Mike Mullin - Ashfall

I was home alone on that Friday evening. Those who survived know exactly which Friday I mean. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing, in the same way my parents remembered 9/11, but more so. Together we lost the old world, slipping from that cocoon of mechanized comfort into the hellish land we inhabit now. The pre-Friday world of school, cell phones, and refrigerators dissolved into this post-Friday world of ash, darkness, and hunger.

But that Friday was pretty normal at first. I argued with Mom again after school. That was normal, too; we fought constantly. The topics were legion: my poor study habits, my video games, my underwear on the bathroom floor-whatever. I remember a lot of those arguments. That Friday they only fueled my rage. Now they’re little jewels of memory I hoard, hard and sharp under my skin. Now I’d sell my right arm to a cannibal to argue with Mom again.

Our last argument was over Warren, Illinois. My uncle and his family lived there, on a tiny farm near Apple River Canyon State Park. Mom had decided we’d visit their farm that weekend. When she announced this malodorous plan, over dinner on Wednesday, my bratty little sister, Rebecca, almost bounced out of her chair in delight. Dad responded with his usual benign lack of interest, mumbling something like, “Sounds nice, honey.” I said I would not be going, sparking an argument that continued right up until they left without me on that Friday afternoon.

The last thing Mom said to me was, “Alex, why do you have to fight me on absolutely everything?” She looked worn and tired standing beside the minivan door, but then she smiled a little and held out her arms like she wanted a hug. If I’d known I might never get to argue with her again, maybe I would have replied. Maybe I would have hugged her instead of turning away.

Cedar Falls, Iowa, wasn’t much, but it might as well have been New York City compared to Warren. Besides, I had my computer, my bike, and my friends in Cedar Falls. My uncle’s farm just had goats. Stinky goats. The males smell as bad as anything short of a skunk, and I’ll take skunk at a distance over goat up close any day.

So I was happy to wave goodbye to Mom, Dad, and the brat, but a bit surprised I’d won the argument. I’d been home alone before-I was almost sixteen, after all. But a whole weekend, that was new. It was a little disappointing to be left without some kind of warning, an admonition against wild parties and booze. Mom knew my social life too well, I guess. A couple of geeks and a board game I might manage; a great party with hot girls and beer would have been beyond me, sadly.

After I watched my family drive off, I went upstairs. The afternoon sun blazed through my bedroom window, so I yanked the curtains shut. Aside from the bed and dresser, my bedroom held a huge maple bookcase and desk that my dad had built a few years ago. I didn’t have a television, which was another subject Mom and I fought about, but at least I had a good computer. The bookcase was filled with computer games, history books, and sci-fi novels in about equal proportions. Odd reading choices maybe, but I just thought of it as past and future history.

I’d decorated my floor with dirty clothes and my walls with posters, but only one thing in the room really mattered to me. In a wood-and-glass case above my desk, I displayed all my taekwondo belts: a rainbow of ten of them starting with white, yellow, and orange and ending in brown, red, and black. I’d been taking classes off and on since I was five. I didn’t work at it until sixth grade, which I remember as the year of the bully. I’m not sure if it was my growth spurt, which stopped at a depressingly average size, or finally getting serious about martial arts, but nobody hassles me anymore. I suppose by now those belts are burnt or buried in ash-most likely both.

Anyway, I turned on my computer and stared at the cover of my trigonometry textbook while I waited for the computer to boot up. I used to think that teachers who gave homework on weekends should be forced to grade papers for an eternity in hell. Now that I have a sense of what hell might be like, I don’t think grading papers forever would be that bad. As soon as Windows started, I pushed the trig book aside and loaded up World of Warcraft. I figured there’d be enough time to do my homework Sunday night.

None of my friends were online, so I flew my character to the Storm Peaks to work on daily quests and farm some gold. WoW used to hold my interest the way little else could. The daily quests were just challenging enough to keep my mind occupied, despite the fact that I’d done them dozens of times. Even gold farming, by far the most boring activity, brought the satisfaction of earning coin, making my character more powerful, achieving something. Every now and then I had to remind myself that it was all only ones and zeros in a computer in Los Angeles, or I might have gotten truly addicted. I wonder if anyone will ever play World of Warcraft again.

Three hours later and over 1,000 gold richer, I got the first hint that this would not be a normal Friday evening. There was a rumble, almost too low to hear, and the house shook a little. An earthquake, maybe, although we never have earthquakes in Iowa.

The power went out. I stood to open the curtains. I thought there might be enough light to read by, at least for a while.

Then it happened.

I heard a cracking noise, like the sound the hackberry tree in our backyard had made when Dad cut it down last year, but louder: a forest of hackberries, breaking together. The floor tilted, and I fell across the suddenly angled room, arms and legs flailing. I screamed but couldn’t hear myself over the noise: a boom and then a whistling sound-incoming artillery from a war movie, but played in reverse. My back hit the wall on the far side of the room, and the desk slid across the floor toward me. I wrapped myself into a ball, hands over the back of my neck, praying my desk wouldn’t crush me. It rolled, painfully clipped my right shoulder, and came to rest above me, forming a small triangular space between the floor and wall. I heard another crash, and everything shook violently for a second.

I’d seen those stupid movies where the hero gets tossed around like a rag doll and then springs up, unhurt and ready to fight off the bad guys. If I were the star in one of those, I suppose I would have jumped up, thrown the desk aside, and leapt to battle whatever malevolent god had struck my house. I hate to disappoint, but I just lay there, curled in a ball, shaking in pure terror. It was too dark under the desk to see anything beyond my quivering knees. Nor could I hear-the noise of those few violent seconds had left my ears ringing loudly enough to drown out a marching band if one had been passing by. Plaster dust choked the air, and I fought back a sneeze.

I lay in that triangular cave for a minute, maybe longer. My body mostly quit shaking, and the ringing in my ears began to fade. I poked my right shoulder gingerly; it felt swollen, and touching it hurt. I could move the arm a little, so I figured it wasn’t broken. I might have lain there longer checking my injuries, but I smelled something burning.

That whiff of smoke was enough to transform my sit-here-trembling terror into get-the-hell-out-of-here terror. There was enough room under the desk to unball myself, but I couldn’t stretch out. Ahead I felt a few hollow spaces amidst a pile of loose books. I’d landed wedged against my bookcase. I shoved it experimentally with my good arm-it wasn’t going anywhere.

The burning smell intensified. I slapped my left hand against the desk above me and pushed upward. I’d moved that heavy desk around by myself before, no problem. But now, when I really needed to move it, nothing… it wouldn’t shift even a fraction of an inch.