Falling Ash
By A.T. Douglas
Copyright © 2016 by A.T. Douglas
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by Marisa Shor of Cover Me Darling: covermedarling.com.
Edited by C.L. Comeaux: [email protected].
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without prior written permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Author Notes and Acknowledgements
Other Books by this Author
About the Author
To jumping just a little farther down the rabbit hole to see where it might lead.
Even if into the darkness.
Prologue
Darkness and silence fill the room around me. I try desperately to bring my limbs close to my body, mankind’s natural reaction to retreat inward to its fetal position in times of fear and crisis. I’m physically unable to move, though, my hands bound by leather cuffs dangling me in a strained position from chains directly above my shoulders. My ankles are similarly bound at the floor, my feet barely able to reach the hard surface because of the short distance that the chains keep my legs spread apart.
My breathing quickens erratically as I struggle against the bindings. The rapid movements of air to and from my lungs become deafeningly loud in the complete stillness around me.
Then it all stops. The slow and heavy sound of footsteps from an area nearby halts all movement of my limbs and inhalations from my lips. The muffled sounds of someone approaching grow louder, weighted with purpose, their malicious intent becoming clearer with each step.
The door creaks open, a blinding beam of white light pouring into the room directly at me. I immediately look away, more to avoid seeing what or who will come in next than to avoid the harsh light. The steps aren’t muffled anymore. They’re right here approaching me, quickening in pace until they’re upon me, overtaking me.
Ending me.
“What is your name?” a deep voice asks.
I say nothing. I don’t move. Despite all that I’ve endured since the end of last year and despite how strong I’ve pretended to be, I don’t know that I can face this.
“What is your name?” The voice is more demanding now, the tone quickly escalating to one of anger.
My mouth opens fully intending to speak, but I can’t get anything out. My breath catches in my throat, and I feel like I can hardly breathe.
“Your name.” All patience gone, he grabs my chin and forces my face forward, though my eyes only see his dark outline against the blinding light from the doorway.
“Ashleigh,” I breathe out, and his hardened grasp on my skin instantly releases.
He steps back just enough to look me over from head to toe, then stills before me. “Ash,” he declares definitively. “That will be your name here.” He turns and takes two more steps away, then barely glances over his shoulder at me. “That will be my name for you.”
Without another word, he quickly exits the room and closes the door behind him, leaving me back where I started, drowning in darkness and struggling to survive.
1
Before
The sharp ping of breaking glass startles me awake. It takes a moment to remember where I am: curled up in a ball on the living room floor, struggling for comfort under a flimsy blanket behind the worn leather couch. I reach into the darkness next to me, my trembling fingers finding my brother’s shoulder as I reluctantly shake him back into the conscious world with me.
“It’s time to go,” I whisper with as much urgency and strength as I can muster.
The creaking sound of bending wood from the other side of the room causes a new wave of adrenaline and panic to rush through me. Crouching on my knees, I peer over the couch toward the front door. One of the floorboards we nailed over the door’s glass side panels has been pressed inward by the imposing barrel of a rifle illuminated by the glow of fire from outside.
My entire body jumps as the loose board pops off completely and clatters to the floor. Jake and I immediately move to a standing position, already fully clothed and wearing shoes in preparation for the escape we’ve known for weeks would be necessary to make once they finally came to claim our house. We’ve seen the gang’s methods to systematically clear out neighborhoods in the area: a quiet entry for the element of surprise, a quick death to any survivors living inside, a sweeping cleanout of all useful resources, and a fiery finale as the empty houses are burned to the ground.
We will not become their next victims. We’ve survived these long months since the coordinated attacks that caused the collapse of modern society. We can make it through this.
We have to.
I catch only a glimpse of a hand reaching in to test the doorknob before I rush silently with Jake through the kitchen to the door leading out to the garage. It won’t take long for the intruders to realize that the front door is nailed shut with additional floorboards, at which point they’ll certainly ditch their quiet entry and barge in with everything they have.
Jake grabs the car key from its hiding place behind the fridge as I get a flashlight from the counter and switch it on. We step into the dark garage, the air surprisingly crisp and dry for a summer night in New England. Jake takes a seat behind the wheel of my white Subaru hatchback while I race around to the passenger side, accidently smashing my left hand into the car in my struggle to open the door.
