Ashfall

* * *

By that afternoon, the hopeful feeling had left me. The road, which had been heading steadily east, began twisting unpredictably. Sometime after lunch, I completely lost track of which way we were going. Darla thought we were still heading east, but she also said we should have hit the Mississippi by then. We had only passed two farms, but both were obviously occupied, so we hadn’t found any food.

A bit before dark, Darla spotted a low structure near the road. She skied around it and found an open doorway at the far side.

It was too low to stand up inside the building. The ceiling was about three feet high at one side of the shed and five feet or so at the other. We had plenty of room though: the building was seven or eight feet wide and at least thirty feet long. It reeked of pig crap.

“Sleeping in a pigsty. That’s a new low,” I said.

“It’s a pig barn, not a sty. Pigsties are outdoor corrals. Anyway, it beats sleeping in the snow.”

“I guess. Where are the pigs?”

“I du

We ate our last two pancakes. Darla fed Jack from our dwindling supply of cornmeal.

We laid out our bedding in the cleanest-looking corner. I was hoping to fool around some more, but Darla just gave me a quick kiss and rolled over. Maybe she was tired, or maybe eau de pig crap didn’t turn her on. Couldn’t say I blamed her—much.

* * *

Only Jack got breakfast the next morning. I thought about suggesting we cook the last bit of cornmeal instead of saving it for the rabbit, but that would’ve made only one pancake.

The road ended in a T not far from where we’d spent the night. I wasn’t sure which way to turn. I asked Darla, but she was as lost as I was. Her mechanical skills didn’t include directional aptitude, apparently. We turned right, figuring that if we’d generally been heading east, that would turn us south, away from Dubuque.

By lunchtime, we’d been forced to make two more turns. We’d had to guess which way to go each time. The roads were getting narrower and the ditches at the side shallower. Where the road ran through trees, it was easy to follow. Where it ran through open fields, we had trouble. We’d seen no sign of the Mississippi, although Darla said the steep hills here meant we were close.

Lunch was a short rest break and some water. I struggled to think of anything other than food. But my mind returned over and over to corn pone, to the bags of cornmeal I’d left with Katie’s mom. I wondered what Darla was thinking. Giving our food to Katie’s mom seemed more boneheaded by the minute. I remembered desperately scrounging for Skittles in the gas station on Highway 20. How hungry and weak I had been. We needed to find food soon.

Less than an hour later, we came across another farmhouse. It was hidden at the back end of some twisty, no-name road. There was a small, ranch-style house and four big, low sheds, maybe ten feet wide by fifty feet long. Arrayed along the outside of the sheds was a series of big metal silos and tanks co

“Pig farm,” Darla said.

I sniffed. The air was cold and clean, with a hint of pinesap from the nearby woods. “How can you tell?”

“Low sheds with silos and water tanks co

“No tracks I can see. Check it out?”

“Yeah.”

We skied up to the house. Everything was quiet and still—too quiet. It made me nervous. Darla popped the bindings on her skis. She tried the storm door—it was unlocked, but it wouldn’t open because too much snow had drifted up against it.

I helped her dig out the snow until the storm door would open enough for us to slip through. Darla tried the main door. It was also unlocked, opening with a creak as if it hadn’t been used in a while.

“Who leaves their front door unlocked?” I whispered.

“Lots of folks do. Or maybe whoever lived here wasn’t pla

We stepped into a small entryway. Beyond, I saw a living room plainly furnished with a battered oak coffee table and a sofa upholstered in worn, striped cloth. A huge limestone fireplace dominated one side of the room.

“Should we call out?” Darla whispered.

“Might as well.”

“Anyone home?” she yelled.

No one answered. I thought I heard a distant thump from outside, but I might have imagined it.

We tiptoed through the living room into the kitchen. A dirty bowl rested in the sink. White fuzz covered it, like the stuff that grows on food left too long in the freezer. Neither the water nor the electric stove worked, of course.

We searched the refrigerator and cabinets. Our whole haul was a box of cream of wheat with about two inches left in the bottom, a three-quarter empty can of Crisco, and four packets of Sweet’N Low. Not much of a meal.

“Where’d the people go?” Darla said softly.

“Du

“Let’s check the sheds.”

We left the house the same way we’d come in and skied to the closest pig barn. Darla found the entrance: a door so short we’d have to duck to get through. A yellow handle, leaning against the metal wall, protruded from the snow. I pulled it free—it was a full-sized ax with a fiberglass handle and rusted iron head. I looked a question at Darla. She shrugged, and I put the ax down.

I pushed down the lever-style doorknob. I’d only opened the door five or six inches when I heard a grunt, and the door was shoved closed violently from inside. I leapt back, holding my staff at the ready.

Everything was still for a minute. It was quiet, other than the blood rushing in my ears and my heart thumping in my chest. I yelled, “Hello? Who’s there?”

Nothing.

I tapped the metal door a few times with my staff.

No response.

I started to open the door again, cracking it a few inches. A bit of snow fell past the bottom of the door into the space inside. It was too dark inside to see through the narrow opening. I stood and listened for four or five seconds. I heard a grunt and the door slammed again.

“This is weird, let’s move on,” Darla said.

I agreed with her, it was strange. But my hunger was stronger than my fear. “We need food.”

“Maybe we’ll find another place farther on.”

I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Look, whoever’s in there, if it comes to a fight, I need to be able to see.”

“What is it with you and fighting, anyway? Let’s just move on. We’ll find food someplace else.”

“There might not be anyplace else. And we need the food. Look, just give me a hand here.”

Darla gave me the evil eye for a few seconds. “Humph.” Then she dug a candle out of the pack on my back and lit it.

I unlatched the door, opening it a half inch, then stepped back and kicked it as hard as I could. It flew open about a quarter of the way and hit something solid. I heard a squealing noise and a series of thunks like wood hitting concrete, and then the door swung fully open. I ducked my head and charged in, holding my staff in front of me. Darla followed me with the candle.

Inside, the candlelight revealed an abattoir. There were partially chewed hog carcasses everywhere. The floor was slick with frozen blood. Two live pigs were in full flight away from the door, their hooves striking the concrete floor, their heads streaked with fresh blood.

Darla pointed. “Oh. My. God. What’s that?”

I looked. To one side of the room there was a row of pens built with metal pipes. They were all empty. Beside one of them, I saw what Darla was pointing to. A man, or what was left of him, lay alongside the fence. One of his legs was obviously broken: a large yellow-white bone stuck out of his torn jeans, pointing almost directly at us. Half his face and most of his torso had been chewed way. The gnawed white ends of his ribs protruded like skeletal fingers from his chest. “That’s disgusting,” I said, turning away.