Ashfall

I let her go, and she shot off into the gloom, both hands clutched around the crackers. The top of my pack was open under the cot, stuff falling out. I put it back together and set it on the cot next to me.

I lay awake for several hours with one arm thrown over my pack, hugging it and thinking. Would anyone survive if food was already so scarce that kids were going hungry? Then I thought about what might have happened if I’d tightened my arm a bit more around her throat, and I felt sick. Mostly, I thought about a little girl who had learned to steal just to get something to eat.

Chapter 11

When I awoke the next morning, about half the refugees in the gym were already up. They tried to move quietly and talked in whispers out of consideration for the sleepers. But more than a hundred people trying to be quiet made a heck of a lot of noise.

I sat up on the edge of the cot and groaned when my feet touched the floor. All that skiing yesterday had done nothing good for the muscles in my calves and thighs. So I staggered off the cot and forced myself through some martial arts stretches in my boxers. After I’d gotten my legs loosened up, I spent some time stretching my right arm and shoulder. It was feeling a lot better, although it still hurt to push my arm above my head.

By the time I finished stretching, I felt okay, so I started doing telephone-booth forms. An ordinary form is a series of kicks, punches, and stances that requires a pretty big space to perform. So to practice in a smaller area, I had to modify the moves. If the form called for a step forward, front kick, step forward, knife-hand strike, I’d step backward for the second move instead, covering and recovering the same small patch of ground.

People nearby were looking at me fu

The next order of business: a toilet. I knew where the closest boys’ restroom was, but when I got there, partway down a pitch-black hallway, it was locked. I returned to the gym and asked the first guy I saw where we were supposed to pee. He pointed me toward the home locker room.

There was another camp lantern hanging in the locker room, turned about as low as possible while still giving off light. The urinals and stalls were blocked with yellow out-of-order tape. Somebody had dragged two Porta-Potties into the shower room, right in the middle near the floor drain. There were two lines, each four or five people deep, both men and women waiting for the facilities.

I got in line to wait my turn behind a young girl. I wondered if she was the same one who’d raided my pack last night. If she was, should I apologize or scold her for trying to steal from me? There were no marks on her neck, so I decided she must not have been the same girl.

The Porta-Potty reeked: a truly foul mix of feces, urine, and sulfur. I assumed they’d run out of that blue stuff they put at the bottom to keep it smelling decent. I took one breath while I was inside. I’d have skipped even that, but the idea of passing out in the Porta-Potty was even more disgusting than the smell.

While standing in the Porta-Potty, food was the last thing on my mind. But the moment I got out of the locker room, my hunger returned, gnawing at my gut. So I made my way down one of the dark hallways leading away from the gym. I navigated by feel, ru

About halfway down the hall, I stopped at a door, which, if memory served, should have led to a classroom. The door was unlocked, so I opened it and stepped carefully inside. It was as dark in there as it had been in the hall. I sidestepped a couple feet, slid off my pack, and sat with my back to the wall.

I groped around in my pack and found a brick of cheese and two water bottles. I ate all the cheese and drank both bottles of water. What kind of guy eats his private stash of food when he knows there are hundreds of hungry people nearby? A guy like me, I guessed. Yeah, I felt bad about it. But I didn’t think my meager stash would have made much of a difference to all the people in that gym. And I knew I’d need the food to get to Warren. I’d probably need more than I had. I reloaded my pack and ran my hands over the floor to make sure nothing had fallen out.

Back in the gym I asked a kid where to get water. He pointed me toward the visitors’ locker room. There was another lantern hanging in there and two guys sitting on folding chairs. I asked them about water, and they led me to the showers. One of the showerheads had been replaced with a hose. I gave them my empty water bottles, and they refilled all of them from the hose, working carefully, spilling nothing.

I was a little surprised to see that the plumbing worked. But I figured it was like Mr. Kloptsky had told me yesterday—the school had its own water tank. It must have been high enough to feed the locker room by gravity. I hoped they had enough water to last until they got some help.

When I got back to the gymnasium, the lantern had been fully turned up and almost everyone was awake. I checked my skiing gear—it was still safely tucked under the blanket on my cot. I wandered around the gym for a bit, looking for anyone I knew.

I found Spork. Ian, really, but we called him Spork in honor of the utensil his dad had packed with his lunches in junior high. His mom was in the military. It seemed like every other year she was off in some Middle Eastern country. Afghanistan right now, I thought.

“Yo, Spork,” I called.

“Yo, Mighty Mite,” he replied, walking over to me. I hated that nickname. I mean, come on, I’m not that small. Sort of average-sized. Although I guess Mighty Mite beat Spork.

“So, is this messed up or what?”

“No, this is FUBAR. In the classic military definition. Effed up beyond—”

“Yeah, I know—all recognition.”

“Recall, or remote possibility of rescue. So what you doing here? I think I’m on roof clearing duty today—want to see if we can get assigned to work together, man?”

“Roof clearing?”

“Yeah, Kloptsky thinks the roof’ll collapse if we don’t shovel it off.”

“Huh. Bet he’s right. The Pita Pit’s flattened. Lots of houses on the way here were, too.”

A girl I knew walked up while I was talking. Laura. A lot of kids called her Ingalls because of her name and the old-fashioned long skirts she always wore. I didn’t because, well, she was cute. Even here she wore a long denim skirt streaked with ash.

“Yo, Ingalls,” Spork said. “What duty did you pull? I’m on roof clearing.”

She scowled at Spork and glanced my way. “Hey, Alex. Good to see you made it here okay.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Good to see you’re okay, too. You stuck shoveling roofs or something?”

“No, I’m getting out of here. My whole church is leaving today. You want to come?”

“Sure.” I figured I’d see which way they were going. Maybe they’d head east, and I could tag along and get closer to Warren.

“So what’re you doing, Ingalls? Driving the church bus out of here?” Spork smirked at her. We both knew there was no way anything short of a bulldozer could drive through all the wet, slippery ash. I was also a little puzzled about how her church pla

“No,” she said. “Come on, Alex.”

“I gotta get my stuff. I’ll meet you at the door, okay?” I trotted to my cot and grabbed my gear. I put on the ski boots, tied the hiking boots to my pack, and carried everything else.