Ashfall

“Will it go any faster?” If I hadn’t been so weak, I could have easily outrun the bulldozer.

“Not much, and only in reverse.”

“Not good.”

“Duck!” Darla yelled and slammed her hand onto a lever to her right. The dozer blade began to rise. I spotted two guards ahead of us, raising their submachine guns. They must have been patrolling the fence. I ducked then heard the chatter of gunfire and the whang of bullets hitting metal. Darla raised the blade so its top edge partially shielded us.

“Raise it some more!” I clutched the dozer’s armrest in a death-grip. The vinyl under my hands was slick with sweat.

“That’s as high as it goes!”

We peeked over the top of the blade. The two guards were circling, ru

“Stay low!” Darla reversed her turn, slowly spi

“Watch out!” I screamed. “Get away! Get away!” People scattered from the front of the bulldozer. There were refugees ru

I didn’t hear any more gunshots. Maybe the guards weren’t willing to fire into the crowd. I hoped not, anyway.

I looked around; I didn’t see the guards now, only a never-ending flow of ru

When we reached the corner of the camp, Darla kept going straight. She dropped the dozer blade a couple of feet so we could see better. The camp was built on a ridge top, so about fifty feet ahead of us the hillside yielded to a wooded ravine.

“Uh . . . you know there’s a cliff up there, right?” I said.

“I’m hoping it’s a steep slope, not a cliff. We’ve got to go somewhere it’ll be hard to follow. This thing is slower than a roadkill turtle, if you haven’t noticed.”

The front of the dozer nosed over the edge of the hill. We crushed a few saplings at the edge of the ravine and picked up speed.

“Hold on!” Darla screamed.

The bulldozer crashed down the hill. Darla’s hands twitched on the joystick, nudging us right and left, trying to avoid the biggest trees. We hit one of them despite her efforts. The shock threw me forward. The tree fell, and one of our tracks rolled up over it, so the dozer canted steeply to the right for a few terrifying seconds. Then we were free of it. The left tread thumped back to the ground, and we continued our headlong rush down the hillside.

Somehow Darla got us down the slope without ru

“Wow. What a ride.” My hands were trembling, and my breath came in gasps.

“Yeah.” Darla was looking ahead, trying to figure out where to go next, I thought.

I craned my head out the side of the cab, looking up the slope behind us. A Humvee was moving slowly about a quarter of the way down the hill. A second Humvee was just starting down the ridge.

“They’re coming!” I yelled.

The blade was down in the creek. Darla raised it and goosed the throttle. The dozer ground forward, and its back end landed with a splash. Now we could see the far side of the creek: a vertical wall of dirt about three feet high. The blade hit the bank and the tracks spun in the mud and water. We couldn’t climb out of the creek. There was no room to turn around, either.

We were stuck.

Chapter 51

Darla tapped the throttle, lightly this time, and the bulldozer inched forward. When the blade hit the bank, the tracks slipped, and the dozer rocked backward.

“We’d better get out and run,” I said anxiously.

“No, I’ve got this.” She tapped the throttle again and again, setting up a rocking motion. Dirt, ash, and snow fell from the creek bank where we were battering it.

I looked back. The lead Humvee was halfway down now. Two more followed behind it.

The bulldozer’s motion got more and more violent. Darla was rocking in time with it, tapping the throttle as her body swayed back and forth against the seat. The dozer knocked big chunks of earth off the far bank each time it rocked forward, slowly battering its way out of the creek.

I glanced back again. The lead Humvee was now within shooting range. I jerked my head back inside the cab. “Keep your head down, they’re close!” I yelled. Darla crouched lower in her seat and rocked the bulldozer forward—hard. It slammed into the bank, but this time the tracks bit. We tilted up at almost a forty-five-degree angle. When we crested the bank, the dozer fell with a crash that threw me forward on the armrest, right into the throttle. The bulldozer accelerated to its max, heading straight toward a huge sycamore. I scooted back, and Darla grabbed the throttle, slamming it to one side. We turned, narrowly missing the tree. I glanced behind us. The first Humvee was mired in the creek. Two more were lined up behind it, unable to pass. I realized I’d been holding my breath and let it out in a heavy sigh.

We rumbled over a flat area dotted with huge trees. Darla veered in an S-pattern around two more sycamores and started the bulldozer up a long, gentle ridge on the far side of the valley.

The ridge was deceptive. It lured us in with the promise of a gentle slope but got steeper and steeper as we ascended. Still, the bulldozer climbed easily, crushing underbrush and small trees beneath its blade and tracks. Near the top, the slope became completely vertical, ending in a line of broken rocks and cliffs. They were only seven or eight feet high—easy to climb on foot, but impossible for the bulldozer.

Darla raised the blade to maximum height and eased the bulldozer forward until it touched the cliff. We clambered out of the cab and onto one of the big metal arms that supported the dozer’s blade. Darla took two steps up the sloped strut and grabbed the top edge of the blade. Then she pulled herself onto it and balanced there for a couple seconds before stepping forward to the top of the cliff.

I started to follow. The arm felt slick under my boots. I tried to walk up it, wobbled a bit, and thought better of it. I sat down and shimmied up on my butt. I grabbed the edge of the blade—it was sticky, coated with sap from the trees we’d mown down. I dragged myself slowly upright, standing on the arm and gripping the blade. Stepping up to the top of the blade looked easy when Darla had done it, but I had a terrible time getting even one foot up there. I straddled the blade instead, pulling myself slowly up and holding on with a death grip all the way.

Darla stepped back onto the blade beside me. She had one foot on the blade and one on the cliff. “Give me your hand.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. This should be easy.” My face was hot despite the freezing weather.

“You’ve been on a starvation diet for almost two weeks, and you probably got a concussion when the guards clubbed you with their guns.”

Darla pulled me to my feet. I tried to control my trembling knees as I perched atop the blade. I sucked down a deep breath and stepped across the gap, pushing my leg into the snow on top of the cliff while I held Darla’s hand for support.