Mike Mullin - Ashfall

What brought me crashing back to reality was the food situation. I ate my last rations for lunch, a cold can of Van Camp’s Pork and Beans. Thanks to all the extra bottles Elroy had given me, I had enough water for another day, maybe two if I was careful.

Late in the afternoon, I came to an intersection: U.S. 20 and Highway 13, the sign read. There was a gas station near the corner-I recognized the sign. When my sister was little, we used to stop here every time we went to Warren. She had to pee thirty minutes into any trip, like clockwork. That thought was depressing: It had taken me six days to travel only about a quarter of the distance to Warren. On the other hand, I was glad to find U.S. 20; at least I now knew exactly where I was.

The freestanding metal roof had fallen and twisted, taking out two of the pumps. It lay there like the wing of a crashed airplane. I smelled gas as I slid past the pumps.

The station itself had collapsed. The cinderblock wall at the rear still stood, but the rest of the station was a tangled ruin of steel girders, glass, and blue plastic. I hunted through the front of the store, looking for something to eat, but there was too much ash and wreckage in the way.

I walked around to the back. Where the cinderblock wall stood, it had created a triangular space by holding up one end of the steel roof beams. I crawled inside, but there wasn’t enough light to see anything, so I backed out to get a candle and matches from my pack.

I wasted half a candle and at least an hour crawling through the wreckage. My haul was four Starbursts and a handful of Skittles. The candy was shockingly bright against the gray ash. It was a pitifully small amount of food-not even a full meal. It seemed to me that there should be more food-after all, gas station convenience stores were full of stuff to eat. Maybe it had already been looted before it collapsed.

I rubbed the Skittles clean on the inside of my shirt and ate them and the Starbursts. Mom would have told me not to spoil my dinner with candy. I wished I had a dinner to spoil. Or a mom to tell me.

What little light there was had begun to fail. I pulled my pack into the gas station next to the cinderblock wall and curled up in the wreckage to sleep.

In the morning, I woke to the sound of breaking glass.

I crawled to the edge of my hidey-hole and peeked out. Someone was rummaging through the front part of the gas station, picking up chunks of debris and tossing them aside. I slunk backward into the wreckage and packed up quickly, wincing every time I made a sound.

When I emerged from the hole, I crouched behind a twisted metal roof panel, hoping to watch for a while without being seen. A man and a woman were going through the rubble at the front of the store, sifting ash and moving bits of the wreckage. Behind them two kids, one maybe four or five, the other a bit older, sat on a warped piece of plywood. A rope was tied to the upturned edge of the board, turning it into an improvised sled. A pair of duffel bags rested on the board beside the kids.

I tried to clip into my skis and get ready to move without exposing myself. But it was almost impossible to put skis on while crouching.

“Hello?” the guy called. “Someone there?”

I stood up. “Hi.”

The guy looked at me. Then I saw his eyes scan right and left. “You alone?”

“Yeah.” I said, although the question made me wonder why he wanted to know. The woman kept poking through the rubble, ignoring us.

“You find any food here?”

“Only a handful of candy.”

“You got any food?”

“No.”

“You don’t look hungry,” he said, starting to slog through the ash toward me.

My heart drooped in my chest. I was hungry, tired, and sore from all the skiing. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation with this guy. I sidestepped on my skis, making sure I had a clear path to push forward or back. I stared at the guy, but said nothing.

“My family and I, we were on our way to Nebraska when it hit. We only had some snacks with us. We’ve had barely any food for a week.”

“That’s rough.” I tried to sound sympathetic, but I kept my eyes wide and took a stronger grip on my staff. He was coming on strong, moving toward me as fast as the ash and wreckage would allow.

“That’s a full backpack you’re wearing. There’s food in there. I can smell it.”

“I don’t have any food.”

“Leave him alone, Darryl. He’s only a kid!” the woman yelled.

I wished people would quit calling me a kid, although if it convinced Darryl to back off, I’d take it.

“Shut up, Mabel. We need food.”

I thought about trying to run. I wasn’t sure I could get my skis turned and get moving fast enough to get away. Then I considered the mechanics of fighting on skis while holding a staff and ski pole. Not good. I jammed the ski pole upward through my belt and hoped it would stay put.

Darryl was getting close-too close. I took the staff in a two-handed grip, like a six-foot baseball bat, and started whirling it over my head. Master Parker would have scolded me if she’d seen my form-you’re supposed to step into each swing, so your body spins with the staff-but I’d like to see her do it right while wearing skis.

Darryl was either dumb, desperate, or both. He kept coming. The end of the staff was probably going a hundred miles an hour. If I hit him with it square, he wouldn’t get up-ever. One of the kids on the makeshift sled started crying.

I swung the staff into the piece of corrugated roofing I’d been hiding behind. Smack! The metal made an echoey, booming sound, like reverb on an electric guitar.

Darryl stopped.

“I don’t have any food,” I bellowed. “Leave me alone!”

“Darryl T. Jenkins, get your butt back here right this instant and help me search,” Mabel screeched.

I slid slowly backward on the skis and whirled the staff over my head again.

Darryl glared at me, a hateful stare. Then he slowly turned toward Mabel. I spun and pushed off, skiing as fast as I could to put some distance between us. When I looked back at the family, Darryl and Mabel were bickering as they searched the rubble. Both kids were crying.

I followed U.S. 20 east. Last night I hadn’t noticed any sign of other people along the road. Today, I saw several sets of tracks: prints from boots, tennis shoes, and signs of stuff being dragged, like the improvised sled Darryl had. All of them were headed east.

I couldn’t tell if there were more people on the road, or if the reduced ashfall was just covering their tracks more slowly. I hadn’t seen many houses along the backcountry roads, but there were none at all on U.S. 20. Clearly the prints weren’t being left by locals.

I hadn’t been skiing long when I topped a rise and saw a knot of five people ahead of me going east. They moved painfully slowly, pulling their feet out of the ash with effort, earning each step. Two of them dragged suitcases.

I thought about Darryl and decided I didn’t want to meet five adults who might share his attitude toward the contents of my pack. I skied about twenty feet back the way I’d come, enough to put the ridgeline between me and the group ahead. Then I turned off the road and took to the countryside, heading roughly southeast.

I worried a little about leaving Highway 20. My family always took 20 to get to Warren; I didn’t know any other route. I wished I had a map, but I hadn’t been able to find any in the wrecked filling station. Perhaps I could head east on some other road and then cut back to 20 when I got closer to Illinois. The day was dim, but brighter than any since the volcano’s eruption. Very little ash fell and no rain at all.