Ashfall

We flew past a green road sign: Welcome to Bellevue, Population 2337. Then the road flattened out, and we were coasting through a quaint riverside town. Or rather, the buildings were quaint with lots of dark-brown brick and an old-fashioned main street. The town itself was weirdly deserted. There were no tracks in the snow, no signs of people. We skied past Hammond’s Drive In, Horizon Lanes, and a Subway. The storefronts gaped like monstrous maws, shards of glass in their smashed windows forming transparent teeth.

Darla and I had fallen into an uncomfortable silence, mirroring the eerie quiet of the town. To break it, I asked, “Where are all the people?”

“I du

I saw a drugstore, Bellevue Pharmacy. Its windows were smashed, too. “Let’s go in there and look around.”

“You think they have some food? We’ve got plenty of pork, but I wouldn’t mind some variety.”

“Well, um . . .” I felt the blood rush to my face and looked down.

“Condoms.” Darla shook her head, but to my relief, she was smiling. “Okay. Look for sanitary supplies, too. I’d kill for something better than rags.”

The drugstore had been thoroughly picked over. We searched for over an hour, even pushing two fallen shelving units upright to look underneath. We found nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. If we’d wanted to know what the latest celebrity gossip had been in August, there were plenty of magazines in the rack to inform us. The small electronics aisle was pretty much untouched. Hair dryers, curling irons, electric shavers, and electric toothbrushes were there for the taking. But everything useful—food, condoms, sanitary supplies, and drugs—was long gone.

“That blows,” I said as we gave up the search.

Darla squeezed my hand. “We’ll figure something out.”

We skied down a hill to the river. The Mississippi itself had changed. A few years ago, my family had taken a three-hour riverboat cruise in Dubuque. Back then, the river had been wide and powerful, filling its banks from tree line to tree line. Now it was a narrow silver thread winding through a gray plain of ashy sludge. Upriver, I could see two barges, both partially grounded in the ash.

The area at the bottom of the hill was fenced-off. A sign on the chain link read: Mississippi Lock and Dam Number 12.

“Maybe we can cross here,” Darla said.

“How? If the lock’s closed, sure, but—”

“Let’s check it out.”

That made sense—it couldn’t hurt to take a look. I climbed the fence. Darla tossed our skis over and followed me. The dam started at the far bank of the river and extended about three-quarters of the way across. Between us and the dam there was a lock, a huge cha

“How are we going to cross that?” I said.

“We’ve got rope. We’ll climb down onto that barge.”

“The drop looks like twenty-five or thirty feet. How will we get up the other side of the lock?” From where I stood, it looked like a long drop onto the barge’s hard, metal deck.

“I’ll improvise something.”

We climbed over another chain-link fence. That put us on the open-gridded metal walkway alongside the lock. We stepped along the catwalk, lugging our skis, and made a forty-five-degree turn as we followed it over the top of the lock gate. The ash and snow had fallen through the grid of the catwalk, but it was still slick with ice. I felt uneasy; there was nothing but a low, metal fence between me and a very long drop to the water below.

When we reached the end of the gate, directly above the stuck barge, Darla dug the rope out of my backpack. She bundled the skis and lowered them to the barge’s deck, where they landed with a clang. Then she looped the other end of the rope around the top bar of the railing and lowered herself down hand over hand, clutching both strands of rope.

Darla yelled “Come on down!” just like a game show host.

I wasn’t too sure. It looked like a long way down. And I wasn’t very comfortable with heights. When I was in fourth grade, Dad had taken me to a huge sporting-goods store that had a climbing wall. He had needed new ski goggles, or something like that. Anyway, I bugged him ’til he let me try the climbing wall. It was easy and fun—I scampered up in no time. But when I stood at the top and peered over the edge, ready to turn around and rappel down, I just . . . couldn’t. Couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t step backward over the edge. Couldn’t even pull my eyes away from the drop. One of the store’s employees had to climb up and pretty much drag me off the edge so another guy could lower my rigid body. I spun on the way down, slamming my ankles into the wall, but I couldn’t move—I was frozen in terror. As far as I knew, Dad never told Mom or Rebecca about that incident. But he’d never offered to take me back to that sporting goods store, either.

I climbed slowly over the railing and got a good grip, holding the ropes with both hands. I didn’t want to step off the metal platform. A little voice in my head screamed at me: Don’t do it! You’re going to fall! You’re going to die!

But I couldn’t let Darla show me up. And this was the best way across the river. Plus, I wasn’t in fourth grade anymore. I’d faced far more dangerous situations over the last six weeks: the looters at Joe and Darren’s house, Target, the plunge into the icy stream. I could do this. I would do this.

Darla yelled, “Any day now.”

I scrunched my eyes closed and stepped off, slowly lowering myself hand over hand.

I let out a sigh when my feet touched the deck. Darla said, “You’re afraid of heights, aren’t you?”

“Uh, not really.”

“It’s okay.”

“Just a little, I guess.”

“You did good, Alex.” She kissed me. If she’d asked me to join a Mt. Everest climbing expedition at that moment, I might have agreed.

Darla pulled on one end of the rope so it snaked free of the railing above us. On the far side of the barge, the other half of the lock gate loomed above us. “Hand me the hatchet, would you?”

Puzzled, I pulled it off my belt and passed it to her.

She tied the free end of the rope around the handle. “Watch out.” She backed up a couple steps and threw the hatchet, aiming for the rail above our heads. The hatchet glanced off and fell back onto the deck with a clang. Darla tossed it again. This time the hatchet went over the top rail, but when she pulled on the rope it came free and clanged back down to the barge. “This may take a while.”

I wandered away, both to avoid the tumbling hatchet and to check out the barge. It was really nine barges co

I expected to find coal or iron ore, something like that. Instead, it was full to the brim with golden-brown grain. I scooped up a handful and let the hatch crash shut. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it looked edible—and there was a lot of it.

Darla yelled, “Hey, I got it!”

I hurried back to her, clutching the grain in my hand. She’d thrown the hatchet up over the railing so that its head had caught on the middle rail and the rope looped up over the top rail. It didn’t look very safe to me: if the knot came loose, or the hatchet broke, or the haft disco