A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  “No, I didn’t hear anything else. It was all in slow motion for me. All right, party’s over,” Graham said, clapping his hands. “Let’s get this stuff back to camp and then we need to check out our hero there and make sure he doesn’t have any injuries.”

  Macy kept her pistol ready; she and Sheriff guarded the party as they made their way back to camp.

  Once there, they were greeted by a very concerned Tala and Ennis. They put the boat down, and Mark was welcomed by Marcy as she came up and hugged him, kissing him on the cheek. “I was so scared,” she said.

  Mark looked a bit embarrassed and said, “Graham put me and Bang up a tree. So, no heroics here.”

  Graham tried to ease the moment by saying, “Actually, if it hadn’t been for Sheriff, I don’t think we’d be talking right now.”

  “Sheriff jumped right at the wolf before it got Graham,” Bang said, choking a little on the last word, motioning with his hands as he remembered the action occurring just minutes before. They were all a little surprised when the boy spoke up. Tala hugged Graham, and he pulled her close as Bang hugged his leg again. “I’m all right,” he said, just for her, but let’s see if Sheriff has any bites or scratches that we need to treat.” He started running his hands through the dog’s fur.

  Sheriff was pumped up, thinking he was receiving much needed attention, and began licking Graham’s hand in gratitude. Then he returned his attention toward the dangers of the forest, his ears twitching and turning for any indication of danger.

  They were all getting a little cold standing out in the open in two inches of glistening snow. After they put the small boat away and removed the contents, Tala hurried those not on guard duty indoors, where they removed their boots and put them all along the wall. She made them hot tea and cocoa, and they all warmed up from the steaming cups—and more so from being together after coming so close to tragedy. Other than a few scratches around Sheriff’s muzzle he seemed unharmed, and for that they were all grateful. Graham suspected he would encounter the wolf again and he would need the dog and any other help he could get next time.

  34

  An Observation

  Dalton got the surveillance report of action in Graham’s camp. A commotion of some sort had happened, but it appeared that all the occupants were accounted for and none of them looked injured, including their pet dog.

  When the previous report had come in about the three men in the canoe approaching Graham’s camp at night, Dalton and several of the other preppers crowded into the small observation room. They held their breath while watching the video of Graham and Tala slinking into the woods just before the men came walking into the camp. They could just barely make out and piece together what happened next. Though there was no audio, it was clear one guy was down and the other two made their way back to the canoe in haste with the dog after them.

  “This guy doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing,” Dalton remembered Rick, their technology specialist, saying at the time. “He should have dropped all three already.”

  In Graham’s defense, Dalton said “He’s a math professor, not military—remember? He doesn’t think like us, but you’re right, he should never have let them get that far in. Now they’ve got a better layout of the camp.” Dalton knew those guys would be back.

  Since then he’d felt edgy and helpless. If something were to happen to Graham’s crew, he knew he shouldn’t act. It would be too dangerous, exposing himself and the others. But he couldn’t stop his emotions; he owed Graham for caring for his young cousin, and he liked the man, for that matter.

  What made things harder was the rest of the team becoming more attached to the carriers. Graham’s camp became a sort of soap opera for them. Rick started it all one evening at dinner as a source of entertainment that he often recalled during their evening meal for the other members to enjoy. Rick suspected that Graham and Tala were getting “better acquainted,” as he put it. He regaled the other preppers with the humorous chicken story: Bang pulling the birds out of the truck cab, and when one got away how the boy finally pinned it down with its wings flapping in his face. He told them about how Macy and Marcy were very different twins. Macy often helped Graham and Mark with splitting wood and other outdoor chores, and Marcy aided Tala in all things domestic.

  Theirs was a boring life, and these little entertainments of human activity kept the preppers looking forward to the next day. They’d been sheltered since the beginning in the safety of their haven. Occasional hunting groups allowed the men to venture out a little now. Planning for next year’s vegetable gardens and the care and keeping of tools and equipment became mundane.

  So the news from Graham’s camp each evening provided something to look forward to and helped keep them from dwelling on their recent past and the losses all had endured. This practice wasn’t unlike “television in the old days, after a hellacious day on the job,” Rick said.

  Concern about the safety of Graham’s camp due to the invaders occupied Dalton and Rick’s conversations lately. Rick had become enamored of Graham’s camp because of his daily surveillance of them.

