Ashfall

by Mike Mullin

  “You can go in now,” the sergeant said.

  We entered another small office and saw another metal desk, another guy in fatigues, and another laptop. He picked up his mug and knocked back the last of the coffee. I caught myself staring at the mug and had to force my eyes away from it. There were no chairs except the one the guy occupied. He stood and stretched his hand out, “Director Evans. Good to see you.”

  “Thanks for seeing us, Colonel,” Evans said, shaking his hand vigorously.

  The colonel looked at me and wrinkled his nose. He didn’t offer to shake. “The purpose of this meeting is?”

  Evans gestured at me. “This young man found a large supply of wheat, maybe several hundred tons.”

  “Where?”

  “Lock 12, in Bellevue, Iowa,” Evans said. “On a barge stuck in the lock.”

  “I know the place.”

  “I’d like your support to retrieve it—we could set up teams of refugees to grind it to flour. It’s a chance to get the camp’s caloric intake up to something sustainable. Exactly what we’ve all been praying—”

  “I’ll kick it up to Black Lake admin in Washington. Thank you for the intel. Dismissed.” The colonel sat down and turned his attention to his computer.

  “What?” I said. “That’s it? Enough food for the whole camp and—”

  “Sergeant!” the colonel yelled, without looking up from his computer.

  Evans wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and I allowed him to hustle me out of the office back to the camp’s main enclosure.

  Of course we’d missed breakfast.

  Chapter 46

  We saw Georgia again at the yellow coat food line that afternoon. She apologized at length for making us miss breakfast and even smuggled another handful of almonds into my pocket. We ate them fast and furtively, huddled against the fence.

  We spent the balance of that afternoon outside the vehicle depot, watching a guy work on a bulldozer. It was parked about thirty feet away on the far side of the fence.

  We’d been watching him awhile when Darla yelled, “Hydraulic control valve’s messed up?”

  The guy looked up, wiped his oily hands on his trousers, and stared at Darla for a couple seconds. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “Just guessed. You disconnected the fluid reservoir and the control linkage, that thing between them just about has to be the control valve, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s shot.”

  “Ash gets in there and tears them up, I bet.”

  “It’s worse on the dozers, ’cause they stir up the ash and come back covered in it. They’ve all gone bad—the garage tent is packed full of dozers with wrecked control valves.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “This one’s had it. I’m out of valves. Distributor we get ’em from is out, too. Major’s going to have my ass. He’s all hot to clear Highway 35 north of Dickeyville.”

  “I bet you could make a master cylinder out of a truck work. As a control valve, I mean.”

  “No way. The fittings wouldn’t be the same size, for one thing.”

  “My dad and I built a hydraulic tree digger a few years ago. Used old master cylinders off junk pickup trucks as controllers. I dunno where he got the lifters, but they weren’t that much different from the ones on that dozer.”

  “And that worked?”

  “Worked great. We moved a bunch of trees from Small’s Creek to the farmyard. Then we sold the rig. Dad said he got two grand for it.”

  “Not bad.” The guy messed with the dozer awhile longer, draining hydraulic fluid into a bucket and wiping parts off with a rag. “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Darla Edmunds.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Chet. See you around, maybe.” He picked up his toolbox and the bucket of oil and walked away.

  * * *

  Guard duty was crazy that night. I’d only walked two circuits of the tent when I caught the first invader, a little boy trying to worm his way into the tent—probably only looking for a warm place to sleep. I’d already dragged him out by his ankles when I realized how small and skinny he was. I thought about waking the tent boss—surely we could find a corner to accommodate this waif, but before I’d made up my mind, the kid ran away.

  That’s the way it went all night—the moment I caught someone trying to sneak into the tent, they’d leave. Some of them backed away from me slowly, some sauntered off, but most ran. Nobody wanted a fight, thank goodness. Even the group of four adults I caught loitering by our tent flap about an hour after dark moved on without a peep of protest.