The moment I’m in the passenger seat, a crashing sound emanates from inside the house, and I immediately know our time is up. As I close my door, Jake cranks the engine and throws the car into gear, barreling us forward through the garage door and out into the driveway. Just as the last piece of debris from the garage door falls to the side from the windshield, I hear a thump from the right front bumper and catch a glimpse of dark clothing flying by my window as we almost hit someone in our blind exit from the garage.
With a sharp yank on the steering wheel, Jake turns us out onto the road and steps on the gas. Gunfire erupts from behind us amidst the sounds of yelling. Jake and I duck instinctively as he tries to swerve the car while maintaining our speed. As we get farther away, the sounds of the chaos we left behind begin to fade. A feeling of relief washes over me until I realize what’s just happened.
The refuge we’ve lived in the last few months—the place where our parents told us to stay, where they knew they could find us—is gone.
This is our new life
, a far cry from the college experience Jake was enjoying only a few months ago. My college experience had already been turned upside down before all of this happened, and though I thought I hit my lowest point the end of last year, I never could have imagined this.
Silence fills the vehicle, as Jake is completely focused on the road before us, taking care to avoid the debris and occasional abandoned cars that litter the pavement. The glow of the lights from the dashboard highlights the determination in his face, but also shows me his worry. For a moment I see him as the little brother I knew from years ago, the boy who wore a tough exterior, even when he was secretly frightened out of his mind. This nineteen-year-old version of him is even more skilled at putting on this facade, and in some ways I’m grateful for his charade, as it keeps me calm and lets me remain in some amount of denial of the reality we face if only for a few moments longer.
“You think Mom and Dad are still alive?”
I don’t know how much time has passed when my brother asks me this question. It’s something we haven’t let ourselves discuss yet, something we aren’t ready to face. It was easy enough to believe our parents could still be alive while we waited for them in our family’s summer home south of Boston on the coast of Massachusetts. Now that we’re out here, though, three months after having had any contact with our parents, that hope we held on to seems much more like the flicker of a dream dissipating into the darkness around us.
“They could still be out there,” I reply with my own facade of strength and encouragement firmly plastered on my face. I wish more than anything I could believe my own words.
Jake briefly nods, and I breathe a sigh of relief at his acceptance of my optimism. He glances over at me with the smallest hint of a smile, but it quickly fades to a look of concern as his eyes drop from my face.
“Your hand,” he says hesitantly before quickly returning his attention to the road. “Is it okay?”
It takes me a moment to even register what Jake’s saying. I look down just beneath the ends of my long dark hair to see my left hand clutched protectively against my chest, my body’s automatic reaction to what I only now realize is burning pain radiating from within my palm. Moving my hand out closer to the light from the dashboard to get a better look, I try to curl my fingers down to create a fist. But they barely move, and the pain quickly becomes too much.
“Damn it,” I curse, letting the seemingly useless appendage fall to my lap, the thick white scar that traverses my palm just barely visible in the limited light. “I should have been more careful.”
“You were a little preoccupied.”
Jake’s defense of my stupidity makes me smile just a bit. “I know, but I’ll never get my hand back to normal if I keep fucking it up like this.”
“You’ll get there,” Jake reassures me before silence fills the vehicle again.
I’m waiting expectantly for him to continue, wondering when the words of encouragement and positivity will come pouring from his mouth, but they never do. There’s nothing but silence and darkness weighing heavily in the air around us.
“Ashleigh.” My name is not more than a whisper from my brother’s lips, but it’s all the confirmation I need to know his tough facade is down completely now. “We’re not going to make it.”
I close my eyes for a moment and will myself to say the words my brother needs to hear. “We can survive out here.”
“Mom and Dad didn’t make it. How can—”
“We don’t know that,” I interject. “We need to get home like we planned and find out whatever we can about where they are or what happened to them.”
Jake won’t look at me now. He’s staring straight ahead, just following the road immediately before us and not looking anywhere beyond that. I fear he’s already giving up on this effort and abandoning any hope for a future beyond our struggling to survive in this stupid car. I don’t blame him, though. Pain and destruction and hopelessness have been the themes this year. Why should that be any different now?
Every once in a while, I see signs of life hiding amidst the destruction around us: the faint glow of candlelight or quick beam of a flashlight from behind the curtains of the houses we drive by, the ones that are still standing and untouched by the devastation that humanity brought upon itself in its fleeting effort to survive without electricity and running water and social services. I was one of those naïve people only hours ago, feeling that sense of safety within the protective walls of a home that could easily be brought down by the evil that has managed to survive and thrive in the absence of authority and a structured society.
