by N. C. Reed
I sighed. My savings were definitely toast. Ah well, like I'd said before, if things went south then my money would be worthless anyway. Might as well get some use out of it.
I needed to talk to an electrician maybe, and see if I could figure out a way to run a freezer. I had a generator, but that took fuel and I usually only kept five or ten gallons for it just in case we had power outage. The generator could actually run the house as long as it was wide open, but that would burn fuel like a California wildfire going through one of those cedar shingle neighborhoods. I'd never have enough. I could get some extra and use the generator in an emergency to charge the batteries, but using it to run the house was a no go. Just too impractical.
That meant a smoke house. I would need meat, and the only way to preserve it was to smoke it. How long would that last? Another item for the list. Pretty soon I'd look like Santa, with a list as tall as the Empire State Building. That made me wonder if the North Pole would have zombies? Maybe I should move to Alaska while I had the time.
I took about an hour to study the internet for news. Nothing new really, other than the standard 'virus continues to spread' crap. There were no new videos, and the one I'd seen the day before was gone by then, scrubbed completely from the web. That, more than anything else, convinced me there was a real problem and that I wasn't being paranoid. Which was enough to shake off the last tendrils of doubt and get my ass moving.
The Zombies were coming.
While I was online I decided to research alternative methods of keeping meat over long periods. First thing that popped up was freeze-dried foods and I almost did the V8 slap on my forehead. I had completely forgotten about stuff like that. I didn't have a good excuse, either, since I used that stuff camping. I punched up one of the more popular company's website, and started looking at what was available. I was worried that there wouldn't be much, but the site showed almost everything in stock.
And there it was. Fish or cut bait. Here was the chance to fix one of the big weaknesses I had in my preparedness for something like this. I sat back into my chair, considering my next move. I did that for almost thirty seconds before I was back to the keyboard, and punching in numbers. I noticed a toll-free number to call for orders, and on an impulse I decided to call the order in. I would be glad I had before it was over.
The woman who answered sounded a bit harried, but was still friendly.
“Busy day?” I asked her, trying to project a calm disinterest.
“Unreal,” she replied. “Seems like everyone decided to order at once. We're selling out fast.”
“Am I too late to get my order up?” I asked, forcing a laugh. “Lot of disappointed campers if I am,” I added, laughing again. Like what, me? worry? nah, not me!
“No, you're in under the wire,” she laughed in return. “All orders processed in the next three hours will ship no later than opening tomorrow, guaranteed. After that, though, I just don't know, to be honest. Now what can I get for you?”
I had a list and ran down it, careful to be calm and considerate. I offered my card information and made sure they had the proper delivery address. No work tomorrow looked like. Or the next day, either most likely.
The bill was high, but less than I'd expected. I printed off the receipt and stuck it into my desk with a big sigh of relief. That was one worry I could cross off my list. I'd need to make sure about some other stuff, like propane and what not, but food I had. Three years of it, on it's way in less than twenty-four hours. Sounded quick enough, but the clock was ticking in a big way.
I looked at my watch, and decided to set the countdown for seventy-two hours. I figured if things were going to get out of hand, it would be right around there if the spread continued like it had so far. I'd have to really be on the lookout, though.
I spent the next forty-five minutes going through my house, list in hand, writing notes on any and every thing that occurred to me while I was at it. It kept growing. By the time I was done with the house, then the grounds, my small shop, and my barn, I had three legal pages of list. That was a lot of list.
I decided to use my cards as long as I could, and save what cash and metals I had for what might come after. Cash was king until everyone figured out that it wasn't going to be worth squat if this got out of hand. And there was always the hope, back then, that it wouldn't.
I gathered up my stuff, more than I normally carried today, and headed into town. I lived only a couple miles out of a medium sized little town. One that would offer me everything I might need for what I feared was coming. Well, most everything, anyway.
Probably.
