As the Ash Fell

by AJ Powers

  After Clay snapped out of his daze, he picked up the shotgun and ran outside to make sure nobody else was coming. He saw silhouettes of several men waiting at the end of the long gravel driveway, looking towards the house. He raised the shotgun and rested his finger on the trigger. The men casually turned and walked away, except for one. He stood there glaring at Clay for several seconds after the others had left. Clay was tempted to just shoot, but knew he had just the one shell left in the gun. Suddenly, one of the other men called him over. The man finally turned and walked off to catch up with the others, a slight limp in his gait.

  Back inside Megan was comforting three hysterical kids while trying to manage her own anxiety. Clay hadn’t even noticed the man he had shot in the shoulder had also died; he bled out on the floor. As Clay dragged the bodies out onto the porch, he noticed that all three of them had a black bandanna just below the left knees. He knew it must have been some sort of identifying mark of their group. The men looked more like Billy the Kid than a street gang. Without rule of law, society had truly regressed into the Old West.

  As Clay stared down at the old, cracked kitchen tile, the grout still stained with the blood of the man Megan had killed that night, he wondered how things would have been different had they stayed and fought to protect their home. He often speculated if the decision to move was cowardly or strategic. Even though he could tell some of the men at the end of the driveway were armed with rifles, he thought with a little preparation and help from Megan that he might have fended off the group, instead of fleeing when they returned three nights later. After all, it was his home, not theirs. And yet, he just handed it over to them without a fight. Now, four years later, it sat vacantly as the elements slowly chipped away at it. The bandits came and went, like parasites that got their fill and then moved on, in search for the next meal.

  He thought back to the two men chasing Dusty. They were no doubt from the same group that had forced his family out of their home. Joseph Patrick—as Clay later discovered—was the head of the group. At one point in time, he was one of the county judges, but after things went belly up, Patrick gave up law and order in exchange for anarchy. Most of his henchmen were the very people he’d locked up just years before.

  On more than one occasion, Clay heard tales told by refugees fleeing from Patrick’s territory—tales of atrocities that were fitting of a horror movie. He heard one man say he thought Patrick and his men were worse than the Screamers. Clay didn’t know if the man was being melodramatic, or if he was on to something, but Clay knew with certainty one thing about the judge: if they ever crossed paths again, Patrick would be dead.

  As Clay walked to the front door, something on the ground caught his eye. He just barely noticed it because it was concealed by the trash and debris. He crouched down and examined it more closely; it was an old brooch. It had belonged to his grandmother who passed it on to his mother. Megan—being the first born daughter—was next in line to receive it, but sorting through jewelry boxes after their mom’s death just wasn’t high on their priority list.

  The return to his childhood home was a mixed blessing. Replaying the events that had transpired years before was painful, but finding the brooch made the whole thing worthwhile. Megan had cried when she realized she had forgotten to bring it to their new home. Now, Clay would have a chance to give her a surprise of a lifetime, likely to bring a smile that would stretch from ear to ear.

  He turned around and took one last glance at his home for almost 16 years and walked out.

  Dusty was not kidding when she said there was nothing left to scavenge in the area. Everyplace he stopped came up empty. It was as if the entire county had become a landfill of useless junk. Even with the food he found at Ted’s, it was going to be a really lean winter. He wasn’t completely confident they would be able to make it, but the added inventory would certainly give them a fighting chance.

  He scouted for a warm place to sleep for the night, but no such thing existed in the wintertime. He had developed a rather painful cough since leaving Ted’s house a few days ago and could do with a good night’s sleep by a roasting fire. Unfortunately, between Patrick’s gang and roaming Screamers, starting a fire anywhere would be too risky. The next best thing was a room without a draft, which he found in a bathroom at the back of an office supply store.

  The snow had started to fall again the next morning. Though it was not the frozen tempest he had battled through on his trip out, it still complicated the journey, especially as he crossed back over Devil’s Canyon.

