that moment was not horror or grief but something like wonder—a mute amazement at the factually declarative nature of the scene, its merciless mechanics. They had used ropes and a pair of wooden stools. They had tied the ropes around their necks, slipping the knots tight, and kicked the stools aside, employing the weight of their bodies to strangle themselves. She wondered: Did they do it together? Had they counted to three? Did first one go and then the other? Michael was pleading, Please Sara, help me, help me save them, and yet that was all she saw. The night before, her mother had made johnnycake; the pan was still sitting on the kitchen table. Sara had searched her mind for some evidence that her mother had gone about this task in any way that seemed different, knowing, as she must have, that she was preparing a breakfast she would not eat, for children she would never see again. And yet Sara could remember nothing.
As if obeying some final, tacit command, she and Michael had eaten it all, every bite. And by the time they were done, Sara knew, as Michael surely did as well, that she would take care of her brother from that day forward, and that part of this care was the unspoken agreement that they would never speak of their parents again.
The convoy had slowed. Sara heard a shout from up ahead, calling them to halt, and then the sound of a single horse, galloping past them through the snow. She climbed to her feet and saw that Withers’s eyes were open and looking about. His bandaged arms lay over his chest, on top of the blankets. His face was flushed, damp with sweat.
“Are we there?”
Sara felt his forehead with the base of her wrist. He didn’t seem to have a fever; if anything, his skin was too cold. She retrieved a canteen from the floor and dribbled a bit into his waiting mouth. No fever, and yet he looked much worse; he couldn’t seem to lift his head at all.
“I don’t think so.”
“This itching is driving me crazy. Like my arms are crawling with ants.”
Sara capped the canteen and put it aside. Fever or no fever, his color had her worried.
“That’s a good sign. It means you’re healing under there.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” Withers took a long breath and let the air out slowly. “Fuck.”
Sancho was in the berth beneath him, swaddled in bandages; only the small pink circle of his face was showing. Sara knelt and took a stethoscope from her med kit to listen to his chest. She heard a wet rattle, like water sloshing in a can. It was dehydration, as much as anything, that was killing him; and yet he was drowning in his own lungs. His cheeks were blazing to the touch; the air around him was sharp with the smell of infection. She tucked the blanket around him and moistened a rag and held it to his lips.
“How’s he doing?” Withers asked from above.
Sara rose.
“He’s close, isn’t he? I can see it in your face.”
She nodded. “I don’t think it will be long now.”
Withers closed his eyes once more.
She pulled on her parka and climbed from the back of the truck, into the snow and sunlight. The orderly lines of soldiers had dissolved into clusters of three or four men, standing around with scowls of bored impatience on their faces, hoods drawn up over their heads, their noses runny from the cold. Up ahead, she saw where the problem lay. One of the trucks sat with its hood open, exhaling a plume of steam into the air. It was ringed by a group of soldiers, who were looking at it with bewilderment, as if it were a giant carcass they’d happened upon in the road.
Michael was standing on the bumper, his arms buried to the elbows in the engine. Greer, from atop his horse, said, “Can you fix it?”
Michael’s head emerged from under the hood. “I think it’s just a hose. I can replace it if the housing isn’t cracked. We’ll need more coolant, too.”
“How long?”
“Not more than half a hand.”
Greer lifted his head and shouted to the men, “Let’s tighten that perimeter! Blue up front, and mind that line of trees! Donadio! Where the hell’s Donadio?”
Alicia came riding from the front, her rifle slung, wreaths of steam swirling around her face. Despite the cold she had shucked her parka and was wearing only a compartmented vest over