Ashfall

I headed northwest, toward my taekwondo dojang, Cedar Falls Taekwondo Academy. It was out of my way—I needed to go east to get to Warren. But I never brought my training weapons home; they stayed at the school. After what had happened at Darren’s house, I’d have felt a lot safer with something more than a short knife at my side. I pla

The roads were a chaos of crashed and abandoned cars. All of them had a foot or more of ash blanketing their roofs and hoods. In some places, so many cars were jammed across the road that I had trouble finding a path among them. Everyone must have gone crazy trying to escape Cedar Falls while I was holed up with Joe and Darren. It didn’t look like anyone had made it very far.

In other places, there were no cars at all. I didn’t see anything moving. Of course, I couldn’t see very far in the gloom and falling ash. The houses along the road were visible only briefly now and then during lightning flashes. Once, I thought I saw movement on a porch but couldn’t be sure.

The skiing was tough. I’d only gone a couple of blocks when my legs started to burn. Sliding the skis forward was easier than pulling my feet out of the goop, but it used a different set of muscles than walking or taekwondo.

My right shoulder wasn’t happy, either. It had gotten steadily better during the rest at Darren and Joe’s house, but the repetitive planting and pushing of my ski pole was aggravating the injury. I tried to do all my pushing with my left arm and rest the right, at least for now.

I paused, leaning against the trunk of a car that had wrapped its front end around a telephone pole. The car’s back windows were intact and opaque, caked with ash. I got a bottle of water out of the side pocket of my pack and sipped about half of it.

When I started out again, I saw the front of the car. The windshield and driver’s window had broken with the force of the crash. A guy (or girl, it was impossible to tell) sat in there, head leaning lifelessly against the steering wheel. Ash had blown into the car, mummifying him. I turned away quickly, feeling a little ill, even though really there was nothing particularly scary about the corpse. I couldn’t smell anything but sulfur or see any blood. Compared to the scene in Darren’s foyer, the car wreck was downright peaceful. But after that, I avoided looking into the wrecked cars.

When I reached the newer section of town, I found a particularly bad stretch of crashed cars. It forced me to take to the yards, skiing beside the houses. They were ranch-style homes here: one-story houses with low-sloping roofs. At least every other roof had collapsed. On one house, the collapsing roof had taken the walls with it. Nothing was left but part of the back wall and a lonely chimney.

I wasn’t making very good time. I used to ride my bike to taekwondo; it took less than fifteen minutes if I rode hard. I don’t know exactly how long it took me, skiing through the ash. Two hours, minimum. The slow pace was disheartening. At this rate, how long would it take me to get to Warren? Could I make it before my food ran out and I starved to death?

Across from the dojang was a restaurant I ate at sometimes, The Pita Pit. The skiing had left me hungry enough to eat two gyro specials and chase them with a two-liter Coke. I would have, too, if The Pita Pit had been more than a freestanding sign with a completely collapsed building behind it.

Amazingly, the strip mall that held the Cedar Falls Taekwondo Academy still stood. A pickup truck had rammed the front of the school, breaking most of the plate-glass windows. It had stopped with the cab inside the building and the bed on the sidewalk.

I unsnapped my boots from the skis. The mechanism had fouled with ash, and it took some work to scrape it clear. I walked through the window alongside the truck, carrying my skis in one hand and poles in the other. I tried to walk quietly, listening and looking around—it occurred to me that the occupants of the truck might still be there.

I didn’t see or hear anything. The truck was empty. I leaned my skis and poles against the front bumper and looked around.

The school was one big practice area with a padded floor plus an office and restrooms off to the side. I could see the front part of the school okay. The back and the office were shrouded in darkness.

I dug a candle out of my pack and lit it. Exploring by candlelight, I found that the place had been looted. The office was a shambles. Master Parker’s sword collection was gone. Someone had pulled the drawers out of the desks and file cabinets and dumped the contents, searching for God knows what. All the water bottles were missing from the mini-fridge.

I walked to the rear of the training room. That had been ransacked as well. Every one of the school’s edged weapons was gone, and the other stuff was scattered all over, as if someone had gone though it in a hurry, throwing aside everything they hadn’t wanted. I’d had a bag with my personal weapons on a rack at the back of the room. The rack was overturned, my bag gone.

I kicked the rack, feeling suddenly furious. What was it with Cedar Falls? People here had always been nice enough. But somehow the volcano had turned them into looters. Was everyone crazy now? We should have been sticking together and helping each other, not wrecking stuff.

I picked through the detritus on the practice floor. Most of it was junk that I hurled aside. Wooden practice swords. Soft foam bahng mahng ees, or short sticks. A set of padded ssahng jeol bongs, or nunchucks. Great to practice with, useless in a real fight. In the candlelight, I saw a dark gleam from the corner of the room and went to check it out. A long hardwood pole nestled against the edge of the mat. Master Parker’s personal jahng bong, or bö staff. I wondered if she’d mind if I borrowed it. Under normal circumstances, yes, she would mind. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even ask.

It was a beautiful weapon. Six feet long, an inch and a quarter thick at the middle, and tapered to one inch at each end. Stained a deep chocolate color. The varnish was worn at the middle of the staff from hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours of practice. I carried it to the pickup truck where I’d left my skis and poles

I blew out the candle and sat on the front bumper to eat. I decided to have a can of pineapple for lunch on the theory that I’d get rid of some of the heavy stuff in my pack. I was still hungry when I finished but knew I needed to conserve food. I sucked down all the juice then tossed the empty can through the broken plate-glass window into the ash. With the ash and shards of plate glass everywhere, littering just didn’t seem to matter.

Three of my water bottles were empty now, so I relit the candle and went to check the restrooms. The toilet tank in the girls’ room was full. The water smelled fine and tasted okay, so I drank as much as I could and refilled my water bottles.

Judging time was tricky in the dim light. I thought about sacking out in the dojang. I was sore and hungry but not sleepy. I knocked as much of the ash off my makeshift banda

The bö staff was a problem. I couldn’t figure out any way to attach it to my pack, yet still keep it easy to grab in a hurry. Finally, I decided to leave one of my ski poles behind and use the staff instead. Planting the end into the ash over and over wasn’t going to do it any good, but I had little choice.

I pushed my skis east along First Street. Four blocks later, I turned south onto Division Street, which would take me past Cedar Falls High. I wanted to see if any of my friends were there. It didn’t seem likely—the building would probably be deserted. Surely school was canceled on account of the volcano.