Now we’re out here and completely vulnerable. The unknown lies before us, and despite the supplies we’ve packed into this vehicle, I still feel completely unprepared. We at least have each other to help us get through this, but I honestly don’t know if that’ll be enough.
With a deep breath, I turn my head forward, not to see the road or the ruins around us, but to look forward to the future. I’ll leave my worries for another day. For now I’ll grasp on to whatever miniscule pieces of positivity remain within me, and I’ll do whatever I can to never let them go.
2
I awaken with a start, my eyes immediately opening to take in the scene around me. Natural light fills the car, the sunlight seemingly unfamiliar to me, as I’ve been accustomed to hiding within a boarded-up house during the day and only sneaking out to look for supplies at night. The beams of light are welcome, though, proving that there are at least some things that remain untouched in this new world we face.
Jake’s just outside sitting on the hood of the car. He struggles to brush a few loose strands of his dark brown hair away from his eyes as he pores over the map draped across his legs. Beyond him I see the dirt road on which we’ve parked and endless trees around us. A somewhat strange feeling of warmth swells within me at the seemingly ordinary and untouched scene that is extraordinary, given the chaotic state of the world we live in.
Opening the passenger door, I step out of the car and lean my head to each side to get the kink out of my neck. Jake peers over his shoulder at me, the slightest smile on his face. I wonder if he’s experiencing the same strange sensation I am at being out in the open air, basking in the sunshine in this calm and pristine area.
“Hey,” he calls to me. “You sleep okay?”
I nod sluggishly. “You were supposed to keep me awake last night, at least until we found a safe stopping point.”
Jake sweeps his hand out in front of him, gesturing to the quiet wilderness around us. “Seems safe enough to me. I had it under control.”
The scolding look I’ve perfected over the years just for him makes a brief appearance on my face before I decide that he’s right. He had gotten us to safety just like he said he would. “I guess you did fine.” I nod to the map in Jake’s lap and approach him. “Do you know where we are?”
“Southern New Hampshire.” He scans the map for a moment and circles his finger around a state park in the southwestern corner of the state. “The bridges over the Connecticut River in Millers Falls and Northfield were blocked, so I kept going north.”
A wave of concern pulses through me, but I try not to let it show on my face. Peering down and pressing my face closer to the map, I follow the line of the Connecticut River as it weaves up the border between Vermont and New Hampshire. “We’ll just have to keep trying farther north. There has to be a way to drive over that river.”
Jake folds up the map as he hops off the hood of the car. “Ready to get back on the road?”
“I…” Words escape me for a moment. I glance at the forest around me, still fully taking in our strange new situation before looking at my brother again to explain that I need to find a place to pee. “I need a minute before we go.”
“Right.” With an awkward nod, Jake fishes the car key out of his pocket as he opens the driver’s side door of the car. “I’ll be here.”
I take care to put enough distance between me and the car to be private
without wandering too far into the forest. It’s hard not to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the day, clear blue skies above and bits of sunshine fighting their way through the tree cover to the ground below. I’ve missed this. It’s almost liberating to feel it again, to be in this place of normality where life is still thriving and untouched by recent events.
By the time I’m ready to go back to the car, I’m almost reluctant to leave this place. It feels free from the selfishness and evil that has plagued most of those people still struggling to survive after the world’s major cities fell, the power grids went down, and communication became impossible. Our travel plan only extends as far as Rochester, New York, where we hope to find out anything we can about what happened to our parents. We’ve never looked beyond that goal. Thoughts of the future have been completely overshadowed by the imminent necessity of surviving the present.
I make it back to the car and take a seat next to Jake. He stops nervously running his hands over the steering wheel, turns on the car, and gets us moving down the dirt road.
It takes only a few minutes for us to get back onto a main paved road. I pull out the map to keep up with where we are, but Jake doesn’t need me to navigate. The fact that he’s memorized the route he wants to take makes me worry he didn’t sleep at all last night, but given the determination on his face, I’m not going to ask him about it now.
As we pass by each of the scattered houses on the road, I wonder who might or might not be living inside. Are these people holed up in their homes protecting themselves and what they have from those who would seek to ravage them for their own survival? Did they abandon their places of refuge like we did, leaving behind the empty shells of their former lives?
I feel Jake let up on the gas just as I look forward out of the windshield to see the cause of his deceleration. There’s a police car up ahead coming our way from the opposite direction. His lights aren’t flashing, but are clearly visible on top of the car, even from this distance.
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