"Take it easy," Clyde said. "You're okay?"

"Where am I? Am I dead?"

"No, you're in someone's shed."

"Why?" she asked, confused.

"Because it was either come in here and live or stay out there and die."

"Oh," said, and was silent for a long time, her breathing shallow and rhythmic. Clyde didn't know if he should let her go back to sleep or not. It was warm under the tarp, but she was in pretty bad shape the last time he checked her.

Reaching out, he found her arm and moved her sleeve up to check her skin, but she jerked. "What are you doing?" she asked sleepily.

"Making sure your skin isn't cold as ice anymore. How do you feel?"

"Tired," she said, "and sore."

"Can you flex your fingers and toes?"

A moment later: "Yes."

Good, that meant she probably didn't have frostbite. He flexed his own digits to reassure himself that he didn't have it either. He didn't. Whew.

The wind rose, and the shed trembled. Clyde poked his head out and looked around. There was no visible damage, but he wasn't sure the structure would survive much longer. He wished he'd brought his phone. He left it home so it wouldn't get wet. Ha. Genius.

"Ronnie," he said, rolling onto his side, hope rising in him. "Do you have your phone?"

"Yes," she said. "It's in my jacket pocket."

Bingo!

Clyde slipped out from under the tarp and knelt beside Ronnie Anne's jacket. He fished in the left pocket, then the right. He didn't feel anything. He picked it up and checked the inside pockets, his heart beginning to race. Still nothing. Damn it.

"It's not here," he said.

Ronnie Anne didn't reply for a moment; Clyde thought she fell back asleep. "I guess I dropped it."

Shit.

Fighting down a surge of panic, he swept his hands across the phone, hoping it had simply fallen out when he took her jacket off. He didn't find it. He did, however, find a small kerosene heater shoved under a workbench. He crawled to it and pulled it out: It was heavy, and he could feel the fuel sloshing inside. Looking it over, it appeared functional. He did not light it, however. He wanted to save it in case they became desperate for heat.

Knowing it was there put him at ease, though.

Slipping back under the tarp, he said, "We're in good shape. I found a kerosene heater and it looks okay. We can turn it on if we need it."

"Cool," she muttered.

For a long time, neither of them spoke, then finally, she asked, "What happened out there? I can't remember."

"You collapsed," Clyde said. "I saw you and helped you in here."

"What were you doing out there?"

"I-" Clyde stopped, loath to admit it. "I was going to Lincoln's."

Ronnie Anne chuckled humorlessly. "So was I. Were you going to punch him in the face too?"

Clyde's eyebrow arched. "No. I was going to see why he's been so distant lately. I..." he trailed off and let the sentence hang unfinished in the air.

"What?"

"I miss him," Clyde said honestly. "He's the only friend I've ever had. He's the only person I never thought would hurt me or throw me away."

Ronnie Anne didn't reply.

"Why were you going there?"

"To punch him in the face."

"But why?"

"Because he dumped me."

Clyde blinked. "I, uh, I didn't know you two were together."

"Not officially, but...I don't know, it's complicated."

"Ah," Clyde said, and nodded. Relationships could be that way he'd heard. He didn't know firsthand.

When Clyde spoke again, he said, "I feel kind of like he dumped me too."

"Yeah? Join the club, dork."

Three and a half miles south, Eric Wayne Freeman loaded his rifle and a bag of provisions into the cargo bay of a black Ford panel van and slammed the back doors. He went through the door connecting the garage to the house and walked into the kitchen. A man and a woman were lying face down on the linoleum, their hands bound behind their backs. Blood pooled next to them. A broken knife was nearby, the blade snapped from the handle. He would have shot them (the noise of the storm would have covered the reports), but he was low on ammo. He had a full box of rounds for the rifle, but only three shots left for the revolver (he left the other one in the snow by the road; let them chew on that come Spring). He regretted shooting everyone on the bus. He should have cut their throats with a jagged piece of glass or strangled them.

