As the Ash Fell

by AJ Powers

  Satisfied with his evasive maneuvers, Clay made the final approach.

  Chapter 2

  Home. It was a 16 story building once owned by one of the biggest banks in the country, though Clay liked to think he had assumed ownership. Nobody had contested that fact so far. The building was modern, mostly made up of glass. It was the second tallest building in the area with a few nearby buildings that were half as tall creating a nice little urban jungle with Clay living right in the center.

  He circled around to the back of the building where there was an entrance to an underground parking garage. The entrance was discreet. In fact, it almost looked as if it was where delivery trucks might have unloaded except there were parking spaces inside, each with an assigned name. Making sure no one had followed him, Clay walked down the ramp. Next to the large garage door was a maintenance door with a large padlock. Break-ins were common, and it was the fourth lock he had installed already this year. After all, a locked door must be protecting something valuable. It wasn’t hard to find new latches, but installing them was an exhausting job when they had to be drilled by hand into a metal door. The latest one seemed to be doing the trick. Scrapes and dings adorned the door near the lock, but no one had broken in. Yet. He discovered two men trying to break in one evening a few months back. Clay drew his weapon; the men were unarmed other than the rock they were using to try and smash the lock. The man holding the rock started towards him, shouting profanity. Clay thought for sure he was going to have to shoot him, but then the other man was able to calm his friend down and led him away without incident. Perhaps if Clay had just been holding a pistol or one of the clunky post-ban double barrel 12 gauge shotguns, the men would have responded more aggressively. But staring down the barrel of an M4, especially after the ash fell, was akin to stepping in front of a Sherman tank. Clay had considered giving them food anyway. It looked as if they hadn’t eaten anything of real nutritional value in quite some time. But he had decided not to. Give a mouse a cookie…Still, he felt guilty and wished he could track them down to give them something. That was months ago though, and the reality was they were probably dead now.

  Clay opened the door just enough to slide through and then quickly latched it. He hung the padlock on a little hook just inside the door, grabbed a doorstop, and wedged it under the door.

  On the far side of the garage, a series of tarps hung from the wall, covering a stretch of about 30 feet with paint buckets, ladders, and other tools carefully strewn about nearby. Clay walked over to a specific spot on the wall and lifted the tarp revealing a door just behind. It was by no means secure—that was what the padlock and door wedge were for—but of all the people who had been able to get into the garage, nobody had discovered what was behind the tarp. For all intents and purposes, that tarp was there to keep the painters from making a mess on the wall years and years before.

  Clay walked through and quietly shut the door behind him once again placing a wedge beneath the door. It acted as the deadbolt on the door when everyone was home. He began his ascent up the stairs.

  As he reached the first floor landing, he stepped around a large pile of debris in front of the door. It didn’t take long after moving in to realize that they needed a way to block the stairwell doors on the first few floors. Even if someone was able to knock the door off its hinges, they wouldn’t get through the blockade behind it. They had effectively made the garage the single point of entry to the home and it was fairly well disguised. Clay wasn’t sure if it was truly an effective means or just luck.

  He climbed up the last flight of stairs; he had barely broken a sweat. To him, it was as common as walking to the end of the driveway and back. He stopped in front of a door with the faded label “Level 16” stenciled in paint. He knocked quickly on the door 3 times, then two hard pounds spaced about a half second apart. Within a few moments, he heard small feet fast approaching the door.

  “What’s the password?” a high pitched voice said from the other side.

  “There isn’t one,” Clay replied.

  The handle turned, and the door slowly opened. Peeking from behind was a bright-eyed boy, seven years of age.

  “Clay!” he shouted. “Did you get any food?”

  “You betcha,” Clay responded and held up the bag of meat.

  The boy, overfilled with excitement, ran down the long hallway screaming “Clay’s home!”

  Clay walked down the hallway with considerably less gusto than the boy. It was good to be home, but he just couldn’t match that kid’s enthusiasm. Tyler was always smiling and joyful, a rare sight in such a dreadful world.

