Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

taken under the truck. I had to get to a more secure perch or I’d fall.
    I seized two of the crossbars connecting the struts. Using them for leverage, I strained, trying to twist my body onto my stomach. No way could I push straight back into the truss—my backpack would have gotten caught. I would have grunted with the effort, but with the Peckerwoods so close, I had to keep my mouth clamped shut.
    As soon as I got twisted all the way onto my stomach, I could push farther back into the triangular space within the truss. When I’d shoved myself completely inside, I collapsed, panting quietly and resting from the exertion of forcing my way into this tiny perch. The crosspieces that made up the truss held my body and legs securely. I closed my eyes and waited for the room to stop spinning around me.
    A few minutes later, I heard the truck roar to life. I opened my eyes just in time to see it pull away. Without the truck, it was a long fall to the garage’s cement floor—twenty feet or more. My relief at not having been seen balanced almost perfectly with my fear of heights. The guy who’d been gassing up the deuce sauntered to the office. The other two guys had resumed working on the pickup’s engine.
    I waited for nightfall, afraid if I continued to move around in the rafters, I’d be spotted. I watched the mechanics, my hand thrust into my pocket, fingering Darla’s broken chain. When the wan light outside started to fade, two new guards entered the garage, and the mechanics and day shift guard left. The night shift closed, chained, and padlocked the big entrance doors and retired to the office.
    I pushed myself up off the girder I’d been resting on. Painful welts crisscrossed my side and legs where the struts had dug in. I worked my way backward within the truss, away from the office, and then dropped down onto the roof of a parked pickup with a heavy crunch. No one heard the noise—or at least nobody came to check on it.
    I explored the garage, looking for a way out, working more by touch than sight. It was packed with vehicles parked in ranks so close that I often had to turn sideways to pass between them. In the darkest parts of the garage, the back corners most distant from the door and guardroom, the trucks were dusty and partially disassembled. Some were missing wheels or body panels. All of them had their hoods propped open. I didn’t know enough about trucks to tell for sure by touch, but I guessed these vehicles were being cannibalized for parts.
    Darla would’ve been able to figure out what they were doing with the trucks, even without being able to see clearly. That thought gave me hope. Maybe the Peckerwoods would put her to work when they discovered her genius for machines. Maybe she would walk into this very garage in the morning.
    Then I remembered the crack of the gunshot and the red bloom spreading across her shoulder. I crouched and put my head between my knees, trying to catch my breath and waiting for the trembling in my limbs to subside.
    I couldn’t find any exit except the big vehicle doors. The key to the padlock holding the garage doors shut would probably be in the office, but there was no way to get close without being seen by the guards. I retreated to the darkness of the far corner of the garage to think.
    I climbed into the bed of a deuce and curled up, holding my head in my hands. But my thoughts just ratcheted over and over the same territory, like a slipping gearshift. The longer I sat there, the more futile my situation seemed, and the more despondent I got. I was aware of being hungry but couldn’t summon the energy to take off the pack and get food. Soon I was yawning. I curled up on the floor of the truck and slept.
    In the morning, I woke to shouted curses and the clang of metal on metal.

Chapter 44
    The clanging noise was so close it sounded as if it were coming from within my skull. I curled up more tightly. The blackness within the truck bed turned oppressive—before it had hidden me, now it presaged the moment when the cloth flap at the back of the truck would be lifted, a light would pierce my shelter, and I’d be discovered.
    When . . . if I was found, I didn’t want it to be like this. Curled in a ball on the truck floor, helpless. I stretched out and rolled silently, fighting the stiffness of my battered limbs. I balanced on my hands and feet like a tiger, poised to spring. If anyone came through the flap at the back of the truck, I would attack. A