Ashfall

by Mike Mullin

  Rita Mae snuffed out the oil lamp and hung a Back Soon sign on the library door. The three of us walked to her house to pick up the skis—apparently the rumor that she was sleeping on a cot in the library was unfounded.

  Along the way, we passed St. Paul’s school. Rita Mae said, “You know, if things get tight out on your farm, you can come stay at the school. Mrs. Nance, the principal, is taking in anyone from the area who needs a place to stay. Everyone has to work if they’re able, but that’s only fair.”

  “Thanks,” Darla said. “Looks like we’ll be fine on the farm, though.”

  The ski boots didn’t fit Darla very well—too tight. Darla said they’d stretch out, but I doubted it; Gore-Tex and plastic don’t stretch much.

  We said goodbye to Rita Mae as quickly as we could. I was getting worried about making it back to the farm before nightfall.

  We made a lot better time with both of us on skis. Not long after we left Worthington, I felt a vibration under my feet. It picked up force, and in a few seconds the ground was rolling and heaving.

  “More of this crap?” Darla said.

  I shrugged and spread my skis wider, trying to stay upright.

  The earthquake passed in less than a minute. It wasn’t strong enough to knock us over, but it did raise a fine haze of ash that clung to the ground like early-morning fog.

  Almost two hours later, a series of low booms rumbled out of the West. It was nothing like the explosions—Darla and I could, and did, talk over it, even though it continued for more than five minutes. I hoped it was the volcano’s dying gasp and not a harbinger of more trouble to come.

  Chapter 27

  When we got back to the farm, the yellow daylight was just starting to fade to gray. The barn door was partway open. I pointed it out to Darla, and she said maybe her mom was feeding the rabbits. We headed for the house regardless. We both wanted to get washed up and rest a little. Skiing through the ash had been hard work.

  I froze as I stepped into the kitchen, shocked to immobility by the scene within. My right foot hovered over the threshold. My face felt suddenly cold.

  Darla’s mom wasn’t in the barn. She was lying halfway on the kitchen table, face down. A small, wiry guy, filthy with ash, bent over her. He had a baseball bat pressed against the back of her neck, holding her down. Her face was turned toward us. Both her eyes were blackened, and a thin trail of blood leaked from her nose onto the table. His legs were between her knees.

  Darla screamed. The guy took a step backward and pulled his sweatpants up.

  I didn’t think, couldn’t think. There was nothing in my head but searing white rage. No room for anything else. My icy immobility shattered. I charged the guy.

  He lifted the baseball bat, but I was on him before he could swing it. Left knife-hand to the wrist holding the bat. I didn’t feel the edge of my hand connect, but I heard something pop and then the clatter as the bat hit the floor.

  His fist hit my right ear. A glancing blow I barely noticed. I cocked my right hand up by my ear and let it loose, spinning into the strike, my hips, shoulders, and arm all turning for maximum power. My knife-hand crunched into the side of his neck.

  He slumped to the floor, twisting bonelessly on his way down. I’d hit him perfectly.

  Darla quit screaming and ran to the table. “Mom?”

  “Uh,” she moaned, as I pulled her skirt down. Darla took one of her hands and leaned close over her.

  It occurred to me to check on the guy to make sure he wasn’t going to get back up. He lay on the floor, unmoving. There was a large, crude tattoo on the inside of his forearm—a rat or weasel or something. I bent and put my finger against the left side of his neck. A huge red welt marred his neck. Nothing. No pulse. I yanked my hand back in shock. I checked again, feeling his wrist this time. Same result: nothing. The room swam around me as I turned to Darla. “I think I killed this guy.”

  “Good,” Darla pretty much spat the word. “Mom? Can I get you some water?”

  “I . . . I didn’t mean to kill him. I wasn’t thinking.” The spinning room made my stomach heave uncertainly. My hand shook as I drew it back from the guy’s wrist.

  Someone else spoke then, from the direction of the kitchen door. “Aren’t you that little snitchface from the campfire? Alex?”

