Ashen Winter

by Mike Mullin

  “Can you go any faster?” I yelled.

  “It’s floored!” Mom yelled back.

  I heard a pop-pop-pop and the whang of a bullet ricocheting off metal as the gunner in the lead pickup started firing at us. The noise reminded me that we had a giant propane tank—aka bomb—sticking out the back of our truck.

  “Tie a bandage around Dad’s stomach as tight as you can,” I told Alyssa.

  I climbed up onto the propane tank. The first pickup was closer now, still firing steadily. Mom started weaving back and forth. The road was rough, bouncing us up and down. I didn’t think the DWBs were likely to hit us until they got much closer.

  I lifted my rifle, lined it up on the lead pickup, and pulled the trigger. Click. I’d forgotten I was out of bullets. “I need a gun!” I yelled. Ben grabbed the assault rifle Dad had taken from Chad and tossed it to me. As soon as I got it seated against my shoulder and roughly in line with the pickups, I pulled the trigger. And nothing. The trigger wouldn’t even operate.

  The safety, I’d forgotten the safety. I found it on the side of the gun and snicked it to full auto.

  The gun still wouldn’t fire.

  “What’s wrong with this piece of junk?” I yelled.

  “The magazine is not seated,” Ben said.

  I lifted the gun and banged the base of the magazine against the propane tank. There was a dull clunk of metal on metal and a click as the magazine popped into place.

  As I aimed the gun again, the tank shivered under me and rang with a series of colossal blows. A row of holes appeared across the tank. Bullets ricocheted and rattled around inside it. I caught a whiff of propane and wondered briefly why I was still alive. Why hadn’t the tank exploded, instantly converting us into ash and charred meat?

  “Don’t shoot!” Ben screamed.

  “What?”

  “The muzzle flash of the AR-15 might ignite the aerated propane!”

  “Stop! Now!” Dad yelled. “There!” He pointed left to a break in the embankment that allowed access to an alley. Mom slammed on the brakes, fishtailing to a stop. The trucks behind us raced closer, spraying bullets as they came. Mom dove out the driver’s door, taking shelter in the alley. Alyssa followed, chivvying Ben along with her. Darla crawled out on her own, and I helped Dad out of the passenger seat to the driver’s side and tried to slide him out the driver’s door. He stopped and sat down.

  “Come on!” I screamed. The trucks were almost on us.

  Dad screwed his face up in agony, planted his left foot on my chest, and shoved. I fell backward onto the icy road. Gears ground as Dad shifted into reverse. “Goodbye,” he said calmly. “Tell everyone I love them.”

  The truck shot backward. “Dad!” I screamed. The propane tank slammed into the lead pickup. I rolled, scrambling toward the shelter of the alley.

  The explosion plucked me off the road and hurled me into the air. I flew for a few seconds before gravity caught me again and dashed me to earth. My back burned, as if I’d been stung by a thousand angry hornets. I smelled smoke, twisted, and realized my back was literally burning. I rolled on the icy road to put it out. The world around me had gone silent, and my ears had become hot knives stabbing into my brain. I touched an earlobe, and my hand came back covered with fresh blood.

  Dad.

  I looked back down the road. I had to squint against the inferno engulfing the conjoined wreckage of the trucks. The buildings on either side of the road had been flattened. One corner of a brick building was still standing, a rough masonry triangle that had sheltered Darla, Alyssa, Ben and Mom. Ben’s hands were clasped around his ears, and he was rocking again. Otherwise they all looked dazed but unhurt.

  I stumbled to my feet and staggered toward the wreck. “Dad,” I breathed, releasing the word like a prayer or kiss goodbye. A secondary detonation—the pickup’s gas tank, perhaps—knocked me flat again.

  A few moments later, I felt hands under my arms, lifting me up. Alyssa was there, dusting the ash and grit from my singed clothing, checking me for punctures. She said something to me, and I shook my head, pointing to my ears.

  Darla was still sitting against the ruined brick wall, doubled over, maybe unconscious again. Mom stood nearby, staring at my father’s fiercely burning pyre. Her eyes were vacant and dry, but her mouth was twisted into an expression of such horror that I had to look away. Ben’s mouth was open now—maybe he was moaning, but I couldn’t hear. Anything.

