Ashfall

by Mike Mullin

  “People are starving!” I gestured with my clenched fists, which was better than what I really wanted to do with my fists.

  “People are starving all over. There’ve been food riots in fifty-six countries.”

  “Countries?” I said. “What, did some other volcanoes erupt?”

  Captain Jameson gave me a condescending smile. “Nope, the U.S. produced twenty percent of the world’s grain. And even before the volcano, there was less than a two-month supply. All that’s gone. Whole world’s starving, except the people with the guns. We’ve got more security contracts than we can service, but I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “All I know is that people are starving right here, right now, and there’s plenty of food close by.”

  “What, you think we should steal that food? That’s private property, son. Plus, I’d get fired. Maybe we do owe you for bringing it to our attention—I’ll see that Chet gets you a candy bar or something.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I stood and stared at him in total disbelief.

  He cast his eyes at Darla. “Look, if you’re that desperate, your girl could get some extra food entertaining soldiers in the evenings. Lots of girls are doing it, some not as pretty as she is.”

  Something about the way he said “your girl”—as if I were her pimp, not her boyfriend—stoked my fury past the boiling point. I screeched like the wail of a roiling teakettle and lashed out, kicking Captain Jameson squarely in his nose. His head snapped back, and his nose erupted with blood. He fell backward into the snow. I stepped forward, intending to beat on him a bit more, but the gate guards closed on me from either side. I blocked the one on my left, but the guy on my right clubbed my temple with the butt of his gun. I went down. As he raised his gun again, Darla screamed, “Stop! Don’t—” Then the gunstock dropped and the world went dark.

  Chapter 49

  I woke to the evil stepmother of all headaches. For a while, I lay curled up in a tight ball. When I finally tried to sit up, my head hit something, touching off a fresh wave of pain and nausea. I lay still and focused on my breathing, trying not to vomit.

  When the nausea had subsided slightly, I opened my eyes. I was in a room barely big enough to hold my coiled body—one of the doghouse-like buildings just outside the main camp enclosure: a punishment hut, I figured. Thin horizontal lines of gray light filtered in through the boards that formed the walls. The lines danced as I watched, merging and doubling, doing a slow, repetitive minuet that told me I literally wasn’t seeing straight.

  I closed my eyes again and waited. Time doesn’t pass in the same way when you’re suffering from a headache that severe. While I lay there, it seemed as if I’d always been in that hut and always would be: There was nothing but the pain. It might have been thirty minutes or all evening for all I could tell.

  Eventually the nausea and double vision passed, and the headache faded to the annoying little sister of all headaches. My face itched. I scratched, triggering a flaky rain of dried blood. My backpack was gone—I didn’t care much about the backpack itself, but I was cold, so the blankets and plastic tarp would have been welcome.

  The punishment hut’s walls and ceiling were made of rough slats, like the ones used for wood pallets. Posts at each corner provided structure. The floor was ash, which was okay—it wouldn’t be the first time I’d slept on a bed of ash. A hatch had been cut into one wall. The hatch had a little play in it, as though the padlock didn’t hold it tightly closed. Maybe I could break one of the slats, force the door, or dig though the ash floor. But I didn’t have the energy to try anything right then. Instead, I slept.

  * * *

  I woke with a horrible crick in my neck and pain in the small of my back. Before I remembered where I was, I tried to stretch out and cracked the knuckles of my hand against one of the corner posts.

  There was daylight outside now. Of course, the inside of the hut was dark, but enough light filtered between the boards so that I could see a bit. I heard noises from the camp, the muted murmur of fifty thousand talking people. By squirming around, I managed to roll over, putting my other side against the ash floor. I noticed there was dry blood on my boot—Captain Jameson’s, I figured, smiling.

  I didn’t want to try to break out during the daytime, so I waited. At first, I hoped that a guard would bring water, my rice ration, or maybe tell me how long they planned to keep me in the hut. But the day wore on and nobody came. I got thirstier and thirstier, but I didn’t think I was totally dehydrated because I needed to pee.

