Ashen Winter a-2

by Mike Mullin

  Darla started setting up the fire-by-friction set while I looked for wood. Everything burnable inside the house was gone. There were a bunch of trees outside, but all the lower limbs and smaller trees had been cut. I picked out the smallest of the remaining trees and started the long process of felling it with my hatchet-a job that really required a chainsaw or at least a full-size ax.

  It was almost an hour later and fully dark by the time I returned to the living room with an armload of wood. I could barely make out Darla’s form hunched over a tiny, glowing spark.

  “This is so cool-this black dust the set makes will keep a spark alive, like forever. We’ve got to find some way to store this stuff.”

  “Sorry I took so long. Had to cut a tree down to get at the branches.”

  “It’s okay. Make me a bird’s nest, would you?”

  It was so dark, I could barely see anything. I stripped the bark from a couple of branches, working by feel. I took off my gloves to make it easier to shred the bark, and soon my hands were freezing. Darla stayed hunched over her spark, feeding it with black powder from the fire-by-friction set and fanning it gently with her knife blade.

  “I think this thing is ready,” I said, holding the bird’s nest out to Darla.

  “Just hold it next to the spark.” Darla cut the spark in two with her knife and lifted half of it into the bird’s nest.

  I slowly lifted the bird’s nest to my lips. I whispered to it, “Burn, baby, burn,” letting the gentle breath of my whisper fan the spark. Darla was feeding the other half of the spark more black powder, building it up in case mine died.

  A strand of bark flared orange, looking like the filament in an old incandescent lightbulb. A tiny flame followed, and in seconds the whole bird’s nest was engulfed in fire. I laid it down in the middle of the tiled area. It threw off just enough light that I could find pieces of kindling to feed it.

  Darla abandoned the rest of the spark and helped me feed the fire. I offered to get more wood, but it was so dark out that I wasn’t sure I could find the tree I’d felled again. I took a flaming stick out of the fire, hoping to use it as a torch. It went out before I even reached the front doorway.

  I bent low, using the faint glow of the embers still clinging to my stick to follow my footprints back to the tree. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to the house, but the glow of the fire was clearly visible through the open maw left by the missing front door.

  That aroused a new worry: What if someone came by? It would be obvious from the light that we were camping in the abandoned house. But we hadn’t seen anyone on the roads all day, and it would be even harder to travel by night.

  I broke more small branches and carried them back to the house. “We’re going to need some bigger logs to keep the fire going all night,” Darla said as I dropped the wood.

  “I can’t see well enough to use the hatchet,” I replied.

  “Hmm.” Darla gathered up several long, slender branches, arranging them in a bunch. She thrust one end into the fire. When she pulled it out, the tip of the bundle was engulfed in a steady flame that survived movement, unlike the single branch I’d used. “Come on. I’ll hold the light for you.”

  With Darla clutching her makeshift torch and me chopping, we got enough wood to last the night. By the time we finished, I was hungry and thirsty. I’d been hungry all day-there was nothing I could do about that. But the thirst I could deal with. “I’m going to get some snow,” I said.

  I didn’t bother taking a torch. Snow was easy to find-it was everywhere. I molded two cantaloupe-sized snowballs and carried them inside. Darla took one, broke off a piece, and put it in her mouth to melt. “Just when I get warm, I’ve got to eat this damn snow,” she said.

  “Beats going without water.”

  “I guess. Let me see the hatchet.”

  I passed the hatchet to her. She wandered around the bare living room for a minute, staring at the ceiling and floor and holding the hatchet by her side. Just as I was getting ready to ask her what in the world she was doing, she gripped the hatchet firmly in two hands and buried it with a thunk in the floor.

  She swung the hatchet like a madwoman, chopping at the floor. Tufts of ash-filled, mildewed carpet flew everywhere. Darla was quickly coated in ash and dirt. She looked like a chimney sweep turned ax murderer: completely insane.

  Chapter 24

  “What are you doing?” I yelled.

