Ashen Winter a-2

by Mike Mullin

  “You’d best not,” Dad said quietly, withdrawing his hand from his pocket. I didn’t think anyone else noticed that his voice wasn’t as steady as usual. He held the red button from the propane distributor. His thumb was under the plastic cover. The two wires ran from the back of the button into his coat pocket. “I press this button, and the propane tank blows. Just like a bomb. Probably level three city blocks.”

  Wolfe turned around and stepped toward Dad. “Yeah?”

  “That’s right.” Dad’s hands were shaking.

  “Bullshit!” Wolfe’s hand whipped out, grabbing the two wires and pulling them free.

  Chapter 79

  “Waste him,” Wolfe ordered.

  “This isn’t some game!” Mom screamed as she slid off the side of the propane tank and stood on the back bumper of the truck. She had an air hose in one hand and a burning torch made of rolled cardboard in the other. She was holding the valve open on the end of the air hose. “If I bring these together, we’re all going to meet our maker. I’m ready to be judged, how about you?”

  Mom let the valve snap shut, moved the hose out of the way, and thrust her torch into the space the hose had just occupied. There was a huge whoosh and a flash that left blue spots on my vision. “I’ll blow us all to hell before I let you flense my family!” she yelled.

  Wolfe was laughing. “Righteous! Do it again!”

  “Screw you!” Mom spat.

  “Maybe later.” Wolfe turned to Dad. “I like that one. You want to sell her, too?”

  “N-no.” Dad’s face was ashen.

  “Woman like that, ’course you want to keep her.” Wolfe stepped up beside Dad and laid a paw like a side of meat across his shoulder. “Y’all have balls. Maybe we can work together.”

  “Good,” Dad said, visibly pulling himself together.

  “Let me show you around.”

  Dad gestured to me with the hand holding Alyssa’s leash. “Give this to your mother and come with me.”

  As I did, Mom yelled, “If my men don’t come back, I’ll level this place.”

  Wolfe smiled up at her. “I believe you would.” Then to Dad he said, “That woman’s worth any three of mine.”

  “Like I said, she’s not for sale.”

  “I know, I know.” Wolfe led us into the walled area. To our left there was a brick building: GEOFF’S BIKE AND SKI. On our right stood a large metal shed marked SOUTH SIDE IMPORT AUTO SERVICES. About a hundred yards ahead there was a large, four-story brick building that appeared to have abandoned shops on the main floor and apartments above.

  Chad and two of the guards returned to the fire. The remaining two guards came with us. One of them was built like a concrete mixer. The other was short and fat-totally different than the rest of the DWBs.

  As we walked, Wolfe said, “So what are you looking to trade for? I got everything. Primo weapons and ammo out of D.C. Drugs out of the strategic reserve in St. Louis. Food out of Texas and Mexico. Got a truckload of flour and watermelon last week. Watermelon! Can you believe that shit? DWBs eat like kings!”

  “I want another 30–30 hunting rifle,” Dad said. “A thousand rounds of ammo. A hundred doses each of antibiotic and acetaminophen. A gallon of hospital-grade antiseptic-”

  “Whoa, whoa, she’s a nice piece, but you’re talking crazy-”

  “And a party for me and my boy. Heard you got the best cathouse in Iowa.”

  “That I can do.” Wolfe gestured at the four-story building ahead of us. “But that other stuff-”

  “It’ll be worth it. This girl is just a first taste. You don’t want me dealing with your competition.”

  “What competition?”

  “The Peckerwoods?” I said. “Black Lake?”

  “Black Lake’s a supplier-they’re your competitor, not mine.”

  “I thought it was the Peckerwoods taking girls out of Maquoketa?” I asked as innocently as I could manage.

  “Maquoketa’s not the only camp Black Lake runs. And we ended the effin’ Peckerwoods. You want to deal flesh in southeast Iowa, you’re dealing with me.”

  “You ended. .? Black Lake attacked Anamosa, not you. I was there.”

  “Nothing happens in southeast Iowa that I don’t approve. And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

  “Ask yourself who benefited,” Dad said to me.

  Wolfe grinned and said, “That’s right.”

  We’d passed the bike and ski shop-it was closed up tight. Now we were walking past the auto shop. The big overhead door was wide open. A fire burned inside, throwing flickering orange light around a jumble of vehicles in various states of disassembly.

  A girl was bent over, working on a pickup. She looked like-she couldn’t be-I’d been wrong before. . Darla.

  Chapter 80

  I had to know for sure. There was a bike just inside the garage doors, parts laid out around it on a tarp. “Is that a Harley?” I said as I peeled off from the group, walking toward the garage doors.

  The girl looked up, her face illuminated first by the orange firelight, then by a flash of recognition and burst of emotion quickly suppressed. Darla. I’d found her. I had to fight down an urge to dash into her arms, to fall to my knees, to shout in pure joy.

  “That’s a Triumph,” Wolfe said, trailing behind me. “Your boy don’t know shit about sleds, do he?”

  Dad spat on the ground. “Failed in my education of him, I guess.”

  The five of us were gathered around the motorcycle while I pretended to inspect it. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Darla. She moved over to a big tool cabinet. A chain clinked, dragging from her ankle. She pulled open the bottom drawer.

  I moved around to the other side of the bike. “A Triumph? That’s, like, way more rare than a Harley, right?”

  The three DWBs looked at me like I was an idiot. But it worked-all of them were staring at me. Darla extracted a small, twisted piece of metal and a huge screwdriver from the tool cabinet. The tip of the screwdriver glinted in the firelight-it had been filed to a vicious point.

  Dad glanced nervously from Wolfe to me and back again.

  “He got that downer syndrome?” Wolfe asked.

  “Can we buy it?” I said.

  “No,” Dad snapped. “Jesus, what’s gotten into you, Alex?”

  “Need to knock him around a bit. I could have Bull do it if you want to make a lasting impression.” Wolfe gestured at the big guy and chuckled, a noise that made my skin crawl.

  “He needs knocking around, I’ll do it myself,” Dad said. “But maybe the party will straighten him up. Everything ready for us?”

  “It will be,” Wolfe replied. “Slim, go make sure them whores are awake.”

  The pudgy guy trotted out of the garage, leaving Dad, Darla, and me with Wolfe and the big guy, Bull.

  Darla reached down with the small piece of metal and did something to the cuff around her ankle. Her chain fell away.

  “What’s wrong with the Triumph? Can you fix it?” I asked, hoping to keep their attention away from Darla.

  “No,” Wolfe said, “we took it apart so we could bedazzle all the parts and hang them on the wall.”

  Darla stalked toward his back, her shank raised above her head in a two-handed grip. She was thinner, her face more angular, cut by tortured shadows. She was getting close-I had to keep Wolfe’s attention on me.

  I looked him in the eye and tried to control the trembling in my arms. “Figures that Dirty White Boys would use a Bedazzler. You’re probably all too stupid to operate a needle and thread.”

  Wolfe roared and pulled one of the guns from his belt. He raised it over his shoulder, like he was preparing to pistol-whip me.

  Darla plunged the shank into the back of his neck. The tip emerged from his throat, glistening red. She wrenched out the screwdriver, and blood fountained from Wolfe’s neck as he collapsed.

  Bull pulled up his gun. I kicked with my right foot-an inner crescent that caught his wrist and sent the gun flying again
st the wall with a clatter. I let the momentum of my kick carry me into a spinning left reverse kick. My foot slammed into Bull’s groin hard enough to lift the huge man off his feet and drop him into a crumpled, moaning heap on the floor.

  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.

  Chapter 81

  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.

  Chapter 82

  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 A
R-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.