  I realized I couldn’t count on anyone to bring me water or food. Maybe they’d let me sit out here for a few days. I thought about it for a while and figured out a solution to my two most immediate problems.

  To deal with the thirst, I dug in the ash. The hut had been built after the ashfall, so I could excavate a small tunnel under the boards that formed the sidewalls. Once I got my hand outside, I reached up past the ash layer and grabbed handfuls of snow. The snow wasn’t very clean once I’d pulled it through my ash tunnel, but I ate it anyway.

  Peeing was the other problem. My captors had made no provision at all for hygiene. I dug a hole in the ash at one corner of the enclosure. I peed as carefully as I could into the hole—which wasn’t easy, since I had to do it lying on my side—and covered it with ash.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait. I listened to the sounds of the camp, hoping I’d hear Darla. But either she didn’t try to yell to me, or I was too far away to hear her. The concussion and lack of food had taken something out of me; I found myself yawning and sleepy only a few hours later. There was no point in fighting it—the nightmares that haunted my dreams would beat the waking nightmare my life had become—so I let myself drift back to sleep.

  Chapter 50

  I woke to a cracking sound and the scream of nails pulling free of wood. For a moment, I flashed back and thought I was in my bedroom in Cedar Falls, hurtling across the room as the house collapsed. I curled into a tighter ball and put my hands over the back of my neck.

  A diesel engine growled from very close by. The hut suddenly began to lift around me. The concrete foundation of two of the posts came up with them, scraggly lumps of rock poised above my head. I desperately scrambled away, clawing in the snow to escape the doom above my head. Then the whole hut toppled backward, landing on its side in the snow behind me with a surprisingly soft thump.

  There was a bulldozer blade above my head. I heard Darla scream, “Get up! Go!” I rolled over, out from under the blade, and pushed myself upright. She was sitting in the dozer’s cab. I climbed up onto the track and from there into the cab. She wore different clothing—fatigues and combat boots, like the guards. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up at her wrists, and the boots looked like clown feet on her.

  There was only one seat in the cab, so I climbed onto the armrest beside her. I bumped a joystick as I was getting situated, and the dozer lurched forward, crushing the punishment hut under its treads.

  “Stay off the throttle!” Darla screamed.

  She grabbed the joystick and slammed it over to one side, sending the dozer into a slow turn. She straightened it out and drove straight toward the camp.

  “Um . . . where are we going?” I croaked.

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  We rolled toward the fence around the refugee yard. Darla steered straight into one of the posts. It broke with a low, metallic pong.

  Darla turned the dozer and drove directly over the fence line. She revved it to the max so that every second or so we were hitting another metal fencepost. Pong! Pong! Pong! The chain link and razor wire disappeared steadily under our treads as if the dozer were eating them. Within a few seconds, we’d left the punishment huts behind.

  We weren’t going very fast, but there was still a breeze on my face. I leaned into it, tasting freedom on my tongue. I was tired, sore, and starving, but despite my maladies, I laughed.

  It was too dark to see much beyond the dozer�
��s running lights. A few lights had popped on in the direction of the vehicle depot. I heard shouts over the roar of the diesel engine. The commotion was waking up the refugees. A few groups of them ran across the crushed fence behind us. Pretty soon the trickle of people increased to a flood—hundreds running in our wake to escape the camp. I finally clued in to Darla’s plan: All the fleeing refugees would block anyone trying to chase us.

  “Will it go any faster?” If I hadn’t been so weak, I could have easily outrun the bulldozer.

  “Not much, and only in reverse.”

  “Not good.”

  “Duck!” Darla yelled and slammed her hand onto a lever to her right. The dozer blade began to rise. I spotted two guards ahead of us, raising their submachine guns. They must have been patrolling the fence. I ducked then heard the chatter of gunfire and the whang of bullets hitting metal. Darla raised the blade so its top edge partially shielded us.

  “Raise it some more!” I clutched the dozer’s armrest in a death-grip. The vinyl under my hands was slick with sweat.

