I looked behind him. I could see, in the little alcove of the drive-through window, canned goods, boxes of mac and cheese, tins of tuna, and stacks of plastic-wrapped taco shells. He had bricked the room with supplies. He was making his stand there, in the drive-through.

“How long have you been in there?” I asked.

“Wil,” Grayson said.

“Get out,” the man repeated. “And drop what you took.”

“We didn’t take anything, sir,” Dance said.

The man nodded his head at Jamey. “Drop that.”

“The mask? Are you serious?” Jamey tore it off with one hand. Her face underneath looked red and sweaty. Starla was whimpering a little.

“Careful,” the man said. “Slow now.”

Jamey dropped the mask on the ground and kicked it across the floor to the man. He was behind the counter, but that shotgun—if it was loaded—could blow a hole through anything.

“Take it,” Jamey said. “I was gonna pay for it.”

What good was the gun in my pocket? What good was I?

“Do you have any fuel?” I asked the man.

Now it was Dance’s turn to hiss, “Wil!”

But the man looked at me. His eyes held the wild, swollen redness of exhaustion. They were runny, his face shiny. “No,” he said. “They cleaned me out. They robbed me.”

“Who did?” I asked.

“A lot of people. Before I wised up. They unlocked the pumps. They brought a tanker.”

Dance’s eyes widened.

“How are you staying warm?” I said.

“Warm? What the hell is warm? Who knows that anymore? Now get the fuck out.”

He was holing himself up in the drive-through alone. He would die in there.

We began to back up. All of us held our hands up, except for Jamey, who held Starla.

“Dog,” Starla said. “Doggy. Want doggy.” She was looking at the rubber mask, puddled on the floor.

“Wait,” the man said. “Wait one fucking minute.” He reached one hand back into the drive-through. The other hand held the shotgun steady on us.

What would he pull out, what would he want from us, what would he take?

He pulled out a can of sweetened condensed milk. Still clutching the gun, he stretched over the counter, and rolled it across the floor. “For the baby.”

We couldn’t drive the speed limit. Asphalt, gravel—it made no difference. The roads could not be saved. They had turned white, a crumbling, chemical white, as if they had had a shock. The last stab at ice control, at melting the winter that would not be melted, had stained them.

It got over everything, salt and whatever it was: the brine on the roads. I had streaks of it on my coveralls. It sharpened the ends of my hair. When I touched my face I tasted it. The truck was encased like a salt-bake. Starla looked like a beach baby, her hair knotted, her clothes hemmed with grit, as if she had rolled in it. Salt got into all our food, bitter on our tongues.