Ashen Winter

by Mike Mullin

  “Now, when the time is right,” she whispered, “you run up those steps and use the rope to lower yourself down the far side of the ice wall.”

  “But the guard—”

  “I’ll handle him. Now get your skis and poles secure in one arm so you can manage the rope with the other. And Alex . . .”

  I paused in my preparations. “Yeah?”

  “Take care of yourself.” Rita Mae pulled me into a hug.

  I nodded, but the lump in my throat prevented me from saying anything. I fought down sudden tears.

  The guard still hadn’t noticed us—his attention was focused completely on the world outside the ice wall. Rita Mae released me and tiptoed up the steps. When she reached the top of the wall, she took a step toward him, and he startled, swinging toward her, his rifle at the ready.

  “Rita Mae! Don’t go sneaking up on me like that. I could have shot you!”

  “You’re more of a danger to yourself than to me with that rifle. Now Mr. Chapman, I have important business to take up with you.” Rita Mae’s voice was laden with disapprobation.

  “Well then, get your fool head down while you conduct whatever your business is,” Chapman said. “You’re liable to get shot standing up here like that.”

  Rita Mae stepped over Chapman and crouched on his far side, so to face her he was forced to roll over and put his back toward the staircase.

  I took that as my cue. Paying out rope from one hand, I crept to the base of the ice stairs.

  “Mr. Chapman, you checked out a copy of Gone eighteen days ago. As you are no doubt well aware, checkout periods for fiction have been reduced to two weeks for the duration of the emergency.”

  “Jesus, is that what you came all the way up here for? I’m on duty! Besides, I returned that book last week.”

  I moved up the steps as fast and quietly as I could. They were slick, and my hands were fully occupied.

  “My records clearly indicate that Gone has not been returned to the collection.”

  “Well your records are wrong, Rita Mae.”

  “Librarians never make mistakes, Mr. Chapman. Now I must insist that you—”

  While they argued, I reached the top of the wall. It was at least eight feet wide and sloped slightly back toward the town. I stood at the outer edge and stared over the brink. Sixteen feet doesn’t sound like much, but from where I stood it seemed like a long drop. I dropped the rest of the rope over the side. The slap of the rope hitting the ground drew Chapman’s attention. He rolled back toward me. “Hey, you! Stop!”

  It was now or never. I grabbed the rope, scrunched my eyes closed, and stepped off the edge. I fell sickeningly at first, but then the rope went taut and caught me with a jerk that threatened to tear my left arm out of its socket. I eased my grip on the rope and let it slide slowly through my glove. In seconds, I felt snow under my feet.

  When I opened my eyes and looked up, Chapman was standing atop the wall, aiming his rifle at me. Rita Mae grabbed the barrel of the rifle and pushed it upward, so it aimed at the horizon instead of my head.

  “What are you thinking, aiming a rifle at that boy? We can’t go shooting our friends.”

  Chapman sighed so heavily I could hear it at the base of the wall. “There never was any problem with any overdue library book, was there?”

  “Of course not. Although I do have the sequel for you. We can stop at the library and get it on our way to the mayor’s office. You do want to turn me in to Kenda for insubordination or some such, don’t you?”

  “Not really. But I have to.”

  I’d gotten snapped into my skis while they talked. Now I looked up and called, “Thanks, Rita Mae.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied. “You be careful, you hear? I’d like to see you again—to know you made it.”

  “I’ll be careful. And I’ll visit again if I can.” I turned my skis south toward Cascade and pushed off, sliding away from the safety and confinement of Worthington’s wall.

  Chapter 34

  The only way I knew to get to Cascade, where Darla had been shot, was by following Highway 136. But on skis I could stay off the roads, and traveling cross-country seemed safer. So I veered left until I could just make out the snow berm alongside Highway 136 and followed that south.

  I needn’t have been so cautious. The road and surrounding countryside were deserted all morning. I reached Cascade in about three hours and slid between the close-set brick walls of two burnt houses to rest and have a quick lunch.

  After lunch I clambered up a fallen and charred beam inside one of the houses until I could poke my head above the exterior wall and look out over the town. The blue steel water tower that marked the Peckerwoods’ base was barely visible in the distance. Between me and the water tower there was a downtown with a lot of fire-gutted brick buildings. To my left, the land fell away into a valley with a small frozen stream well below the level of the town itself. That appeared to be the best route. The buildings and slope would shield me from anyone who might be looking. On the other hand, if anyone did get close enough to see me, I would get barely any warning.

