Mike Mullin - Ashfall

Darren was stalking through the living room, a big chrome pistol clutched in front of him in a two-handed grip. Chain lay beside the sofa; blood gushed from his ruined skull and soaked the rug. My nostrils filled with the copper tang of blood blended with a faint fecal stink. I fought back vomit.

Darren got close enough to see Joe, motionless on the floor of the entryway. Darren screamed-an inhuman, animal yowl. Baseball Bat turned and took a step toward the door. He reached for the doorknob. Blam-Blam! Darren shot him in the back of the head. His face exploded. I heard a thunk as part of it hit the door and then a dull thump as Baseball Bat’s body slumped to the floor. A dark stain marred the door, like someone had hurled a blood-filled water balloon against it.

Tire Iron moaned and pushed himself up on one arm. Darren screamed again.

I shouted, “Darren, take it-”

“Yearrrgh!” Darren pushed the pistol against Chain’s temple. Blam-Blam! His head pretty much burst, showering my legs with blood and bits of hair and skull and brain. The scent of blood and shit was overpowering now.

Joe groaned loudly and rolled over. Darren’s gaze twitched from corpse to corpse, rage disfiguring his face.

I ran for the front door.

The door snagged on Baseball Bat’s body, but there was enough space for me to slip through. Behind me I heard Joe call out weakly, “Alex…” I didn’t care. Didn’t care what he had to say. Didn’t care where I was going, either. I had to get away. Had to leave that horrible, gore-splattered foyer. Had to clear the stench of blood from my nostrils-if that was even possible.

Running through the ashfall wasn’t easy. Water and ash scoured my face. With every step, my feet sank into the gooey mess. It was less like running than doing a fast, high-step march. I couldn’t see very far, and I wasn’t really looking around, but the street seemed deserted. There were no moving vehicles, only half-buried parked cars. No sign of any people. No noise except the thunder. Very little light other than the occasional flash of lightning.

I made it only two blocks before I got too winded to keep going. I’d lost my shoes somewhere, sucked off by the wet-concrete-like ash. I rested my hands on my knees and stood there a minute, panting. The image of Tire Iron’s head exploding invaded my brain. I vomited. The steaks tasted a whole lot worse coming up than they had going down.

I didn’t know if it was running or spewing, but something got me thinking straight again. I needed water, food, and some kind of protection from the ash. Shoes, too. Running around like a madman would get me killed in a hurry. But I couldn’t go back to Darren’s house. I doubted I could ever look at him again without seeing that rage-contorted face. And just thinking about returning to his gore-drenched foyer-no way.

But I had to go somewhere. I dragged myself slowly back down the road toward my house. The ash had permeated my socks and was abrading my skin. Every step hurt the sides of my feet where my skin was soft and thin. The ash caked the inside of my mouth and got into my eyes, making them water and causing me to blink constantly.

The front of my house had collapsed further under the weight of the ash. My room and my sister’s were pretty much pancaked. The gutters had ripped off the house, but we had modern aluminum gutters, unlike Darren’s, so it hadn’t done much damage. The back part of the house looked okay. I found a window the firefighters had left open and climbed in.

The inside wasn’t too bad. A lot of ash had blown in through the open windows, but so long as I didn’t walk in it and stir it up, it didn’t bother me. I checked the faucet in the kitchen sink. It sighed when I opened it, air rushing into empty pipes. No water. I got a warm Coke out of the fridge and used the first swig to rinse my mouth. That got me coughing. When I pulled my arm away from my mouth it was spotted with bloody flecks. That scared me; coughing up blood couldn’t be good. But what could I do about it? I finished off the Coke, slugged down another, and devoured two apples.

I needed to pee. The downstairs bathroom and the one my sister and I shared were in the wrecked part of the house, so I went up the back staircase to the master bath. As I was getting ready to do my business, I thought of something. Grody though it was, I might need the toilet water. The water in the tank would be clean, right? And one of my friends had this cat, George, that always drank from the toilet-it hadn’t killed him. I went downstairs and peed out an open window into the ash.

Back upstairs in my parents’ bedroom, I stripped off the now repulsive clothing Joe had lent me and threw it in the trash. Ash clung to the inside of my underwear. My clothes were all burned or buried at the front of the house, but Dad’s stuff fit me okay. Way too loose in the waist, but otherwise not bad. It was getting cold, which worried me. I thought for a moment and figured out it was the last day of August. The volcano must be messing with the weather somehow. How cold would it get? I had no way to answer that question, so I ignored it for the moment. I put on one of Dad’s long-sleeved shirts over a T-shirt.

I slept in my parents’ bed that night, fully clothed. Under the oppressive smell of sulfur, I caught a hint of my mom-a faint whiff of the Light Blue perfume we bought her every year for Mother’s Day.

Lately I’d been so consumed with fighting with Mom that it never occurred to me what my life might be like without her. Without Dad’s benevolent disinterest. Without the brat, my sister. Who would I be, if they were all gone?

I clenched my eyes shut and refused to cry. Would I see them again? Yes, I decided. If they were alive, I would find my family. There was no way they could come home to get me. Nothing short of a bulldozer would be able to move in all that ash. And if the gang that had invaded Joe and Darren’s house was any indication, Cedar Falls would only get more dangerous. Tomorrow, I’d set out for Warren to find my family. The journey might be impossible, but I had to try. I had to find my mother. With that resolution, I drifted off to sleep.

I slept badly. Sweat-soaked nightmares featuring Tire Iron woke me a few times. Baseball Bat invaded my dreams, too. Morning announced itself with a shift in the darkness, from pitch black to merely dark and gloomy. I rolled over and went back to sleep, the first solid sleep I’d had in days.

A coughing fit woke me for good. No blood this time, thank God. I needed water, so I got up and found a cup in the bathroom. I took the lid off the toilet tank and scooped out some water. It smelled okay. I sipped it. It tasted fine, sweet even. I drank that cup and dipped myself another.

I brushed my teeth with my dad’s toothbrush and rinsed my mouth with a tiny sip of water. My freshly brushed teeth felt heavenly. Maybe it was the normalcy of getting up and brushing my teeth, or maybe it was just having one part of my body clean, but I felt much better.

Breakfast was wilted lettuce and two more apples.

After breakfast, I searched for supplies. If I planned to honor the promise I’d made the night before, to find my family, then I needed to get prepared.

My backpack was buried in my room with everything else. But I needed a way to carry supplies, so I dug through my dad’s closet. Way in the back, I found an old knapsack from back when he used to hike and ski. I wished it were bigger, but it would have to do.

I got one extra change of clothes out of my dad’s closet, but I couldn’t afford the space in the backpack for any more clothing than that. I did take two T-shirts though-I might need the cloth to make breathing masks. I also snagged a pair of Dad’s work boots. They fit okay if I wore two pairs of socks.