  I glanced up. Target filled the doorway. A filthy gray rag was wrapped around his head, covering his left eye. Part of his face and one arm were crosshatched with ropy scabs and partly healed burns. He held a double-barreled shotgun in one hand and a rabbit in the other. The rabbit’s head and shoulders looked like he’d started it through a meat grinder. He dropped the rabbit and lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, sighting down the barrels at me.

  I thought about charging him, but he was ten or twelve feet away. He’d kill me before I got close. So I just stood there, staring at him. I felt numb, whipsawed by adrenaline and shock.

  “Oh, this is rich—better than getting bunked with a fresh punk. I’ve been looking for you, you know. So you killed Ferret, huh? I knew you had potential.”

  I glanced at the dead guy by my feet and shrugged. “Guess so.”

  “I owe you big time. My goddamn eye isn’t healing right. I’ve been dreaming about you—dreaming about digging your eyes out of your skull with a knife and—”

  “Whatever.”

  “I don’t want to shoot you. Too fast—”

  “Fine. Let Darla and her mom go. Then you can take your time with me.” I shrugged, trying to suppress the trembling in my shoulders.

  “Darla, is it?” He smiled, a twisted thing that crawled across the bottom of his face. Then he swiveled the shotgun toward Darla, who was cradling her mother’s head in her arms.

  “Darla!” I screamed and jumped. I hit her at about shoulder height in a flying tackle. I heard the boom of the shotgun and felt a sudden pain stab my ankle.

  When I turned my head to look up, Target was standing over me, pointing the shotgun at my back. I swallowed bile and struggled to keep Darla underneath me, hoping my body would block the blast. My stomach was a leaden ball, weighting me down. Darla squirmed beneath me.

  Target pulled the trigger. There was a soft metallic click.

  I opened my eyes. I hadn’t remembered closing them. I’d never heard any noise quite so welcome as the click that shotgun made when it wasn’t killing me.

  Target pulled the trigger three more times. Click, click, click.

  I guessed what had happened. Target, the dumbass, had killed a rabbit by shooting it and hadn’t reloaded, so one of his barrels was empty. Why he didn’t wring the rabbit’s neck was beyond me. Criminals are stupid as a general rule, I figured.

  I reached up and grabbed the gun barrel. It felt warm. Target tried to yank it away from me. I took advantage of his motion, letting him pull me to my feet. I launched a sidekick, using the gun for leverage and balance. I kicked him perfectly, right in the kidney. He grunted and sagged away from my foot—but only a little. Damn, but he was big and strong. That kick should have laid out a horse.

  He held onto the gunstock with his left hand and stepped toward me. His right fist crashed into my side, hitting the spot where he’d cut me almost three weeks ago. I screamed and danced away, still holding onto the barrel with my right hand. I was afraid if I let go he’d use the gun to club me to death.

  He tried to follow up with an uppercut. I swept it aside with my forearm and connected on a quick jab to his chest. He threw another punch. I blocked again and got in another solid body shot that seemed to have no effect whatsoever. He reached for the hatchet at his belt, so I threw a punch at his face, forcing him to block.

  We traded blows this way four or five times. I blocked or dodged everything he threw my way, got in solid counterattacks to his body—and accomplished nothing. Neither of us would let go of the shotgun, and he couldn’t get at the hatchet on his belt without leaving his head open.

  In a flash, it came to me what I was doing wrong. I was sparring with this go
rilla. Hundreds of hours of training had taught me too well—don’t hit below the belt, no eye gouges, no groin strikes. . . .

  Darla reared up behind him with Ferret’s baseball bat. Target moved, and she missed his head. There was a meaty thwack as she clubbed his shoulder. He barely staggered. I lunged forward, trying to drive a spear-hand strike into his good eye. He spun, and my fingers hit his temple instead.

  Darla wound up for another strike, but this time Target stepped toward her and grabbed the bat in his right hand as she started to swing. So now he was holding the bat in his right hand and the shotgun in his left, stretched between Darla and me.

  That left him wide open for a round kick. I unloaded on him: one of those perfect, sweeping kicks that, on a punching bag at Cedar Falls Taekwondo, would have produced an echoing slap. But I wasn’t kicking a punching bag—I was kicking Target in the nuts.

  He screamed and doubled over, dropping the gun and bat. Darla and I both began clubbing him. He spun and ran for the door with his hands up around his head, trying to protect himself from our murderous blows.

