Darla's Story (2 page)

We returned to the cellar with the bundle of
supplies. Mom took the flashlight and began writing furiously on
the pad. “DON’T YOU DARE RUN OFF LIKE THAT AGAIN!!!” she wrote.

“We needed the supplies,” I scrawled beneath
her note.

“We need to stay safe.”

This wasn’t an argument I was likely to win.
“What is this?” I wrote and then pointed at my covered ears.

“Judgment day,” Mom wrote in a shaky
scrawl.

“No. Judgment day, you’d be raptured. I’d be
alone.”

“Not true. If not judgment day, what?”

“Dunno. Someone on the radio said the
earthquakes in Wyoming meant the volcano under Yellowstone was
going to erupt. Nobody believed him. We’ll know soon.”

“How?”

“Ash.” I figured any volcano powerful enough
to drown out conversation from a thousand miles off would easily
fling ash all the way to Iowa. Maybe all over the world.

After a short pause, Mom wrote, “How long
will this noise go on?” Her writing was so shaky now, it was hard
to read.

I shrugged.

Mom crumpled in on herself, her chest
falling. She looked like she had at Dad’s funeral. Smaller
somehow.

“You can’t check out on me, Mom,” I
whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear me. The only thing worse than
the damn noise would be facing it alone. I wrapped one arm around
her and offered her a bottle of water and a granola bar. She took
them but made no move to eat or drink.

I sipped a little water and nibbled on a
granola bar. Whatever was happening, starving ourselves wouldn’t
help. The chunks of granola rasped down my too-dry throat,
reluctant to enter the hard knot of my stomach. I took Mom’s hand,
moving her still-wrapped bar toward her mouth. She startled,
glanced at the bar as if puzzled to find it in her hand, and set it
aside. I gave up and laid down my own half-eaten bar.

I formed our supplies into a neat pile in the
corner of the cellar and laid our afghan and pillows out on the
dirt floor. I looked back at Mom—she was curled up, hand over her
mouth, head nodding, her face red as if she were having a huge
coughing fit. Which made sense, as the house vibrated so badly, the
air was choked with dust. I took the water bottle from Mom’s hand,
twisted it open, and held it to her lips. She drank, and her
coughing eased.

The dust got me thinking: if the roar got
even stronger, could it shake the house down? I thought about
pictures I’d seen of Muscatine, Iowa, after a tornado roared
through, and I moved the makeshift bed to the edge of the cellar,
against one of the brick walls.

I lay down on my side, my back pressed
against the wall. The floor and wall vibrated, sending percussive
basso tremors through my body, as if I were curled up inside the
engine case of a gigantic, mistuned Harley. I scooted away from the
wall, which eased the shaking against my back. There was nothing I
could do about the vibrating floor.

The headphone dug into my right ear, but I
stayed on my side—I wanted to watch Mom. She hadn’t moved. I made a
“come here” gesture in the beam of the flashlight and held my arms
out for a hug. Her immobility shattered, and she slid into my arms.
I turned the flashlight off and clung to her.

We must have dozed off at some point, despite
the unholy noise. What woke me was the smell. A reek of sulfur—not
quite like rotten eggs—more like what I imagined a TV preacher’s
fire and brimstone might smell like.

It was pitch dark. I groped for the
flashlight, bumping Mom in the process. She startled in a sudden
flurry of motion that I could feel but not hear. My hand found the
flashlight, and I switched it on.

Mom’s head swiveled toward me, her eyes huge
and unfocused in the flashlight’s beam. Her mouth was open, panting
in sudden fear. I reached out and took her hand. She gathered
herself, looking me in the eye and saying something I couldn’t make
out over the roar. I shined the flashlight on her wristwatch: 7:07
a.m.

I dropped Mom’s wrist and started to get up.
She grabbed my hand and tugged, urging me back to the improvised
bed. I twisted free and found the pad of paper and pen. “My
rabbits!” I wrote.

“NO!” Mom wrote back.

I pressed the flashlight into Mom’s hand and
got up to grope my way toward the stairway. She reached for me with
her other hand, but I dodged her.

The flashlight beam illuminated the base of
the stairs. I glanced back at Mom, who was following me, holding
the light. I made my way to the top of the stairs and tried to push
the door open. It seemed heavier. I had to put my shoulder against
it and heave upward. It shifted, and a fine waterfall of gray
powder fell past the edges of the door. I poked a finger into the
stream of powder—it was fine like talc, yet gritty like sand. Mom
had backed up a step.

