Ashen Winter

I looked inside, half expecting to see Darla in the dim light. But nobody was there—the door was falling open because of some quirk in the building. When it swung fully open, I saw something else hanging from a meat hook, pink and streaked with frozen, red-black rivulets: half of a human ribcage.

I let out a short, involuntary yelp.

Chapter 36

“Hey, who’s there?” a voice yelled from the direction of the fire.

I stepped inside the abattoir to hide. Bits and pieces of people hung everywhere. The stomach-turning stink of blood that I’d barely noticed as the door opened now overpowered me. I turned my face toward the wall, trying to hide from the room’s gruesome contents.

“Guuuys. It ain’t fu

His voice had a weird singsong quality—like what I imagined a preschooler might sound like with the vocal chords of a grown man. I slid the glove off my right hand, drew the pistol from my belt, and tried to thumb off the safety. My hands were shaking and slick with sweat. My thumb kept missing the safety, sliding just over the top of it.

“I ain’t going to jump and scream like last time, so you can come on out now.” The voice sounded closer.

I tucked the pistol under my arm, pulled off my other glove, and used my left hand to snick off the safety.

“I know you’re in there,” the voice was very close now. “You think Brick’s a dump truck, but I’m not that dumb. That ratchet didn’t fall out on its own.”

I held my breath. The guy stepped through the doorway. Half of him was in shadow, the other half lit by firelight. He looked like something an amateur sculptor had attempted to chisel out of an enormous block of granite before giving up the job as hopeless. Then an equally inept painter had come along and covered the sculptor’s work with crude blue tattoos of Woody Woodpecker. He turned away from me, checking behind the door.

I took one step toward him and jammed my pistol against the back of his head. “Down! On the floor! Now!” I used the most commanding tone of voice I could manage while whispering.

“Oh-uh?” He sounded like a mooing cow.

“Down!” I repeated.

He turned toward me slowly. I pressed the pistol harder against his head, but he kept turning, so that by the time he could look at me, my pistol was against his right temple rather than the back of his head. “Who are you?”

“Nobody! Now get down, or I’ll shoot you.”

“Oh. You’re a bad guy.”

I had to stifle a panicky laugh. I was holding a gun on a ca

“You won’t shoot me.”

“I will.”

“You won’t.”

“What? Do you want me to shoot you?” It was like arguing with a two-year-old.

“No. But if you shoot, my brothers will hear it.”

The apartment building was about one hundred yards off. A pistol shot might not wake them. But if they had posted guards . . .

Brick started turning again, slowly reaching for the gun in my right hand. I quickly sidestepped to stay behind him and snapped a front kick toward him.

My kick co

When he could breathe again, he moaned, a sound that started as a low, monotonic “Oooh” and grew into a high-pitched screetch: “Eeee!” I quickly shrugged out of my pack and grabbed the first thing that came to hand from the top—a dirty T-shirt. I tied the T-shirt around Brick’s head, forcing it between his teeth to muffle him. Then I cut a hank of rope from my coil and used it to tie his hands behind his back. He didn’t resist at all—just rocked back and forth on his knees, moaning through the gag.

“Get up,” I said.

“Uh-uh,” he moaned, shaking his head.

I moved around to his front and cocked my leg behind me. Which was sort of silly—no martial artist would telegraph their moves like that—but I figured it might scare him. “If you don’t get up, I’m going to kick you again.”

He moaned and struggled to his feet.

I retrieved my gloves, safetied the pistol, and put my pack back on. “Come on,” I said. I led him out of the meat locker into the main part of the shed and shut the door behind us, sliding the broken ratchet back into place. Closing the door on that grisly morgue brought a sigh of relief to my lips. I hoped I’d never have to open it again.

Threatening him with further violations to his family jewels, I forced Brick to hide with me behind the dilapidated minivan. Then I made him sit down so I could tie his ankles together.

“I’m going to take my T-shirt out of your mouth.” I lifted my foot, letting it hover over his groin. “You know what happens if you yell, right?”

He nodded. His gaze was affixed on my foot. I knelt beside him and untied the T-shirt. He’d drooled all over it. I tossed it aside—no way was I going to put that thing back in my pack.

“Listen up,” I said. “Darla . . . the girl you caught—is she in there?” I gestured toward the meat locker.

“Girl?”

“Yeah, a little shorter than me, long dark hair, cute?”

Brick shook his head.

“She was shot. She fell on one of your trucks.”

“Sky Girl?”

“Sky Girl?” I repeated, confused.

“She fell out of the sky. Whumped on the roof of the cage. Made Brick jump.”

“Cage?”

“The truck.”

“Yes, that’s right. Sky Girl.” I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to ask the next question. But I had to know. “Is she alive?”

“I du

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Was she alive when you found her? Did you kill her?” I balled my fists and lifted my elbow, thinking about smashing his nose.

“She wasn’t hurt too bad. Ace said she was a hardbelly. Hot enough to trade.”

“Trade? Where is she?”

“Ace took her. To trade for bullets.”

“Took her where? When?”

“To Da

“Who’s Da

“He’s the Big Willy. At Grandma’s.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Da

“And he traded Darla to Da

“That’s what I just told you. He ain’t back yet.” Brick had an expression on his face like he thought I was stupid for even asking. “You go

“How far is it to Anamosa from here?”

“’Bout an hour in the cage. Maybe two on a sled.”

“Sled?”

“Yeah, sled . . . snowmobile, you know.”

I thought about the row of snowmobiles parked at the far side of the shed. They’d be perfect for traveling: I could stay off the roads and go cross-country, which would probably be a lot safer. An hour by truck might be forty or fifty miles, two or three days on foot—maybe longer. Darla might not have that long. I had to steal a snowmobile. The only problem was how would I find Anamosa? I vaguely remembered it was somewhere southeast of Cedar Falls.

I stepped around the minivan to the closest snowmobile. I’d never driven one before or even ridden on one. The steering seemed obvious—it had handlebars like a bicycle’s. I found the ignition, but its key was nowhere in sight.

I went back to the corner where I’d left Brick. “Where are the keys to the snowmobiles?”

“Anybody’s got their own sled, they keep the key. Posers ain’t allowed to touch the sleds or the keys.”

“Where’s your key?”

“I just told you, posers ain’t allowed to touch the keys.”

“What’s a poser?”

“Guy who ain’t got a sled.”

“Like you.”

He glared. “Yeah.”

Great. How was I going to get a key? I started searching Brick’s pockets.

“What you doing?” he asked.

“Looking for a key.”

“I already told you, I ain’t got a sled.”