  I inched carefully back down to ground level, sliding along the beam on my butt. I snapped into my skis and set out, heading toward the valley. To get there, I had to cross the highway I’d been following all morning. I stopped alongside a shell of a convenience store and looked both ways, waiting and listening for anyone who might be in a position to spot me as I crossed the open road. After five minutes or so, I decided it was safe and darted across.

  On the far side a steep slope led down to the valley. I dropped into a tuck and whooshed silently down the hill.

  I skied through the valley until I’d left the downtown behind. A small, frozen creek with steep banks cut across my path. I slid down onto the ice and sidestepped laboriously up the far bank. I emerged from the gully onto a football field. The turf wasn’t visible, of course, but the yellow goal posts still stood, shockingly bright against the snow. The blackened and broken windows of a low brick building looked out over the field—the local high school, I figured. Past the school there were several large metal commercial buildings, mostly crushed by the ash and snow. Everything was quiet, dead.

  Finally I reached the base of the hill that supported the water tower, where I’d seen what I figured was part of the Peckerwood gang hanging out. The huge Woody Woodpecker graffito mocked me. I ducked behind a wrecked building, hiding myself from Woody and any other observers who might be keeping watch.

  I worked my way slowly up the hill, moving from building to building, trying to stay under cover. Each time I left the shelter of a building, I stopped to listen for a minute or two first. I still heard nothing, but the silence felt ominous.

  I reached the back of one of the twin apartment buildings at the top of the hill. Attached garages jutted off the rear of the building at regular intervals. Beyond this point, I remembered, there was a large open field flanked by the huge maintenance shed where I’d seen the Peckerwoods working on their snowmobiles and cooking. If I went any farther, I’d be seen.

  I hid in the corner between the apartment building and one of its attached garages and tried to think through my next move. I needed to spy on the Peckerwoods to see if they had Darla. I had to find an unexpected vantage point—someplace they’d be unlikely to notice me.

  An idea occurred to me. I unsnapped my skis and hid them in the snow beside the garage. The snow was mounded so high that the gutter was in easy reach. I took hold of it, tugging experimentally. It seemed solid. I swung my legs and did a chin-up, trying to clamber onto the roof. Under normal circumstances, it would have been easy, but the wounds on my arm and side hurt, and I was weighed down by my backpack. The gutter bent in my hands, and I heard the screech of a nail starting to pull free. I threw myself onto the roof and released the gutter. It was badly bent—I did my best to straighten it to hide any sign of my passage.

  I crawled slowly up the icy garage roof. From the peak, the roof of the two-s
tory apartment building was within easy reach. I took hold of the edge and swung myself up.

  The ridge at the top of the apartment roof would give me perfect cover to scout the maintenance shed. Unless someone looked directly at the roofline, I’d be safe. I fought down my fear and started crawling toward the top. At least it wasn’t very steep, though the ice and snow made it tricky.

  I poked my head up over the ridgeline. The door of the maintenance shed was open. A group of people were clustered around a roaring fire just inside.

  I observed for a while, motionless, stomach pressed into the shingles. Three men were working on a truck—it looked like the same pickup I’d seen the bandits driving yesterday. I watched intently, hoping for any sign they might be holding Darla captive. Maybe someone would take food or water to her, and I’d learn where they were keeping her. I was so focused that I lost track of time and was jolted out of my observational trance when my body started shivering. If I waited much longer, I’d freeze to the roof.

  I low-crawled backward until I was completely hidden from the Peckerwoods by the ridgeline. I needed to warm up, but a fire was out of the question—far too dangerous. The apartment roof was too steep to jog on. I scuttled over to a standpipe that jutted from the roof. By clinging to it with my hands, I could safely do leg lifts and side kicks. I worked on those until my leg muscles were burning and my whole body started to warm up. Then I turned around, hooked my ankles around a standpipe, and did push-ups for a while, ignoring the pain of my wounds. By the time I finished, my arms were sore, but I was toasty warm. I slithered back up to the top of the roof and peeked out.