  He finally made it back to the highway that ran past the office building, a welcomed indication that he was about 15 miles out. Tromping through the snow meant sluggish progress, but barring any unforeseen circumstances, he would be back in his own bed by tomorrow night. That comforting thought fueled him to press on, after every ounce of energy had long been depleted.

  Clay’s cough had worsened overnight and breathing had become more demanding, even when he was out of the elements. He just needed a hot meal and a couple days of rest, and he’d be back to normal.

  His hotel for the night was Caldwell’s Wings and Beer, a little sports bar next to a bunch of low-rise office buildings. Clay set up camp in the walk-in freezer off the kitchen. Because of its insulation to keep cold air in, it actually did a good job of keeping cold air out, and since it hadn’t been running in many years, the inside was significantly warmer than the rest of the establishment. He placed an old spatula in front of the hefty steel door to prop it open just a bit so he wouldn’t suffocate in his sleep. He also set up two noise alarms, one near each entrance to the kitchen that would allow him time to react should anyone come in behind him.

  The freezer was quite comfortable, and he would have slept well had it not been for his persistent cough. His body ached as if he had spent the day as a crash test dummy. He still found he had more energy than he had in days, so he got back out on the road for the final stretch.

  Gradually, throughout the day, the temperatures climbed, surprising Clay and providing a much needed break from the cold of the past few weeks. The temperatures were creeping into the 40s and Clay started to break a sweat. These days 40 degrees was the new 72.

  As Clay reached the top of a small incline, he saw a bobcat trekking through the snow about 75 yards away. There wasn’t much meat on him, but every pound would help them endure the long, brutal winter. He dropped to one knee and raised his M4. Keeping the reticle fixed on the large cat was proving to be a difficult task for his shaky hands. Finally, he fired, and the cat stormed across the field, quickly disappearing into the nearest tree line.

  He stayed kneeling for several minutes as he lambasted himself for the squandered opportunity. His head was stuck in a fog, and his clumsy actions were proof of that. After several attempts to return to his feet, he finally got back on the move.

  At last he saw the towering sanctuary in the distance. The haze concealed most of it, but he could just barely make out the profile of the building. Not a moment too soon, he thought, since every step he took felt like knives had been jammed into every one of his joints. The chilled breeze that had begun to intensify over the last hour wasn’t helping matters either.

  Clay’s pace had slowed significantly, and he found himself taking short, but frequent breaks to catch his breath. One such break, he leaned up against a tree and howled in agony as he pressed his shoulder against the bark. Though his many layers of clothing prevented him from examining it, he knew his wounds from the birdshot had become seriously infected. He still hadn’t changed his bandages, and wasn’t going to bother now. The damage was already done.

  With nearly five miles to go and a fast approaching storm, he dug deep and pressed forward, doing his best to fight through the pain, but the pain proved to be a staunch opponent.

  By the time the rain began to fall, his head was throbbing. His body had spent the last several days trying to tell him he needed to rest, but like the “check engine” light on a car’s das
hboard; he ignored it. The wintery mix had soaked him through and through in a matter of minutes. It was probably a blessing in disguise since his fever had spiked to dangerous levels and the cold rain was as effective as taking an ice bath. He took some ibuprofen for the pain—his last four in the bottle—which also helped to combat the fever he was unaware he had.

  About an hour later, he had made it to his street. He was walking through the road like a zombie. His brain was on autopilot, nary a conscious thought to be found. He made his way directly to the building, no detours, no cloak-and-dagger.

  Megan was on her way to the garage to load some water into the pulley basket. Charlie had faithfully hoisted water up every day for the past couple of weeks, which meant multiple trips to the basement. Since Charlie twisted his ankle earlier that morning, Megan volunteered to go so he could rest.

  As she swung around the landing on the 12th floor, her heart stopped for a beat when she saw him lying on the next landing down. “Clay!” she screamed in a panic and ran down the remaining flight of stairs. “Clayton?” she asked loudly and pushed on his back, “Clayton, can you hear me? Answer me!”