  At first, I thought maybe they were giving up because of me. Maybe news had spread, and I’d acquired a reputation for my mad “kung fu” skills. I flattered myself with that idea for a minute before realizing it was total bull. First, something like fifty thousand people were penned in the camp. There was no way even a small fraction of them could have heard about the incident yesterday. Second, it hadn’t been an impressive fight. I’d twisted a guy’s arm, so what? Third, it was so dark that nobody would recognize me anyway, even if I did have a scary rep.

  While I was thinking about it, I ran an old guy off. He was trying to sneak into the tent sideways, so I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him out. He weighed next to nothing. He must have been rail thin, although I couldn’t tell from looking at him, since he had at least two blankets tied around himself with scraps of old rope. Pulling him upright brought his face within a few inches of mine. A dirty beard clung beneath his gaunt cheeks. I let go of him, and he almost fell over before regaining his balance and stumbling off into the night.

  These people weren’t afraid of me; they were starving. All of us were starving. I felt weak, and this was only my third day with so little to eat. The folks who’d been here since the eruption must have been near collapse. That also explained why so many of the would-be intruders were kids—they’d been getting more food than everyone else. Kids and newcomers were the only ones with enough energy to try raiding the tents.

  It didn’t seem likely that Darla and I would be getting any food from the Baptists except an occasional handful of almonds. We were too tall and too old—unless something changed, they’d always run out of food before we made it to the front of the line. Already we were weakening. We had to get more food—and soon.

  Chapter 47

  The next three days were infuriating. Every morning we fought our way to the front of the breakfast line to get paper cups of rice. After breakfast, we’d wander over to the vehicle depot. Twice we saw the mechanic, Chet. Once he came over to the fence and talked to Darla for a while, speaking in some foreign language that might best be named “Diesel Truckish” (or should it be “Diesel Truckian”? Whatever). Every afternoon we stood in the Baptists’ food line, but they always ran out before we got to the front. We saw Georgia every day, and every day she had the same news for us: nothing. Colonel Levitov hadn’t told Director Evans anything about the wheat, and the Baptists couldn’t go get it without trucks and support from Black Lake. Keep praying, Georgia said.

  Prayer is all well and good, but I wanted to do something. Darla looked thinner every day, and she’d been slender to start with. I felt as if we were being hollowed out from the inside, so our skin might soon collapse, leaving only a papery husk to mark our passing. I figured my backpack could hold enough wheat to keep us both alive for a month or more. If something didn’t change soon, I planned to try climbing the fence, razor wire and guards notwithstanding.

  The next day, our sixth in the camp, something did change. Not long after breakfast, the camp’s loudspeakers came on with a hiss. At first I ignored them, but when I heard Darla’s name I tuned in. “Edmunds report to Gate C immediately. Darla Edmunds, Gate C.” I glanced at her and saw her shrug.

  When we got there, the gate was closed. Chet was on the far side, chatting with the two guards.

  “Did you call me?” Darla asked Chet.

  “Yeah, that idea about using brake master cylinder
s as control valves on the dozers? You want to try it?”

  “Try it?”

  “Sure, I had road ops tow in four pickups yesterday. We can scavenge the cylinders off them. I’ve got all the tools we need and a full shop . . . so, you in?”

  Darla was quiet a moment. Thinking, I figured. I said, “You should—”

  “What’s it pay?” Darla asked.

  “Pay?” Chet said.

  “Yeah, you want me to help fix your dozers; I ought to get paid, right?”

  “I guess so, but getting a job at Black Lake is really hard. I’d have to go to the colonel, and I dunno if—”

  “I don’t need money. I want three square meals a day. For me and for Alex. And I’ll fix as many dozers as you want me to.”

  “Um . . . I can feed you when you’re working. Maybe two meals. But if I let you take food back into the camp, I could get fired. Couple a guys caused a riot that way two weeks ago, giving food to girls through the gate. And I only got authorization for one assistant.”

  Darla was quiet a moment. “No. If we can’t both eat—”

  “Do it!” I whispered. “We’ve got a lot better chance if one of us gets enough to eat.”

