Ashen Winter (42 page)
Dad grabbed Bull’s assault rifle. Darla scooped up both of Wolfe’s revolvers. “You got a way out of here?” she asked, her voice as sharp as the bloody screwdriver she’d just discarded.
“Truck. Just outside the wall. Three guards between us and it.”
“Three? Usually only two.”
“Yep. Three.” I took the rifle off my back and readied it.
Bull groaned. I heard a wet crunch behind me and glanced over my shoulder. Dad had kicked him in the face. Blood was pouring from his nose and mouth, mixing with Wolfe’s on the concrete floor. The sweet, coppery stink of it filled my nostrils, flooding me with an insane joy. I wanted more, wanted all the DWBs to bleed to death.
“There’s more than a hundred of them in the apartments,” Darla said. “We’ve got to go. Fast.”
The three of us approached the open door of the garage. Chad and the two guards by the fire were on their feet, looking in our direction. Chad yelled, “Everything—” Then his eyes widened, and he reached for his gun. He was staring at me. I glanced down—my boots and coverall legs were soaked with Wolfe’s blood.
All six of us raised our guns.
The air burst with gunfire—the crazed sewing-machine rattle of the assault rifles and the metronomic boom, boom, boom of Darla’s revolver. My rifle was snug against my shoulder, my eye on the sight, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger. The three DWBs were down. We’d come out expecting a fight; they were only a second or two slower, but in the new world, the postvolcano world, that was all it took. The difference between life and death was measured in seconds and inches.
“Got to go. Now . . .” Darla said. Her voice wavered, and I glanced at her, alarmed, just in time to see her crumple. I caught her as she fell, easing her to the ground while I frantically checked for blood.
I heard a rattle of gunfire from our right. Slim was standing in the doorway of the apartment building, firing an assault rifle at us. “Go!” Dad screamed. He whirled to return fire. I slung Darla’s limp body over my shoulder and ran for the truck.
I leaped into the truck, laying Darla out in the space behind the passenger seat. “Come on!” I screamed as I turned back toward Dad. Slim had ducked back into apartment building. Dad’s rifle clicked empty. He turned and ran toward the truck, scooping up Chad’s assault rifle as he passed the corpses. Slim stepped back into view in the doorway, firing his rifle. Dad stumbled, picked himself up, and kept running. I lifted my rifle, firing until the magazine was dry. Slim took cover again.
Mom was in the driver’s seat. Alyssa and Ben huddled behind the driver’s seat in the scant space beside the propane tank. Dad threw himself into the passenger seat. “Go! Go! Go!”
Mom floored the accelerator, and the truck leapt forward, racing north toward Warren and safety.
I checked on Darla. She was breathing and the pulse at her neck throbbed, hot under my fingers. I started stripping off her filthy coat, trying to figure out what was wrong. Had she been hit?
Dad groaned. My mind replayed the stumble he’d taken over and over, worrying at it.
“You’re hurt!” Mom glanced at him, her face etched with a strange combination of fear and compassion.
“Yeah,” Dad replied weakly. “But keep going. We’ve got to get out of here.”
I looked from Darla to Dad, unsure what to do. “I’ll check on him,” Alyssa said, pushing past me.
Darla was wearing the same clothing she’d had on when she was shot on the overpass two weeks before. Her shirts were crusted with old blood. I tore her undershirt at the shoulder and pulled it away from the wound.
It was weeping greenish yellow pus and smelled utterly revolting. Her whole shoulder was swollen—red flames of infection licked out from the wound, reaching down her side and along her shoulder toward her neck. The reason for her collapse was obvious—what wasn’t obvious was how she’d stayed on her feet, managed to stab Wolfe, and shot a revolver with a wound this badly infected. There was nothing I could do for her but give her Tylenol. We needed to get her to a doctor—and fast.
As I worked on Darla, Alyssa had stripped off Dad’s coat and shirts. He was already sitting in a puddle of his own blood. It was everywhere, coating her hands in a nauseating crimson glaze. She pulled up his T-shirt, revealing the bloody hole a bullet had punched in the left side of his stomach. “Lean forward,” she said.
Dad groaned as he bent away from the seat. Alyssa checked his back—low on his left side was a round, puffy entrance wound, welling blood. “I need some bandages!” she yelled.
“Janice,” Dad began.
Mom didn’t reply. She was staring at the blood welling from Dad’s stomach. Her cheeks glistened, and she’d bitten her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
“Watch the road!” Dad told her.
Ben had been moaning and rocking, but when Alyssa asked for bandages he stopped and looked directly at her for a second. Then he started rifling through the Abilify bags, tossing stuff everywhere as he searched for bandages. I was out of my mind with worry about Darla and Dad but still fiercely proud of Ben in that moment. He found several rolls of gauze and passed them up to Alyssa. She took the first roll and pressed the whole thing against the hole in Dad’s belly. He moaned but then placed his bloody hand over hers and pushed harder. “Got to stop this bleeding,” he gasped.
Darla stirred. “Cold,” she moaned.
“Lieutenant!” Ben yelled. He yelled it again before I figured out he was talking to me. “We have a tactical problem.” He pointed toward the open back of the truck.
Two pickups were racing on the road behind us, gaining fast.
Both trucks had guns mounted on top of their cabs and a pair of guys standing in their beds. They were distant, but at the rate they were approaching, that wouldn’t last. We were racing down a long, straight road lined with burned-out commercial buildings.
“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.
“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.