  “That’s as high as it goes!”

  We peeked over the top of the blade. The two guards were circling, running to try to get a side angle on us. Darla turned the dozer toward them, keeping the blade between us and the guns. They kept circling and getting closer.

  “Stay low!” Darla reversed her turn, slowly spinning the dozer away from the guards. They raised their guns; for a moment they had a clear shot at Darla’s side through the cab window. She leaned all the way over in my lap, as close to flat as she could. I curled over her. Bullets slapped metal somewhere close by. Darla finished the turn. Now we were rumbling directly away from the guards. I hoped the metal at the back of the dozer’s cab was thick enough to stop bullets. We crashed back through the fence and into the camp.

  “Watch out!” I screamed. “Get away! Get away!” People scattered from the front of the bulldozer. There were refugees running everywhere—the ruckus had woken the entire camp.

  I didn’t hear any more gunshots. Maybe the guards weren’t willing to fire into the crowd. I hoped not, anyway.

  I looked around; I didn’t see the guards now, only a never-ending flow of running people. Darla turned toward the eastern edge of camp. When we got there, she turned again, driving the bulldozer right over the fence, heading north and plowing the chain link under the treads. Crowds of refugees dashed through behind us, racing for freedom.

  When we reached the corner of the camp, Darla kept going straight. She dropped the dozer blade a couple of feet so we could see better. The camp was built on a ridge top, so about fifty feet ahead of us the hillside yielded to a wooded ravine.

  “Uh . . . you know there’s a cliff up there, right?” I said.

  “I’m hoping it’s a steep slope, not a cliff. We’ve got to go somewhere it’ll be hard to follow. This thing is slower than a roadkill turtle, if you haven’t noticed.”

  The front of the dozer nosed over the edge of the hill. We crushed a few saplings at the edge of the ravine and picked up speed.

  “Hold on!” Darla screamed.

  The bulldozer crashed down the hill. Darla’s hands twitched on the joystick, nudging us right and left, trying to avoid the biggest trees. We hit one of them despite her efforts. The shock threw me forward. The tree fell, and one of our tracks rolled up over it, so the dozer canted steeply to the right for a few terrifying seconds. Then we were free of it. The left tread thumped back to the ground, and we continued our headlong rush down the hillside.

  Somehow Darla got us down the slope without running into anything that would stop the dozer. We plowed through a patch of soft ground and flattened some bushes. The front end of the dozer fell alarmingly, coming to rest halfway in a creek.

  “Wow. What a ride.” My hands were trembling, and my breath came in gasps.

  “Yeah.” Darla was looking ahead, trying to figure out where to go next, I thought.

  I craned my head out the side of the cab, looking up the slope behind us. A Humvee was moving slowly about a quarter of the way down the hill. A second Humvee was just starting down the ridge.

  “They’re coming!” I yelled.

  The blade was down in the creek. Darla raised it and goosed the throttle. The dozer ground forward, and its back end landed with a splash. Now we could see the far side of the creek: a vertical wall of dirt about three feet high. The blade hit the bank and the tracks spun in the mud and water. We couldn’t climb out of the creek. There was no room to turn around, either.

  We were stuck.

  Chapter 51

  Darla tapped the throttle, lightly this time, and the bulldozer inched forward. When the blade hit the bank, the tracks slipped, and the dozer rocked backward.

  “We’d better get out and run,” I said anxiously.

  “No, I’ve got this.” She tapped the throttle again and again, setting up a rocking motion. Dirt, ash, and snow fell from the creek bank where we were battering it.

  I looked back. The lead Humvee was halfway down now. Two more followed behind it.

  The bulldozer’s motion got more and more violent. Darla was rocking in time with it, tapping the throttle as her body swayed back and forth against the seat. The dozer knocked big chunks of earth off the far bank each time it rocked forward, slowly battering its way out of the creek.

