Ashfall

“Yeah,” Darla replied. The two live pigs had moved around us, back to the door, while we looked at the corpse. They were lapping at the snow that had fallen into the barn, grunting and slamming into the door and each other in their haste to get fresh water.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“This guy ran out of food, came out here with his ax to butcher a pig, I guess. Usually people send their pigs to a processor for slaughter, even if they’re going to eat the meat themselves, so he might not have known what he was doing. Somehow he broke his leg. Maybe the pigs were starving, thirsty, or whatever and crushed him against that fence. Once he bled out, well, pigs will eat anything.”

“Gross,” I said. “Too bad there’s no food in here.”

“Hello? There’s enough food here for both of us to live on for weeks.”

“You want to eat—you can’t be serious.”

Darla kicked one of the pig carcasses. It was frozen solid. “The dead ones would probably be okay to eat. But I was thinking we should butcher one of those.” She pointed at the two pigs licking snow by the door.

“I don’t know—”

“What, you don’t like pork?”

“I like bacon, although it feels kind of slimy getting it out of the package.”

One side of her mouth wrinkled. “City people. Let me see your knife.”

I handed it to her. “You ever butcher a pig?”

“No. But how much worse can it be than cutting up a rabbit?”

It was way, way worse. Darla handed me the candle and retrieved the ax from where I’d left it outside the door. “Any idea what the best way to kill a pig is?”

“What, you don’t know?”

“Um, no. Maybe a whack on the back of the head? Like some people use for rabbits?”

“Go

“Hmm, okay.”

Holding the ax in a two-handed grip, Darla got alongside one of the pigs. She reversed the ax so the blunt end aimed down and raised it high above her head. The pig kept lapping at the snow, oblivious to the doom poised above it.

The ax fell, thunking onto the back of the pig’s head. The pig went limp and slumped to the ground. The other pig let out a squeal and galloped away, seeking refuge at the far side of the shed.

Darla dropped the ax and grabbed the knife. She plunged it into the underside of the pig’s neck, just above its chest, and pulled the knife upward toward its snout. It woke and thrashed, all four legs churning the air as if it were trying to run away. One of its forelegs caught Darla on her shin and she yelled, “Ow! Crap!” and jumped back, pulling the knife out of the pig’s neck.

Blood fountained out, spraying her arm. The blood gleamed black in the candlelight. A few drops spotted Darla’s face. I felt suddenly ill and turned away. The pig began squealing nonstop, a sound that resembled nothing so much as a kid throwing a full-throated tantrum. We were forced to listen to that awful noise for at least five minutes before the pig finally bled out.

I hadn’t had anything to eat since the day before. Still, when I saw the carnage in the pig shed, I’d lost my appetite. Now I felt so sick, I wasn’t sure whether I ever wanted to eat again. “If we live through this, I’m going to become a vegetarian.”

“Not if I’m cooking for you,” Darla said.

“That’s okay, I’ll do the cooking. Hope you like tofu.”

“Tofu? Now that’s disgusting,” said the girl whose arm dripped with pig blood. “Give me a hand with this.”

Darla and I each grabbed one of the dead pig’s back legs and dragged the carcass outside. It left a wide, red smear in the snow.

I volunteered to build a fire, hoping to avoid butcher duty. By the time I got the fire done, Darla had gutted the pig and was trying to hack the hams free with the hatchet. Her arms and chest dripped with pig blood. I looked down for a moment, trying to get my stomach under control.

“That’s a lot of meat. Won’t it spoil?” I said.

“If we had time, we could smoke it. But I’m guessing you’d rather not hang around here.”

“Right.”

“So I figured we’d try to cook it all and freeze it. If the weather stays cold, it should be fine in our backpacks.”

“Okay. I’m afraid you’ll say yes, but is there anything I can help with?”

Of course there was. So I wound up getting almost as bloody as Darla. It seemed like we wasted a lot of that pig—I left tons of meat clinging to its bones and skin. Darla just shrugged. “Yeah, we’re wasting a ton. But we can’t possibly carry it all, anyway. And this is a lot different than butchering a rabbit. I’m doing the best I can.”

I was wrong about never eating again. The smell of roasting meat brought hunger surging back to my stomach. We ate a late lunch of very thick-cut bacon fried in our skillet over the open fire. Well, Darla said it wasn’t really bacon since it hadn’t been cured, but it tasted similar: juicier and much less salty.

As I reached for my third slice, a thought occurred to me that stopped my hand in midair and brought my nausea back. “Um, so we’re eating this pig . . .”

“Yeah?” Darla replied around a mouthful of pork.

“And this pig ate part of that farmer. Doesn’t that make us ca

Darla quit chewing. “Gross.” She thought a moment and then swallowed. “No. If a cow eats grass, and we eat the cow, then we aren’t grass eaters. In fact, we can’t eat grass. Cows have a special digestive system for that.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I thought about it for another second or so, then served myself another slab of side pork.

It took all afternoon and part of the evening to finish roasting the meat. We spitted all the different cuts over the fire, which worked okay. Some of the meat was a bit burnt, and some was tough and hard to eat, but it would keep us alive.

We buried the meat in a snow bank to freeze it. Darla worried about wild animals getting into it. I didn’t think that would be an issue because all the wild animals had probably died of silicosis. But it couldn’t hurt to be careful, so I spread the plastic tarp over our cache and weighed it down with three logs.

After a late di

There were two bedrooms in the house, both with queen beds. They looked pretty inviting to me: plenty of room to spread out and, uh, do whatever. Darla said it was too cold in the bedrooms. She was right. We did just fine on the ratty old couch in front of the fire.

Chapter 41

Not long after we left the pig farm the next morning, we came back to Highway 52. I groaned. We’d spent two days skiing in a circle, damn it. At least we’d found the pigs—even though it had been disgusting, I felt a lot better with a full stomach and a heavy pack stuffed with pork on my back.

We weren’t at the same place where we’d crossed 52 before. There was no sign of St. Donatus or the two sentinel churches. “You think we’re north or south of where we hit 52 the first time?” I asked.

“South, probably. We were heading east, and we mostly turned right.”

“Those roads were pretty twisty, though.”

“Either way, if we turn right, we’ll eventually hit Dubuque. I’m not sure where 52 goes if we turn left, but I think it follows the Mississippi River.”

I thought about Katie’s mom and her failed attempt to cross the Mississippi. “I don’t want to go to Dubuque.”

“Me, either. Left it is.”

The highway ran along a ridgetop for a few miles and then veered left and began a long decline. We picked up speed as the slope grew steeper—I raced along behind Darla, trying to stay in her ski tracks. The wind felt icy on my face, but still it was fun; soon we were laughing and screaming as we shot down the hill.