Frozen Read Free Page B

ones I could manage were the small ones. The babies. And Sophie. I buried Sophie, too.”
    He keeps talking, about how he lived off canned fruit and chicken eggs. How he melted snow for water and gathered clothes and blankets from other houses to keep warm. How he goes back to his house only once each day to record a nick on his bedpost, but never lingers because of the smell of decay. I don’t understand how someone so young can go through so much alone.
    “Rusty and I stay in Mr. Bennett’s house because it’s empty,” Aiden explains. “I’m running out of food, though. And it’s getting hard to feed all the chickens and horses—most are sick or dying. Are you going to leave me here? In the morning?”
    “Of course not,” Emma says, but no one else speaks up. Bree has this pained look on her face and I know she’s thinking the same thing I am: An eight-year-old boy is going to slow us down.
    Owen runs a hand over his head and gazes at the fire. “We’re on a strict schedule.”
    “You can’t be serious.”
    “It’s not like I want this, Emma, but we have to average around twenty miles a day. There’s no way he’ll keep up with us.”
    “So you’re just going to leave him here?” She’s almost shouting now. “You can’t! We can put him on a horse if pace is your concern.” My father remains quiet, refuses to make eye contact. Emma turns to me. “Tell him, Gray. Please. If anyone can talk sense into him it’s you.”
    She looks even more desperate than she did when I found out about her and Craw, when she apologized to me again and again and again. I wonder if siding with her now will make our conversations come easier. They’ve been forced at best, even when we’ve been trying so hard.
    But my father is right. We still have another two weeks of travel before we reach Bone Harbor, a small town that sits along a stretch of ocean cutting north through nearly half the country. A boat is waiting to ferry us closer to Group A while simultaneously keeping us out of the Order’s eye. Without the boat, there’s a domed city we’d have to pass near. Haven , I think Clipper called it. Either way, Aiden will slow us drastically.
    I glance at the boy and his face is hopeful in the firelight, his eyes as wide as Emma’s. I don’t want to let either of them down.
    “If we leave him, we’re as good as letting him starve to death,” I say to my father.
    He sighs, rubs his forehead. “You’re right. You’re both right.” He looks at Aiden for a long while. Exhales again. Then finally: “You can come, but only until we find somewhere safer, a place you can settle with the living.”
    “Oh, thank you,” Aiden exclaims. “Thank you! Can I bring Rusty, too?”
    “Why not? It will be good to have a dog around. They’re clever creatures, good judges of character, fantastic on watch.”
    Sammy frowns. “Sir, I’m honored you think so highly of me, but I’m a little offended you’ve mistaken me for a dog.”
    The group dissolves into laughter.
    “Bed,” Owen orders. “Everyone. Now. Breakfast is at first light and then we’re moving again.”

THREE
    TONIGHT I HAVE SECOND WATCH, which means I might actually get a decent night of uninterrupted sleep. We rotate the order and it’s the middle shifts that are the worst—I never feel rested the following day.
    Outside it is cold and gusty. I have the woodworking shop at my back, blocking most of the wind, and Rusty at my side, keeping me company. He’s a good guard dog, just as my father suspected. Twice he hears something before I do, his ears perking up, and both times it is nothing but a raccoon coming to feast on the dead.
    I watch the minutes go by on a wristwatch that Clipper says runs on “solar power.” He walks with it strapped to the outside of his pack each day, allowing the sun to warm its face so that it can tell time throughout each evening. When my hour’s up, I head back inside, where everyone is cramped around the makeshift