He went through the house one final time, taking some jewelry and fifty bucks in cash from the couple's room. On his way out the door, he grabbed another knife from the drying rack and stuck it into his belt. Back in the garage, he loaded a toolbox and a first aid kit into the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine. The radio came to life, some cheesy eighties song blasting from the speakers. He grimaced and turned it down.

For a long moment he sat in the garage and peering into the thick falling snow. He dreaded a repeat of the Jeep, but if what they were saying on the news was true, National Guard troops and state police officers were conducting a door-to-door search in Royal Woods; it was only a matter of time before they found him. Driving out wasn't an A1 option on account of the travel ban, but it was either sit around and wait or get out there and try.

Sucking a deep breath, he pressed on the gas pedal, and the van crept out of the garage and into the driveway. The front tires sank and spun, and he gritted his teeth. They came loose, and he pulled out onto the street (or what he imagined was the street), the vehicle shaking and shuddering. He spun the wheel left, and the van blasted through mounted snow, its headlights reflecting off the driving downpour.

When the van was pointing in the direction he wanted, he pressed the gas and crawled forward. The engine whined, the tires slid. The wheel pulled to the left, and he jerked it back. "Come on, you motherfucker," he growled, and hit the wheel. "Come on!"

"Come on," Lincoln said, his head bent against the storm. Luan was trailing behind, and almost lost her footing. Why didn't she stay? Why did she have to come and put added stress on his mind?

"I'm trying!" she yelled, turning her head away from the pounding snowfall. They had gone roughly half a mile south along Franklin Avenue. Lincoln, like Clyde, knew the area well, and was certain that he could navigate well even in low visibility. And like Clyde, he soon came to realize just how wrong he was. He could barely see two feet in front of his face, and what he did see didn't make sense: Houses buried nearly to their roofs, slanted power poles and street lamps, dangling power lines. The wind scoured tundra might as well have been on a remote section of Pluto for all he recognized it.

Soon, they were at the intersection of Franklin and Main. Lincoln only knew that because the steeple of the First Methodist Church towered into the sky. A dark traffic light swung crazily back and forth. Shops, their windows boarded against the storm, lined the street.

"Lincoln!"

Lincoln looked back. Luan was holding onto her cap with her hand. "We have to go back! There's no way we'll be able to find him like this!"

"I have to try!" Lincoln shouted back. "He's my friend!"

"I know! But we'll wind up dead! I have to think about the baby!"

"What?" Lincoln asked, not sure he'd heard her right.

"I have to think about the baby," she repeated.

It took a moment for her words to sink in, but when they did, Lincoln jolted. "Baby?"

She nodded. "I think I'm pregnant!"

A gust of wind nearly pushed him over. Luan? Pregnant? It made sense the way she'd been sick lately. He remembered the morning sickness his mother had with Lilly, and the enormous reality of what she was proposing came over him. He was going to be a father.

That scared the shit out of him.

Head spinning, a mixture of happiness and horror rising into the back of his throat, he put his hand to his head and stumbled as another crash of wind raked him. Luan grinned sheepishly, and he took her into his arms. He opened his mouth to speak, but didn't know what to say. Finally, he said, "You should have stayed home."

"I know," she said. "You should have too."

Just then, a loud, timber-splitting thunderclap cut through the storm. They turned just as the church steeple began to topple to the side. Lincoln's arm tightened around Luan's waist as it crashed down in a shower of wood, plaster, and steel beams. Debris pelted the street and rained down on the buildings flanking the right hand side of the street, the bulk of it landing on the road, the sidewalk, and a parked car.

"Let's go," Lincoln said.

Sorry, Clyde.

-2-

"I just feel stupid, you know?"

They had been in the shed for hours...two or twenty, Clyde couldn't tell. The light against the frosted window pane was getting dimmer, but it was pretty dim to begin with. It could be two in the afternoon or six. Who knew? Who cared anymore?

"Yeah," he sighed. They were no longer under the tarp: They lay with it pulled up to their chins. Clyde found another one and laid it on the ground beneath them. To be honest, he didn't really understand how she felt.

