Ashfall

by Mike Mullin

  I woke up, panting quietly and staring into the darkness overhead. Someone had turned the lantern way down. I felt something bump my back through the canvas cot. I turned my head and saw a dim form kneeling beside me, reaching under my cot with one arm. I snaked my arms out from under the blanket and grabbed for it. I got a fistful of hair with my right hand and yanked it backward and up. That told me about where the guy’s throat should be, so I went for a chokehold with my left forearm.

  The whole thing was over in less than two seconds. I craned my head to get a look at the side of his face.

  Her face. It was a girl, maybe eight or nine years old. I let go of her hair—my right shoulder ached, anyway. I kept my left forearm locked around her neck. She had pulled two packages of peanut-butter crackers out of my pack. They slipped out of her hands and fell to the floor.

  What was wrong with me? I’d been shocked to see Cedar Falls degenerate into looting and violence, but here I was with my forearm crushing a little girl’s throat, a little girl who only wanted something to eat. Was I any better than the looters?

  I reached down and felt around the floor. I found both packages of crackers by touch. I scooped them up, put them back in her hand, and curled her fingers around them.

  “If you tell anyone where you got these, I’ll find you and break your neck.” I tugged my forearm a little tighter against her throat to emphasize the point. I felt horrible. It was wrong, nasty even, to threaten her. But I couldn’t think of any alternative. I didn’t want everyone to help themselves to my food. She nodded, at least as much as she could with my arm crushed against her larynx.

  I let her go, and she shot off into the gloom, both hands clutched around the crackers. The top of my pack was open under the cot, stuff falling out. I put it back together and set it on the cot next to me.

  I lay awake for several hours with one arm thrown over my pack, hugging it and thinking. Would anyone survive if food was already so scarce that kids were going hungry? Then I thought about what might have happened if I’d tightened my arm a bit more around her throat, and I felt sick. Mostly, I thought about a little girl who had learned to steal just to get something to eat.

  Chapter 11

  When I awoke the next morning, about half the refugees in the gym were already up. They tried to move quietly and talked in whispers out of consideration for the sleepers. But more than a hundred people trying to be quiet made a heck of a lot of noise.

  I sat up on the edge of the cot and groaned when my feet touched the floor. All that skiing yesterday had done nothing good for the muscles in my calves and thighs. So I staggered off the cot and forced myself through some martial arts stretches in my boxers. After I’d gotten my legs loosened up, I spent some time stretching my right arm and shoulder. It was feeling a lot better, although it still hurt to push my arm above my head.

  By the time I finished stretching, I felt okay, so I started doing telephone-booth forms. An ordinary form is a series of kicks, punches, and stances that requires a pretty big space to perform. So to practice in a smaller area, I had to modify the moves. If the form called for a step forward, front kick, step forward, knife-hand strike, I’d step backward for the second move instead, covering and recovering the same small patch of ground.

  People nearby were looking at me funny, so I called it quits after two forms and pulled on the same dirty jeans and long-sleeved shirt I’d been wearing yesterday. I put on my dad’s hiking boots and threw my backpack over my shoulder, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the skiing gear. I waited until nobody seemed to be paying attention and hid the stuff under the blanket on my cot. Hopefully it’d be okay.

  The next order of business: a toilet. I knew where the closest boys’ restroom was, but when I got there, partway down a pitch-black hallway, it was locked. I returned to the gym and asked the first guy I saw where we were supposed to pee. He pointed me toward the home locker room.

  There was another camp lantern hanging in the locker room, turned about as low as possible while still giving off light. The urinals and stalls were blocked with yellow out-of-order tape. Somebody had dragged two Porta-Potties into the shower room, right in the middle near the floor drain. There were two lines, each four or five people deep, both men and women waiting for the facilities.

  I got in line to wait my turn behind a young girl. I wondered if she was the same one who’d raided my pack last night. If she was, should I apologize or scold her for trying to steal from me? There were no marks on her neck, so I decided she must not have been the same girl.

