Darla's Story

by Mike Mullin

  The moon and stars were gone. It was so dark that I couldn’t see the side of the house, though I could reach out and touch it. More dust rained through the beam of the flashlight, falling onto the stairs. I sagged, letting the door slam, only now it wouldn’t close completely—the grit in the hinges held it ajar. I pushed past Mom, retreating to the bedroll to think.

  Mom sat next to me and picked up the pad and pen, holding the flashlight awkwardly under her arm. “What is it?” she wrote.

  “Ash, I think,” I wrote back.

  Mom wrote a big question mark.

  “If it’s dust from storms or nukes, there wouldn’t be so much. Would there?”

  Mom shrugged.

  I put down the pen and paper, and Mom wrapped me in a hug. When she lowered her arms, I reached out to switch the flashlight off—maybe this whole mess would end soon, and the electric light in the cellar would pop on, but what if it didn’t? I had to do something. Get out to the barn to replenish my rabbit’s food and water. How much of this noise, ash, and darkness could they survive? But the rabbits weren’t the worst of my worries: if this kept up, how could Mom and I survive?

  Chapter 3

  We cowered in the cellar, hoping the horrible explosive noises would end, but they continued all morning. We’d skipped breakfast—something about being stuck in a cellar during what sounded like an artillery barrage killed our appetite. Maybe it’d be the next fad diet for townie girls—on TV, they’d call it the Apocalyptic Abs Diet, if there was any TV after this. I had always thought the townie girls should try a diet of farm work and farm food, but when I suggested that to Lindsay, the chief frizzy-haired airhead at school, she’d laughed condescendingly and turned back to a salad that appeared to be made with broccoli and sphagnum moss. I still wasn’t hungry at lunchtime, but I dutifully got out water and granola bars, forcing two down and nagging Mom to eat, too.

  Mom kept shifting uncomfortably as we ate. After lunch, she picked up the pad and wrote, “I need a number one badly.”

  Number one? Who says that anymore? “Just pee in the corner,” I wrote, gesturing at the far side of the cellar’s dirt floor with the beam of the flashlight.

  “Not sanitary,” Mom wrote.

  “It’d be better if we dug a pit toilet, but I’d have to go get a shovel from the barn. We shouldn’t use the house bathroom—not enough water.” I’d been thinking about that quite a bit—how to get water out of our well with the electricity off. I had an idea for a simple hand pump that might work, but we definitely needed to conserve water until I could try it out.

  Mom gave up discussing it, and we both peed in the corner of the cellar. So then the omnipresent sulfur stench was augmented by the smell of urine. We returned to our blankets, huddling together in the cool darkness of the cellar, waiting. Our terror had abated and been replaced by a sort of anxious boredom. Would this ever end? When? Was anything left of the world outside the safety of our cellar? My thoughts spun like the wheels of a stuck truck.

  Finally, something changed: abruptly, the noise ended.

  Chapter 4

  The silence was shocking. My ears rang, but other than that, I couldn’t hear anything. Mom and I sat still for a few minutes, saying nothing, doing nothing, just soaking in the flood of relief triggered by the silence. I peeled the headphones off. I rubbed my earlobes, trying to massage away the tingling sensation.

  Finally I broke the silence. “I need to go check on the rabbits.” My voice sounded funny—hollow and distant. Mom didn’t respond. I groped for the flashlight, fumbling around ’til I found it. Mom looked okay—she’d taken her headphones off, too. Her lips were moving, but all I could make out was a sibilant whisper.

  “Mom!” I shouted. “Can you hear me?”

  Her lips moved, but I still couldn’t hear anything.

  “Yell. I think our ears are messed up.”

  When she shouted directly at my ear, I could understand her, but her voice sounded like an echo of the original.

  “I’m going to go check on the rabbits,” I yelled and started to get up.

  “Wait,” she shouted. “We should pray. Give thanks for being spared.”

  I wasn’t sure we’d actually been spared. It seemed to me that there still might be a myriad of ways to die in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption—thirst would be the first issue. But I wouldn’t turn down help, divine or otherwise.