"I guess he just needed someone...different."

Clyde opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again. He knew Ronnie Anne well enough to know that she would probably sock him in the face if he said what was on his mind.

"I mean...do you think I'm a bitch?"

Clyde sighed. "No," he finally admitted, "I think you just shut people out because you're afraid of being hurt. You hide your emotions behind a wall of hardness. I kind of do the same thing but different. My dads..." here he paused, not wanting to go on. Thinking about it made his mind ache.

"Yeah?" she urged.

"My dads adopted me when I was eight. I was in an orphanage since I was born. My mother dropped me off and drove away. I guess people get over that, but...I think...if you can't trust the woman who gave birth to you...who can you trust?"

Ronnie Anne was silent beside him. "That's rough," she said finally, "
I'm sorry."

"Don't be. My dads love me. I know that. But I get scared sometimes. Scared they're going to send me back and nuns are going to beat me again. Scared that I won't be good enough to please them. I'm so messed up and I'm afraid I'm too much of a burden."

"You're a dork," Ronnie Anne said in the gathering gloom, "but you're not messed up. The way you are makes perfect sense."

"Yeah," he muttered.

"You're kind of right, too. Okay? I don't want to let anyone in because shit like this happens. You open up your heart and someone sticks you in it. You know that, right? You feel that way?"

Clyde shrugged. "Kind of. I mean...my dads treat me good, but there'll always be a hint of doubt, you know? Because they aren't my real parents, and I don't know if you can unconditionally love what isn't yours. Look at all the people getting married and getting divorced. They loved each other but something happened and they stopped. Something might happen with my dads and they'll stop loving me."

His lips began to quiver, but he beat back the tears.

"I don't think that'll happen," Ronnie Anne said. She hated being mushy-gushy, but the pain was clear in his voice; she had to say something. "They chose you, Clyde. A lot of birth parents don't really do that. It just happens. But with your dads...they acutally chose you out of all the other kids, and they haven't given up on you yet."

"I guess," Clyde said.

"I just...it's not easy for me to be mush-gushy and shit, and I really liked Lincoln. I can't say I blame him, but I'm still mad."

"At yourself, mostly," Clyde blurted, and wished he hadn't.

Instead of snapping at him or punching him, Ronnie Anne only sighed. "Yeah. Mainly at myself, for acting like this. I should have let it go, but I didn't. I'm weak."

"So am I," Clyde said. "I need someone else to tell me I'm worth something, because I can't believe it myself. I know I shouldn't be like that, but it's hard when you're as alone in the world as I am. I don't even know who I am."

"You're a dork," Ronnie Anne said, "but you're an alright dork."

Clyde glanced at her. "Thanks. And you're a tough hardass. But in a good way."

She giggled, and suddenly they were kissing, her tongue slipping into his mouth. His eyes widened and for a moment he didn't know what to do, then he kissed her back, his hand falling gently to the side of her head.

"What's that?" Luan asked. Lincoln looked up, snow pelting him in the face. Ahead, a black shape loomed out of the tempest. He stopped and squinted.

"I don't know!" he shouted over his shoulder. They approached, and suddenly a man came out of the snow. He was dressed in a heavy jacket and a knit cap. Lincoln realized then that it was a van, and it was stuck.

Grunting, the man tried to push the vehicle free, but it wouldn't budge. Shaking his head, he turned, saw Lincoln and Luan, and jerked.

"Hey, can you help me?" he called. "My van's stuck!"

Lincoln came to the man's side and helped his in another vain attempt to push the van out. "Harder!" the man strained.

Luan was pushing now too, and with the three of them working, the tires began to roll. Without word, the man rushed to the cab, climbed in, and gunned the engine. The van shot forward, and Lincoln and Luan both fell into the snow.

"You okay?" Lincoln asked as he got to his feet.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Thanks for the help," the man said. Lincoln turned...

...and stared down the barrel of a gun.

"Now get in."