Mike Mullin - Ashfall

We went up five or six flights and stopped at a hatch set into the ceiling. Laura pushed the hatch open, and the three of us emerged onto an open area under the roof of the bell tower.

It was maybe sixteen feet on a side, but it felt small and crowded. At least twenty people were jammed together up there. All four walls of the bell tower were open to the elements; we were protected from a long fall by only a low brick railing. Ash swirled over the railings, forming drifts inside.

A guy in a minister’s robe was preaching; everyone else faced him, listening. Laura slid through the crowd to someone I took to be her mom.

“Yo, Mrs. Wilder,” Spork said.

“Our last name is Johnston, you idiot,” Laura whispered.

“Be quiet and listen to Reverend Rowan,” Mrs. Johnston whispered sternly.

So I did. He had a powerful head of preaching going: gesturing and sweating and shouting. He was saying something about a fourth seal when I started paying attention. “Behold! A pale horse. Pale because he’s coated in this ash, my brothers and sisters. And his name that sat upon the horse was Death, and Hell followed with him. This,” the reverend made a sweeping gesture, “is a foretaste of Hell; this is the ash that precedes the flood of fire and brimstone. A fourth of the earth shall be given over to famine and pestilence. This fourth, our fourth, where we lived. For this ash is the pestilence that will bring famine. If you are not summoned, if Jesus does not call you to His home, you will surely die. Our Lord told us this was coming. In the book of Matthew, He said, ‘The sun shall be darkened and the moon will not give its light. Therefore you must also be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’ Pray with me now, pray with me, brothers and sisters, for Jesus to carry us up to sit at His right hand.”

“So this is how you’re leaving?” I asked Laura.

“Yes, Jesus is going to carry us to his home,” Mrs. Johnston responded.

“So, if you’re going to get carried up to heaven, can I have your stuff?” Spork said. He reached for Mrs. Johnston’s purse and flipped up the flap. “Got anything good?”

My face got hot. Although I sort of saw Spork’s point: If they were being summoned to heaven, they wouldn’t need purses or their contents.

“Get out of there, you miserable child.” Mrs. Johnston pulled on her purse strap, yanking it away from him and spilling junk on the ashy floor. A cell phone, a make-up case-and two Snickers bars. Spork pounced on the Snickers.

A couple people nearby were eyeing Spork angrily. The preacher shouted, “Peace, brothers and sisters, let us pray.”

Mrs. Johnston swung her purse at Spork, but he was too quick. Clutching the candy bars, he sprinted down the stairs as one of the parishioners tried to grab him. I followed Spork.

We leaped down the stairs two or three at a time for the first two flights. I almost fell and had to grab the handrail and stop for a second. I couldn’t hear anyone following us. They’d probably decided Jesus was more likely to take them to his home if they forgave the juvenile delinquents in their midst. I yelled at Spork, getting him to stop, and we walked down the rest of the staircase together.

“That was nuts.” I tried to put some disapproval into my voice. I thought the parishioners in the bell tower were wrong, but that didn’t excuse stealing from them. I think God helps those who help themselves. Yeah, I know it’s not in the Bible, but it still makes sense. If the folks at Redeemer Baptist were going to be carried to heaven, God could have found them fine while they scavenged food and worked to survive. At least that was what I figured.

“Maybe it was nuts, but I got two candy bars out of it. You want one?”

“Sure.” I was so hungry that I certainly wasn’t above eating stolen food. I chewed my Snickers slowly, trying to make it last.

“Those skis work pretty slick. Where are you trying to go on them anyway?”

“East. Warren, Illinois. That’s where my folks are, I think.”

“I hope you make it, Mighty Mite.”

“Yeah, me too. What’re you going to do?”

“My dad and I are staying at the high school. We’ll be okay there, maybe.”

“Good luck.” I reached out to shake his hand.

He surprised me by pulling me into a hug. “You too, Alex. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”

Skiing away from Spork was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But I needed to head east-I wouldn’t find my family in Cedar Falls. A sense of dread and loneliness settled over me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d never see Spork, Laura, Darren and Joe, or anyone else from Cedar Falls again.

I followed Main Street north to the First Street bridge. Most of the old downtown buildings along Main had collapsed. Their thick masonry walls still stood, but the roofs had fallen and the windows were shattered.

There was a semi twisted across the First Street bridge, blocking it, so I continued north on Main across Cedar River into Waterloo. I turned right, east, on Lincoln, figuring I’d skirt between Waterloo and the airport. I needed to get to Highway 20, but I also wanted to get out of town as fast as possible. If I went straight to 20, I’d have to pass through most of Waterloo. Maybe the people there would be fine, organizing and helping each other survive. Or maybe there’d be more looters. My palms got sweaty at the thought of meeting more people like Tire Iron and Baseball Bat. I didn’t see any reason to risk it.

I passed under Highway 27. Enough ash had blown under the bridge that I didn’t have to take off my skis-I was able to keep sliding along. A little farther on, Lincoln became West Airport Highway. There were lots of commercial and industrial buildings along the road there, mostly newish metal buildings with flat roofs. Every one of them had been crushed by the ash.

The road was deserted. I knew the airport was somewhere north of me, but I couldn’t see it. On a normal day, I might hear a plane passing overhead or taxiing on the runway. That day, there was no sign of activity. The only noise was occasional thunder.

After a couple hours, the commercial buildings petered out, so I knew I was in the boonies. The corn was also a big clue. Cedar Falls and Waterloo form an island amid a sea of corn. In early September, it stands higher than my head. Now, though, the ash had flattened it. The only way I could tell I was passing a cornfield was the few hardy stalks still standing upright, coated in gray ash, leaves broken under the weight. Every now and then a metal seed sign protruded a foot or so above the ash bed. I passed an occasional field completely covered in ash, an unremittingly flat, gray expanse. Soybeans, maybe.

I might have been skiing on the surface of the moon for all the activity there was. I passed four or five farmhouses but saw nothing moving. Everything I normally saw in the Iowa countryside was missing: There were no people, no cars, no cows-not even a solitary turkey vulture circling in the sky.

The weird, rainless thunder and lightning continued. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so every time a series of lightning bolts lit up the landscape, it hurt. The thunder seemed strangely muted. Maybe the falling ash muffled it somehow, or maybe my ears hadn’t fully recovered from the first enormous explosions.

Despite the ash, the road was easy to follow. It was raised, with deep ditches on each side. I skied along the crown of the road, where the centerline was buried under its blanket of ash.

I’d been skiing for four or five hours when I saw a thin line of trees looming in the dark about thirty feet ahead. They’d been beaten down by the ash. Most of the leaves were gone, and there were scars on the trunks where entire branches had ripped away. What was left was coated with gray-white ash. A small creek, only three or four feet wide, coursed along the line of trees. It had cut a channel through the ash, forming little cliffs almost two feet high on either side of the creek bed.