  “I am sick. .” The hatchet thunked back into the carpet. “Of eating. .” A chunk of wood from the subfloor flew up. “Snow!” Darla slammed the hatchet back into the floor.

  “Take it easy. How’s killing the floor going to help?”

  Darla didn’t answer, just kept destroying the floor. I saw wood joists and a rectangular metal heating duct through the ragged hole she’d opened. Darla turned her attention to the heating duct, slamming the hatchet into it with a clang and screech of tearing metal.

  I heard another noise when Darla hit the duct, an almost musical tinkling, kind of like a bottle rolling on the sidewalk. It seemed to be coming from the far side of the room beneath one of the windows. I followed the path of the duct with my eye-it led straight to a grate in the floor.

  I stepped over to the grate, giving Darla and the wildly swinging hatchet a wide berth. She was still whaling on the ductwork, trying to cut it or rip it up out of the floor. Had the cold and hunger tipped her over the edge?

  I couldn’t see what was holding the grate in place, so I got my fingernails under its edges and pulled it up. It came free fairly easily. The duct behind it jerked and shivered as Darla whacked the other end of it. I clearly heard something rolling around. I reached down into the duct and withdrew a half-full bottle of Canadian Mist.

  “Hey,” I yelled, “check this out.”

  “Just a sec.” Darla was totally focused on butchering the heating duct. A big chunk of it came free with a metallic shriek. She set aside the chunk of metal and let the arm holding the hatchet fall. “That was in the duct?”

  “Yeah, someone must have hidden it down there. You think we should drink it?”

  “I dunno. Alcohol has calories. Maybe it would help.”

  I unscrewed the cap and sniffed the bottle. Even the smell of alcohol made my empty stomach turn and clench. “I’d probably barf.”

  “Yeah. Let me finish, and then we’ll put that whisky to good use.” Darla started hacking at the piece of ductwork with the hatchet and knife. The sheet metal was thin and soft enough that our knife would cut it-although Darla was straining at it, holding the duct in one hand and sawing the knife back and forth with the other.

  I groaned, thinking about what she was doing to the edge of the knife. We didn’t have a sharpening stone. But saying anything was useless-getting between Darla and a project was as futile as standing on a railroad track hoping to stop a train with an upraised palm.

  So I watched while Darla shaped the sheet metal into a rough, square pan. Each corner had a triangular fold, and the top was sharp and ragged, but it looked like it would hold water. “Tada,” she said. “No more eating snow.”

  “That’s great. But will the hatchet still cut wood?”

  Darla picked it up and looked at the edge. Even by firelight, the nicks and dull spots were obvious. “We’ll look for a stone to sharpen it on tomorrow.”

  I shrugged and loaded the balls of snow into the pan. Darla set the pan at the edge of the fire. Then she plucked the bottle of whisky from the floor.

  Darla sniffed the whisky and wrinkled her nose. She lifted the bottle to her lips and took a huge swig.

  “Ugh, that’s disgusting,” she said, coughing as she passed the bottle to me.

  Disgusting or not, I couldn’t let Darla show me up. I raised the bottle to my mouth and knocked back as much as I could swallow at one gulp. It was horrid-a smell like paint thinner and a sharp taste so strong it burned my throat. I bent double, gasping and coughing, trying to clear the alcohol sear from my nostrils. Once
that passed, though, it tasted kind of good for a few seconds, sort of like smoke from a campfire. But the pleasant taste passed, too, and then I was left with nothing but the chemical aftertaste of the cheap whisky.

  “Maybe this stuff does have calories, but I don’t think I want to drink any more,” I said.

  “Me, either,” Darla replied. “Maybe we can find some real food tomorrow. Save the rest of the alcohol to use as an antiseptic.”

  “Makes sense. Let me see your hand.” I gently stripped off the makeshift bandage from Darla’s palm. The wound looked better-a little puffy and swollen, but there were no red streaks, and it didn’t smell bad. I washed it as best I could with whisky, then rebandaged it, using more cloth torn from my undershirt.