  Mom clasped my hand in hers and began speaking. I couldn’t understand the prayer—I guess she didn’t think shouting it would be proper. But I bowed my head and tossed in an amen when she finally released my hand.

  I tromped up the cellar stairs. The door was obviously covered in ash again; I couldn’t even lift it with my arms. Instead, I planted my shoulder under it and thrust upward, using my legs to lift it. Ash slid off, raining through the gap on the hinge side. Without the ash, the door seemed almost weightless, and I threw it fully open.

  Mom’s watch said it was late afternoon, but it was still darker than the blackest night imaginable. The beam of the flashlight died just a few feet from its lens, snuffed out by the thick, nonstop rain of gray, powdery ash.

  Mom had followed me up the stairs. “How am I going to even find the barn in this mess?” I yelled.

  “Don’t go out there,” she yelled back.

  “Hold this.” I pressed the flashlight into her hand. “Keep it aimed at me. Stay there, so I don’t get lost.”

  I turned to face Mom and started stepping backward, keeping my eye on the light. It faded to invisibility shockingly fast—in just four steps. I hurried to rejoin Mom.

  Even in the brief time I’d been outside, the ash had coated my mouth and nose in a vile, acidic sludge. I bent double, hacking and spitting.

  Mom laid her hand on my back. “You okay?”

  “Let’s get out of this junk,” I gasped.

  I swung the cellar door shut, and we followed the wall of the house around to the back door. The air in the mudroom was stale and sulfurous but much nicer to breathe than the ash-choked air outside.

  We staggered into the kitchen. Mom poked around the dark interior of the refrigerator with the flashlight’s beam, found a bottle of water, and handed it to me. I rinsed my mouth out and then drank about half the remaining water before handing the rest to Mom.

  The water was a stark reminder—I had to figure out a way to get water out of our well without electricity. If the ashfall didn’t kill us, dehydration would. How deep was the well? Thirty feet? Forty? And my rabbits would run out of water soon. They were meat rabbits, not pets, but still, I had a responsibility to them. To kill them humanely. Dying of thirst wouldn’t be particularly pleasant—for them or us.

  Mom used the flashlight to find a candle and book of matches in one of the kitchen drawers. She got out a bag of rice and a pan. What was she thinking? Without electricity, the water wasn’t going to work. I let her find that out the hard way—she held a pan under the faucet, flipped it on, and nothing came out. Our stove was propane, so at least that would work until the tank was empty.

  “I’ll try to figure out a way to get water out of the well without power,” I told her.

  “How? Can you run the pump on batteries or something?”

  “Probably not. Maybe some kind of inertial pump.”

  “How are we going to cook?”

  “Stove should work until the propane runs out. Then we’ll have to switch to the living room fireplace, I guess.”

  Mom set the pan down and sagged into a chair. I took the flashlight and went looking for the ball of kitchen string I knew Mom kept in one of the drawers. I would’ve preferred rope for what I had in mind, but all our rope was in the barn. I found the string and then went upstairs to my room to fetch an old T-shirt. I sliced the T-shirt into wide strips, one of which I tied around my mouth and nose.

  When Mom saw me, she gave a start. “Scared me, walking up with that mask.”

  “I’m going to find the barn.” I thought Mom might argue, but she just
nodded.

  “How will you keep from getting lost?” she asked.

  I held up the ball of string.

  Mom nodded and followed me to the back door. I tied one end of the string to the screen-door handle and started reeling it out, walking slowly toward—I hoped—the barn.

  From my very first ash-filled breath, I realized the mask wasn’t going to work. My mouth and nose collected a fine haze of particles, irritating my throat with their grit and acidic sting. “Christ!” I growled to myself. I wasn’t cursing at the mask: I learned long ago that things—machines particularly—aren’t to blame for their failings. If you maintain and operate your equipment properly, it won’t let you down. People are another matter.

