Ashfall

by Mike Mullin

  “No, I guess not. . . . What’s wrong?”

  Darla didn’t answer right away. “You remember when Captain Jameson was telling you about the ‘evening entertainment’—”

  “Yeah, I hope I broke his nose.”

  “You did. Both his eyes were turning black by the time he dragged you into that hut. I followed and watched from inside the fence.”

  “So that’s how you knew which hut I was in.”

  “Yep. So anyway, he should have called it a prostitution detail—”

  “I knew that’s what he was talking about. Something about the way he said it—I could hear the slime oozing off his voice.”

  “So, anyway . . . I volunteered for it.”

  “You what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. How else was I supposed to get in the guards’ enclosure? Chet always watched me during the day, and I figured we’d have a better chance to get away at night, anyway.”

  “But that’s why I kicked the guy. Because what he was suggesting was so repulsive in the first place. Because I wanted to protect you.”

  “Then you did a crappy job of it. He was propositioning me, not you, and I didn’t try to beat him down. What were you thinking? If you’d kept your cool, I wouldn’t have needed to offer to prostitute myself, wouldn’t have needed to steal a bulldozer and break your ass out of that hut.” Darla poked me in the chest with one finger, hard.

  “I would have gotten—”

  “You don’t even know how bad off you were! I wheedled it out of Chet. They may call those doghouses ‘punishment huts,’ but they’re not for punishment. Nobody comes out of them alive, Alex. They throw troublemakers in there to die, so there’s no physical evidence to contradict the reports they file with FEMA. ‘Died of exposure’ doesn’t call for an investigation. It’s safer for them than putting a bullet in your fool head. Although a bullet in the brain might not kill you, because it’d sure miss all the organs you do your thinking with.”

  Darla whirled away, following the tree line to our right.

  For about fifteen minutes I struggled to keep up with the furious pace she set. Then I stopped and called to her. “Darla,” I said between gasps for air, “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t know that sorry cuts it.” She strode back to me, kicking through the snow. “As it happened, I only volunteered to be a camp prostitute. I didn’t have to go through with it. But so what if I had? So what if I’d screwed every motherless guard in that godforsaken camp?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Would that have made me less of a woman in your mind? Less of a person? Just one of those girls, the easy ones, the ones the high-school cliques gossip about and call sluts? Is that the kind of boy you are, Alex? Is that the kind of man you want to be?”

  “No, I . . .” I didn’t know what to say. I’d been angry when she began her rant, but it occurred to me that she was right. I had reacted impulsively when I kicked Captain Jameson. That had made things worse for both of us. A thought hit me almost physically, like the sound wave of the eruption eight weeks ago: I realized exactly how much Darla had been willing to sacrifice on my behalf. I fought back tears. There was only one thing I could say. “I love you, Darla.”

  I held out my arms. She stumbled into them, whispering, “God, I was scared, Alex. I was so scared.” She was crying, and I lost the fight to hold back my own tears. We stood in the icy snow and hugged for a while.

  “So,” Darla said, “I was filthy, like everyone else in the camp. Captain Jameson had some grunt take me to the showers. He stood guard outside the shower room door—either to keep me from escaping or to stop anyone from bothering me, I don’t know.”

  “Your hands still feel greasy.”

  “I didn’t shower. When I got in there, I noticed it was built of temporary walls under a big canvas tent—no ceiling. So I flipped on the water and climbed over the back wall into the next room.”

  “How’d you know what was on the other side of the wall?”

  “I didn’t before I climbed up there. Turns out it was an empty barracks room. I stole a uniform and ditched my old clothes. I was hoping I could pass for a guard—at least at a distance.”

  “And that worked?”

  “Yep. I walked out to the vehicle depot. Nobody was around that late at night, so I used a hammer to bash open the lockbox and grabbed the key to my favorite dozer.”

  “That was crazy. And brave. Thanks.”

  “They should call us the seven-mile-an-hour bandits.”

  “Huh?”