  I put my arm across Alyssa’s shoulders for support. “Come on,” I said, hobbling around the fire. Alyssa replied—I saw her lips move, but no sound reached my brain.

  Alyssa and I gave the wreck a wide berth. Even so, the heat was intense. The snow berms on both sides of the road had started to melt. Water trickled off them to join the ashy pool forming around the entire mess.

  About fifty feet farther on, I saw the rear-most pickup. It was slewed across the road, hood half-buried in a snowbank. It was huge for a pickup—both a king cab and a dually. On the left side of the truck, the windows had blown inward, and its body was the color of charred steak. The door was open, and the driver had slumped out. The left side of his face was a horrifying patchwork of blackened skin and blood-covered glass fragments.

  A plume of steam rose from the back end of the truck. I thought about it a moment and realized that the truck was idling, although I couldn’t hear the engine. Despite the pounding it had taken, the truck still worked.

  I grabbed the least charred part of the driver’s collar and dragged him the rest of the way out of the truck. He didn’t move at all. Maybe he was dead, but I didn’t care enough to spend the energy to check.

  It occurred to me that there had been two guys in the bed of the truck manning the roof-mounted gun. There was no sign of them now. The truck’s airbags had deployed. I shoved the deflated airbag out of the way.

  By the time I finished, the driver was awake, reaching up to me with one trembling arm. The horror of the situation seized me suddenly, squeezing the air from my lungs, the life from my heart. Dad, dead. Darla, hurt. Why had the DWBs followed me? Why couldn’t they have let me slip away, let me take my family back to Warren to struggle together to survive—or at least to die united?

  I had no answers, just pure rage. I knelt before the bandit, pulled the butcher knife off my belt, and lifted it high over my head. Someone caught my arm from behind. I turned—Alyssa was there, shouting something at me—I saw her mouth working soundlessly. I twisted my knife hand free and brought the blade slashing down toward the driver’s throat.

  Alyssa caught my arm again. She put her face inches from mine and shook her head. The rage washed out of me as quickly as it had come. I again twisted free of her grasp and threw the knife. Powered by my disgust and grief, it flew clear across the snow bank on the far side of the road.

  Alyssa wrapped her arms around me, and suddenly I was sobbing. I clung to her and cried until the back of her coat was wet with my tears.

  The sewer stench of death brought me back to my senses. The bandit’s arm was down, and the unburnt right side of his face had relaxed into a facsimile of peace.

  I lifted my eyes past him. Tears still clouded my vision. All I could see was a blurry gray—the ashen smear of my father’s remains upon the eternal snow.

  Chapter 83

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. It was weird, not being able to hear myself. I could tell I was talking only by the vibrations in my mouth and nose. Alyssa nodded.

  She started to turn away. I caught her arm and gestured at the truck. “You drive?” I asked.

  She shook her head and said something I couldn’t understand.

  I sagged against her. I could barely walk, and now I’d have to drive.

  Alyssa slid into the truck and I followed, stopping behind the wheel. The truck was an automatic. The keys were dangling from the ignition, and the fuel gauge read just shy of full. I slid the gear selector into reverse and eased my foot onto the gas. We lurched free of the snowbank with a
bounce.

  I backed the truck around the body of its former driver. The fire amid the wreck had died down to a dull, angry glow. I cranked the wheel over and inched past, staying as close to the berm as I could. I pulled up beside Mom and Ben. Neither of them made any move to get in. Darla was still curled against the ragged brick wall.

  Alyssa and I got out. I ran to Darla. She was conscious but dazed. I helped her into the front seat of the truck, buckling her into the middle, where she’d be next to me.

  I turned back toward Mom. “Can you drive?” I asked.

  Her eyes were focused on a world apart from this one. Maybe her hearing was damaged, too.

  “Mom!” I shouted.

  Her lips were still. She stared past the dying glow of the wreck.

  I took Mom’s hand. I led her like a child into the passenger seat of the pickup and buckled the seat belt around her. When I slipped back out of the truck, I saw Alyssa brushing Ben, trying to coax him into motion.