  The Porta-Potty reeked: a truly foul mix of feces, urine, and sulfur. I assumed they’d run out of that blue stuff they put at the bottom to keep it smelling decent. I took one breath while I was inside. I’d have skipped even that, but the idea of passing out in the Porta-Potty was even more disgusting than the smell.

  While standing in the Porta-Potty, food was the last thing on my mind. But the moment I got out of the locker room, my hunger returned, gnawing at my gut. So I made my way down one of the dark hallways leading away from the gym. I navigated by feel, running my hand along the banks of lockers.

  About halfway down the hall, I stopped at a door, which, if memory served, should have led to a classroom. The door was unlocked, so I opened it and stepped carefully inside. It was as dark in there as it had been in the hall. I sidestepped a couple feet, slid off my pack, and sat with my back to the wall.

  I groped around in my pack and found a brick of cheese and two water bottles. I ate all the cheese and drank both bottles of water. What kind of guy eats his private stash of food when he knows there are hundreds of hungry people nearby? A guy like me, I guessed. Yeah, I felt bad about it. But I didn’t think my meager stash would have made much of a difference to all the people in that gym. And I knew I’d need the food to get to Warren. I’d probably need more than I had. I reloaded my pack and ran my hands over the floor to make sure nothing had fallen out.

  Back in the gym I asked a kid where to get water. He pointed me toward the visitors’ locker room. There was another lantern hanging in there and two guys sitting on folding chairs. I asked them about water, and they led me to the showers. One of the showerheads had been replaced with a hose. I gave them my empty water bottles, and they refilled all of them from the hose, working carefully, spilling nothing.

  I was a little surprised to see that the plumbing worked. But I figured it was like Mr. Kloptsky had told me yesterday—the school had its own water tank. It must have been high enough to feed the locker room by gravity. I hoped they had enough water to last until they got some help.

  When I got back to the gymnasium, the lantern had been fully turned up and almost everyone was awake. I checked my skiing gear—it was still safely tucked under the blanket on my cot. I wandered around the gym for a bit, looking for anyone I knew.

  I found Spork. Ian, really, but we called him Spork in honor of the utensil his dad had packed with his lunches in junior high. His mom was in the military. It seemed like every other year she was off in some Middle Eastern country. Afghanistan right now, I thought.

  “Yo, Spork,” I called.

  “Yo, Mighty Mite,” he replied, walking over to me. I hated that nickname. I mean, come on, I’m not that small. Sort of average-sized. Although I guess Mighty Mite beat Spork.

  “So, is this messed up or what?”

  “No, this is FUBAR. In the classic military definition. Effed up beyond—”

  “Yeah, I know—all recognition.”

  “Recall, or remote possibility of rescue. So what you doing here? I think I’m on roof clearing duty today—want to see if we can get assigned to work together, man?”

  “Roof clearing?”

  “Yeah, Kloptsky thinks the roof’ll collapse if we don’t shovel it off.”

  “Huh. Bet he’s right. The Pita Pit’s flattened. Lots of houses on the way here were, too.”

  A girl I knew walked up while I was talking. Laura. A lot of kids called her Ingalls because of he
r name and the old-fashioned long skirts she always wore. I didn’t because, well, she was cute. Even here she wore a long denim skirt streaked with ash.

  “Yo, Ingalls,” Spork said. “What duty did you pull? I’m on roof clearing.”

  She scowled at Spork and glanced my way. “Hey, Alex. Good to see you made it here okay.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Good to see you’re okay, too. You stuck shoveling roofs or something?”

  “No, I’m getting out of here. My whole church is leaving today. You want to come?”

  “Sure.” I figured I’d see which way they were going. Maybe they’d head east, and I could tag along and get closer to Warren.

  “So what’re you doing, Ingalls? Driving the church bus out of here?” Spork smirked at her. We both knew there was no way anything short of a bulldozer could drive through all the wet, slippery ash. I was also a little puzzled about how her church planned to leave.