  “You sure? It doesn’t seem—”

  “I have to get back to work,” Chet said.

  “Okay. Two meals. One before work and one after, every day. And I start after the camp breakfast.”

  “Come on, then.” Chet opened the gate.

  Darla gave me a peck on the lips and trotted through the gate after Chet. I watched as they walked across the administration compound and through another gate into the vehicle depot. I kept watching until they disappeared inside a huge canvas tent that served as a garage.

  It was strange, being alone. There wasn’t much to do; Darla and I had already visited the latrine trench, refilled our water bottles, and gone through the breakfast line that morning. I’d spent almost every minute with Darla for the last five weeks; being separated was . . . uncomfortable. It felt a bit like being naked in a room full of clothed people. Not that I’d ever done that, but I imagined it’d feel like I did right then.

  I found a spot out of the wind where I could crouch beside a tent and still see the vehicle depot. I spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon there, watching. When it was time to line up for the yellow coats’ dinner, Darla still hadn’t emerged from the garage. I was getting a little worried, but there was nothing I could do, so I crossed the camp diagonally to try my luck with the food line.

  My luck held: bad, same as always. The food line dispersed even quicker than usual. There were three hundred, maybe four hundred kids between me and the last one who had gotten anything to eat. The only kids short enough to get fed looked to be eight or nine. Obviously nobody had gotten any wheat off the barge yet. The Baptists’ food supply was getting smaller, not bigger.

  Georgia wasn’t there, either. There were two yellow coats organizing the line, but one of them was new. I caught him as everyone was leaving and asked about Georgia.

  “Don’t know if I’m supposed to say anything about that.”

  “Come on. She’s a friend.” When I said it, I was only trying to get information, but then I realized it was true.

  The guy shrugged. “Where’s the harm? She went home.”

  “She didn’t tell me she was leaving.”

  “It was a sudden thing. Some kind of dispute with Director Evans.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s all I’m going to say. I’ve got to go help clean up.”

  I trudged to the vehicle depot. There was no sign of Darla there, so I walked to Gate C, where she’d met Chet that morning. She was standing a few feet outside the gate, waiting for me. There were grease stains on her shirtsleeves and a big splotch of oil on her jeans. I didn’t care. I wrapped her up in a tight hug.

  “Let’s go to the tent,” she said.

  “Okay.” I took her hand and we started walking. “How was it?”

  “Not bad. Chet’s not much of a mechanic. He didn’t even know to open the bleeder valve when you’re draining brake fluid. He didn’t get the line clear, so when I pulled the first master cylinder, I got oil all over myself.”

  “I wouldn’t have known any of that stuff, either.”

  “You’re not getting paid to be a mechanic.”

  Nightfall was at least two hours off, but there were two people in our tent when we got there. They seemed to be asleep—resting, I guessed. We ignored them and shuffled to the back, where we knelt side by side, facing the corner. Darla reached down the front of her jeans. She didn’t need to unbutton them to accomplish this, which reminded me how much weight she’d lost—weight she couldn’t afford to drop. She pulled out a crumpled plastic package and surreptitiously passed it to me.

  I glanced at the front of the package. Something was written there, but it was too dark in the tent to read it. I ripped off the top of the package. An intoxicating scent wafted to my nose: chocolate. Saliva filled my mouth, and I felt a little dizzy. I hoped the other two people in the tent were sick; maybe stuffed-up noses would keep them from smelling that heavenly aroma. I ate a piece—the first chocolate I’d had in seven weeks. Somehow it tasted even better than I had remembered.

  The bar had been crushed to crumbs in Darla’s pants. I poured myself a handful of chocolate and threw it into my mouth. I ate like a starving beast, but then again, I was starving. I wasn’t a beast, though. I stopped myself before I’d wolfed it all and offered some to Darla. She put her lips against my ear and whispered, “No. Eat it all. I had one already. I’d have smuggled them both to you, but Chet was watching me too closely. Sorry.”