  I stumbled back into the house and ripped my mask off. My throat burned. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge—our last one—and rinsed my mouth out as best I could with a tiny sip of water. Even if I made it to the barn, where was I going to get water for the rabbits? Without power tools and supplies from the hardware store in Dyersville, it might take days to fabricate a working pump. I needed the water now.

  I took another tiny sip of water as I thought. It was cool, soothing my throat. I knew I was swallowing ash and hoped it wouldn’t hurt me. I figured I’d be okay; little kids eat dirt all the time. Breathing the ash, though—that scared me. I’d heard about that disease miners get—black lung or something. Maybe wetting down my mask would keep the ash out of my lungs, but we didn’t have enough water for that.

  There was water in the house pipes. There had to be. The well had a backflow preventer, so the water couldn’t drain out of the system. I could cut a pipe in the cellar ceiling to drain the water, but my hacksaw was in the barn.

  Suddenly it hit me: I’d forgotten about the hot water! The water heater wouldn’t be working, of course, but it held tons of water. Fifty gallons, I thought. I threw open the cabinet beside our stove and started rummaging through Mom’s pans.

  “What are you doing?” Mom asked.

  “We’re out of water—”

  “I noticed that.”

  “I need a flattish pan with sides—like this.” I held up a Pyrex casserole dish.

  “What for?”

  “Hold the flashlight for me. I’ll show you.”

  I led Mom to our cramped laundry room. The water heater was in the corner. I set the pan under the drain valve, cranked the handle open, and was rewarded with a stream of fresh water.

  Mom shook her head, her quizzical smile visible in the backwash of the flashlight. “How did you do that?”

  “What? I just opened the drain.”

  “No, I meant how did you know to open it? That there was water in the tank?”

  “Dad.” I paused. We usually didn’t talk much about him. It’d be kind of like picking each other’s scabs. “He installed this water heater. I helped. I remember draining the old tank—carrying endless pans of water to the kitchen sink, because we couldn’t get enough drop for a hose to flow right.”

  We refilled all our water bottles and two plastic gallon jugs that Mom normally used to water her plants. I stuffed the gallon jugs into my school backpack and shouldered it. Then I was ready to try again. I shook the ash off my breathing rags and wetted them down, tying them back in place around my nose and mouth. It was harder to breathe, but I figured that was a good sign—maybe my mask would keep out the ash this time.

  I found the ball of string where I’d left it in the ash by the back door. The end was still tied to the storm-door handle. I stepped slowly into the ashfall, paying out string as I went. The wet rags worked almost perfectly. I moved steadily across the backyard, aiming in the direction of the barn.

  After three steps, I couldn’t see anything in front or behind me. Just the dim glow of the flashlight beam and a never-ending blizzard of gray ash. My eyes burned and I blinked incessantly. I counted my steps, trying to guess how many it would take to reach the barn. Forty or fifty, I thought.

  My count had just reached forty-six, with no sign of the barn, when the explosions started again.

  The noise was so loud, so visceral, that I reacted without thinking, flinging my hands to my ears. The string went taut and snapped. I was forty-six steps from my house without a lifeline home.

  Chapter 5

  I started cussing at the top of my lungs but couldn’t even hear the words over the horrid noise. I was forty-six steps from home. It struck me that I could die out here. If I tried to take those forty-six steps without the string to guide me, one slight turn—only ten or fifteen degrees—would be enough to miss the house completely. I’d wind up as an ash-covered lump for Mom to find when this God-forsaken ashfall finally ended. I fell to my knees. My ears hurt, and the mask made breathing difficult. I couldn’t get enough air—it seemed suddenly far harder to inhale through the mask than it had just a moment ago.

  You’re panicking, Darla, I thought. You do not panic. Not anymore. It all flooded back over me then: Dad’s funeral. Standing when I was supposed to say a few words. Taking two halting steps toward the altar. Freezing, utterly unable to move. Some well-intentioned soul had taken my hand, tried to lead me back to my seat. Instead I’d fallen, hit my head on a pew, and awakened in the hospital.