  No response.

  She felt for a pulse which she finally found; it was weak. She put her palm on his forehead. “He’s burning up,” she murmured aloud.

  “Charlie!” she shouted as loudly as she could, but nobody came. She ran back up the stairs, all the while shouting for Charlie’s help. By the time she reached the 15th floor, she heard the door explode open. Charlie was already running down the stairs.

  “Megan, what’s wrong?” he asked frantically.

  Out of breath, she gasped, “It’s Clay!”

  Chapter 21

  Charlie was walking home from the library when he saw a lone fawn crossing the highway. The baby deer was frail; its rib cage protruded through the skin, and its posture was unbalanced. The poor animal was likely going to die in the next couple of days, perhaps even hours.

  Charlie could tell he wouldn’t be able to harvest much meat from it, but anything would be better than nothing. Despite the food they found in Clay’s pack, there just wasn’t going to be enough to last them the winter. Charlie had volunteered to skip a couple of meals a week to help stretch the pantry a little further; Megan did the same. Clay was barely eating as it was—Megan had a hard enough time getting him to take fluids, let alone chew and swallow food. It had only been a week since she found him in the stairwell, so she wasn’t yet worried about his food intake so much as she was about hydration and staving off the fever. The antibiotics were helping, but she knew eventually she would have to find a way to get him to eat so his immune system could do the rest. In the meantime, however, Clay’s lack of appetite also contributed to the efforts being made to conserve food.

  The fawn stopped in the middle of the road and nosed around in a fresh layer of snow. It nibbled at a few things then moved a few feet away, repeating the same process. Charlie took his time and inched closer. He had Clay’s M4, which was a superior weapon to the M1. Even though he had become quite a good shot with his old World War II carbine, he much preferred the accuracy and ease of use the M4’s optics provided.

  Charlie crept closer, stopping about 50 yards out. He raised the rifle, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. He squeezed the trigger.

  The deer dropped to the ground in an instant. It was a clean shot through the head. Charlie knew any shot to the torso could damage what little meat remained on the starved animal’s body.

  He quickly moved in and began cutting into the baby deer. Clay had not yet taught Charlie how to properly field dress game, so he did his best with what limited knowledge he had on the topic, which was mostly from listening to Clay talk about the similarities and differences of wild hog as Clay cleaned Charlie’s kill the night of Bethany’s birthday party.

  There was even less meat than he had expected, maybe 10 pounds at best. He put the meat into a bag and stuck it into his pack. He stood to his feet and turned to leave but was startled by a man who was approaching.

  “Stay back!” Charlie ordered as he raised his rifle at the man.

  The man stopped and put his hands in the air. “It’s okay, son. I don’t want to hurt you. I just wanted to see if you could spare some of that meat you just took.”

  “Sorry, but this is mine,” he said, then waved the barrel of the rifle to the left. “Now go on, and leave me be.”

  “I know it’s yours; that’s why I’m asking you, man to man. Can you please spare any? I have kids back home and we haven’t eaten in days,” the man pleaded.

  The man’s sunken cheeks and leathery skin suggested he was in his 60s, but Charlie doubted he was much older than 40. He wore tattered clothes that were two sizes too big and was missing three fingers on his left hand. Charlie genuinely felt sorry for the man, but he remembered one of the first things Clay had taught him. People are deceptive. The man seemed sincere, enough so that Charlie believed his story, but he struggled with the thought of giving a total stranger food when he wasn’t even sure that his own family would be provided for this winter.

  “I’m sorry, I-I-I just can’t,” Charlie reiterated.

  “Please,” the man said and started to move towards Charlie, his hands still in the air. “Just a couple of pounds.”

  “I said stay back!” Charlie said sternly and began to step backwards to keep the distance from the man. “I will shoot you!” he warned.

  The man continued forward, “Such a young boy ought not be making such threats,” the man said.