I heaved the door wider, expecting daylight.
Instead, I got blackness.

The moon and stars were gone. It was so dark
that I couldn’t see the side of the house, though I could reach out
and touch it. More dust rained through the beam of the flashlight,
falling onto the stairs. I sagged, letting the door slam, only now
it wouldn’t close completely—the grit in the hinges held it ajar. I
pushed past Mom, retreating to the bedroll to think.

Mom sat next to me and picked up the pad and
pen, holding the flashlight awkwardly under her arm. “What is it?”
she wrote.

“Ash, I think,” I wrote back.

Mom wrote a big question mark.

“If it’s dust from storms or nukes, there
wouldn’t be so much. Would there?”

Mom shrugged.

I put down the pen and paper, and Mom wrapped
me in a hug. When she lowered her arms, I reached out to switch the
flashlight off—maybe this whole mess would end soon, and the
electric light in the cellar would pop on, but what if it didn’t? I
had to do something. Get out to the barn to replenish my rabbit’s
food and water. How much of this noise, ash, and darkness could
they survive? But the rabbits weren’t the worst of my worries: if
this kept up, how could Mom and I survive?

We cowered in the cellar, hoping the horrible
explosive noises would end, but they continued all morning. We’d
skipped breakfast—something about being stuck in a cellar during
what sounded like an artillery barrage killed our appetite. Maybe
it’d be the next fad diet for townie girls—on TV, they’d call it
the Apocalyptic Abs Diet, if there was any TV after this. I had
always thought the townie girls should try a diet of farm work and
farm food, but when I suggested that to Lindsay, the chief
frizzy-haired airhead at school, she’d laughed condescendingly and
turned back to a salad that appeared to be made with broccoli and
sphagnum moss. I still wasn’t hungry at lunchtime, but I dutifully
got out water and granola bars, forcing two down and nagging Mom to
eat, too.

Mom kept shifting uncomfortably as we ate.
After lunch, she picked up the pad and wrote, “I need a number one
badly.”

Number one? Who says that anymore? “Just pee
in the corner,” I wrote, gesturing at the far side of the cellar’s
dirt floor with the beam of the flashlight.

“Not sanitary,” Mom wrote.

“It’d be better if we dug a pit toilet, but
I’d have to go get a shovel from the barn. We shouldn’t use the
house bathroom—not enough water.” I’d been thinking about that
quite a bit—how to get water out of our well with the electricity
off. I had an idea for a simple hand pump that might work, but we
definitely needed to conserve water until I could try it out.

Mom gave up discussing it, and we both peed
in the corner of the cellar. So then the omnipresent sulfur stench
was augmented by the smell of urine. We returned to our blankets,
huddling together in the cool darkness of the cellar, waiting. Our
terror had abated and been replaced by a sort of anxious boredom.
Would this ever end? When? Was anything left of the world outside
the safety of our cellar? My thoughts spun like the wheels of a
stuck truck.

Finally, something changed: abruptly, the
noise ended.

The silence was shocking. My ears rang, but
other than that, I couldn’t hear anything. Mom and I sat still for
a few minutes, saying nothing, doing nothing, just soaking in the
flood of relief triggered by the silence. I peeled the headphones
off. I rubbed my earlobes, trying to massage away the tingling
sensation.

Finally I broke the silence. “I need to go
check on the rabbits.” My voice sounded funny—hollow and distant.
Mom didn’t respond. I groped for the flashlight, fumbling around
’til I found it. Mom looked okay—she’d taken her headphones off,
too. Her lips were moving, but all I could make out was a sibilant
whisper.

“Mom!” I shouted. “Can you hear me?”

Her lips moved, but I still couldn’t hear
anything.

“Yell. I think our ears are messed up.”

When she shouted directly at my ear, I could
understand her, but her voice sounded like an echo of the
original.

“I’m going to go check on the rabbits,” I
yelled and started to get up.

“Wait,” she shouted. “We should pray. Give
thanks for being spared.”

I wasn’t sure we’d actually been spared. It
seemed to me that there still might be a myriad of ways to die in
the aftermath of a volcanic eruption—thirst would be the first
issue. But I wouldn’t turn down help, divine or otherwise.