  “Top speed for that bulldozer. Seven miles per hour. Well, eight in reverse.”

  I laughed. “Lot better time than we’re making while we stand here and talk.”

  Darla nodded. “Let’s go.”

  As the night wore on, I got slower and slower. Darla was breaking the trail, but she still had to stop every few minutes and wait for me to catch up. I tried to up my pace, to force myself to keep up with Darla by willpower alone, but I couldn’t. It doesn’t matter how hard you push down on the accelerator of a car, if there’s no gas in the tank, it won’t go.

  On top of that, the edge of the woods was meandering, following the contour of the hillside. I had no idea if we were still going east—if we even had been in the first place.

  “We’ve got to find a road,” Darla said.

  “Be a lot easier for Black Lake to find us.”

  “I don’t think they’ll be looking—”

  “Of course they will. They chased us in those Humvees.”

  “Yeah, but that was a knee-jerk reaction. Chet said Black Lake gets paid by how many refugees they’ve got in the camp. It’s worth a lot more money to round up some of the thousands of people who ran than to chase the two of us.”

  “Maybe. But it might be personal to them now.”

  “We’ve got to risk it,” Darla said. “I don’t think I can keep up this pace all night, pushing through deep snow like this.”

  What she really meant was that there was no way I could keep up. I hated the fact that I was holding us back. I hated that she had to break the trail for us. I even hated her a little for being so damned nice about it.

  Darla turned away from the woods, cutting across the field. At the far side, we stumbled onto a berm of snow. After we’d struggled across it, we found a gift: there was the road. It was a two-lane county road, but someone had plowed it to a solid layer of packed snow.

  “Which way?” Darla asked.

  “I don’t know. We’ve got to find Stagecoach Trail. It runs mostly east-west.”

  “Okay, so I think we were going north, or maybe east. If we were going north, then this is an east-west road, and it might be Stagecoach Trail, so we should turn right.”

  “I don’t think it’s big enough.”

  “If we were going east, then we should turn left, and we’ll run into Stagecoach Trail.”

  “And what if we were going south or west?”

  “Then we’re screwed. So which way do you want to turn?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know this area. You do. You have to decide.”

  “Left,” I said, just because I was tired of talking about it.

  Chapter 52

  We plodded along the road, walking next to the snow berm on the left. It was much easier—we were probably going three or four times faster than we had been through the snow. Despite the faster pace, I could almost keep up.

  “If we hear a car or see headlights, dive over the snow berm and hide,” Darla said.

  “They’ll see our tracks.”

  “Maybe not—it’s dark, and hopefully they’ll be moving fast.”

  I grunted.

  We hadn’t been walking long when we came to an intersection. The road we’d been following teed into a highway. A road sign poked out of the snow on the far side of the intersection, but it was so dark we had to walk right up to it to read it: W. Heller Lane and Stage
coach Trail.

  “Good call on the left turn back there,” Darla said with a smile I could barely make out in the darkness.

  “Lucky, for once.”

  We turned right on Stagecoach Trail. Maybe it had started as a trail years ago, but now it was a plowed highway. We followed the same strategy, walking on the left side of the highway along the berm, ready to dive over it if we heard anything coming.

  The road was deserted all night. I dragged my feet along in a fugue state, not thinking anything, trying not to feel anything: right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot.

  Not long after dawn we passed over a bridge. A sign that barely protruded from the snow berm read: West Fork Apple River. I told Darla we were close, although I couldn’t remember exactly how much farther we had to go.

  An hour or so later I woke to Darla shaking my shoulder. “Get up. Get up!” I looked around woozily—I was lying in the road. “Goddamn it, Alex, get up and walk!”

  “What happened?”

  “I looked behind me, and you were fifty feet back, taking a nap.”

  “Sorry.” I struggled to my knees. Darla knelt beside me and tucked her head under my arm. Leaning on her, I found I could stand. After that, we hobbled down the road with my arm over her shoulders.

