Ashfall

“Yeah, there’s a barge stuck in Lock 12, not far from here. It’s loaded with wheat. Must be hundreds of tons of it.”

“Lock 12?”

“On the Mississippi, in Bellevue. The barge is stuck in the lock. It might be tough to unload, but there’s plenty of manpower here.”

Darla let out an exaggerated sigh. “The wheat would have to be ground. But I know how to make a mill. Or we could improvise a zillion mortars and pestles. Like Alex said, there’s plenty of manpower here.”

“And it’s not far?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Fifteen or twenty miles, tops.”

“Sounds like the answer to one of my prayers. You can show us where it is?”

“Sure, no problem. But it’s right there in the lock, easy to find.”

“What are your names?”

“I’m Alex. Alex Halprin. This is Darla Edmunds.”

“Georgia Martin.” She held out her hand. I hesitated a moment since mine was filthy, but she clasped my hand in both of hers, then shook Darla’s, too. “Good to meet you both. Let me talk to the mission director. I’ll look for you here tomorrow and let you know if we need you to show us the barge.”

* * *

It didn’t take that long. The next morning, we’d been waiting in the breakfast mob for about an hour when the loudspeakers mounted on the fence posts crackled to life. “Alex Halloran and Darla Edmunds, report to Gate C immediately. Alex Halloran and Darla Edmunds, Gate C.”

“Guess that’s us,” I said.

“Guess so, Mr. Halloran.”

I scowled at Darla. “Well, it sounds sort of like Halprin.”

“Hope this doesn’t mean we’re going to miss breakfast.”

We fought our way out of the mob and jogged diagonally across the camp to the same gate we’d come through on our first day. As we approached, I saw Georgia standing on the other side of the fence with an older guy. His face was a little droopy, as if he’d lost a lot of weight recently, and he had a neatly trimmed fringe of hair around his otherwise bald pate. Georgia said something to the guards and they waved us through.

“Thanks for coming. This is Mission Director Evans—”

“Call me Jim, please,” the bald guy said. “Very exciting news you brought yesterday. How much wheat did you say is on the barge?”

“I only looked into one of them, but it was packed. And there were nine barges tied together and stuck in the lock. If they all carried the same thing, I don’t know. . .”

“Hundreds of tons,” Darla said.

“Mysterious ways. . .” Director Evans muttered. Then he added out loud, “We have an appointment to see Black Lake’s camp commander, Colonel Levitov. Shall we go?”

He led us into one of the large tents. It was a pavilion, really, much bigger than even the tent my cousin Sarah had had at her wedding reception two years before, but subdivided inside. We followed Director Evans through a maze of canvas corridors and rooms until we reached a small office. A guy in fatigues sat behind a metal desk, typing into a laptop.

“Morning, Sergeant,” Director Evans said. “We’ve got an appointment with the colonel.”

“He’s ru

That presented a problem. There were four of us and only two unoccupied chairs in the room. Darla and I stood to the side and looked at Director Evans and Georgia.

“Have a seat,” Director Evans said.

“We can stand,” I said.

“No, please. With how few calories you’re eating, you need to be off your feet far more than we do.”

I sank into a chair, and Darla took the one beside me. Evans was right. I was tired and hungry, or maybe tired because I was so hungry. I’d been hungry for three days now, but it was better not to think about it. Not that it was possible to not think about it. Just Evans’ comment about calories was enough to bring my empty stomach to the top of my mind. Maybe because it was morning, I thought about breakfast food. Donuts. Bagels. Wheaties, for some reason, even though I hated Wheaties. I put my head on my knees and tried to think about something, anything else.

We’d been waiting fifteen minutes or so when someone shouted from the other side of the canvas wall behind the sergeant’s desk: “Coffee!” The sergeant left the room for a few minutes and returned with a steaming ceramic mug. The smell rekindled my hunger so powerfully that I was almost nauseated. He carried the mug through a flap in the wall and then returned to his desk.

We waited another twenty or thirty minutes. I heard a shout, “Ready!”

“You can go in now,” the sergeant said.

We entered another small office and saw another metal desk, another guy in fatigues, and another laptop. He picked up his mug and knocked back the last of the coffee. I caught myself staring at the mug and had to force my eyes away from it. There were no chairs except the one the guy occupied. He stood and stretched his hand out, “Director Evans. Good to see you.”

“Thanks for seeing us, Colonel,” Evans said, shaking his hand vigorously.

The colonel looked at me and wrinkled his nose. He didn’t offer to shake. “The purpose of this meeting is?”

Evans gestured at me. “This young man found a large supply of wheat, maybe several hundred tons.”

“Where?”

“Lock 12, in Bellevue, Iowa,” Evans said. “On a barge stuck in the lock.”

“I know the place.”

“I’d like your support to retrieve it—we could set up teams of refugees to grind it to flour. It’s a chance to get the camp’s caloric intake up to something sustainable. Exactly what we’ve all been praying—”

“I’ll kick it up to Black Lake admin in Washington. Thank you for the intel. Dismissed.” The colonel sat down and turned his attention to his computer.

“What?” I said. “That’s it? Enough food for the whole camp and—”

“Sergeant!” the colonel yelled, without looking up from his computer.

Evans wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and I allowed him to hustle me out of the office back to the camp’s main enclosure.

Of course we’d missed breakfast.

Chapter 46

We saw Georgia again at the yellow coat food line that afternoon. She apologized at length for making us miss breakfast and even smuggled another handful of almonds into my pocket. We ate them fast and furtively, huddled against the fence.

We spent the balance of that afternoon outside the vehicle depot, watching a guy work on a bulldozer. It was parked about thirty feet away on the far side of the fence.

We’d been watching him awhile when Darla yelled, “Hydraulic control valve’s messed up?”

The guy looked up, wiped his oily hands on his trousers, and stared at Darla for a couple seconds. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Just guessed. You disco

“Yeah. It’s shot.”

“Ash gets in there and tears them up, I bet.”

“It’s worse on the dozers, ’cause they stir up the ash and come back covered in it. They’ve all gone bad—the garage tent is packed full of dozers with wrecked control valves.”

“That’s rough.”

“This one’s had it. I’m out of valves. Distributor we get ’em from is out, too. Major’s going to have my ass. He’s all hot to clear Highway 35 north of Dickeyville.”

“I bet you could make a master cylinder out of a truck work. As a control valve, I mean.”

“No way. The fittings wouldn’t be the same size, for one thing.”

“My dad and I built a hydraulic tree digger a few years ago. Used old master cylinders off junk pickup trucks as controllers. I du

“And that worked?”

“Worked great. We moved a bunch of trees from Small’s Creek to the farmyard. Then we sold the rig. Dad said he got two grand for it.”