  “We’ve got to go,” I told Alyssa.

  She nodded at me and led Ben toward the truck. They slid into the back seat. I put the truck in drive and headed north, away from Iowa City and the DWB slavers, toward Warren and the safety of Uncle Paul’s farm.

  The windshield was cracked so badly, it was tough to see through it. I had to bend my body and crane my neck to peer through a patch of clear glass.

  I found a map in the glove compartment and handed it to Alyssa. Darla had passed out again, and Mom was awake but in another world. Alyssa charted a course that skirted around Anamosa and its prison. Each time we reached an intersection, she would point the right direction and yell. I still couldn’t make out words, but at least I could hear that she was saying something now.

  My ears started buzzing with a high-pitched whine. I took that as a good sign, even though it was incredibly annoying. I was constantly dizzy—I worried I’d accidentally drive into a snow berm. About twenty miles out of Iowa City, I got so nauseated I had to pull over and vomit on the icy road.

  My eyelids were drooping. Mom, Darla, and Ben were completely zoned out. I fought to stay awake, biting my lip, slapping my face, and pinching my legs. The cold air rushing through the broken side windows helped some, but I didn’t think I could keep going long enough to get us to Warren. And Darla needed help—soon.

  I wanted nothing more than to stop, curl up, and cry. To mourn my father. To try to help Darla with her infection and my mother with her grief. But I had to go on. The frozen roads of Iowa were no safe place for funerals or remembrances. I pointed to Worthington on Alyssa’s map. “Go there.”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t know if it’ll still be there, because the Peckerwoods in Cascade were planning to attack. Hope the walls held.”

  Alyssa nodded and said something I couldn’t hear.

  By the time we reached Worthington, it was late afternoon. We approached from the west on 272nd Street. There was no gate on this side, just a sheer ice wall towering above the road, blocking it completely.

  I could make out figures running atop the wall, so I stopped the truck well out of rifle range.

  I looked over my shoulder. Mom and Ben were awake but dazed. “I can’t go talk to them,” I said to Alyssa.

  She shrugged.

  “My ears. They’re still not working. You’ll have to go do it. If they look like Peckerwoods, run. If they’re farmers, tell them you’re with Alex Halprin, and we’ve got Darla Edmunds with us and she’s hurt. Tell them I’ve still got kale seeds to trade. Ask for the librarian, Rita Mae. She’ll help.”

  “Okay,” Alyssa yelled into my ear. I was amazed I could sort of hear her in an echoey way.

  Alyssa tumbled out the rear door. She trudged toward Worthington, her hands up and palms out. There were nine or ten people on the wall now. I hoped they were farmers, citizens of Worthington, but I couldn’t tell from this distance. All of them aimed guns at her.

  A lump of guilt lodged in my throat. I should be the one walking out there alone. But since I couldn’t hear any commands, I might get myself shot. And surely Alyssa would seem to be less of a threat by herself.

  There was one thing I could do: If something went wrong, I could drive up and get her. I put my hands back on the steering wheel, put the truck in gear, and rested my foot on the brake. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

  Alyssa stopped a few hundred feet from the wall and stood there for a long time. When she finally started back, she moved at a far brisker pace than she had on the way in.

  When she reached us, I couldn’t contain my impatience. “Did Worthington hold out? Did you talk to Rita Mae? Will they let us in?”

  With a combination of shouted words and gestures, Alyssa told me that, yes, Worthington had beaten back the Peckerwoods’ attack, and they would let us in. Apparently there was a road around Worthington adjacent to the wall that we could follow to reach the town’s only gate.

  I inched forward under the guns of Worthington’s defenders. The road along the wall turned out to be more of a track of packed snow than an actual road. Still, the four-wheel drive dually handled it with ease. The DWBs were murderous cannibals, but they sure had good taste in pickups.

  At the gate we had to surrender our guns. I still had the assault rifle Dad had taken from Chad, and the gun mounted on the roof turned out to be another assault rifle. I hadn’t thought to check earlier.

  I pulled the truck up in front of the low metal building that housed the fire station, city hall, and library. Mayor Kenda came out to meet us before I’d even stepped from the truck.