  Outside, Darla started to chase him through the ash.

  “Darla!” I yelled. “Your mom.”

  She turned, ran back to the doorway, and pushed past me into the kitchen.

  Target got fifty or sixty feet away and turned to stare at me. “You’ve got to sleep sometime. I’ll be back. I’ll slit your throat—and your girl’s.”

  I stood silently and watched him. My breathing slowed, and my body started to hurt in a dozen places. Eventually Target got tired of shouting threats and disappeared into the ashy haze. I went back to the kitchen to check on Darla and her mom. Still shaking with the adrenaline aftereffects of one fight, I went to face another—one I couldn’t hope to win.

  Mrs. Edmunds was still breathing, but that may not have been a good thing. The shotgun blast had hit her head. Her face looked like fresh hamburger. Her breath burbled in and out of her mouth, blowing little bubbles in the blood welling around her shattered teeth. Her eyes were ruined—she’d never see again.

  Darla was kneeling beside her mom in the cold room, wearing nothing but jeans and a bra. She’d stripped off her filthy outer shirt. Her undershirt was wadded up in her hand, pressed against her mother’s neck. It wasn’t doing much good; the pool of blood from Mrs. Edmunds’s throat grew bigger as I watched. Already it surrounded Darla’s knees, soaking into her jeans.

  I doubled over, hands on my knees. Spasms wracked my body as if I were sobbing, but no tears came.

  Mrs. Edmunds said something, one word so low and distorted I could barely understand. It sounded like “love.”

  Darla whispered, “I know, Mom. I love you, too.”

  I stood nearby and watched them, feeling utterly helpless. All my fury washed away in a wave of despair. What could I do or say? Less than a month ago I might have dialed 911 on my cell phone, asked Mom or Dad for help, or run to Darren and Joe’s house. Now none of those options were available. Darla and I were alone with her dying mother and the corpse of some guy called Ferret. Alone on a vast plain of unforgiving gray ash.

  Chapter 28

  I stood there with my hands on my knees for a while. Ten minutes? Maybe longer. The burbling sounds coming from Mrs. Edmunds had long since ceased. My ankle hurt. I checked it; shotgun pellets had pierced my boot in a couple places, but there was no blood.

  I looked at Mrs. Edmunds. There were no more bubbles at her mouth. The pool of blood around her head had stopped spreading. I bent down and put my fingertips against her wrist. No pulse. I felt wooden, like a numb marionette that the real Alex could only observe from a distance.

  “Darla?” I whispered. “She’s dead.”

  “Mom? Mom, wake up. You’re going to be okay.” Darla pulled her blood-soaked undershirt away from her mother’s neck. No new blood welled out of her wounds. She’d bled out.

  Darla put her fingertips alongside her mother’s perforated throat. She bent down so her cheek touched her mother’s ragged lips. She moaned, “No. No. No—”

  “She’s dead. I’m sorry.”

  Darla leapt up, a motion so sudden it startled me. She yelled, “This is all your fault!” She lashed out, swinging her clenched fist against my chest like a hammer. “You led him here.” Thump, she hit me again. “We were fine until you showed up.” Thump. “He said he knew you.” Thump. “Said he was happy to find you again.” Thump. “It’s your fault!”

  I was bruised, sore, and tired beyond words. Hot blood trickled down my side where Target had punched me, reopening the gash in my side. But I let her hit me. Made no move at all to defend myself. What if she was right?

  “I hate you.” Thump. “I hate you! I hate you!” Thump thump.

  She was crying now. I reached out and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She kept beating her fists against my chest within the circle of my arms.

  Eventually her energy ran down. She quit hitting me, which was a good thing, not only because of my bruised ribs. I’d begun to worry whether Target might have already circled back.

  Darla looked about ready to fall over. I took hold of her shoulders and guided her into a chair. I picked up her overshirt and draped it across her shoulders.

  I wanted nothing more than to collapse into a chair beside her, to surrender to the despair, to let the world go to hell without me for a while. So what if Target circled back and killed me? Maybe I deserved it.

  But Darla didn’t. I walked to the door and peered out, looking for Target.

