Ashen Winter a-2

by Mike Mullin

  “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-story 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 s
nore.

  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 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 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.

  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.”
<
br />   “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 dunno.”

  “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 Danny. Yesterday.”

  “Who’s Danny? Where did he take her?” I had to stifle the urge to yell.

  “He’s the Big Willy. At Grandma’s.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “Danny’s boss of all the Peckerwoods in Iowa. At the big house in Anamosa-Grandma’s. Ace went to see him yesterday.”

  “And he traded Darla to Danny? At Anamosa?”

  “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 gonna eat me?”

  “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.