  She yelled something at me, but I couldn’t make out the words. I pointed at my ears. She said something else, and Alyssa shot me a worried look.

  “Is Rita Mae around?” I asked.

  Mayor Kenda said something else, and Alyssa answered her.

  I’d had enough of being outside the loop of this conversation. I knew Mayor Kenda meant well, but she might decide that the best thing for us would be to take our truck and keep us here in Worthington, where we’d be “safe.” I strode directly to the library door and jerked it open.

  Rita Mae was at her desk, reading by the light of an oil lamp. She had one hand on the shotgun propped against a bookcase, but when she saw me her face broke into a huge grin. She let go of the shotgun and darted around her desk. She hugged me surprisingly hard for such a tiny old lady, and I struggled not to collapse and pull us both off our feet.

  When Rita Mae broke the embrace, she started talking to me. I could make out a word here or there, but not enough to follow what she was saying. I pointed to my ears and pantomimed an explosion.

  Rita Mae got it right away. She took a stubby library pencil and a sheet of paper that looked like it was the fly-leaf from a book off her desk. “I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again,” she wrote.

  “Darla’s gunshot wound is bad,” I said. “We need help.” I swayed on my feet and grabbed the edge of the desk for support.

  “Paramedic’s in the fire station,” Rita Mae wrote. She tucked the paper and pencil into her pocket, grabbed my arm, and led me out of the library.

  I tried to veer toward the pickup where Darla was, but Rita Mae pulled me to the pedestrian door of the fire station. Inside, the station was sparsely illuminated by a small fire smoldering on the concrete floor. A man in a worn paramedic uniform sat on a metal folding chair beside the fire. Rita Mae said something, and he sprang to his feet, rushing past us toward the pickup.

  A small hole had been cut high up on a nearby wall to let out the smoke. A row of cots lay to the left of the fire. On the right, there was another room created with make-shift curtains. More metal folding chairs were scattered randomly throughout both rooms. There wasn’t a fire truck in the station. When I’d been here last year, it had been stuck in the ash outside—obviously it had been moved, but not back into its garage.

  The paramedic returned, carrying Darla in his arms. He ushered me into the curtained area, and Rita Mae followed us. I
nside, there was a vinyl exam couch, two rolling chairs, and a stainless-steel table with cabinets under it.

  The paramedic examined Darla efficiently, inspecting the wound in her shoulder and taking her temperature, blood pressure, and pulse.

  “Can you treat the infection?” I asked.

  The paramedic said something I couldn’t make out. Rita Mae whipped out her paper and pencil and wrote out his words for me. “I’m not supposed to have to treat everything. I just stabilize them and drive them to the Mercy Medical in Dyersville. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

  “She needs antibiotics, right?”

  “Yes. And a doctor to clean and debride that wound.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” the paramedic replied. His voice was so loud and anguished that I could understand it even without Rita Mae’s written translation.

  “Nothing?” I yelled. “At least give her some antibiotics!”

  “Can’t. They’re rationed. Mayor Kenda keeps them locked up.”

  “They’re—” I stepped away from the paramedic and slammed my palm into the corrugated metal wall. The pain got me thinking again.

  I dug around in my jacket and pulled out the last eleven packets of kale seeds. “I want a ten-day course of antibiotics and a week’s worth of food for five people.” It suddenly occurred to me that kale seeds might not be as valuable now. Presumably Worthington would be growing the ones I’d traded to them right after Darla was shot. I dug deeper in my pocket, pulled out one of my carefully hoarded bags of wheat, and handed it to Rita Mae with all the kale seeds.

  “I can get a lot more than that if you give me time to negotiate,” Rita Mae wrote.

  “I don’t care. We’re leaving Worthington in fifteen minutes. I’m taking Darla to Dr. McCarthy in Warren.”

  “You’re falling down on your feet. You leave now you’ll wreck your truck.”

  I started to yell that I didn’t care but bit back my words. She had a point. Crashing on the way to Warren wouldn’t get Darla the help she needed. “You’re right,” I said quietly. “We should get Darla started on her antibiotics, get something to eat, and sleep a few hours.”