Fallen Ash

Chapter 6

The next morning was quiet, the events of last night of course didn't leave my head, and I turned a light pink every time I thought of it, I was praying the ash coat I'd gained was hiding the blush.

Chris seemed unaffected, he was packing things up and getting ready to go as usual, he didn't seem any different, Scarlet was punching his arm every time he made a snarky remark and Chris would just shove her away with a smirk. He was about 2 heads taller than her, so it was entertaining to watch. Chris and Scarlet eventually left to go to the bathroom so Rochelle and I stayed back and waited.

"Hey...uh Liz?"Rochelle asked softly. I glanced at her.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Uh," She hesitated. "Is there something going on between you and Chris?" I froze.

"What makes you ask?" I questioned calmly.

Shoot did she hear us last night?

"No reason...I was just curious, you act different around him, that's all." She shrugged.

"Oh, well, uh, no there's nothing going on between us." I smiled. She nodded.

"Okay, I was just curious." By then, Chris and Scarlet were back. They literally fell in through the door.

"We have a bit of an issue." Scarlet groaned after landing on her face.

"You should be more careful, your head..." My voice trailed.

"It hurts like hell but it's fine." She rubbed it.

"There's painkillers in your backpack if you need them." Something told me she was acting like she was fine, I would convince her we should stay back another day but we did need to keep moving.

"Cool, thanks." She nodded, rubbing her head.

"Liz, the ash is too thick." Chris finally spoke up taking a step forward.

"What?" I mumbled and looked outside, the ash was piling up too fast, at this rate we'll be under it.

"Uh..." I mumbled.

"Liz if we cant hardly walk out there, we'll get buried before we even reach the state border." Rochelle spoke. I ran a hand through my hair.

"Let's look around, maybe we can find something to stand on the ash with." Chris offered.

"Yeah, good idea..." I mumbled and we all looked around. The more I looked around the more I realized that this is a supermarket. Maybe we can find something here.

So we looked around, it took a good half an hour before we finally found something. Skis and snow shoes.

"Oh nice!" Scarlet whooped. 4 sets of skis and snow shoes were left, talk about a score. We all grabbed a pair of skis and tried them on. Now I've never skied before but hopefully it wasn't too hard. Chris and Scarlet have gone skiing before apparently, so they know the basics, but admit they haven't gone in a few years. Rochelle almost toppled over once she got her's on. I just barely grabbed her arm and almost went down with her, luckily we managed to regain our balance.

"Good God this is hard." Rochelle huffed. Scarlet and Chris helped us with the gist of the skis, how to hold the poles and the stance to use when skiing, the skis were either too big or too small on us, but we just found toilet paper and stuffed that into the ones that were too big and suffered with the too tight ones. Afterwards we all grabbed a pair of snow shoes and shoved them in our packs. We then wet our washcloths and got going.

The ash was wet again due to the rain, but it felt colder than it did the day before. I didn't even think of jackets, hopefully we can hold out.

With the wet ash, we were gliding over it easily with the skis, we all fell once or twice but we eventually got the hang of it and stopped. The land around us was so desolate and abandoned. I was shocked we still hadn't run across more people trying to escape the ash fall, but I wasn't complaining, I didn't want another gun pointed at us.