  Before he could get down to the end of the hallway, Clay heard more feet fast approaching. “Clay!” two young girls shouted in unison as they rounded the corner and headed straight for him.

  “Hey girls!” he said as he put an arm each around their shoulders and squeezed them tight. “Did you miss me?”

  They both nodded.

  “Paige drew a picture for you,” one girl said.

  “Sarah! I wanted to surprise him!” Paige said with disappointment.

  “Oops, I forgot,” Sarah replied.

  “I’m sure it’s beautiful, Paige, I can’t wait to see it,” Clay said, nudging them forward to continue down the hall.

  The two girls walked at a fast pace, and Clay trailed behind. He turned the corner and walked to the end of that hallway eventually reaching the lobby of an old law firm. Parkland & Howell was written in fancy brass letters across the wall behind a receptionist’s desk. The floor was a nice light oak, though it was in need of a good cleaning. Fake potted plants were carefully placed throughout, but all of the furniture that wasn’t bolted to the floor had been moved to other rooms.

  “Where’s Megan?” Clay asked Paige.

  “I think she’s in the kitchen.”

  Clay walked over to an executive conference room just off the lobby. He unlocked and opened the door, quickly dropping his pack and rifle off before locking back up.

  He made his way to the break room, which was now their kitchen. Though the faucets didn’t work, the counter space and cabinets made it an obvious choice for a kitchen. The linoleum tile also helped with cleaning up the frequent spills. There was a fridge next to the sink and a freezer chest in the corner on the opposite side of the room. They had carried the freezer chest up from the ninth floor from a research lab. It was the only residential one they could find, the other ones on the floor would consume too much power, not to mention would have been nearly impossible to carry up the stairs.

  Megan was dicing fresh carrots next to a bowl of rehydrating peas. At first, it was odd to mix dehydrated vegetables with fresh, garden grown ones, but they quickly realized the days of being picky about what they ate were long over. Now, it was just second nature to combine whatever they could to make a dish as tasty as possible.

  “Smells delicious,” Clay said.

  She turned around and gave him a look—the kind of look any sister would give when their younger brother said something stupid. “There’s nothing to smell yet,” she said as she continued chopping.

  Clay put his arm around her and gave her a hug.

  “I was worried about you, Clayton,” she said with frustration in her tone. She ran her fingers through her short black hair and sighed with relief. “You gotta stop doing that to me, I was worried all night.” Megan blew a strand of hair out of her face and continued chopping.

  While it wasn’t uncommon for him to be gone several days at a time, he rarely stayed out overnight without advanced warning. Though she was irritated, Clay could see the tension dissipate as her shoulders lowered and her chopping became more fluid and relaxed. He was home, and that’s all that mattered.

  “Peace offering?” Clay said with a smile as he held up the venison.

  She looked over with a smile. “Venison?” she asked with a hopeful look.

  He nodded.

  “Sweet!” she said excitedly

  “Want to put it in the
stew?” Clay asked.

  “Either that or we’re having meat stew without the meat,” she said half-jokingly, realizing had Clay not come home with the venison her statement would have been true.

  Clay placed the venison into the freezer. It was nearly empty except for some frozen vegetables, a few pounds of hog, and some concentrated juice mixes. That freezer held the “overflow” of meat and veggies, while the freezer above the fridge had most of the food for a given week or two. Clay was happy to have venison to add to the overflow. He would need at least another deer, a hog or two, and some other smaller game to fill the compartment to the top for winter. That was always his goal, but he had yet to achieve it.

  “We had to turn on the heater last night,” she turned back to look at him. “Batteries drained in less than a half hour this time. I think the solar panel is broken again.”

  Clay let out a deep sigh. It seemed like he was fixing that thing every week. He would have to find some replacement parts soon. He would check with his friend Vlad—a trader working out of a small community named Liberty Township—the next time he was out that way, which would likely be tomorrow.

