Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

a couple tons.”
    “So? I’m sure UPS builds these trucks to handle a lot of weight. And it looks like it’ll fit.”
    Dad stood and eyed the tank speculatively. “How the heck would we load it on there?”
    “It’s at about the right height.” I started pushing through the snow toward it. “If we back up the truck to it so that the end of the tank is already inside, maybe we can slide it the rest of the way on.”
    “Might work. I wonder what’s holding up the tank?”
    “One way to find out,” I said as we both reached it. I started clearing the snow from its base.
    The tank rested in a metal cradle. A crank on one side of the cradle would disengage a set of clamps that locked the tank in place, but the crank was padlocked to a flange on the side of the tank.
    “Let’s break the padlock,” I said.
    “I bet the key is in there.” Alyssa gestured at the cinderblock office.
    We went to check out the office. Two sides were solid cinderblock walls. The front and left side each had two glass-block windows. The only door—a heavy metal thing—was locked. I tried kicking it, using a simple front kick. I thrust my hips forward for extra power and landed my kick right alongside the knob, hoping to break the lock. But the door barely shivered. I tried kicking it twice more before I gave up.
    “You need a battering ram,” Ben said. “A Stinger has the advantage of a one- or two-man operation and can breach doors or masonry walls—but a tree trunk would work almost as well.”
    That made sense. A narrow stand of trees remained between two nearby fields. The ash and snow had stripped them of their leaves and broken their branches, so they looked like parallel cracks in the yellow-gray sky.
    It took all morning to fight through the deep snow and fell a tree with our butcher knives. We chose a pine with a trunk five or six inches in diameter so we could carry it without too much trouble. We left a dozen branches on the trunk, cut to about two feet each so they’d make good handles.
    By the time we got back to the building carrying our tree, I was ready for lunch. Not looking forward to it exactly—all we had to eat was cornmeal mush. But Ben was so excited to try the battering ram that he harassed the rest of us until we agreed to delay lunch.
    We lined up in front of the door, each of us holding one of the remaining branches. The rough bark bit into my hands through my gloves, aggravating my blisters. Our first swing was tentative but still made a solid thump and dented the metal door. We swung the ram harder the next time, and it hit with a resounding crash and left a huge dent in the door. We swung it again and again, each strike harder and louder than the previous one. The door deformed, but the jamb didn’t break. Finally, after a dozen or more hits, we bent the door so much that the deadbolt slipped out of the jamb and the door flew open.
    Inside we found a small, utilitarian office with a metal desk and chairs. One wall was covered in pegboard. A dozen crescent wrenches hung from hooks. A set of keys hung beside the wrenches. Elsewhere there were bins holding a wide variety of brass hose fittings. In a back room that mostly held janitorial supplies, I found a snow shovel and a spade with a yellow fiberglass handle. The toilet in the tiny bathroom was cracked—all the water had frozen. In the medicine cabinet above the toilet, Dad struck gold: a bottle of Tylenol.
    The office had a cement slab floor, so we chopped up our battering ram and built a fire right in the middle of the front office. It became a little smoky, but we got enough fresh air through the open door that it was tolerable. Not that we had a choice about leaving the door open—it had deformed so much that it wouldn’t close.
    After lunch, I took the keys outside and quickly found one that fit the padlock. But the lever that clamped the tank to its base still wouldn’t turn. I tried banging on it with a wrench, kicking it, hanging off it awkwardly with my feet off the ground—nothing worked.
    I slumped into the snow, defeated. Everyone else tried to move the lever, and each of them got the same results as I had: bupkis. If Darla were here, she would know exactly how to free up the lever. But we needed to free it to get fuel to go find Darla. I noticed that my fists were clenched, and I was grinding my teeth, so I tried to force myself to relax.
    “The nut’s frozen,” Dad announced.
    “You think?” I said.
    “Yep,” he