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Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

Titel: Ashen Winter (Ashfall) Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Mike Mullin
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turns between us and the Peckerwoods to make us harder to follow. I planned to loop back to Anamosa and find a way to get inside the prison to look for Darla. A couple of miles down the new road, I spotted a narrow, plowed crossroad. When I let go of the wheel, the truck turned left all on its own—a brief moment of respite for my aching arm.
    The numbness in my right arm started to wear off. Not a good thing—it was replaced with what felt like eight zillion angry bees swarming under my skin, stinging and chewing my muscles to hamburger. And to top it all off, I was exhausted. I tapped my left foot, bit my lip, and suppressed a few dozen yawns—all in a monumental struggle to stay awake.
    “I can’t do this much longer,” I said.
    “I’ll watch for a place to stop,” Alyssa said.
    “I’ve got to get back to Anamosa. You drive for a while.”
    “I’ve got to take care of Ben.” She turned away from me and resumed brushing Ben and talking to him in a low voice.
    She’d already wrapped his ankle—it seemed to me that he’d be fine on his own for a while.
    The first farmstead we passed was a burned-out husk. Few of the walls were standing, let alone any part of the roof that could shelter or hide us. A few minutes after we passed it, I heard a faint clang in the distance, like a bell ringing, but I couldn’t figure out where the sound had come from.
    The second place we found was different. The driveway wasn’t plowed, but the snow had been deliberately packed down. I couldn’t make out any footprints or tell what had packed the snow—there were no tire or snowmobile tracks.
    It was a typical Iowa farm: two-story white clapboard house, red barn, three corrugated-steel grain silos, and a big metal garage that had been crushed by ash, snow, or both.
    “Stop here?” Alyssa asked.
    “We should keep going.”
    “Ben needs rest. You do, too.”
    “I don’t like it. Looks occupied. But I can’t keep driving.” I thought about suggesting we camp in the truck. But we had no good way to heat it other than running the engine, and the gas gauge had already dipped under a quarter tank. I muscled the wheel into a turn at the driveway.
    The truck lurched, sinking into the snow, but the four rear wheels of the deuce got enough traction to keep pushing us forward. I didn’t have to use the brake to stop us—with the flat tire and packed snow, the truck simply coasted to a groaning stop after I let off the gas.
    The farmstead was silent. I thought I smelled a faint whiff of smoke. There were no other signs of habitation.
    I eased open my door. “Stay here,” I said. “If you see anything, yell or come get me.”
    Alyssa nodded. I pulled the pistol off my belt, holding it in my left hand, and slipped out of the truck.
    The flat tire had shredded, losing most of its tread. Some of the rubber had melted onto the wheel well. Maybe that accounted for the smoke I smelled.
    I stalked to the back door. The snow on the walk was packed to icy solidity. My exhaustion vanished, replaced by another adrenaline-fueled buzz. I swiveled my head back and forth, totally alert—looking, listening, smelling, even tasting the air.
    There was a lean-to addition on the back of the house. Only four inches or so of snow were on the roof; someone had cleared it off after last year’s blizzards. A skylight, slightly off center, pierced the shingles. A round piece of metal covered the center of the skylight, as though someone had patched it. The snow had melted for a foot or so all around the skylight, which meant there was, or had been, a heat source inside.
    The storm door was open and askew. Its top hinge had been ripped away. The entry door seemed solid, though. I took hold of the knob, slowly twisting it.
    The door was unlocked. I pushed it open.
    Inside there was a small mudroom. An ancient freezer sat in one corner, redundant because the room itself was below freezing, and useless because there was no hum of power. A pile of filthy, frozen clothing occupied another corner. Aside from that, the room was empty.
    The next room was a large kitchen. I could tell it had been a kitchen by the pipes protruding from the walls and the outlines in the paint showing where cabinets had once hung. A thick three-foot-square chunk of foam-board insulation lay on the floor. Someone had laid a double stack of concrete patio pavers on it, and ashes from an old fire were clumped atop the pavers. A huge jumble of branches was heaped in one

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