  The sun must have been setting. I couldn’t see it, hadn’t seen it since the eruption, but the western sky glowed a dull, angry red. There wasn’t enough light left to see much. Target could have been standing fifty feet off, and I’d have missed him in the gloom.

  I returned to the kitchen and dug a candle out of a drawer. Darla sat where I’d left her, staring at her hands. The shotgun lay beside her on the floor. We didn’t have any shells for it, so I tossed it onto the upper bank of kitchen cabinets where it’d be hidden.

  “We’ve got to hide,” I told Darla. “Hole up somewhere overnight.”

  No response.

  “Come on, Darla. Where’s the best place to hide? Just for tonight.”

  Nothing.

  Great, like I didn’t have enough problems, now Darla had gone catatonic on me. Not that I blamed her. Much. I wanted to curl up and give in to the tears finally welling behind my eyelids. But Target had said he would come back. I believed him.

  I racked my brain, trying to think of someplace safe, hidden, and defendable . . . the hayloft in the barn where we’d gotten boards for the smokehouse. We’d only ripped up part of the floor. There was still plenty of room to hide. I suggested it to Darla.

  She said nothing. She didn’t follow me when I left the kitchen, either. I had to go back and take her hand, leading her outside like a three-year-old. It took some coaxing to get Darla, still silent, into her skis. It might have been easier to walk the short distance to the barn, but I was so tired and sore I wasn’t confident I’d be able to pull my feet free once they’d sunk into the ash.

  The aluminum ladder to the hayloft was still where I’d remembered it. We had to squeeze past Darla’s bicycle-powered corn-grinding machine, which gave me an idea. After I’d convinced Darla to climb the ladder, I returned to the machine. I disconnected the drive belt and lifted the heavy runner stone. It weighed a ton, but I ducked and rolled it off the base stone onto my shoulder.

  I made my way slowly up to the hayloft with one arm wrapped around the quern on my shoulder and one hand on the ladder. As soon as I could, I dropped the grindstone. It landed with an alarming thunk that shook the floor of the hayloft. I pulled up the ladder behind me and left it resting at the edge of the loft.

  I checked the wound on my right side. Target’s punch had reopened a corner of it, but it was already starting to scab over. I’d live—if Target didn’t find me again.

  It hurt to take off my boots. I shook out my right sock, and
two pellets fell out. The right side of my ankle and foot were blotched with green-and-purple bruises where the edge of the shotgun blast had caught me, but it would heal.

  I realized I’d forgotten the baseball bat, left it sitting on the floor in the kitchen. I was too tired to do anything about that now.

  Darla sat on a hay bale, staring at her hands. I said goodnight and collapsed into a pile of loose hay.

  Chapter 29

  In my dreams, I was trapped again in my bedroom in Cedar Falls. The desk pressed down on my chest, suffocating me. The wall by my head was hot to the touch. And everything was smoky—my eyes burned with smoke, my nostrils swelled with its stench.

  I woke, twitchy with remembered fear, but the smell of smoke hadn’t faded with my dream. If anything, it was stronger now. A lurid orange light shone into the loft from the room below. Darla was still asleep, curled into a fetal position, almost touching my back. I shook her awake and stalked as quietly as I could to the edge of the loft.

  There were two separate fires blazing in the room below. Target was there, trying to ignite the workbench with a torch.

  I picked up the grindstone. It had seemed impossibly heavy when I’d lugged it up the ladder. Now, charged with adrenaline, I could move it as if it were Styrofoam.

  I shuffled sideways along the edge of the loft. One of the boards under my feet creaked—a groan that seemed loud enough to be heard in Worthington. I held my breath, watching Target. He didn’t look up.

  I got into position more or less above him. He was wearing a big backpack, one of the old-school kind with an external frame. I stared down at the tattoo inked on the back of his head for a couple seconds, and then I dropped the grindstone, aiming for the center of the target.

  There was a soft thunk. Target fell, catching his chin on the edge of the workbench. He landed on the barn floor on his side. The torch fell near his face. Even from ten feet above him, I could see the deep valley the rock had smashed into the back of his skull. He didn’t move, despite the flames licking his nose.