Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

you.”
    I took a step toward the door. Then things started to happen way too fast. Darla screamed, an involuntary yell that she cut off in an eye blink. I looked—she had pulled her hand away from Benson’s mouth. Both her hand and his mouth dripped blood. He started shouting, “Security breach! Security breach!” over and over again at the top of his lungs.
    I heard a clatter and turned my head back toward the truck. The driver had whacked his gun on the truck’s window frame in his haste to shoot me.
    Darla screamed, “Down!” and her shotgun went crunch-crunch as she chambered a shell. Benson threw himself sideways, chair and all, hitting the floor with a crash. I dove the other way.
    I heard a pop-pop-pop and then a deafening boom followed by the crash of breaking glass. Darla screamed, “Go!” The driver was holding his gun out the truck’s window. His arm was a dripping mess of raw meat and blood—Darla’s shotgun blast and the resulting flying glass had shredded it. The gun slipped from his fingers and fell between the truck and hut.
    Darla hurled herself through the window on the other side of the shack. I scrambled to my feet, swept the bags of wheat and the kale packet off the table, and jammed it all into my coat. I stepped over Benson and launched myself through the window, following Darla.
    We slithered through the hole I’d cut in the fence and sprinted along the snow berm toward Bikezilla. It was either eerily silent, or the shotgun blast had deafened me. Given how my ears were ringing, maybe some of both. I risked a look back. The dump truck was still parked beside the guard shack. I couldn’t see anything moving, but you could have hidden a platoon behind the hill of snow between us and them.
    Just that quick look had given Darla time to get about twenty feet ahead of me. By the time I caught up to her, she was struggling over the snow berm to where we’d hidden Bikezilla. “You get the wheat?” she huffed.
    “Yeah. And the kale seeds. How’s your hand?” I gasped.
    “Hurts. I’ll live.”
    We pushed the bike upright, stowed the pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle, and took off. We both stood on the pedals, straining to get the beast moving. In a few seconds we were flying away from the snow berm on virgin snow.
    I wasn’t sure why we were going deeper into the area Black Lake was guarding instead of trying to get out. Maybe Darla figured they wouldn’t expect us to double back. I didn’t know exactly how we’d get past the fence or down the embankment on Bikezilla, either. But I didn’t have the lung capacity to ask while we were pedaling like maniacs. I hoped she knew what she was doing.
    We bounced up the railroad embankment and braked hard, skidding down the back side. We came to a complete stop by crashing into the chain-link fence. “Hurry! Cut the fence!” Darla ordered.
    I grabbed the bolt cutters and started chopping chain-link as fast as I could. We needed a huge hole to accommodate Bikezilla. Luckily we were far enough south of the guard shack that we couldn’t see it and, presumably, couldn’t be seen. I finished up the hole, stomping flat the huge piece of chain-link I’d cut out. Darla nearly ran me down in her haste to push Bikezilla through. She didn’t stop, either—I had to stow the bolt cutter and remount the bike while it accelerated away from the fence.
    As we approached the steep slope down to the river, Darla didn’t slow down. If anything she was speeding up. I yelled and tried to back off my pedaling, but the pedals on Bikezilla were ganged together—I had no choice but to keep up with Darla’s frenetic pace. And all the brake controls were at the front of the bike.
    “Hold on!” Darla screamed, and we were airborne. The back end of the bike hit the slope with a thump. Then the front end slapped down, and I was pitched forward, my head thudding into Darla’s back.
    We careened down the slope, totally out of control. When we hit the ice at the bottom, the front ski flexed almost forty-five degrees, but nothing broke.
    And just like that, we were out on the river ice. We still both stood to pedal, but slightly slower than before.
    “I’m going to head south,” Darla grunted. “Cross the open part of the river somewhere out of sight from the lock.”
    “Sounds good,” I yelled.
    “You think we’re in the clear?”
    “Yeah.”
    Then I heard an engine rumble behind us.

Chapter 17
    I glanced back. A Humvee was rolling down the