  “Charlie is working on getting the banks recharged right now,” she added.

  “All right,” Clay said wearily. He was ready to eat and rest, but there was work to be done. “I’ll go take care of it in a minute.”

  Clay walked out of the kitchen and past a bathroom which had become their cooking room. He had rigged up a makeshift stove for Megan. Sitting atop a small table was a two burner propane grill, the kind once used on a campout. They also had a small oven that would sit on top of the burners when needed.

  The hood was merely some ventilation ducts that fed up to the bathroom’s exhaust fan that Clay had rigged to run on a nine volt battery. Though the makeshift bake room worked well, their ever dwindling resources—of both propane and batteries—prevented it from being used more often. It was only used to cook food, never to reheat.

  Lona, the eldest of the 10 children Clay and Megan had ‘adopted’, was preparing a stock for the stew.

  “Hey Lona,” he said casually.

  “Hi,” she responded with little emotion as she stirred the contents inside the pot.

  Lona had a lot of scars from the past. Some he knew about, others were too deep for her to reveal. He wondered sometimes if she even remembered what they were. The mind has a way of blocking out horrific memories, but the impressions they once made will linger. She was a good kid, though, and even though she rarely smiled, when she did the room would light up as if the power was back on. If she were his daughter—and in his mind, she essentially was—he would be sure to clean his shotgun in the open whenever she had a date. Though he didn’t figure he’d have to worry about that anytime soon.

  He continued down the hallway and heard a buzzing sound coming from the end of the hallway. As he got closer, he started to hear panting. He reached the door and popped his head through.

  “Hey dude,” Clay said.

  “Hey Clay!” Charlie said before puffing for another breath as he pedaled on a stationary bike.

  Charlie was just six years old when Clay found him in a ransacked pharmacy, clinging to his mother’s motionless body. It was less than a year after Yellowstone erupted, and most of the population had started making their way to the various FEMA camps around the country. It was around that time that the rule of law really began to decline, and areas started to fall under the control of the group with the biggest guns.

  He didn’t talk for nearly three months, but ever since then, he hadn’t stopped. Charlie looked up to Clay like an older brother and even a father figure. Having just turned 13, Charlie was the second oldest of all the kids, just a few weeks younger than Lona. Charlie was a hard worker and never complained, no matter how tough or boring the task. He even wanted more responsibility which he asked for on a daily basis.

  “Just charging the batteries. The switch cut the power last night while we were using the heater so I am just charging them back up,” he said pausing every couple of words to suck in more oxygen.

  Clay realized it was his day to charge the battery bank. The family had a daily rotation of who would be responsible for charging the batteries should the need arise. Because of the constant lack of direct sunlight, the solar panels on the roof—when functioning properly—were only really enough to power the fridge, freezer, and a few USB devices. Anything more, though, and someone would usually have to supplement the power on the stationary bike that operated like a dynamo or the batteries would quickly drain.

  “Thanks for covering my shift,” Clay said, giving Charlie a tap on the shoulder.

  “Just…doing…my part,” he gasped as he wiped his forehead with his arm.

  Charlie had been on the bike for three hours already. He was exhausted, but more than that he was bored. Unlike Charlie, Clay didn’t mind the boredom. In fact, he welcomed it. Being able to take a couple hours without challenging his mind did him a lot of good. Though, more often than not, thoughts of daunting tasks in the near future would creep in and disturb his quiet time.

  Clay looked over at a little meter and saw that the bank—a little over a dozen car batteries daisy chained together—was nearly two-thirds of the way charged.

  “Hey, I gotta run up to the roof and fix the solar panel. I might need some help. You interested?”

  Charlie’s eyes lit up with joy. “Sure!” he said with a crack in his voice before disappointment colored his words, “but, the batteries aren’t charged yet.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll finish up later tonight. It’s my day anyway.”

  “Okay,” Charlie replied with a smile.

