Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

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