Mike Mullin - Ashfall

Darla sat on the edge of the couch and rubbed her feet.

“You okay?” I asked.

“It’s just my feet-the ski boots are too tight.”

“I’ll help if you want.”

“Sure.” She stretched out her feet toward me.

I sat on the floor and massaged her feet. They were crosshatched with red welts. They didn’t smell bad at all, which surprised me-my feet probably stank.

“Oh,” Darla sighed, “that feels so good.” She pulled her feet away from my lap, climbed under the blankets, and stretched out on her side with her face toward the fire. I sat on the edge of the couch beside her and pulled my boots off.

Suddenly I felt funny about getting undressed. It made no sense-I’d been completely naked in front of Darla repeatedly over the last few weeks. I sent strict orders to my body to chill out. Concentrating on my breathing helped. Two quick breaths in through the nose, two quick breaths out through the mouth, just like I’d use during a sparring match. I peeled off my jeans and overshirt and crawled under the blankets with her.

I spooned against her, my back against her stomach. Well, honestly, what I noticed were her breasts against my back. They formed two puddles of warmth beneath my shoulder blades, although maybe my overactive imagination was at work. I didn’t think I was pressed that tightly against her.

I probably smelled rank in my sweaty underclothes. I had probably smelled rank for days, but it hadn’t bothered me until then.

“Goodnight,” Darla said.

“Goodnight.”

My knees and arms hung over the edge of the couch. The room was bright-we’d built the fire up before we turned in. I stared into the flames for a while.

“You awake?” I asked, my voice pitched low.

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

“What?”

“Obviously, you can ask me something. You just did. You asked if you could ask me something.”

“Do you know you’re annoying?” I punctuated this comment by elbowing her in the side.

“Yeah, sorry. What did you want to ask me?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really, what was it?”

I sighed. “It was… I was wondering. Why’d you follow me out of Worthington?”

“I dunno.”

“No, I’m serious. You would have been safer there. They’re organized. They’ve got water and food. The people there know you and like you. But I’m… with me, your chances aren’t so good. I’ve almost died three or four times already. We’ve got food for what? Four or five more days, maybe? Maybe we can make it to Warren by then, but I don’t know what’s waiting for us, if anything. I mean, I hope my parents are there with my uncle and his family, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything, really.”

She was silent.

“I mean, I’m glad you did follow me,” I said. “I’d have been dead in that river without you. But I’m not sure it was so smart.”

“I’m not exactly sure why myself.” Her voice was so soft that the whisper of the flames in the fireplace threatened to drown it. “I.. . look, it’s not logical, but I feel safe with you. I should be freaked out by the dead guy in the room behind us, but I’m not. I know I’d be safer in Worthington, but I didn’t feel that way when I woke up that morning and you weren’t there.”

I reached back, caught her left hand in mine, dragged it to my chest, and held it there.

“I guess I never bothered to ask whether you wanted me with you,” Darla continued. “Maybe you could make better time without me. And I know I was a real drag to have around-”

“Want you? Of course I do, Darla. I’d be dead twice over now except for you. And you’re an amazing girl. I’ve never met anyone who works as hard as you do. Or knows as much about machines. When I first saw you in your barn, I thought you were an angel. If I didn’t know you were already in love with Jack, I might seriously let myself-”

“Roll over.”

I did. Darla’s lips were on mine before I’d completely turned over. We kissed. I felt like I was falling, plunging headlong down a warm, moist tunnel.

My eyes were closed. My right arm was wrapped around her shoulder; my hand gently cupped the back of her head, as if it were some wondrous glass sculpture, fragile in my palm.

Darla started crying.

No, that’s wrong. She wasn’t crying; she was sobbing, in full-throated wails. I pulled away, shocked. What had I done wrong?

Darla wrapped her arms around me, pulling my body back to hers as she cried. She held on as if she were trying to crush my body in her arms. I returned her embrace a little weakly-I was having trouble breathing.

When she’d finally run out of tears, her arms relaxed, and I sucked in a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That kiss. It was… how can we feel so good when so many people are dying? I started thinking about Mom, Dad

…”

She was quiet. I held her tighter.

We lay like that for a long time, but eventually it got uncomfortable. Our knees knocked together. Darla rolled over again, and I snuggled against her back.

Her breathing calmed as she drifted to sleep. I watched the firelight play with her hair, watched it until the fire had burned so low that I couldn’t see her anymore. Then, at last, I slept too.

After breakfast the next morning, we thoroughly searched the house. We both thought there must be more bullets somewhere-what use is a gun with only one bullet, anyway? But we couldn’t find any.

We did find clothing: hats, gloves, scarves, heavy flannel shirts, and even an insulated pair of overalls. By mixing and matching the new stuff with what we already had, we managed to put together two decent sets of winter gear.

There was no food at all in the house. The refrigerator stood open and empty except for a box of baking soda. We found two candles in the kitchen, fat pillars of the sort that would be annoying to carry in our pack. Darla borrowed my knife and gave them impromptu liposuction, whittling the excess wax off the sides.

I found a ball of string in one of the kitchen drawers, but Darla said it wasn’t heavy enough. She wanted something tougher to fix my ski poles, so we explored the barn.

A snowdrift had covered the long side of the barn, reaching upward almost to the eaves, which made it something like fifteen feet deep. We skied around, looking for a way in.

There were no doors on the right side or back of the barn. When we got to the left side, we found a big square hatch set on the inside of the jamb so it would open inward. Darla said it was for unloading manure, but I didn’t know how she could tell. There was no sign or smell of manure there.

I tried the hatch; it was locked. But it had a little wiggle to it on the right side, like it was loose. I took off my skis and kicked the door with a simple front kick. I got my hips behind the kick, thrusting forward for extra power, like I would for a board break in taekwondo. The door rattled, but the latch didn’t break. I tried again. On the third try it finally gave, and the door flew open with a bang.

I stepped into the barn. The door had been secured from the inside with a simple hook and eye. My kick had ripped the hook out of the doorframe.

“Damn,” Darla said appreciatively, looking at the splintered spot in the wood.

I shrugged. We broke boards all the time at the dojang. It was no big deal.

In the barn’s loft, we found fifty or sixty bales of hay-the small, rectangular kind.

“Perfect,” Darla declared.

“We need hay?”

“No, silly, the baling twine-I can make ski pole baskets with that.”

So I cut twine off the hay bales while Darla searched for some wood. We carried everything back to the living room and built up the fire.