  Sometime later, we heard the noise of an engine approaching behind us. Darla dragged me toward the berm. We were still trying to thrash our way over the snow pile when a car whizzed past.

  The next time we heard a car engine, we didn’t even bother trying to hide. There was no sign of Black Lake; if we were lucky, they were busy chasing refugees closer to the camp.

  I found I could close my eyes and keep moving, stealing a sleepwalking nap with my arm draped across Darla’s shoulders.

  Ages later, I woke from one of those semiconscious snoozes. “Alex, hey, you in there?” Darla asked. “We’re close, check it out.” I cracked open my eyes and looked around. There was a graveyard on the left side of the road, with a sign: Elmwood Cemetery. I could see the buildings of Warren ahead.

  “Canyon Park,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Think we went too far. Supposed to turn south on Canyon Park Road.”

  “We passed that an hour ago. I think you sleepwalked through it.”

  “Ugh. Turn around. Sorry.” I was too tired even to feel upset with myself over the extra hour of walking.

  Darla must have felt the same way, because she didn’t say anything. She just wheeled us around, and we crossed the road, walking on the other side back in the direction we’d come. I fought to stay awake, to spot the turnoff we’d missed. “Left here,” I said. “It’s close. Less than five minutes in a car.”

  Canyon Park Road was plowed, which surprised me. I remembered it as a little-used dirt road. The prospect of ending my journey brought out some hidden reserve of energy within me. I leaned less on Darla and picked up the pace some. My mother, father, and sister might be only a few hundred yards down this remote lane.

  We’d walked about a half-hour when I saw the front of my uncle’s long driveway. It wasn’t plowed, but someone had shoveled a path in the snow. The light wasn’t bad; it was early afternoon, so when we got closer I could make out his house at the end of the driveway. The barn and duck coop were still standing, and there were two other structures, long half-cylinders constructed of wood and plastic sheeting. Greenhouses, I remembered. Darla and I turned up the driveway, walking in the shoveled path.

  We’d traversed maybe half the driveway when we heard a faint noise from inside the house. A drape was thrown open, and I saw my uncle looking through the window, holding a long gun against his chest. Then I heard a high-pitched shout. The front door was flung open, and my sister tore down the driveway toward us.

  “Alex! Alex!” she screamed. She ran pell-mell into my arms, knocking me backward into the snow. “You’re alive! You’re alive—”

  “Good to see you, too, Sis.” I didn’t know if she was laughing or crying or some mixture of the two. I wanted to do both, but I couldn’t summon the energy. So I just hugged her close and looked over her shoulder.

  Uncle Paul, Aunt Caroline, and my cousins, Max and Anna, were all standing around us now. Everyone looked thinner and older than I remembered. I scanned the faces again, looking for my parents.

  “Where’s Mom and Dad?” I said.

  My sister’s laughter ended abruptly. She didn’t reply.

  “Where’s Mom, Rebecca?”

  “They’re . . .”

  “They’re what?”

  “They’re gone, Alex. They’re both gone.”

  Chapter 53

  I woke in a bed, confused. It was sublimely soft, made up with old cotton sheets conditioned by hundreds of washings to near-perfect comfort. A heavy bedspread lay over the top. Despite my uncertainty about how I’d gotten there, I felt warm and safe for the first time since I’d left Cedar Falls.

  Darla was slumped in a chair beside the bed, napping. Her head was completely bald.

  “Darla . . .” I said. “You awake?” The question didn’t really make sense. She was asleep—I was trying to wake her.

  “Uh?”

  “You in there?”

  “Yeah.” She stretched her arms and yawned. “You scared me. Just folded up right there in the snow.” “I don’t remember.”

  “I don’t know if it was starvation, exhaustion, or what, but you passed out. How are you feeling?”

  “Okay. Hungry and thirsty. Sore. How long have I been out?”

  “I dunno. Not sure how long I’ve been asleep.” Darla walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. “It’s getting dark. Guess we’ve been asleep all afternoon.”