  “I need to do a few things and grab some tools. I’ll meet you up on the roof in about 15 minutes?”

  “You got it,” Charlie said and sped up his pedaling in the meantime.

  Clay made his way back to the conference room and grabbed the backpack and rifle and headed to the armory. The armory was once a server room for the firm’s network. The door to the room was concealed by a soda machine. It was on wheels and easy to push aside. After unlocking the door and walking in, Clay flipped on a dim LED lamp that coated the room in a thin film of light. It was just enough to see, but hardly used any energy.

  He had converted some of the server racks into gun racks. This was where he kept all of their firearms except for the ones he and Megan always had on them. He put the Scout rifle back in its place on the rack and traded it out for his M4 carbine, which he carried with him if he didn’t need another long gun at the time.

  Several five gallon buckets surrounded a table that served as Clay’s reloading station, each containing various shell casings. He reached into his pocket and fished out the .308 brass case from when he shot the deer and tossed it into one of the buckets. He loved to reload bullets before the eruption, but now when it was more of an essential than a hobby, he still found it to be relaxing; it was another opportunity for quiet time.

  He inspected his inventory. He was running dry on most bullets. His powder and primer supply was also dwindling but not nearly as much. He still had quite a few factory loads left and at least twice as many reloads. He would be fine for the winter at least, but finding more bullets would need to move up on his priority list soon.

  Clay looked up and saw a picture taped to the wall. It was a photo of him with his mother before the car accident—the one that ultimately caused her death. It was taken on his 11th birthday when she had taken him out to pick out some rollerblades. Clay had four sisters, no brothers, and was the middle child. Spending time with his mom one-on-one was very rare, even on birthdays.

  They both looked so happy in the picture. Clay was holding up his new skates while she crouched down next to him. He could still remember the joy he felt on that day. But every time he looked at the picture now, all he felt was guilt. Not even three years later his mom was dead.

  “Take care of your sisters.” His mom’s last words echoed
in his memory.

  It was a task he had failed.

  Chapter 3

  Clay climbed the stairs and walked out to the roof. Charlie was already there playing tag with Blake and Courtney, siblings who had just joined the group last month. Erica and Maya were enjoying the swings on the jungle gym. It was well worth the three months it took Clay to piece together. The children loved it. It was important that Clay provide ways for the kids to be entertained, to have fun, and most importantly, to just be kids. Life was already hard enough for them. They had all lost their parents, most by way of death but a few were abandoned. Clay couldn’t understand how anyone could just leave their children, back when things were relatively normal, let alone in a world like this. He tried not to think about it too much; he always got angry when he did. It was hard for kids to be kids anymore. There were no governments to keep commerce rolling, no law enforcement to keep evildoers in check. The world was a pit, and kids had to grow up fast. Clay did everything in his power to keep that from happening to these kids—his kids—which is why he was dreading the coming conversation.

  Charlie saw Clay walking over to the solar panel. He said something to Blake and then darted over to Clay.

  “Oh, Clay,” Charlie said, his apology heard in the awkward chuckle in his voice, “Blake and Courtney looked bored, so I, uh, thought I would play with them. Ya know, to help them fit in,” he stammered.

  “You know, Charlie, you don’t have to always act so grown up. It’s okay to be a kid.” Clay said.

  “I guess,” he murmured, “but I know I can be more help to you if you would just let me.”

  “You are a great help, Charlie, to both Megan and me.” Hesitantly he began the conversation he didn’t want to have. “But you want a gun, don’t you?” Clay said, already knowing the answer.

  Charlie had been hinting at this for the past few months. He wanted a gun. It wasn’t because Charlie was eager to shoot a bad guy or try and impress the other kids. Having a gun meant trust, responsibility, and duty. It also meant sacrifice. He would have to give up much of his time to work for the family. He would also have to be willing to put himself at great risk in order to protect the family. It was a terrible burden to lay on the shoulders of a 13 year old boy—a burden Clay knew from personal experience.