  “No,” she said. “Come on, Alex.”

  “I gotta get my stuff. I’ll meet you at the door, okay?” I trotted to my cot and grabbed my gear. I put on the ski boots, tied the hiking boots to my pack, and carried everything else.

  Laura and Spork were standing just inside the doors. They’d already wrapped their faces in damp rags. I dribbled a little water on one of my torn-up T-shirts and wrapped it around my mouth and nose.

  “Thought you were shoveling off the roof,” I said to Spork.

  “So I’ll be late. Won’t be the first time Kloptsky has yelled at me. And I want to see how you guys are getting out of here.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  It was a little brighter that morning. The ash was still falling, but I could see farther today. The rain had quit, but the ash was wet and slushy from yesterday. Oddly enough, the lightning and thunder continued unabated, even without any rain.

  I slowed my skiing to a crawl so as not to outpace Laura and Spork. While they struggled with every step, wrenching their feet free of the muck and plodding forward, I skimmed the surface. It wasn’t easy, though. My muscles protested, particularly after all the abuse they’d endured over the last few days. But watching Laura and Spork made me aware of how much the skis were helping.

  Laura’s church was only fifteen or sixteen blocks from the high school, but it took what seemed like hours to get there. The church was a yellow brick building dominated by a big square bell tower at the front. Metal letters bolted onto the brick beside the entrance proclaimed REDEEMER BAPTIST. Ash had collected in tall peaks atop the letters, giving them a Gothic look. I thought I saw some movement in the bell tower above us.

  It was impossible to tell where the church’s lawn, parking lot, and driveway began or ended. It was all one ashy plain. A couple of scraggly trees were bent under the weight of the ash, coated so thoroughly that not a speck of green was visible. Four cars and the church bus were parked to the side where the parking lot must have been. All of them were buried under more than a foot of ash.

  Laura led us to the side door of the church, protected by a steep-roofed porte-cochère. I unclipped my boots from my skis and leaned the skis against the wall inside the doors. Spork was trying to bang the dust off his clothing and boots, but Laura told him to forget about it, since everyone would be leaving the building soon, anyway.

  Someone had left a single candle burning in the sanctuary. By its light, I could see the church was modern, with a bright red carpet and oak pews. There was a path of near-white ash tracked on the carpet, which we followed to the back of the sanctuary and up a staircase to the small balcony.

  Another, steeper staircase led upward from the balcony. It turned on itself in a square pattern, following the walls of the bell tower. I was surprised not to see any ropes dangling in the middle to ring the bells. Maybe they did that electronically or omitted the bells altogether. There were windows set into the walls, but the day outside was so dim that not much light leaked into the tower. I held the handrail and took the stairs slowly. It would be a long fall if I tripped in the darkness.

  We went up five or six flights and stopped at a hatch set into the ceiling. Laura pushed the hatch open, and the three of us emerged onto an open area under the roof of the bell tower.

  It was maybe sixteen feet on a side, but it felt small and crowded. At least twenty people were jammed together up there. All four walls of the bell tower were open to the elements; we were protected from a long fall by only a low brick railing. Ash swirled over the railings, forming drifts inside.

  A guy in a minister’s robe was preaching; everyone else faced him, listening. Laura slid through the crowd to someone I took to be her mom.

  “Yo, Mrs. Wilder,” Spork said.

  “Our last name is Johnston, you idiot,” Laura whispered.

  “Be quiet and listen to Reverend Rowan,” Mrs. Johnston whispered sternly.

  So I did. He had a powerful head of preaching going: gesturing and sweating and shouting. He was saying something about a fourth seal when I started paying attention. “Behold! A pale horse. Pale because he’s coated in this ash, my brothers and sisters. And his name that sat upon the horse was Death, and Hell followed with him. This,” the reverend made a sweeping gesture, “is a foretaste of Hell; this is the ash that precedes the flood of fire and brimstone. A fourth of the earth shall be given over to famine and pestilence. This fourth, our fourth, where we lived. For this ash is the pestilence that will bring famine. If you are not summoned, if Jesus does not call you to His home, you will surely die. Our Lord told us this was coming. In the book of Matthew, He said, ‘The sun shall be darkened and the moon will not give its light. Therefore you must also be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’ Pray with me now, pray with me, brothers and sisters, for Jesus to carry us up to sit at His right hand.”

