Leni screamed and flew at him, her hands curling into claws.
“No, Leni!” Mama cried.
Dad grabbed Leni by the shoulders, shook her hard. Grabbing a handful of her hair, he yanked her across the floor, her feet tripping up on the rug, and shoved her outside into the cold.
He slammed the door shut.
Leni threw herself at the door, battering it with her body until there was no strength left in her. She slumped to her knees beneath the small overhang of the roof.
Inside, she heard a crash, something breaking, and a scream. She wanted to run away, get help, but that would only make everything worse. There was no help for them.
Leni closed her eyes and prayed to the God she had never been taught about.
She heard the door unlock. How long had it been?
Leni didn’t know.
Leni stumbled to her feet, frozen, and went into the cabin.
It looked like a war zone. A broken chair, shattered glass across the floor, blood splattered on the sofa.
Mama looked even worse.
For the first time, Leni thought: He could kill her.
Kill her.
They had to get away. Now.
*
LENI APPROACHED HER MOTHER cautiously, afraid Mama was on the verge of collapse. “Where’s Dad?”
“Passed out. In bed. He wanted … to punish me…” She turned away, ashamed. “You should go to bed.”
Leni went to the hooks by the door, got Mama’s parka and boots. “Here, dress warmly.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” Leni moved quietly across the cabin, eased through the beaded curtain. Her heartbeat was a hammer hitting her rib cage as she looked around, saw what she’d come for.
Keys. Mama’s purse. Not that there was any money in it.
She grabbed it all and started to leave and then stopped, turned back.
She looked at her dad, sprawled facedown on the bed, naked, his butt covered by a blanket. Burn scars puckered and twisted his shoulders and arms, the skin looked lavender-blue in the shadows. Blood smeared the pillow.
She left him there and went back to the living room, where Mama stood alone, smoking a cigarette, looking like she’d been beaten with a club.
“Come on,” Leni said, taking her hand, giving a gentle, insistent tug.
Mama said, “Where are we going?”
Leni opened the door, gave Mama a little shove, then she reached down for one of the bug-out bags that were always by the door, a silent ode to the worst that could happen, a reminder that smart people were prepared.
Hefting it onto her shoulder, Leni leaned into the wind and snow and followed her mother out to the bus. “Get in,” she said gently.
Mama climbed into the driver’s seat and fit the key into the ignition, giving it a turn. As the VW warmed, she said dully, “Where are we going?”
Leni tossed the big pack into the back of the bus. “We’re leaving, Mama.”
“What?”
Leni climbed into the passenger seat. “We’re leaving him before he kills you.”
“Oh. That. No.” Mama shook her head. “He would never do that. He loves me.”
“I think your nose is broken.”
Mama sat there a minute longer, her face downcast. Then, slowly, she put the old VW in gear, and turned toward the driveway. Headlights pointed to the way out.
Mama started to cry in that quiet way of hers, as if she thought Leni couldn’t tell. As they drove into the trees, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror, wiping her tears away. When they reached the main road, a feral wind clawed at the bus. Mama worked the gas carefully, trying to keep the bus steady on the snow-packed ground.
They passed the Walker gate and kept going.
At the next bend in the road, a gust of wind punched the bus hard enough that they skidded sideways. A broken branch cracked into the windshield, got caught for a second in the wiper, was slammed up and down before it blew away, and revealed a giant bull moose in front of them, crossing the road on a turn.
Leni screamed a warning, but she knew it was too late. They had to either hit the moose or swerve too hard, and hitting an animal of that size would destroy the bus.
Mama turned the steering wheel, eased her foot off the accelerator.
The bus, never good in the snow, began a long, slow pirouette.
Leni saw the moose as they glided past him—his huge head inches from her window, his nostrils flaring.
“Hang on,” Mama screamed.
They hit a berm of snow and flipped over; the bus cartwheeled and plummeted off the road, landing in a screech of metal.
Leni saw it in pieces—trees upside down, a snowy hillside, broken branches.
She cracked her head into the window.
When she regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was quiet. Then the pain in her head and the taste of blood in her mouth. Her mother was slumped beside her; both of them were in the passenger seat.
“Leni? Are you okay?”
“I … think so.”
She heard a hiss of sound—something gone wrong with the engine—and the whining creak of settling metal.
Mama said, “The bus is lying on its side. I think we’re on solid ground, but there could be farther to fall.”
Another way to die in Alaska. “Will someone find us?”
“No one is going to be out in weather like this.”
“Even if they were, they wouldn’t see us.”
Moving cautiously, Leni felt around for the heavy, clanking backpack, found it, and burrowed through it for a headlamp. Fitting it onto her head, she flicked the switch. The glow was too yellow, otherworldly. Mama looked freakish, her bruised face waxlike and melting.
That was when Leni saw the blood in Mama’s lap and her broken arm. A bone stuck out from a tear in her sleeve.
“Mama! Your arm. Your arm! Oh, my God—”
“Take a breath. Look at it, look good. It’s a broken bone. And not my first.”
Leni tried to settle her panic. She took a deep breath, submerged it. “What do we do?”
Mama unzipped the backpack, began pulling out gloves and neoprene face masks with her good hand.
Leni couldn’t look away from the splintered bone, from the blood soaking her mother’s sleeve.
“Okay. First I need you to bind up my arm to stop the bleeding. You’ve learned how to do this. Remember? Rip off the bottom of your shirt.”
“I can’t.”
“Lenora,” Mama said sharply. “Rip your shirt.”
Leni’s hands were shaking as she removed the knife from her belt and used it to start a rip in the fabric. When she had a long ribbon of flannel, she carefully scooted sideways.
“Above the break. Tie it as tightly as you can.”
Leni fit the fabric around Mama’s bicep, heard the groan of pain her mama made when Leni tightened it.
“Are you okay?”
“Tighter.”
Leni yanked it as tightly as she could, tied it in a knot.
Mama let out a shaky sigh and climbed back into the driver’s seat. “Here’s what we have to do. I am going to break my window. You are going to climb over me and climb out.”
“B-but—”
“No buts, Leni. I need you to be strong now, okay? You need it. I can’t get out and if we both stay here, we’ll freeze to death. You need to go for help. I can’t climb out of the bus with this broken arm.”
“I can’t do it.”
“You can do this, Leni.” Mama clamped a bloody hand over the makeshift bandage on her arm. “I need you to do it.”
“You’ll freeze while I’m gone,” she said.
“I’m tougher than I look, remember? Thanks to your dad’s Armageddon phobia, we’ve got a bug-out bag. A survival blanket, and food and water.” She gave a wan smile. “I will be fine. You go for help. Okay?”
“Okay.” She tried not to be scared, but her whole body was shaking. She put on her gloves and her neoprene face mask and zipped up her parka.
Mama pulled a life hammer out from under her seat. “The Walker place is closest. It’s probably less than a quarter of a mile from here. Go there. Can you make it?”
“Yeah.”
The bus made a dull, creaking sound, settled a little, moved.
“I love you, baby girl.”
Leni tried not to cry.
“Hold your breath. Go up.”
Mama cracked the hammer against the window, hard, fast.
The glass crackled into a webbed pattern, sagged. For a second it held together, and then with a snap! it broke. Snow dumped into the bus, covering them.