Halfway down, and still a good eighty feet above the valley floor, he slipped in some loose rocks. Overbalanced by his heavy load, he was unable to correct himself, and tumbled over the edge. He saw the rock ledge below him, and braced for the impact.
There was a sudden, blinding flash of pain, then nothing at all.
He drifted slowly back to consciousness, more a gradual increase of awareness than actual clear thought. He didn’t open his eyes, preferring the dark of his eyelids. His head throbbed, a constant pounding that threatened to make him nauseous again. He rolled onto his side and dry heaved. There was nothing in his stomach to expel.
Pain assaulted him from every angle. His head felt like it had split open. His arm screamed a fiery curse at the rest of his body, and his left leg felt broken. But if he didn’t open his eyes, he could go back to sleep, and then the pain would go away.
Through the fog of dizziness and pain, he caught a strange smell in the air. It almost smelled like smoke, but not quite. It smelled more like ashes. As if the world had burned to death while he was unconscious. He didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be good.
He tried to lose himself into the darkness again. But the more he tried, the more the pain kept him awake. Finally. He couldn’t ignore it anymore, and he tried to open his eyes. The lids were stuck together by some gummy, sticky mess - probably blood - and he had to open them with the fingers on his good arm.
It took a moment for his eyes to focus. He lay on a rocky outcrop about twenty feet off the valley floor. He must have bounced along a little further down the slope after hitting the ledge. That would certainly account for the pain in his arm and leg, which shouted at him even louder now that he was conscious again. He had some herbs in his pack that might help, although if his leg were truly broken they wouldn’t do much good. He’d need a splint, and he damn sure wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
The world around him had a soft, gray quality, as though he’d awakened at dusk or early dawn. He could not see the sun through the haze. The sky was thick with gray clouds. And it was snowing.
Already? he thought. It’s not time yet. And it’s nowhere near cold enough.
He took another look, noting the dingy gray color of the flakes falling from the sky. Not snow, he realized, but something else.
One of the flakes landed on his forearm, and he noticed for the first time that there were hundreds of them covering his body.
Ash.
He brushed the ashes off his arm, immediately regretting it as another flare of pain shot through him. He almost screamed, but held it in, lest some hungry predators hear him and think about a nice, helpless meal.
He coughed. A thick wad of gray matter shot from his mouth to smack into the dingy tree to his right. Not good.
Down in the valley, no animals remained. As the ash piled up, it covered any tracks left behind by the stragglers.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe.
A shadow fell over the valley, and he looked up into the sky. The soft gray clouds had been replaced by an angry black wall.
More ash. Lots more.
He coughed again, his lungs trying desperately to clear themselves. I should have just left with the animals, he thought. Too late, now.
Then the black wall poured into the valley.
SHELTER
by David Dalglish
Jason pushed aside the curtains to watch as the rumbling clouds neared. Melissa squirmed in his arms.
“Daddy, I’m scared,” she said.
“We all are,” he told her. “Sit still. This’ll be pretty, I promise.”
“I want to watch Spongebob,” Melissa insisted.
“Not now,” Jason said, his eyes wide as the sky suddenly cleared. Calm red sky shone above, clean, ominous. Then it was gone, a rolling black wall of cloud and ash sweeping over it.
“Daddy, Spongebob!”
Jason kissed the top of her head, wondering if she felt his tears dripping down. He’d give anything to send her to that underwater paradise forever. Instead, he had only his arms, his walls, and his love to offer. The house shook as wind slammed against it. The darkness deepened, broken only by thick bursts of lightning.
“Is it going to rain?” Melissa asked.
“No, sweetie,” he said. “Not now.”
Not ever.
It’d taken six rolls of duct tape, but Jason was confident he’d sealed the building. Every side of every window he’d layered. After locking and barring his front door, he’d stuffed old shirts into the crack below, then started taping. He lived in a modular home on his property not too far out of town. He thanked god it was fairly new. Last summer he’d looked at a two-story fixer-upper in the middle of town. The extra room would have been nice, but there’d been so many windows needing fixed, walls painted, and floors retiled that he’d passed. Sitting against the front door, a half-used roll of duct tape in hand, Jason couldn’t imagine trying to seal that old place up.
Melissa sat on the couch, huddled under a mountain of pink princess blankets.
“Can we have candles?” she asked. “The dark is scary.”
“We can’t, babe,” Jason said. “Air is precious now.”
“When will the lights come back on?”
Jason sighed. He debated whether to lie or tell the truth. Biting down on his lower lip, he told the lie. In the darkness, unable to see her wide eyes, it came easy.
“In a week or two. We’ll rough it until then. We’re like pioneers. You read about pioneers in school, right?”
“They lived in dirt houses,” Melissa said. “How’d they keep the bugs out?”
“They didn’t,” Jason said. “The bugs were their friends. They named them and built them little houses to live in beside their cabinets.”
“Daddy!”
“What? They didn’t teach you that in school?”
Jason smiled when he heard her laugh. Thank God for small miracles.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You be a good girl and stay on the couch, and I’ll get us a flashlight.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice muffled by the blankets.
Jason stretched out his arms and took baby steps toward the kitchen, feeling like a blind Frankenstein. Vague blobs grew in the darkness, outlines of the sink or the fridge. He stubbed his toe on a toy, something plastic with wheels. It rolled into kitchen, the sound grating. Without the television, air conditioners, his computer, cars outside, planes above, and water heater below, the resulting quiet was shocking. Sometimes the wind picked up, whipping against the side of his house. Other times the clouds grumbled in angry thunder. But mostly there was silence.
“You okay, dad?” Melissa asked him, sounding so far away.
“I’m fine,” he said. “When the lights come on, you’re cleaning up your toys.”
She didn’t respond, and inwardly he cursed himself. Why’d he have to remind her of what they didn’t have?
His hand brushed the counter. He used it to guide himself along until reaching a drawer he’d purposefully left open. Inside was a handful of flashlights. He grabbed one of the smaller ones and clicked it on. The white microwave shone into view for half a second before he shut it back off. Tempting as it was, he kept it off on his way back to the couch.
“Where you at?” he asked when he felt his toes bump the couch’s edge. “Come on, let’s see, where you hiding?”
He waved his arms around him blindly, and when his fingers brushed blanket, he dove them forward, his fingers tickling. Giggles rewarded his efforts.