Shards of concrete flew off the corner. Dad had barely gotten clear in time.
“Peckerwoods?” I hissed.
“Black Lake,” Dad replied.
“Quit shooting! We’re the good guys,” I hollered.
“Back up!” Dad ordered. “Now!”
We ran back down the corridor, Dad shuffling backward and pointing the rifle behind us. Maybe the gunfire had been a mistake, but none of us wanted to go back and find out.
We made our way out of the prison. The black night had been replaced by a greasy yellow light. A cluster of Black Lake mercenaries conferred by one of their trucks, but they paid no attention to us.
“Going to be a long walk to wherever we’re going,” Dad said.
“There’s a vehicle depot at the back,” I said. “We can try to liberate a truck.”
“Gas?”
“Yeah, gas, too.”
I led the way around to the back of the prison. The place was huge-just walking around it seemed like a half-mile hike.
Black Lake had beaten us to the vehicle depot. Three mercenaries were guarding it, and they flatly refused to let us “borrow” a truck or any gas. At least they didn’t shoot at us.
“Maybe we can find a car in town?” I suggested.
“Any vehicle that was run during the ashfall will be damaged,” Ben said.
“We might get lucky. Find one that was garaged. Or overhauled afterward.”
Dad shrugged.
I noticed something weird as we kept walking: Although the snow and ash had buried most of each car we passed, all of them had a clear spot over their gas caps. It didn’t matter whether the gas cap was on the left or right side of the car or which way the car was facing.
I stopped by one of the cars and pried open the gas hatch. The plastic cap unscrewed easily, and no air hissed out. I smelled only a faint odor of gas.
“Someone take the gas out of all these cars?” I asked.
“Looks that way,” Dad said. “Why else would they just dig out the gas caps?”
“How would they do that?”
“A siphon would work,” Ben said, “or a portable pump.”
“We’re not going to be able to find gas anywhere, are we?” I said.
“If the Peckerwoods drained all the cars, surely they hit the gas stations, too,” Dad replied.
I nodded morosely.
It took only another five minutes to reach Anamosa’s small downtown. Main Street was plowed. Towering piles of snow and ash lined both sides of the street, making the road a white-and-gray canyon. A few two-story buildings peeked above the snow, their brown bricks streaked with ash and ice. The five of us looked like refugees from a bombed out Bristol-Myers Squibb convention as we lugged our packed Abilify bags awkwardly on our shoulders.
A deeper brown caught my attention to the right. A UPS truck had hit the front of Anamosa Floral, shattering the plate-glass window. Someone had dug a narrow path in the snow pile to reach the open passenger-side door. A hillock of snow blocked the back of the truck, although one section had been dug away to reveal the deep blue gas cap of a very small car.
“What’s that symbol?” Alyssa asked, pointing to a diamond-shaped red sticker on the truck that read LNG.
“Must be one of those new natural-gas-fueled trucks UPS has been testing. Lower emissions,” Dad said.
“So the UPS truck crashed, and then that little blue car blocked it in?” I asked.
Dad shrugged. “Let’s check it out.”
I took the precious shake light out of my pocket. The path that had been dug to the truck was so narrow and its sides so high that it felt like a cave. Dad followed me in, but Mom, Ben, and Alyssa stayed in the street.
The inside of the truck looked as though a storm had swept through it. Scraps of cardboard and empty boxes were scattered everywhere, covered in an uneven layer of packing peanuts and bubble wrap. The keys were in the ignition, but the fuel gauge read empty. Which figured. We’d have better luck finding a scrap of paper in a blizzard than a working car in Anamosa.
“Check this out,” Dad said, pointing at a row of four metal tanks strapped to one interior sidepanel. They were squat propane cylinders, like barbeque grills use. The tanks were linked with hoses, but the last hose in the row was disconnected, maybe knocked loose when looters rampaged through the truck. Dad grabbed the hose, slid the quick-connect sleeve back, and reattached it to the tank.
“Is propane the same thing as natural gas?” I asked.
“No,” Dad said. “And they wouldn’t put the tanks inside the truck, anyway. Somebody has converted this one.”
“You think it’ll run?” I asked.
“One way to find out.” He sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key.
The first time, the truck made a rusty cough and died. The second, it chugged for a moment, and I breathed a prayer, “You can do it, truck. Start. . start.” Darla would have laughed and informed me that machines run on gears and solvents, not hopes and prayers. But I knew nothing about natural gas-powered trucks; all I could offer was hope and a prayer.
The third time Dad cranked the key, the truck choked to life. The fuel gauge twitched, moving to just above empty. Dad shut down the truck right away-we couldn’t go anywhere blocked in by the small blue car and snow. We trudged back down the narrow path and explained the situation to Mom, Alyssa, and Ben.
“Is it even worth digging out the truck?” Mom asked, “since we barely have any fuel, anyway?”
“I saw a propane distributor just south of Anamosa,” I said. “They had tanks painted like ears of corn. Maybe there’s still propane there.”
“Good idea.” Dad nodded, ruminating.
We spent the rest of the day digging out the truck. We scavenged some shelves from ANAMOSA FLORAL that we used as makeshift snow shovels and scrapers. A mountain of snow crowned the truck, entombing it completely. And we had to clear the snow from around the blue car-which turned out to be a VW Bug-not to mention figuring out some way to move it.
By nightfall, everyone was exhausted and cranky. We all had at least one nasty blister, and Ben had cut his hand on the sharp edge of one of the shelves. But the vehicles were clear of snow and ash. We built a small fire using cardboard from the back of the truck and wood scavenged from the flower shop’s furniture. Dinner was cornmeal mush.
The temperature dropped more during dinner. We debated sleeping inside the floral shop, but if we built a fire inside, the wood floor might ignite. None of us wanted to risk a fire inside the UPS truck near those four propane tanks.
Instead we slept more or less on Main Street in the area we had cleared behind the truck. Each of us took a two-hour guard shift, feeding the fire and keeping a lookout. For once, Alyssa stayed awake during her watch. It figured that the one time she actually kept watch, the night would pass peacefully.