  Never again, I’d promised myself. At least not in public, when people are watching. Even though I was desperately alone—forty-six steps from Mom, utterly isolated by the dense ashfall and the all-consuming noise—the thought comforted me somehow. I could pretend someone was watching me. In that moment, I felt certain it was true, that I was being watched over. And that feeling was enough to calm the storm of panic rising within me.

  I looked for my footprints. They were already filling, nearly invisible through the ashfall. The end of the string was still clutched in my right hand, which was clamped against my ear. I hadn’t lost the flashlight, thank God; it was wrapped in the fingers of my left hand, and my palm was jammed against my left ear. Maybe I could follow the string backward. It would have broken at the knot, I guessed—the bend in the fibers would stress the string, make that spot weakest. My flailing arm must have moved it, but maybe I could follow the string back to somewhere near my house.

  I bent low, crawling awkwardly on my knees and elbows, with my face just a few inches from the ground. I’d only shuffled a few feet before the string disappeared beneath the ash, buried in less than a minute by the dense ashfall. I moved my hands away from my ears, intending to follow the string by touch, but the noise burned in through my ears like a pair of misaimed blowtorches, meeting in the center of my head in a molten glob of pure pain. I clamped my hands back over my ears.

  I bent even lower. My backpack slid forward, smacking me in the back of my head. I shrugged it off, hooking one arm through the strap so I could drag it alongside me. I brushed at the string with my cloth-covered nose. It was painstakingly slow—crawling along with my face thrust against the ground, following the string—but it might get me back to the general vicinity of the house.

  I’d been following the string for ten or fifteen minutes and had probably covered only a few feet, when the string ahead of me pulled free of the ash, snapping taut. Mom. She’d found the other end of the string.

  Gasping with relief, I stood and let the gentle pull of the string guide me to her. She held a flashlight in one hand and the string in her other. She wore one pair of the hearing protectors, and the other pair hung from her wrist like an oversized bracelet. I seized the headphones and slapped them on, releasing a pent-up breath as they reduced the noise from actively painful to merely deafening.

  Mom hugged me and I clung to her, crying the tears I hadn’t allowed myself when I was alone. It was as if all the fear I’d been suppressing had decided to pour out of my tear ducts, mixed with some of the joy I felt at seeing my mother’s cloth-wrapped, ash-coated face.

  When I raised my head from Mom’s shoulder, I realized something was missing. Where was the house?

  Chapter 6

  “Mom, which way’s t
he house!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, my breathing mask pressed against her headphones. She didn’t even flinch. The noise was so powerful, she probably couldn’t even tell I was talking.

  I held her out at arm’s length and gestured broadly with the flashlight, trying with body language to ask if we were lost. I had a sinking feeling that I knew the answer.

  Mom held a hand in the beam of the flashlight, palm out, gesturing to stop. Then she turned and groped behind her, coming up with the kitchen broom, of all things. What good a broom would do was beyond me—a thousand Paul Bunyans armed with oversized brooms instead of axes wouldn’t be able to sweep up all this ash. Babe the Blue Ox with a bulldozer blade wouldn’t have made a dent.

  But Mom surprised me. She held the broom out behind us, arms outstretched so it was parallel to the ground. Then she swung it in an arc. When it suddenly stopped, jarring her arms, we walked in that direction. It turned out that we were only three short steps from the house. She had used the broom to stay in contact with the house while searching for the broken end of the string. If she hadn’t found the string, I might never have found my way back.

  When we got back inside, we huddled in the closet off the master bedroom. The noise abated some when we closed the door, although it was still far louder there than it had been in the cellar. I had no desire to return to the dank, dirt-floored cellar, and Mom made no move to leave the closet, either. Not that it was clean in the closet—we were both filthy with ash, and the sulfur stench hung around us in a noxious cloud.

  You might think it would be impossible to get bored in the middle of a volcanic roar, but you’d be wrong. There’s a limit to how long you can stay terrified, and I’d reached it. Or maybe I’d just gotten used to the roar—it’s astonishing what you can get used to, given enough time.