  “What happened to your hair?”

  “Bald is beautiful, huh?” Her tone of voice didn’t suggest she found it particularly beautiful.

  I shrugged.

  “Well, you look pretty odd without your hair, too.”

  I touched my head. Sure enough, my hair had all been shaved off. “What? Why?”

  “Lice. We were lousy with them, ha ha.” She didn’t sound the least bit amused. “They don’t have any pesticide shampoo, so . . .”

  “It doesn’t look so bad. And it’ll grow back.”

  “I guess.”

  I put my hand out from under the covers and held hers. My hand was a shocking white—the layer of grime and ash had been scrubbed off. It was hard to believe I’d slept through being washed and having my head shaved; I must have been deeply unconscious. Darla and I sat in silence for a minute or so until I remembered what my sister had been saying before I passed out.

  “My parents. Are they—”

  “I’d better get your uncle to explain. He’s been . . . weird.” Darla dropped my hand and stood up. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she left the room.

  Not sixty seconds later, my uncle came in with Darla following. He turned, looked at her, and cleared his throat. They stared at each other a moment.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen,” Darla said, then left the room again.

  “Who is she?” Uncle Paul asked.

  “What happened to my parents?” I said.

  “She said you met in Worthington? How well do you know her?”

  I pushed myself up in the bed with some effort. The covers fell away from my torso. Blood rushed from my head, and I felt a bit woozy. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her. She saved my life. More than once.” I stared into my uncle’s eyes, making an effort not to blink. “I’d die for her.”

  Uncle Paul looked away. “Heck of a scar on your side.”

  “Darla stitched it.”

  “She didn’t tell us about all that. I guess we can count on her, then.”

  “You can.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s . . . there’s all sorts of crazies out. Don’t see much of them here, but we hear stories. Folks who live out on Highway 20 have had a rough time.”

  “Tell me about it. . . . Where are Mom and Dad? Are they dead?” />
  “Yes. That. I tried to talk them out of it, but they were determined.”

  “Out of what? And quit dodging the question. Are they dead?”

  “I don’t know. They left five weeks ago. They went back to Iowa.”

  My chest felt suddenly heavy. “Why? And why’d they leave Rebecca here?”

  “They went to look for you.”

  “They what?”

  “They went into the red zone to find you, Alex. We haven’t heard any news of them since they left.”

  “Crap.” I swung my legs out of the bed, realized I was naked, and pulled a corner of the covers over my lap. I’d spent the last eight weeks struggling to reach my uncle’s farm, figuring that once I got here my quest would be complete. But it wasn’t. Sure, I’d be safe here, but if I were only looking for a safe place to stay, I never would have left Mrs. Nance’s school in Worthington. “I’ve got to go back. Try to find them.” I looked around for my clothing but didn’t see it.

  “No. You’re safe here—”

  “But they’re not safe in Iowa. They’ve got no idea what they’re getting into.”

  “They had some idea before they left. Things have been rough here, too. I traded a pair of breeding goats for a shotgun and gave it to your dad.”

  “My dad? With a shotgun? No way. He’s liable to hurt himself.”

  “People have changed. Your dad’s not the same man he was. Heck, you’re not the same either—I don’t see any sign of the sullen kid who used to bury his nose in a computer game or book the moment he got here.”

  “Yeah, well.” I didn’t care much for being called a sullen kid. But maybe he was right. I had changed. “I should go back. I know what to expect in Iowa now. They might need help. I didn’t even leave a note at the house, and my bedroom is completely collapsed. There was a fire, too. If they get there, they might think I’m dead. I guess Darren and Joe know I was alive when I left, but they might be dead or gone by now.”

  “If they can’t find you, they’ll come back here for Rebecca. If you go, how will you find them? You’ve already passed each other on the road. And this winter is only going to get worse. All the ash and sulfur dioxide in the air is going to wreck the weather for years. It’s going to get colder and harder to travel—”