Ashen Winter

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. Why would Alyssa want to help me find Darla? But before I could ask her about it, Mom started up again.

“We’re going back to Warren. All of us. That’s final.”

“I don’t think Alex is going to Warren, honey,” Dad said mildly.

“We could make him.”

“I don’t know that we could. Even if I were willing to.”

Mom turned back to me. “Alex. I know you think—I know you love her, but you need to go back to Warren. With your family.”

“Darla is my family.”

Even by the lantern’s weak light, I could see the fury reddening Mom’s face, the tension in the cords on her neck. “We will talk about this later.”

I shrugged. She could talk about it all she wanted to. I was done talking.

“That’d be fine,” Dad said. “We’re going to need supplies. Help me search.”

We searched the room thoroughly. Under the desk, Alyssa found a whole stack of heavy canvas bags with Abilify and Bristol-Meyers Squibb logos on them. I stuffed one with medical supplies—bandages, a suture kit. I even found some antiseptic spray and a dozen aspirin.

We stuffed two bags with spare clothing we found in a closet. The men’s clothing was all huge—sized to fit the still unconscious patient. The only person it would fit well was Ben. The women’s clothing was the nurse’s and would fit the rest of us okay. I guessed cross-dressing beat freezing.

Mom found a lighter in a bedside table drawer. She flicked it and cracked a grim smile at the flame it produced.

Dad gave me the shake light. Then he grabbed the lantern off the desk and handed it to Alyssa. “Carry this. I want my hands free.”

“I need that lamp,” Elsa said.

“We need it more,” Dad replied, and we left Elsa and her patient behind in the darkness.

Ben led us on a devious, twisty route through the back halls and stairs of the prison. On the main floor, we emerged into a huge, industrial kitchen.

Dad made a beeline for the walk-in freezer. I hung back, having some idea about what he might find. Dad cracked the heavy metal door while Alyssa held out the lantern. He turned back around almost immediately.

“Don’t go in there,” Dad said grimly. “There’s nothing we can eat. Nothing you want to see.”

It occurred to me then that Alyssa had been held captive here for months. What had the Peckerwoods fed her? I started to ask and then thought better of it. If I’d been forced to take up ca

In one of the steel cabinets we found the motherlode: eight one-gallon Ziploc bags packed with coarsely ground cornmeal. We stashed them all, along with a frying pan and a pot we found hanging above the stove. We discovered three one-gallon jugs that would work to store water, once we’d melted some snow. A drawer next to the prep sink was full of butcher knives. We took one each. The knives were big and awkward—not made for fighting—but they might come in handy for chopping wood or something.

Next, Dad asked Ben to show us the way to the armory. We’d need something better than one rifle and an assortment of butcher knives to survive on the road. As he rounded the corner leading to the barracks and armory, Dad suddenly backed up, shuffling backward so fast he almost knocked Ben down. A loud pop-pop-pop echoed along the corridor.

Chapter 74

Shards of concrete flew off the corner. Dad had barely gotten clear in time.

“Peckerwoods?” I hissed.

“Black Lake,” Dad replied.

“Quit shooting! We’re the good guys,” I hollered.

“Back up!” Dad ordered. “Now!”

We ran back down the corridor, Dad shuffling backward and pointing the rifle behind us. Maybe the gunfire had been a mistake, but none of us wanted to go back and find out.

We made our way out of the prison. The black night had been replaced by a greasy yellow light. A cluster of Black Lake mercenaries conferred by one of their trucks, but they paid no attention to us.

“Going to be a long walk to wherever we’re going,” Dad said.

“There’s a vehicle depot at the back,” I said. “We can try to liberate a truck.”

“Gas?”

“Yeah, gas, too.”

I led the way around to the back of the prison. The place was huge—just walking around it seemed like a half-mile hike.

Black Lake had beaten us to the vehicle depot. Three mercenaries were guarding it, and they flatly refused to let us “borrow” a truck or any gas. At least they didn’t shoot at us.

“Maybe we can find a car in town?” I suggested.

“Any vehicle that was run during the ashfall will be damaged,” Ben said.

“We might get lucky. Find one that was garaged. Or overhauled afterward.”

Dad shrugged.

I noticed something weird as we kept walking: Although the snow and ash had buried most of each car we passed, all of them had a clear spot over their gas caps. It didn’t matter whether the gas cap was on the left or right side of the car or which way the car was facing.

I stopped by one of the cars and pried open the gas hatch. The plastic cap unscrewed easily, and no air hissed out. I smelled only a faint odor of gas.

“Someone take the gas out of all these cars?” I asked.

“Looks that way,” Dad said. “Why else would they just dig out the gas caps?”

“How would they do that?”

“A siphon would work,” Ben said, “or a portable pump.”

“We’re not going to be able to find gas anywhere, are we?” I said.

“If the Peckerwoods drained all the cars, surely they hit the gas stations, too,” Dad replied.

I nodded morosely.

It took only another five minutes to reach Anamosa’s small downtown. Main Street was plowed. Towering piles of snow and ash lined both sides of the street, making the road a white-and-gray canyon. A few two-story buildings peeked above the snow, their brown bricks streaked with ash and ice. The five of us looked like refugees from a bombed out Bristol-Myers Squibb convention as we lugged our packed Abilify bags awkwardly on our shoulders.

A deeper brown caught my attention to the right. A UPS truck had hit the front of Anamosa Floral, shattering the plate-glass window. Someone had dug a narrow path in the snow pile to reach the open passenger-side door. A hillock of snow blocked the back of the truck, although one section had been dug away to reveal the deep blue gas cap of a very small car.

“What’s that symbol?” Alyssa asked, pointing to a diamond-shaped red sticker on the truck that read LNG.

“Must be one of those new natural-gas-fueled trucks UPS has been testing. Lower emissions,” Dad said.

“So the UPS truck crashed, and then that little blue car blocked it in?” I asked.

Dad shrugged. “Let’s check it out.”

I took the precious shake light out of my pocket. The path that had been dug to the truck was so narrow and its sides so high that it felt like a cave. Dad followed me in, but Mom, Ben, and Alyssa stayed in the street.

The inside of the truck looked as though a storm had swept through it. Scraps of cardboard and empty boxes were scattered everywhere, covered in an uneven layer of packing peanuts and bubble wrap. The keys were in the ignition, but the fuel gauge read empty. Which figured. We’d have better luck finding a scrap of paper in a blizzard than a working car in Anamosa.

“Check this out,” Dad said, pointing at a row of four metal tanks strapped to one interior sidepanel. They were squat propane cylinders, like barbeque grills use. The tanks were linked with hoses, but the last hose in the row was disco

“Is propane the same thing as natural gas?” I asked.

“No,” Dad said. “And they wouldn’t put the tanks inside the truck, anyway. Somebody has converted this one.”

“You think it’ll run?” I asked.

“One way to find out.” He sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key.