  Nothing had changed. I stayed on the roof most of the rest of the day, growing more and more uneasy as I watched the Peckerwoods. There was no sign of Darla. I tried to get into the apartment building, but there was no way to break in that wouldn’t make my presence obvious. Finally, at dusk, they abandoned the garage, trooping back into the apartment building beneath me.

  I crawled off the roof and stalked across the field between the apartment building and maintenance shed. The snow here had all been packed down by something—I couldn’t see well enough to tell what had done it—boots, truck tires, or snowmobile tracks, most likely. The surface was slippery, but at least my footprints wouldn’t show.

  When I got closer to the shed, I could see part of the reason the fire looked smaller than it had during the daytime—the big sliding doors were mostly closed. I crept toward the opening. I could faintly hear the crackle of the fire and something else underneath that sound: a low, regular rumbling I couldn’t quite identify. It sounded a bit like the purr of a well-tuned engine. I was so close that the heat of the fire warmed my side, but I still couldn’t figure out exactly what I was hearing.

  After about five minutes of this, I decided that whatever was making the noise probably wasn’t a threat and leaned sideways to peer into the shed.

  A snoring man in a filthy orange sleeping bag lay on the far side of the fire, facing directly toward me.

  Chapter 35

  Most of the guy’s body was hidden by the sleeping bag, but judging by the way it bulged, he was huge—fat, heavily muscled, or both. His eyes were closed, and he was snoring gently. Why couldn’t Darla snore like that instead of her grizzly bear roar?

  Thinking about Darla brought a wave of sadness so intense I had to bite my lower lip to hold in a sob. I pulled my head back, trying to get my feelings under control. If I found Darla, I’d gladly stay up all night just to listen to her beautiful garbage-disposal snore.

  When I’d calmed down a bit, I thought about the guy by the fire. There had to be a reason he was there. He was guarding something. The snowmobiles and the trucks maybe. Maybe something else. Maybe Darla.

  I looked back through the opening. The guard was still snoring rhythmically. I measured the space between the sliding doors with my eyes. I’d fit sideways, but not with my pack on, and I didn’t want to go anywhere without my pack.

  I slipped it off my shoulders and held it out to my side. Slowly I took a step sideways, sliding my pack through the opening, careful not to touch the metal doors lest they make noise. I stared at the guard, looking for any sign of wakefulness. The fire was so close to the doors, I was almost standing in it when I got inside. I held my pack as high as I could, but my arm was still hot from the flames. If the nylon on my pack melted, the smell alone might wake him. I stepped to the side, pulling my arm and backpack away from the fire.

  The pickup truck was parked to one side of the fire. On the other side was an open space big enough for another truck. Beyond that I saw a row of snowmobiles—four intact and one in pieces. I didn’t see any sign of the cloth-topped deuce that had carried Darla away from me. I slipped behind the pickup truck, out of sight of the sleeping guard, and crouched to catch my breath.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dim light on the shadowed side of the pickup. When they did, I saw a workbench loaded with tools. Next to it stood a dozen or more tall cylindrical tanks. Beyond that, in one corner there was an old minivan resting on blocks. The other corner had been walled off. Corrugated steel formed an interior room of some kind, its metal door directly ahead of me.

  Judging by the snoring, the guard was still sleeping soundly. I slipped my pack back over my shoulders and slunk toward the door.

  There were two handles—one affixed to the door and another to the frame. Someone had jammed the broken arm of a large ratchet through both of them, holding the door closed. Why would they bar the door from the outside? To keep someone in?

  Trembling with excitement, I slipped the ratchet out of the handles. It made a scraping sound that seemed impossibly loud in my ears. I turned to look toward the fire, but the pickup blocked my view of the guard, so I couldn’t tell if I’d woken him. A creaking noise sounded behind me. I spun back; the door was slowly opening inward of its own accord.

  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 funny punking Brick again.”

  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 mooi
ng 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 cannibal named Brick, standing in a room full of frozen human flesh, and I was the bad guy? “On. The. Floor.”

  “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 connected perfectly, catching him right between his legs. The hours of farm work, pedaling Bikezilla, and skiing had paid off—my kick was so powerful it lifted him onto his toes. Then he crumpled, collapsing and clutching his crotch.

  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.