  I glanced back again. The lead Humvee was now within shooting range. I jerked my head back inside the cab. “Keep your head down, they’re close!” I yelled. Darla crouched lower in her seat and rocked the bulldozer forward—hard. It slammed into the bank, but this time the tracks bit. We tilted up at almost a forty-five-degree angle. When we crested the bank, the dozer fell with a crash that threw me forward on the armrest, right into the throttle. The bulldozer accelerated to its max, heading straight toward a huge sycamore. I scooted back, and Darla grabbed the throttle, slamming it to one side. We turned, narrowly missing the tree. I glanced behind us. The first Humvee was mired in the creek. Two more were lined up behind it, unable to pass. I realized I’d been holding my breath and let it out in a heavy sigh.

  We rumbled over a flat area dotted with huge trees. Darla veered in an S-pattern around two more sycamores and started the bulldozer up a long, gentle ridge on the far side of the valley.

  The ridge was deceptive. It lured us in with the promise of a gentle slope but got steeper and steeper as we ascended. Still, the bulldozer climbed easily, crushing underbrush and small trees beneath its blade and tracks. Near the top, the slope became completely vertical, ending in a line of broken rocks and cliffs. They were only seven or eight feet high—easy to climb on foot, but impossible for the bulldozer.

  Darla raised the blade to maximum height and eased the bulldozer forward until it touched the cliff. We clambered out of the cab and onto one of the big metal arms that supported the dozer’s blade. Darla took two steps up the sloped strut and grabbed the top edge of the blade. Then she pulled herself onto it and balanced there for a couple seconds before stepping forward to the top of the cliff.

  I started to follow. The arm felt slick under my boots. I tried to walk up it, wobbled a bit, and thought better of it. I sat down and shimmied up on my butt. I grabbed the edge of the blade—it was sticky, coated with sap from the trees we’d mown down. I dragged myself slowly upright, standing on the arm and gripping the blade. Stepping up to the top of the blade looked easy when Darla had done it, but I had a terrible time getting even one foot up there. I straddled the blade instead, pulling myself slowly up and holding on with a death grip all the way.

  Darla stepped back onto the blade beside me. She had one foot on the blade and one on the cliff. “Give me your hand.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This should be easy.” My face was hot despite the freezing weather.

  “You’ve been on a starvation diet for almost two weeks, and you probably got a concussion when the guards clubbed you with their guns.”

  Darla pulled me to my feet. I tried to control my trembling kne
es as I perched atop the blade. I sucked down a deep breath and stepped across the gap, pushing my leg into the snow on top of the cliff while I held Darla’s hand for support.

  She stepped back across the gap. I took another step away from the cliff and put my hands on my knees, resting and trying not to collapse altogether.

  Darla waited beside me for a couple of minutes, then we slogged on up the hill. The slope wasn’t as steep here, but it was still tough going. The snow was almost three feet deep. We had to high-step, lifting our feet up and dragging them through the top layer of snow. We started out side by side, but I quickly fell behind and took to walking in Darla’s footsteps. Also it was dark, and without the running lights of the bulldozer, bushes and trees suddenly loomed at us from out of the night, forcing Darla to detour often.

  After a few minutes of this, my pants legs were soaked through. Darla’s fatigues were damp all the way up to the small of her back—she was getting the worst of it since she was breaking the trail. I felt cold, but the effort required to move forward was keeping me from freezing. I imagined that if we stopped now, without a fire or shelter, both of us would be hypothermic in no time.

  At the top of the slope, the woods ended, and we stepped into a field. Darla bent double to rest. “Which way?”

  “Northeast, somewhere. I sort of remember how to get there. In a car, anyway. We’ll have to find a road.”

  “I was planning to stay off the roads until we were farther away from the camp.”

  “Makes sense. How did you manage to steal a bulldozer, anyway? That was . . . wow.”

  Darla looked away. I couldn’t see her cheek very well in the darkness, but she might have been blushing. “I just did, okay?”

  “It was amazing. I was trying to figure out some way to escape, find you, and slip out of the camp, and then wham! You knocked the whole hut down.”

  “Do we have to talk about it?”