I spent the time between then and my doctor's appointment filling my trailer and then my cargo van with gear and supplies. I spent a good bit on groceries, even with all the other stuff I had coming. I bought plenty of beans, rice, flour and corn meal to stretch the canned stuff I had ordered. Anything to fight food fatigue, you know? Sugar, salt, and plenty of spices rounded off that list.
Next was new fuel tanks and fill them up. I hated to leave them in the trailer full up, but. . .well, I didn't know for sure that I'd get the chance to fill them once the shit hit the fan. I bought five new cans and filled them. Tomorrow, I'd do the same thing again. After that, I'd have to see what happened.
Next was to the first of three gun stores I traded with on a regular basis. I got powder, primers and bullets, along with other odds and ends. I also picked up several (thousand) rounds of new ammunition in calibers for the guns I owned. Extra magazines for pistols and rifles that used them and parts and pieces for the weapons I owned. Buffers, springs, pins, that kind of thing. No sense in having a bunch of ammunition and not having anything to shoot it from, right?
Next was a hardware list of power tool batteries, hand tools, oil and grease, parts and supplies for chainsaw and mower, several lengths of chain, tape of all kinds, the list went on and on. I added several two-by-fours and three sheets of one inch plywood, just in case. Might need to build something, or board up my windows. I had shutters on my windows, actual working storm shutters in fact, but stuff breaks, you know? Better to have and not need and all that.
Finally I took a break, and went to lunch. I sat in the far corner of the Jack's restaurant, ordering myself both the double Big Jack cheeseburger and the ten piece chicken finger meals, plus a shake. They make good shakes with real Blue Belle ice cream. . .well, they used to anyway.
I hoarded my food and my lists in that corner, checking off all that I had managed to get done so far. A check of my watch showed that I still had about two-and-a-half hours until my appointment, so once I finished foundering myself on fast food and dairy I made the trip to a discount shoe place and picked up two new pairs of boots and two more of sneakers, along with two dozen pairs of socks. What? I get cold feet, okay?
Then it was off to a few last box stores for odds and ends, including duct tape. Man just can not have too much Duck Tape or Gorilla Glue. I can fix anything with those and a hammer, one way or another. People looked at me a little odd when I got to the check out with ten rolls of duct tape, ten more of electric tape, and six bottles of Gorilla Glue. Since there wasn't enough Duct Tape to suit me, I had scrounged around and located four rolls of Gorilla Tape. Good stuff, Gorilla Tape. I mean you know a gorilla will be stronger than a duck, right? Right.
After that, I checked again. My countdown was already down to sixty-six hours. Damn. That was quick. It was also time for me to head to the doctor's office.
Now, a few words about my doctor. She's hot. I mean like God Almighty, I break out into a sweat just thinking about her hot. And single. Straight and single. Nothing against those who play for the other team or anything, but I figure a good lesbian girl just won't show any interest in me, whereas with my straight, athletic, lovely doctor there was always that slim, last man on earth chance that she'd say 'yes' if I asked her out.
You know, once I worked up the courage to ask her out. Which, looking at my watch again, I needed to go ahead and do if
I was going to. Well, might have waited too late for that. We'd see.
Anyway, I knew as soon as I pulled up to the clinic that I wasn't the only one who had the idea to see the doctor today. Up until now I had almost convinced myself that no one in my sleepy little area had noticed what was happening. Maybe they had and were just going about their own lists in a different order from me.
Sure enough, the waiting room was still jam-packed. I walked to the desk and spoke to the receptionists, signing in as I did so. She assured me it would be at least an hour before I heard my name called. I told her I had a few errands to run and she agreed that I had time, so long as I was back and inside by closing which was five pm. No problem, I assured her and departed again.
The only real errand I had was to visit a used book store in the middle of town but it kept me from sitting in a room full of potential sick people for over an hour. I spent the next forty-five minutes looking through shelf after shelf of used books, most in better shape that you might think. I selected about two dozen paperbacks and I think nine hard covers in the end. At the last minute I threw in some handy-man type books I saw on the way to the counter. There was a set of them, nine in all, from back in the day. Considering what might be coming, I could use them I figured. I paid for my new library and stored them behind the front seat of my van then headed back to Doctor Hottie's office.