Mom clasped my hand in hers and began
speaking. I couldn’t understand the prayer—I guess she didn’t think
shouting it would be proper. But I bowed my head and tossed in an
amen when she finally released my hand.

I tromped up the cellar stairs. The door was
obviously covered in ash again; I couldn’t even lift it with my
arms. Instead, I planted my shoulder under it and thrust upward,
using my legs to lift it. Ash slid off, raining through the gap on
the hinge side. Without the ash, the door seemed almost weightless,
and I threw it fully open.

Mom’s watch said it was late afternoon, but
it was still darker than the blackest night imaginable. The beam of
the flashlight died just a few feet from its lens, snuffed out by
the thick, nonstop rain of gray, powdery ash.

Mom had followed me up the stairs. “How am I
going to even find the barn in this mess?” I yelled.

“Don’t go out there,” she yelled back.

“Hold this.” I pressed the flashlight into
her hand. “Keep it aimed at me. Stay there, so I don’t get
lost.”

I turned to face Mom and started stepping
backward, keeping my eye on the light. It faded to invisibility
shockingly fast—in just four steps. I hurried to rejoin Mom.

Even in the brief time I’d been outside, the
ash had coated my mouth and nose in a vile, acidic sludge. I bent
double, hacking and spitting.

Mom laid her hand on my back. “You okay?”

“Let’s get out of this junk,” I gasped.

I swung the cellar door shut, and we followed
the wall of the house around to the back door. The air in the
mudroom was stale and sulfurous but much nicer to breathe than the
ash-choked air outside.

We staggered into the kitchen. Mom poked
around the dark interior of the refrigerator with the flashlight’s
beam, found a bottle of water, and handed it to me. I rinsed my
mouth out and then drank about half the remaining water before
handing the rest to Mom.

The water was a stark reminder—I had to
figure out a way to get water out of our well without electricity.
If the ashfall didn’t kill us, dehydration would. How deep was the
well? Thirty feet? Forty? And my rabbits would run out of water
soon. They were meat rabbits, not pets, but still, I had a
responsibility to them. To kill them humanely. Dying of thirst
wouldn’t be particularly pleasant—for them or us.

Mom used the flashlight to find a candle and
book of matches in one of the kitchen drawers. She got out a bag of
rice and a pan. What was she thinking? Without electricity, the
water wasn’t going to work. I let her find that out the hard
way—she held a pan under the faucet, flipped it on, and nothing
came out. Our stove was propane, so at least that would work until
the tank was empty.

“I’ll try to figure out a way to get water
out of the well without power,” I told her.

“How? Can you run the pump on batteries or
something?”

“Probably not. Maybe some kind of inertial
pump.”

“How are we going to cook?”

“Stove should work until the propane runs
out. Then we’ll have to switch to the living room fireplace, I
guess.”

Mom set the pan down and sagged into a chair.
I took the flashlight and went looking for the ball of kitchen
string I knew Mom kept in one of the drawers. I would’ve preferred
rope for what I had in mind, but all our rope was in the barn. I
found the string and then went upstairs to my room to fetch an old
T-shirt. I sliced the T-shirt into wide strips, one of which I tied
around my mouth and nose.

When Mom saw me, she gave a start. “Scared
me, walking up with that mask.”

“I’m going to find the barn.” I thought Mom
might argue, but she just nodded.

“How will you keep from getting lost?” she
asked.

I held up the ball of string.

Mom nodded and followed me to the back door.
I tied one end of the string to the screen-door handle and started
reeling it out, walking slowly toward—I hoped—the barn.

From my very first ash-filled breath, I
realized the mask wasn’t going to work. My mouth and nose collected
a fine haze of particles, irritating my throat with their grit and
acidic sting. “Christ!” I growled to myself. I wasn’t cursing at
the mask: I learned long ago that things—machines
particularly—aren’t to blame for their failings. If you maintain
and operate your equipment properly, it won’t let you down. People
are another matter.

I stumbled back into the house and ripped my
mask off. My throat burned. I grabbed a bottle of water from the
fridge—our last one—and rinsed my mouth out as best I could with a
tiny sip of water. Even if I made it to the barn, where was I going
to get water for the rabbits? Without power tools and supplies from
the hardware store in Dyersville, it might take days to fabricate a
working pump. I needed the water now.