  “So this is how you’re leaving?” I asked Laura.

  “Yes, Jesus is going to carry us to his home,” Mrs. Johnston responded.

  “So, if you’re going to get carried up to heaven, can I have your stuff?” Spork said. He reached for Mrs. Johnston’s purse and flipped up the flap. “Got anything good?”

  My face got hot. Although I sort of saw Spork’s point: If they were being summoned to heaven, they wouldn’t need purses or their contents.

  “Get out of there, you miserable child.” Mrs. Johnston pulled on her purse strap, yanking it away from him and spilling junk on the ashy floor. A cell phone, a make-up case—and two Snickers bars. Spork pounced on the Snickers.

  A couple people nearby were eyeing Spork angrily. The preacher shouted, “Peace, brothers and sisters, let us pray.”

  Mrs. Johnston swung her purse at Spork, but he was too quick. Clutching the candy bars, he sprinted down the stairs as one of the parishioners tried to grab him. I followed Spork.

  We leaped down the stairs two or three at a time for the first two flights. I almost fell and had to grab the handrail and stop for a second. I couldn’t hear anyone following us. They’d probably decided Jesus was more likely to take them to his home if they forgave the juvenile delinquents in their midst. I yelled at Spork, getting him to stop, and we walked down the rest of the staircase together.

  “That was nuts.” I tried to put some disapproval into my voice. I thought the parishioners in the bell tower were wrong, but that didn’t excuse stealing from them. I think God helps those who help themselves. Yeah, I know it’s not in the Bible, but it still makes sense. If the folks at Redeemer Baptist were going to be carried to heaven, God could have found them fine while they scavenged food and worked to survive. At least that was what I figured.

  “Maybe it was nuts, but I got two candy bars out of it. You want one?”

  “Sure.” I was so hungry that I certainly wasn’t above eating stolen food. I chewed my Snickers slowly, trying to make it last.

  “Those skis work pretty slick. Where are you trying to go on them anyway?”

  “East. Warren, Illinois. That’s where my folks are, I think.”

 
; “I hope you make it, Mighty Mite.”

  “Yeah, me too. What’re you going to do?”

  “My dad and I are staying at the high school. We’ll be okay there, maybe.”

  “Good luck.” I reached out to shake his hand.

  He surprised me by pulling me into a hug. “You too, Alex. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

  Skiing away from Spork was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But I needed to head east—I wouldn’t find my family in Cedar Falls. A sense of dread and loneliness settled over me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d never see Spork, Laura, Darren and Joe, or anyone else from Cedar Falls again.

  Chapter 12

  I followed Main Street north to the First Street bridge. Most of the old downtown buildings along Main had collapsed. Their thick masonry walls still stood, but the roofs had fallen and the windows were shattered.

  There was a semi twisted across the First Street bridge, blocking it, so I continued north on Main across Cedar River into Waterloo. I turned right, east, on Lincoln, figuring I’d skirt between Waterloo and the airport. I needed to get to Highway 20, but I also wanted to get out of town as fast as possible. If I went straight to 20, I’d have to pass through most of Waterloo. Maybe the people there would be fine, organizing and helping each other survive. Or maybe there’d be more looters. My palms got sweaty at the thought of meeting more people like Tire Iron and Baseball Bat. I didn’t see any reason to risk it.

  I passed under Highway 27. Enough ash had blown under the bridge that I didn’t have to take off my skis—I was able to keep sliding along. A little farther on, Lincoln became West Airport Highway. There were lots of commercial and industrial buildings along the road there, mostly newish metal buildings with flat roofs. Every one of them had been crushed by the ash.