Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

my shoulders. I clambered out the back of the truck and onto the canvas roof to observe the center of the garage. Another cloth-topped deuce was pulled up alongside the stack of gas cans. One of the mechanics was gassing it up.
    A hulking guy came around the corner of the truck. He might have been 6’4” if he had straightened up. But he walked with little mincing steps, hunched over as if he were cradling something to his chest. I couldn’t see his face or clothing; he was silhouetted in the light of the open garage doors.
    I saw a flash of brown hair around him. A girl was walking beside him, shielded by his rectangular bulk. I crawled closer, sliding across the truck roof, trying to get a better look.
    A pair of wiry guys strutted around the corner behind the hulk. They talked to each other in voices loud enough to be audible over the idling truck.
    “Iowa City is going to be off the hook.”
    “Them Dirty White Boys is scum, but they know how to party.”
    All four of them had gathered in a knot at the back of the truck. One of the wiry guys let down the tailgate.
    “What you waiting for?” the other guy slapped the hulk alongside his head. “Get in.”
    The hulk hunched further over and moaned, an unnatural-sounding monotone noise that continued long past the point at which most people would have had to stop and breathe. The girl was saying something to him but too softly for me to hear her words.
    Still moaning, the hulk took hold of the edge of the tailgate in both hands and hopped into the truck like a rabbit, both legs moving at once. There was a tinkling sound as he moved. Just before he vanished within the blackness of the truck, I saw why—his ankles and wrists were connected with lengths of heavy chain.
    The girl heaved herself up onto the tailgate. I had a clear view of her back for a moment. My brain flooded with fierce light, and my heart leapt. Her height, her shape, the way her hair bunched around her shoulders—I’d recognize her anywhere. Darla.

Chapter 45
    That truck wasn’t going to leave the garage without me. Either I’d be on it, or I’d get killed trying to hitch a ride.
    Darla disappeared into the blackness of the truck bed, following the hulking guy. One of the wiry guys closed the tailgate and tied down the flap. Then they strolled around the corner of the truck, heading toward the cab, out of my line of sight.
    The only person I could see now was one of the mechanics. He was facing away from me, holding a five-gallon can above the truck’s gas cap.
    Only about two feet separated me from the roof of the nearest truck. I crawled to the gap and reached across, eyeing the mechanic the whole time. Once my hands touched the other truck, I swung my legs across. The mechanic didn’t even glance up.
    I scuttled over two more trucks in the same way until I was lined up roughly even with the one that held Darla, but three ranks back. The truck I was perched on had its hood open. The vehicles between me and the idling deuce were both pickups—there was no way I could keep hopping from roof to roof as I’d been doing.
    I looked down the aisle on the left side of the truck. The two wiry guys were standing by the driver’s door of the idling truck. If I tried to sneak down that aisle, they’d spot me. But from the aisle on my right, I’d be in plain view of the mechanic. I couldn’t afford to wait—they were gassing up the truck for a reason. I had to get on it—and fast.
    I slinked away from the aisle, stood, and jumped. I caught the metal girder overhead in both hands. My whole body screamed with pain—my tortured muscles being stretched by my weight. I gritted my teeth and started slowly working my way forward, hand over hand. Even with my taekwondo practice, I probably couldn’t have traversed the beam that way ten months before, swinging from my arms. But there was one advantage to being blasted back into nineteenth-century farming by the volcano: I was at least as strong as anyone I knew, except maybe Darla.
    I couldn’t see the guys by the cab anymore, but I was in plain view of the mechanic. So long as he kept paying attention to the gas, I’d be okay.
    I worked my way slowly along the beam. Twenty feet . . . ten . . . I hung over the bed of a pickup about ten feet below me. The mechanic pulled the spout of the gas can out of the truck and turned toward me. I froze, praying he wouldn’t look up. If I moved, he’d spot me for sure. But maybe, just maybe, it was