  “Your turn.” Darla took the whisky bottle and went to work on my side. It looked a lot better, the red streaks had mostly faded, and it didn’t smell like roadkill anymore. By the time Darla finished washing and bandaging me, we’d torn up more than half my T-shirt. All that remained were the shoulders, neck, and a ragged fringe of cloth hanging partway down my chest.

  “If you keep using my clothes for bandages at this rate, I’ll be naked in a few days,” I said.

  Darla laughed. “Fine by me. I’ll enjoy the naked boyfriend show. Might be a bit cold for you, though.” She pulled the makeshift pan away from the fire. All the snow had melted.

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll wait until we get somewhere warmer before I let you rip all my clothing to rags.”

  “Deal.”

  We waited a bit for the pan to cool, then carefully sipped warm water from its sharp edges. “We’ve got six bags of wheat. Maybe we should cook one?”

  “We don’t need to,” Darla said. “We should make it to Worthington the day after tomorrow.”

  “Better to keep up our strength. How do you cook wheat, anyway?”

  Darla shrugged. “Boil it like corn? I don’t know.”

  I refilled the pan with snow. When that melted, I dumped a bag of wheat in. While I waited for that to boil, I whittled flat spots on a couple of sticks-improvised spoons.

  I had no idea how long to cook it. After about fifteen minutes of boiling, I scooped out a few kernels with my stick. They were so hard that they were difficult to chew, and they had an unpleasant, hairy texture.

  “How is it?” Darla asked.

  “Not good.”

  She frowned. “Let’s get some sleep. Figure it out in the morning.”

  I pulled the pan off the fire and started getting ready for bed. We hadn’t had any Cipro yet that day, so I split a tablet and handed half of it to Darla. She choked it down with a grimace.

  The floor beside the fire was hard, but we were so tired it didn’t matter. I wrapped Darla up in a hug and kissed her goodnight. We slept like that, our limbs entangled, warmed by each other and the comfort of our hard-won fire.

  Chapter 25

  The next morning I tried the wheat again. The pan was warm from sitting by the fire all night. Soaking overnight had transformed the kernels-they were soft and delicious. Darla and I quickly ate them all.

  When we’d finished breakfast, I packed the makeshift pan, the bottle of whisky, and the remaining bags of wheat under my coat. I cinched the drawstring around my waist extra-tight so everything would stay put. Darla carried the fire-by-friction set under her jacket, the bow sticking out at her collar. We looked lumpy and awkward, strange aliens trudging across the snowscape. The pan rubbed uncomfortably as I moved, its edges digging into my chest through the coveralls and overshirt.

  The countryside reinforced my feeling of strangeness. Last year, more than half of the Iowa farmsteads had been occupied. Many of the unoccupied ones had collapsed under the weight of the ash and snow, but very few had burned. Now all of them were abandoned and more than half had burned. Often all that marked a former farm was a grain silo and some charred rubble. Where had all the people gone?

  A faint stench of charcoal, melted plastic, and sulfur followed us along the road. The burnt-out buildings made the countryside seem more desolate. The only break in the solitude came late that morning. We heard an engine in the distance and rushed to the side of the road, thinking we’d hide. But the noise faded, and we never saw the vehicle that made it.

  Iowa had been a vibrant place just ten months ago. Even on the back roads, you could always see signs of civilization, of people. Now. . nothing. What kind of life could Darla and I hope for in this desolation? I took her hand and held it for a while as we walked.

  I was hungry despite the half-pan of boiled wheat I’d eaten that morning. The hunger made us tired. Our steps slowed as the day wore on, and we barely talked.