Did I mention my doctor was flaming hot? I mean dear Lord how did you get all that in those jeans hot? Oh, I did? Sorry.
I still had to spend about twenty minutes sweating it out in the waiting room and germaphobe that I was turning into I had to use those handi-wipes that everyone was keeping at the door these days to clean the seat I was using. That drew some rather ugly looks from some of the people inside, especially the women, but having just watched one small child of about four clean his nose the way toddlers will, and then clean his hand on a chair when he was finished, I decided I would risk the ugly looks. If the world went the way I was terrified it might, most of these people might be zombie chow by the end of next week anyway, right? No point in worrying about running into them again, at Doctor Hottie's or anywhere else.
Sounds crass I guess. I don't mean it to be. What was I supposed to do? Announce to them 'oh, by the way? Zombies are on the loose in Spain and some other countries who's names I can't pronounce so you might want to stock up on ammo, edged weapons, and beef jerky?' Yeah, that would be a dandy way to get my work finished, spending the next seventy-two hours under mental observation.
No, thank you. But just know that it wasn't personal. I didn't have anything against any of them. Well, maybe that kid with snot on his hand, but even him I wouldn't have just left to a zombie. But do you really think his mom would have listened to me?
Yeah, me either.
Anyway, soon enough I was talking to the nurse, explaining that I had felt bad this morning, runny nose, slight fever, nausea, you know, the usual shit you tell the doctor when you want to be off sick for a few days. She nodded sympathetically, telling me 'it's going around', then left assuring me Doctor Hottie would be along shortly. And leaving me wondering what 'it' was and if I had 'it' now, after spending more than ten seconds in that germ infested waiting room.
That would be my luck though, you know? Make sure I'm prepared to ride out the Zompocolypse and then catch some respiratory disease and die just as the zombies started piling up. Shaking my head at the unfairness of it all, I used the sink in the exam room to wash my hands. Again.
I was still drying my hands when Doctor Calendar Girl came in. For once she wasn't drop dead gorgeous. Well, that's a lie since she's always drop dead gorgeous. But today she was out of sorts. Hair frazzled, face worn, clothes wrinkled. She did smile when she saw me though, making my heart and a few other things do a flip and flutter.
“Well, how's my favorite survivalist?” she grinned, looking at my papers.
“I need a tetanus shot,” I told her without preamble. “I also need some antibiotics and painkillers if you can give them to me. Something with a decent shelf life. If I can get more than one script, that would be extremely cool as well.” She had stopped reading and making notes about half way through my introductory speech, looking up at me with a frown.
“You know I don't do much pain meds,” she said. “As for the others, what do you need all that for? The tetanus I understand, since I don't even have a note of when you might possibly have had one last. What's going on?”
Doctor Hottie wasn't stupid by any stretch of the imagination. I should admit here that I knew her from more than just seeing her as my doctor. She was a member of the gun club that I helped to run. Is this a great country or what? Good looking woman, doctor, and she was a shooter. Damn good one at that.
“I'm not sure anything is going on,” I admitted finally. “I'm. . .covering my bases, that's all.”
“Then what do you think is going on?” she pressed. Ah, Connie. Oh, that was her real name, Connie Kane. Cool name, huh? Makes an impression coming and going, does Connie. Know what I mean?
I stood looking at her for a minute and then took my tablet from my bag, setting it on the table. I looked at her, nodded at the tablet, and she rattled off the password to the clinic's WI-fi. Soon I was on line, and showed her as quickly as possible the news items I had marked. She read them efficiently, eyebrows raising as she looked at me.
“I know about this,” she told me. “It's a virus, probably an offshoot of Avian. Precautions are being taken at all ports of entry. There are no reported cases anywhere in the state.”