  Charlie kept stepping back as the man continued moving forward. “How about a trade?” the man asked, with a glimmer of hope in his fatigued eyes.

  Charlie raised the rifle even more. His intense body language caused the man to stop. “I’m sorry, but I am not interested in whatever it is you have,” Charlie said.

  “Just take a look It’s all I have to trade.” The man moved his hand towards his coat pocket.

  “Stop!” Charlie screamed.

  The man reached into the pocket, and then suddenly the world went quiet for Charlie. He could hear the man trying to talk, but his voice was unintelligible. The man’s expression was wrought with fear and shock. He stumbled forward a few feet before dropping to one knee. Charlie heard vague muffled coughs as he saw the man spit up blood, staining the untainted snow a dark crimson color.

  Charlie looked down the barrel and saw smoke pouring out of the muzzle, his finger still on the trigger. His mouth hung open, and he began to tremble. Charlie looked back at the man whose life was fleeting. The blood from the bullet wound in his chest had started to seep through his many layers of clothing. The man removed his hand from his pocket, briefly clutching onto something small before reaching at his injury. He locked eyes with Charlie for a moment. There was no anger, no ill-will towards Charlie, only pity. Then, as if watching the final grains of sand slip into the bottom of an hourglass, the man’s stare became empty, and his body toppled over.

  Charlie remained paralyzed with shock. His brain was still processing everything that had just happened. Two minutes ago, he was cutting meat off a deer, and now he was staring at a man who had died at his hand. It was the moment Clay warned him about, it was the moment when Charlie was faced with that split second decision…

  Suddenly, Charlie bent over and threw up what little food he had in his stomach. The stinging sensation ran all the way up his throat and out his mouth. He continued to heave for several minutes, but there was nothing left to come out.

  After regaining his composure, Charlie worked up enough courage to see what the man had retrieved from his pocket. He instinctively thought the man was going for a gun or weapon of some sort, but it, in fact, was a pocket watch. Charlie picked it up and unclasped the cover. On the inside of the ornately engraved door was a picture of the man with his wife and kids. They were all smiling; they were happy.

  Charlie snapped the watch shut and dropped it on the ground next to the lifeless body. Tears began streamin
g down his face which quickly froze to his reddened cheeks. “Sorry,” he uttered to the departed man before he turned and walked away.

  He wanted to cry, he wanted to run home and have someone tell him it was okay, that he didn’t do anything wrong, but he couldn’t. Because he did do something wrong. He killed a desperate father who was just begging for food—all because he didn’t want to share with the man. Charlie wanted the whole thing to be a horrific nightmare that would cease as soon as his eyes opened, but he knew this would be a nightmare that would torment him for life. In a split second, Charlie had destroyed the lives of this man and his family and perhaps even his own.

  The walk back was long and arduous. It felt as if darkness followed him all the way home—a menacing feeling he could not shake. He walked into the kitchen with the bag of meat and handed it to Megan without saying a word.

  “Charlie?” she asked, noticing the grim look on his face. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  He kept walking towards the door. “I fed the evil wolf,” he said and walked out.

  Though his response was vague, she knew what had happened. She remembered what it was like to take someone’s life, and was deeply grateful that she had not been forced to do it again. Justified or not, seeing another person die as a result of his action was not something easy to live with, especially at his young age.

  She wanted to go talk to him but needed to tend to Clay. It was probably for the best. If Charlie was anything like her, he wouldn’t want to talk. Right after Megan killed the man attacking Clay, all she wanted to do was lock herself in a room and cry for the rest of the day, but she didn’t have that luxury and she didn’t want to take that opportunity away from Charlie.

  Megan walked into Clay’s room with a tray of broth, water, and some stale saltines. He opened his eyes slightly when he heard her come in. His face was still sickly, but he had come a long way over the past few days. Short of an unexpected event occurring, it looked as if the worst was behind him, though he had lost a lot of weight and muscle which would make the remaining winter months that much more difficult for his recovery.