  About an hour before nightfall, we passed a whole series of burnt houses. All that remained were a few scarred and blackened brick walls and chimneys. We trudged up a slight rise. At the top perched a dark-blue, cylindrical water tower overlooking the town. CASCADE, it read in huge white block letters. Below the town’s name, someone had spray-painted a crude drawing of a woodpecker in garish red and neon blue. The woodpecker stood on its hind feet, wings thrust into the air some twenty feet above his head. Fat red boxing gloves capped each of the woodpecker’s upraised wings.

  “Excellent,” Darla said. “Cascade is only ten miles from Worthington. But what is that drawing on the water tower?”

  “Woody Woodpecker,” I said.

  “Woody what?”

  “You know. The cartoon.” I tried to make the Woody Woodpecker sound, but it didn’t come out too well.

  She looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “You’ve never heard of Woody Woodpecker?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Country people.” I shook my head in mock seriousness. “They lack cultural awareness.”

  Darla slugged my shoulder. “Well, if that’s a woodpecker, it’s got a huge evolutionary advantage.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s so ugly, trees will die at the sight of it.”

  “Yeah, it is ugly. I wonder why someone bothered painting it up there. Must have taken a lot of spray paint to make it that big.”

  As we got closer, we could see beyond the water tower. There was an open snowfield boxed in by two small apartment buildings and a massive metal shed. The shed’s sliding door was open, and we could see a fire flickering within.

  “I think I see people moving by that fire,” Darla whispered.

  “Check it out?” I asked. “See if they look friendly?”

  “Yeah. But stay hidden ’til we’re sure.”

  We crept closer, keeping below the level of the wall of plowed snow that lined the road. Once we were within a few hundred feet, Darla and I slowly raised our heads.

  Inside the shed, four men clustered around a small, bright-yellow machine. They were big guys, heavily muscled and tattooed. They looked like they’d been eating well. Three women sat by the fire. Two of them had their backs to us. They were working on something in their laps. The other woman was hunched over the fire, cooking.

  “What’s that machine they’re working on?” I whispered. “A jet ski?”

  Darla shook her head. “A jet ski? What would they do with that? It’s a snowmobile,” she hissed.

  One of the women stood up. She carried a crude mortar and pestle. She dumped ground meal out of her mortar into a paper bag and scooped something from a feed sack. Behind her, I saw something roasting on a spit over the fire: a leg.

  Chapter 26

  “Is that. .?” I asked.

  “It’s too thin to be a cow’s leg,” Darla whispered. “Too long to be a pig’s.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We need to find a place to spend the night.”

  “Not in this town.”

  Darla started crawling beside the snow berm. I followed on my hands and knees. We didn’t stand up until we’d left the metal building far behind.

  Cascade was wrecked. We moved slowly and silently, sticking to the shadowed area alongside the
road. Burnt, partially collapsed buildings flanked us, leaning in like gravestones in an unkempt cemetery.

  We reached a major intersection. On the far side a mostly collapsed building still sported its bright red CONOCO sign. The area in front of the building, where the gas pumps used to be, was now nothing but a fire-seared crater. A sign clung to a fallen light pole: HIGHWAY 136.

  “Right turn here.” Darla’s voice was so soft I could barely make out her words.

  The building on the corner to our right had burnt, too. Only its brick walls still stood. A half-melted plastic sign read TRI–COUNTY BANK. Below that, someone had spray-painted a crude drawing of a woodpecker similar to the much-larger one on the water tower. I shuddered, and we hurried past the bank’s abandoned shell.

  As we reached the outskirts of Cascade, total darkness fell. Darla and I held hands and stumbled along more by feel than by sight.

  After about twenty minutes, I felt a break in the berm at the road’s edge. I groped around, trying to figure out if we’d come to a crossroads. To my right, there was a steep uphill slope. It was strange-the slope was concrete, not snow or ice. I struggled partway up it, trying to figure out what it was-it was far too steep to be a road. The underside of a girder loomed in the darkness. We were under a highway overpass.

  There was a low, flat shelf at the top of the slope. The girders were at least five feet high-I could stand upright in between them. “Let’s stop here for the night,” I said.