I said nothing, just punched up the video from Spain. I pushed the tablet over to her again and she made it clear by facial contortions she was humoring me. Probably for the rest as much as anything. That changed about two minutes into the video. Maybe sooner, since I was watching her face and not the clock.
Suddenly she looked up at me, eyes wide. I just rewound the vid, hit the slow-mo and punched play again. Connie watched it without comment. Once it was over, she took out her script pad and wrote what I asked for.
“What are you doing about this?” she asked, handing over the papers.
“Right now I'm just taking precautions. Food, water, shelter -”
“Ammo,” she cut me off, and I nodded.
“And ammo. And parts and fuel and whatever I can think of in the next. . .” I checked my watch, “sixty-four hours and. . .thirty-one minutes.”
“What? Why that amount of time?” she asked, surprised.
“I gave myself seventy-two hours to be as ready as possible. That was before dawn this morning. After that, it'll either be over and I'll be taking it day by day, or things will be fine and I'll be back at work. Much poorer than I started off today. I don't know which.”
She was silent for two, maybe three full minutes. That's a long time for a woman, or a doctor, to be quiet. Finally she looked at me and I could see the wheels turning.
“You think this is real, don't you?” she asked, serious.
“I think it's possible, yes,” I nodded. “And that video was scrubbed from the net this morning. No mention of it anywhere.”
“Well, that's a bad omen,” Connie said absently. “I live in an apartment building here in town,” she said, looking straight at me. I waited for more, but then realized she was waiting. On me.
“I'm fortifying my place,” I replied, once I figured out what she wanted to hear. “I've got about two acres of fenced land and an extra bedroom. If you want to order some freeze-dried food, here's the number. You better hurry, they're about to sell out.” I wrote my address on the paper and gave it to her. “Are you sure you want to do this? I might be wrong.”
“That video looked pretty real,” she temporized and I knew then she knew more than she was letting on. That wasn't fair.
“What do you know, Doc?” I asked. “Time for secrets is over, if we're going to work together.” She seemed to consider that for a minute, then nodded.
“Fair enough. Yes, I've heard odd stories, bu
t. . .look, I worked for Doctors Without Borders for three years before establishing my practice. I know people who are still over seas and I met foreign doctors that I became good friends with. Yesterday I got a message that made almost no sense from a friend of mine in Portugal. I met her and her husband in Zaire and we've stayed in contact ever since. Her e-mail was rambling on and on about how wonderful things were and how their children were growing so tall and her husband was working over-time to make sure that the kids were well taken care off, that sort of thing.”
“So?” I asked. “That's not really odd sounding, to me.”
“They can't have children,” Connie replied. “And they work in a government hospital on a straight salary. There's no such thing as over-time. She's trying to tell me something without telling me. Until now, I had no idea what it was. Now, maybe, I do.”
“You think she's warning you that this is real and they may be compromised?” I asked.
“That's just exactly what I think,” Connie nodded. “Look, I've known you longer than anyone else here in town. You know I can shoot and I'm a doctor. Maybe together we can make it if things really get that bad. You want a partner?”
Well hell yeah I want a gob-smackingly hot doctor who can shoot and probably cook better than I can and is smart to boot for a partner! What the hell kind of a dumb-ass question is that?
“That might work,” I said carefully, trying to look reluctant. Connie almost smirked at me.
“Drake, I know that you watch my ass every time I walk away from you. You know you want me. With you, I mean,” she added with a grin that said she knew exactly what I really wanted.
Busted.
“Well, when you put it that way,” I sighed. “If I'm going to have a partner for the end of the world, I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend the Apocalypse with than you, Connie.” She grinned ear-to-ear.
“That's more like it,” she said firmly. “All right, this is my address,” she scribbled on a piece of paper from her pocket. “I have four more patients and then I need to run by the hospital. Can you give me two. . .no, make it three hours, then come to my place? I'll have some of my stuff already packed by then, maybe.”