  I snarfed the rest of the chocolate and licked the inside of the package. Then I licked off my hands, which gave the chocolate a gritty, sulfurous taste. I stuffed the wrapper into my pocket. I’d find a place to bury it later.

  Chapter 48

  The next morning, Darla insisted that I eat her cup of rice as well as my own. I tried to argue, but she was right. She’d gotten two full meals out of Chet yesterday—MREs, the prepackaged meals the military gives troops in the field. She was probably eating ten times as many calories as I was.

  Four more days passed like that. I’d heard nothing about the wheat. The yellow coats didn’t know anything about it. When I asked to see Director Evans, they told me he was busy. Clearly the yellow coats were running out of food; the line broke up faster and faster each afternoon. Darla kept forcing her ration of rice on me, but despite the extra food, it got harder to stay awake and march circles around the tent each night on guard duty.

  Darla, on the other hand, got more energetic and cheerful. Two solid meals per day were doing wonders for her. I took the first guard shift as usual, but twice she woke and relieved me before I’d finished my 360 circuits of our tent.

  Darla got in the habit of sleeping in her “clean” set of clothes and changing into the greasy ones right before she went to work. That way only one change of clothes got messier. Although, to be frank, the grease was probably cleaner than the dirt that covered us head to toe. There was nowhere to wash clothes in the camp, nowhere to bathe or take a shower. Everyone was filthy. My head itched terribly. I hoped I didn’t have lice, but I was afraid to ask Darla to check.

  I watched the vehicle depot while Darla was at work. Usually, I couldn’t see anything. They did most of their work in the big tent they used as a garage, which made sense because it kept them out of the wind. Sometimes I’d see Chet moving a dozer or towing a pickup truck into the garage. Once I saw Darla driving a bulldozer. Chet was crammed into the seat beside her. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she laughed about something. The blade on the front of the dozer lifted and dropped. It looked like Chet was teaching her to drive it. I should have been grateful to him for giving Darla a job and making sure she got enough to eat, but right then I wanted nothing more than to smack him silly.

  Since I wasn’t getting any answers from the yellow coats
about the wheat barge, I pestered the guards. Every time I saw a new one on gate duty, I asked about it. None of them knew what I was talking about.

  Finally, I thought to ask Chet. He picked up Darla at the gate every morning and brought her back at night, since she wasn’t allowed to be outside the refugee enclosure unescorted. He hadn’t heard of the wheat barge, either, but at least he listened. I told him the whole story: how we’d met with Director Evans and Colonel Levitov and told them about the bounty of wheat on the Mississippi. And how we’d heard zilch about it ever since.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Chet said. “But if you don’t have anything else to do, you guys can wait here, and I’ll go see what I can find out.”

  “Sure,” I said. Of course we didn’t have anything else to do. Duh.

  We waited about twenty minutes. Then Chet emerged from one of the admin tents with Captain Jameson in tow—the guy we’d met the first day, the one who’d ordered Jack shot. I hoped he wouldn’t recognize us. Maybe he did, because as he passed through the gate to where we stood, his lips thinned and hardened, forming a cruel sneer. “The maintenance man tells me you two know something about a wheat barge. How’d you learn about it?”

  “We’re the ones who found it,” I said. “We told Colonel Levitov about it.”

  “Oh? I guess we owe you, then. But it’s classified now. Don’t talk about it anymore.”

  “Classified? What? Why—”

  “We won’t tell anyone,” Darla said. “I’ve got a good job helping Chet. You can count on us.”

  “Good.” Captain Jameson turned to go.

  “But where’s the food? Why are we eating rice when there’s all that wheat nearby?” I said.

  “Wheat’s not ours. The colonel kicked it up to Washington. Turns out Cargill owns it.”

  “Cargill?” I asked.

  “Huge grain distributor,” Darla replied.

  “Yeah,” Captain Jameson said, “Black Lake got a nice contract to guard it until they can pick it up. Bonuses all around, I hear.”