I had finished my coffee. Fog might have burned off the mountains by now, but there was no sun, nothing to sear the white mist that seemed to spring from the ground. There was a mine fire near home that had been burning underground for a hundred years, sparked by a coal seam. It might never go out. I wondered if folks had found a way to harness that fire for warmth. I wondered if breathing in the hot, toxic haze of a coal seam fire was worth it to stay warm, if we were killing ourselves to survive.

I hiked down the hill to the main camp. We needed to get back to the truck, back on the road. I needed to rally the others.

Behind me, Dance picked up his ax. I heard the ringing song of the wood being split, the kick and tumble of the logs. This time of year—fall—there still should have been insects, the drowsy riot of hornets, the bees doing their last and best. Mama and I used to joke that the seasons in southeastern Ohio were Winter, Mud, Summer, and Hornet. They were each troublesome, something to dread and deal with on the farm. Now they seemed like children I had named but would never know. Something Lisbeth would have done.

I heard a whistle, high and piercing. Three short blasts.

I looked back at Dance and he shook his head, but he set the ax down, listening. The whistle did not come again. But below in the camp, people began to run.

Someone dumped a bucket of sand on the cook fire. Others pulled boughs and branches over the structures being built. The cooler and food supplies disappeared into a hole in the ground. The whistle was a sign. I started to break into a run down the hill.

The women from Skate State were scrambling up the bank from the stream, Jamey being led by a hand. Grayson stood frozen and I ran over to him. The women with Jamey knew the whistle was an alert, but then they must not have known what to do. No one at the camp had told them more—and no one had told us anything. We stayed by the stream together, looking around.

The man who had been splitting wood in the camp, the one who had stared at me, covered the whole chopping block with boughs. The camp started emptying. People were climbing into the trees, up onto the deer stands. They hauled up backpacks and baskets by ropes.

Mica strode through the camp, calm as it all collapsed around her. She blew more short blasts from the whistle around her neck. She saw us and spat the whistle out. “Get the kid in the trees,” she said.