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door.
    I stopped by the barn, picking up a coil of rope. Only twenty people, including me, Darla, and Ed, were waiting by the trucks. Twenty to attack a town that had held almost two thousand before the eruption. It seemed the height of foolishness to even try. But I believed in Ben’s plan. In Ben himself. We loaded up the trucks and headed out.
    We drove south on Canyon Park Road to avoid Warren. The roads deserted, the only noises were the rumble of our engines and the crunch of our tires on the thin layer of frozen snow. We turned on several minor roads, working our way over to Highway 78, the main route between Warren and Stockton. Neither Ed nor I knew the roads well since we weren’t from Warren, so Lynn gave Darla directions.
    When we reached the intersection of Highway 78 and Highway 20, which led directly to Stockton, we pulled the trucks against the snow berm on 78, where they’d be hidden.
    I called everyone together and explained the plan, splitting us into two squads of six and one of seven. Darla would stay behind with the trucks. I wasn’t sure how to choose people to lead the other two squads. Ed could have done it, but no one would trust him—a former flenser—as a leader. Someone had to be in charge, though, so I called for volunteers. Nylce and Lynn spoke up, which made sense, I guessed. They were the first ones to volunteer for this whole crazy plan. I wished Uncle Paul were with us. He was always steady in a crisis, and I knew I could have trusted him to lead a squad.
    Ben had told me to circle around Stockton at this point and approach from the south. What he hadn’t explained was how I’d even find Stockton after we left the road. It was dead black. And any light would have made us painfully obvious.
    I led the column over the snow berm on the south side of Highway 20. We trudged through the thick snow, hoping we were moving in the general direction of Stockton. The walk seemed interminable.
    I’d been counting in my head, trying to estimate how long we’d been out there. I reached four thousand—more than half an hour. Surely we should have reached Stockton by then? I started curving to the right, straining to catch sight of Stockton’s barricade of upturned cars.
    My count passed six thousand. Still no Stockton. A wall loomed suddenly in front of me: not Stockton’s car wall, but the backside of a snow berm. We must have walked in a huge arc, winding up back at Highway 20. I took a left, following the berm. No doubt Ben was correct, that it would be better to approach from the south, from a place where there was no road. But we couldn’t attack Stockton if we never found it.
    Not five minutes later, we finally reached the wall of cars. A sedan was propped on its front bumper, trunk thrust in the air. On either side of it, more cars were wedged together tightly, forming a solid barrier.
    On the other side of the berm, I remembered, there was a log gate blocking the road. That would surely be guarded. I led our troop south along the car wall in near silence. No one talked, but in the frozen night, every crunch of our boots in the snow tightened the cold knot of fear growing at the base of my spine.
    I glanced overhead constantly, fearing the moment when someone would appear atop the wall. The scene played over and over in my mind—the figure barely visible in the darkness, swinging a gun toward us, opening fire.
    I also looked for a particular kind of car in the wall. I needed an older truck with hefty side mirrors mounted on steel brackets, not the modern, plastic, breakaway type. When I found one, I signaled a halt with an upraised palm.
    I stopped—waiting, watching, and listening for any sign of opposition above where we stood. I started counting silently: one Mississippi, two Mississippi. About the time I hit four hundred, I heard a low mumble behind me, and turned to glare, raising my hand in a stop gesture. The grumbling silenced. I forced myself to wait a full ten minutes, as Ben