August 27 continued.

  My pen quit working earlier and I had to get another.

  I almost got caught tonight.

  I was careful. I always am. But as I slipped past the ration tent, stuffing what I could into my sack, I heard the familiar bark of a voice—sharp, commanding.

  E22.

  I didn’t stop to look. I never do. I just ran.

  The ground was slick with ash, and my feet skidded on the loose gravel. Behind me, I heard the pounding of boots, the scrape of a Cinderbone against the ground. He was close. Too close.

  I ducked through the narrow gap between two supply crates, my heart hammering as I darted into the shadows. For a moment, I thought he might have seen me—might have caught the sway of my scarf before I disappeared.

  “Stop!” His voice rang out.

  I don’t know how long I crouched there, listening to his frustrated curses. He didn’t see my face. He never does. But he’s getting closer. And if I get caught, I lose everything. It could cost me my job at the sick house, or worse.

  I hate him. Always watching. Always getting in my way. He doesn’t understand. He has no idea what it’s like to watch someone you love waste away. To see their bones press against their skin while you try to pretend everything’s fine.

  Mema needed this food. That’s all that matters.

  She’s fallen asleep, and I’m trying to slow my heartbeat still. At least she got the extra bread. I won’t have to steal for a few more days.

  My mind is flashing into the past. It’s night now, and I’m writing next to the fire. I’m huddled beside Mema in our tiny lean-to. Her breath is warm and slow beneath the two blankets I pulled over us. The fire’s contained in a small rusted metal bucket. There’s barely enough light to see. I’ll stay awake until it’s out.

  The shadows dancing on the canvas walls mesmerize me. It’s better than looking around and realizing that the only furnishings we have are our blankets and my Cinderbone. I’ve only had it a week, and I still give a start when I see it. That man who died . . . He wanted me to have it. And Hannah told me I’d earned it, told me to keep it.

  The sun disappeared behind a wall of dust, and now winter feels eternal. Salvador Grandel promised us the ash would clear up soon. The refugee camps are set up on mines, mining ore, mining coal, mining whatever we can think of to help purify the earth. We’re trusting the officials to save us. But I’m losing hope. They’ll say whatever they need to to keep us working.

  I work in the sick house. I’ve seen the dwindling supplies. The dwindling medications. Even with the medicines, I do more burying of bodies than healing the sick. The Yellowstone eruption changed everything. New diseases pop up on the weekly, bacteria or fungus dredged out of the earth, and our systems can’t fight them.

  The newest one, the Drange, is the worst one. It ravages the mind before it takes the body. What happens when we can’t provide everyone with their required pill? The one with supplements to keep us alive and prevent the Drange?

  Fever means isolation. Fever means death.

  There’s an announcement tomorrow. A government official is coming. I didn’t catch what it’s about. It must be important to make us skip the morning shift.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  We’re sitting on a gold mine here, quite literally. But the gold isn’t used for jewelry or coins like in the time before. Now it’s secreted away for its ability to conduct electricity. Here in Alabama we are lucky we still have electric power, but the batteries were corroded by the ash and the solar power is almost non-existent. So it’s not reliable. The gold is supposed to fix that.

  And then there’s the mica, used to line new buildings as insulation against the cold. And protection from the sun’s radiation, when it comes back.

  But the most valuable mineral here is the iron.

  It’s used for everything. Weapons, tools, construction, even food supplements. We have a mine and a processing plant and even waste management.

  The majority of people in the hospital are from the mines. I see a lot of silicosis, or too much iron dust in the lungs. And more and more people show signs of iron poisoning of the blood. Not just the miners, either, but the children. The elderly.

  We might all die here before we get the tools necessary to rebuild society.

  At least here we have protection.

  A few buildings remain intact from when this was a tourist attraction. Restaurants, visitor center, campgrounds. We use them for the sick house and the offices. The rest were torn apart, brick by brick, to build the perimeter fence.

  Some days, the ash in the air is so thick that I can only see a few feet in front of me at a time. The planet is dying.

  So are we.

  David

  David stood in the kitchen of his childhood home, the familiar scent of cinnamon and vanilla wrapping around him like a warm hug. His mother, her hair streaked with silver, laughed softly as she kneaded dough on the counter, flour dusting her apron. Grace sat at the table, her eyes bright with laughter.

  "Remember, honey, hope is what keeps us human," Mom said, glancing up at David with a smile that softened the lines etched into her face. "No matter what comes."

  He couldn’t speak. He drank in her face, memorizing her features.

  "But what if—" Grace's voice wavered, fingers tracing the grain of the wooden table. "What if our dreams are bigger than reality allows?"

  Mom paused, the dough beneath her hands momentarily forgotten. "Then we dream bigger," she said.

  David watched, heart aching with a love so fierce it threatened to consume him.

  A thunderous rumble shattered the serenity. David's eyes snapped to the window with a dark sense of deja vu, where the sky darkened ominously. His heartbeat quickened, fear clawing its way up his throat. Outside, beyond the deceptive calm of their Wyoming home, he knew the volcano loomed, ready to claim everything he held dear.

  "Mom," he choked out, the word heavy with dread.

  She turned, her expression questioning. David struggled, torn between the desperate need to warn her and the selfish desire to bask in the dream’s fleeting warmth.

  "David?" she asked, a crease forming between her brows. "Is something wrong?"

  He opened his mouth, but no words came. The knowledge of what was to come—an unstoppable force of nature—weighed against the yearning to remain untouched by reality, even if just for a moment longer.

  The room pulsed, each heartbeat a ticking countdown to disaster.

  "Mom," he tried again, voice barely a whisper, "we have to—"

  But the rumble grew louder, the ground beneath their feet thrumming. His mother's eyes locked onto his, filled with confusion and growing alarm. The warmth of the room shifted, the air charged with an electric sense of foreboding.

  "David?" Grace said.

  He reached for his mom, as if he could somehow pull her away from the doom that awaited, as if his touch could rewrite the future.

  As if he could save her.

  “Sun up!”

  The call shattered the dream like glass. The shout slammed into his mind, and his eyes snapped open. A Monitor stuck his head through the tent flap before moving onto the next one.

  David bolted upright, gasping for breath, the echo of “Mom” still on his lips. Harsh sunlight filtered through the dust-caked tent fabric.

  He blinked rapidly, trying to shed the remnants of the dream, but they clung to him stubbornly.

  Around him, the camp stirred. The oppressive weight of the day settled on his shoulders, heavy with the knowledge that nothing would bring back the past. He shook it off and prepared to face the world that had taken everything else from him.

  Dust particles danced in the slanting light that invaded his tent. His eyes snapped to the tent as it flapped in the chill morning breeze, a breath of the outside world sneaking in to steal the warmth of his memories. His muscles tensed, instinctively ready to fight off the bitter cold and the demands of the day. He rubbed at his face, forcing the last visions of home to dim, though they clawed at him, desperate to linger.

  Two things fought for attention in his mind. Get his shift changed so he could find the red scarf.

  And get ready for whatever Kip had planned.

  The latter made his heart gallop twice as fast as before.

  None of it matters, he told himself. Grace needs a Cinderbone.

  Girls needed protection even more than boys. And that was a hard truth.