The Survivors
Authors: Will Weaver
WILL WEAVER
SARAH
THE SKY IS NOT FALLING
.
At least not today. No yellow haze, no volcano dustâit's a hot, late-August afternoon with a mostly blue sky. Life feels almost normal, which means that Sarah and her brother, Miles, are arguing.
“âjust saying, how many kids would go to school if they didn't have to?” Miles asks. He stops sawing to look at her.
“Lots,” Sarah replies. She's watching him work, which always annoys him.
“Not me, that's for sure!” Miles says. He touches a finger to the bright handsaw blade. Tests its sharpness.
“You're still in school.”
“Alternative schoolâwhich means I don't have to
go
there,” Miles replies, turning to grab another board. “I can do my classwork at home. You should try it.”
“And why would I want to stay
home
?” Sarah asks sarcastically as she glances at their cabin in the woods.
Miles doesn't answer. He gets all adult-like when he has a tool in his hand. Sarah kicks a pinecone, which skips across the ground in little explosions of fine gray ashâor tephra, as scientists call the stuff. “Maybe I like regular school,” she says.
“You never did before,” Miles says, bending again to his work. The shiny handsaw blade goes
RASS!âRASS!
back and forth against the wood. His tanned arms glisten with sweat, and the piney sawdust odor is strong but does not cover his stinky smell. “Back home”â
RASS!
â“hated”â
RASS!
â“skipped”â
RASS!
â“the time.”
“Not all the time. And we weren't homeless then,” Sarah says.
Miles quickly stops sawing. He points the shiny blade toward their cabin. “We are
not
homeless.”
Her gaze follows his to the little shack tucked in among the pines. The trees behind are shaggy gray with the volcano dust that coats everything, and that has totally screwed up her life. Less than two months ago she lived in Wayzata, a western suburb of Minneapolis. Her family's big house in the cul-de-sac, her life of hanging out with her seventh-grade friends at school and at the Cinnabon in Southdale and the Mall of America and Valley Fairâall that now feels like a dream. Either a dream or else she is stuck inside a cheesy movie about a suburban family trying to survive an environmental disaster.
“Yeah. Some home,” Sarah says. “It looks like it was built for trolls.”
“Hey, think what it looked like when we first arrived,” Miles says.
Sarah is silent.
“Trashed,” Miles continues. “Now we've got gas lights, a front porchâMr. Kurz would be proud.”
“He's dead,” she says sarcastically. Miles pauses to give her a glare but doesn't go off on her.
“Well, we're not dead,” he says, “and thanks to him we at least have a safe place to stay.”
Mr. Kurzâanother character from the bad movie she's stuck in. He was an old guy whom Miles had met at a nursing home in Minneapolis during his ninth-grade oral-history project, or “interview a geezer,” as Miles called it then. The old man had a crazy story about living in a cabin hidden in the north woods all his life; Miles was crazy enough to believe him; and their parents, Art and Natalie, were crazy enough to let Miles bring them all here. Then again, it wasn't as if they'd had much choice.
“It's great living in the woods by the river,” Miles says. “Why would anyone want to leave?”
“Let's see,” Sarah says. “A real school might actually have kids my age? Plus my cell phone won't work here. I can't call any of my friends back home.”
“What friends?” Mile says. “And anyway, all those suburban fake-Goth losers you hung around with are going to be hunting rats or looking for roadkill to eat.”
“Shut up, Miles!” she says quickly.
Miles does, which is his small way of apologizing.
“Plus a school has things like flush toilets,” Sarah continues, “and hot water that comes out of faucets?”
“Our outhouse works fine,” Miles says, not bothering to look up. “No pipes, no electricityâwe're totally green. And what's wrong with cooking on a woodstove and washing in the river?”
“You tell me.”
He stops to stare.
She pinches her nose. “I hate to say it, but you stink. Really bad.”
Miles hoists his right arm and smells his pit. “I don't smell nothing.”
“âAnything,'” she says. Since they arrived at the cabin, Miles's grammar and hygiene have slipped big-time. He hardly ever washesânever brushes his teeth. His hair has gotten longer, and now that he's getting older, his skinny chest is growing furry with dark hair. Every day he looks more like a wild animal.
Miles straightens up. “I stink? Really?” he says, now faking genuine concern; he sniffs first one armpit, then the other. He steps closer. “Are you sure?”
“Miles, no,” Sarah says, edging away.
He fakes a growl and leaps forward to grab her. Sarah shrieks. He's so sweaty and slick from his carpentry work that she twists out of his grasp and races off toward the river. He waves his arms like a crazy man, and his hairy armpits chase her like two owls. Laughing, she runs down the path toward the river. Behind her, Emily, their goat, begins to
“Baaack!”
in alarm.
“Don't worry, EmilyâI'll be back!” Sarah shouts over her shoulder. She makes a running jump into the water, hoping that Miles will leap in after her. It would be a service to the family.
But Miles skids to a stop at the riverbank. “Sorry,” he says, “I got to keep working. Winter is coming, and anyway, you smell, tooâlike a goat.”
“I do not!” she shouts.
“Goat Girl!” Miles teases.
She punches water toward him but it falls short, then swears at him for real.
“Sarah? Miles?” their mom calls from back on the front porch. “Everything all right?”
“You're in trouble now,” Sarah says, emerging from the river.
“No I'm not.” Miles quickly heads back to the yard.
As Sarah trudges, sopping wet, up the short trail and into the yard, her mother waits on the front porch, arms crossed. “Okay, what's going on?”
“Miles did it. He chased me,” Sarah says, pointing to him.
Miles looks around innocently. “She's obsessing on toilets and showers again,” he says, and shrugs.
“That's enough, Miles,” Nat says. “I don't care who did whatâjust stop!” Their mother is small with blue eyes; and a red do-rag covers her curly dark-brown hair. Art appears in the doorway and takes out one earbud.
“What's going on?” he asks. He's only a little taller than Nat, and has wispy curls turning gray over his ears; he shades his eyes against the hazy sunlightâhe's an indoor kind of man, a musician, drummer for a jazz band, and a totally urban guy.
“Nothing,” Sarah says.
“I'm so sick of these two bickering and fighting,” Nat says to him.
“Listen to your mother,” their father says.
“So what? Are you going to ground me?” Sarah asks her parents. “Take away my cell phone and credit card? No trips to the mall for a week?”
“Very funny,” her mother says.
They are all silent for a moment.
“We just need ⦠to pull together,” her mother says. “Okay?”
“All right, all right!” Sarah says with annoyance. She isn't used to this new family teamwork motto. She used to have essentially no parents. Her dad was on the road all the time with his group, and her mother was busy with her literary clientsâand it was just fine that way. Now they're like the
Little House on the Prairie
familyâor more like
Little House in the Big Woods
: Everybody's home all the time. “Just tell me again why we're living here?” Sarah says.
Everyone knows it's a rhetorical question, but Miles isn't done pushing her buttons. “Where to start?” he says sarcastically. “Do you sorta remember when the volcanoes didn't stop erupting, how we had to wait longer and longer in line at gas stations? How fights would break out if somebody took more than five gallons? And how after about a year of volcanic dust in the air, the plants barely grew anymore, and all the grocery store shelves had big bare spots? All the âtemporarily out of stock' signs?”
“That the best you can do, Memory Boy?”
“Or how about the family down the road that was tied up and beaten by looters looking for food?” Miles continues.