  Rick wanted to talk to Dalton about reaching out to Graham to help him secure his camp more efficiently. He was sure Dalton wouldn’t go for it, but since they were now all involved in their story, he might entertain the idea, even though he knew logically they shouldn’t do it. If they didn’t do something soon to help, Rick felt certain the invaders would attack Graham’s camp and its residents would be wide open for slaughter. Of course, in doing so, they risked revealing to Graham that they were watching them.

  The people in the small cabin had suffered much more than any of those in the prepper compound. Somehow these few had found one another after losing their entire families and realizing their immunity to the virus made them a much hated minority, endangered by the fact that they were known to carry the virus.

  They could see Graham had somehow picked up foundlings whom he might have determined as being of no concern to him, but despite that he’d collected them and brought them to safety. They knew he’d just stumbled onto Tala and the old man, but even they had been accepted. Graham’s kindness in taking in Dalton’s young cousin without question had earned him a great deal of respect from all the preppers. They felt they owed him, in a way, and maybe that’s why they’d all become emotionally involved and were cheering the carriers on. It was not just that Graham was Dalton’s boyhood friend; he’d taken these others in without question, in these horrible times, and the preppers couldn’t help but feel admiration for the man.

  Dalton walked into the dining tent, where his wife Kim and another woman, Tammy, were making lunch for the children, who were watching the cartoon version of Pocahontas in the underground shelter.

  They’d established a strict rule about what they could bring into the compound when an emergency hit, but one of the other dads had smuggled a DVD player into the shelter. When they found out, he argued it was necessary to keep the kids safe and occupied. They continued to argue about it until he revealed his collection of DVDs with all the Disney movies in addition to most of Clint Eastwood’s films. After the rest of them saw that, they voted that it was actually a good idea and then started having a weekly movie night for both the children and adults, using a wide-screen computer monitor. All in all it became an escape for them from the reality and dangers the carriers posed.

  “Whatcha ladies making today?” Dalton asked Kim, planting a kiss on the top of her head.

  “Tuna sandwiches and dehydrated apple rings.” Then she renamed them. “Otherwise known as tuna triangles and apple snacks,” she said and laughed when Dalton tickled her neck with his kiss.

  “Stop that, mister, we’re working here,” Tammy butted in, amused at the two’s little love scene.

  Dalton loved Kim’s smile. Actually, he loved everything about her, from her strawberry blond hair to her slim figure to her perfect, unpainted toes. Dalton had been terrified when the chaos broke out; he couldn’t get Kim and the
boys to safety fast enough. Now the challenge was to keep them safe.

  When everyone first gathered, they ate only MREs and stayed locked up in the underground shelter they’d built in secret over the years. Then, when things settled down—or, more precisely, when most of humanity had perished—they opened the doors, pulled out the military tents, and established new rules.

  They began cooking with what supplies they had and the meat they’d hunted, saving the MREs for leaner times. Kim and Tammy also started baking bread, more out of a need for comfort than anything else. Tammy had always made their own bread at home, and now she was doing it on a larger scale for the rest of the group; it was something everyone appreciated. They were now able to make sandwiches out of peanut butter and jelly, or tuna, or even canned chicken. One night she caught Rick making one out of some cold roast venison and he swore it was the best thing he ever had. The only thing it was missing was the fresh tomato and lettuce.

  They had yet to see the really cold snows of winter, but were already dreaming of tender green onions, crisp red radishes, heads of romaine, and peas tucked in their jade-green pods. This pastime, not unlike the drama of Graham’s camp, came a close second in the evening conversations. So much so that they would begin salivating until someone would put a stop to it by asking for mercy. Spring could not come fast enough. Even though it was way too early, they’d already set up the tables and hung the grow lights in anticipation of next February.

  Tammy had the most knowledge of this, having worked in a nursery. She even knew how to spot plants in the wild that were either medicinal or edible if it came down to it.

  One of the first outdoor projects that Dalton and the other men got busy on, besides putting up the tents, was fencing in their immediate compound. They’d stored the metal fencing in a buried bunker, complete with chain link pullers, posthole diggers, sledgehammers, and bags of concrete, and they worked quickly and efficiently. Since they’d spent so many weekends working together, they had already worked out the kinks in their relationships. Where Rick was bossy, Sam was contemplative, but they all figured out a way to work together and, surprisingly, there were few arguments. They depended on one another, and this was crucial in their situation. Above all they respected Dalton’s final word on any debate. He’d gotten them this far, and they owed him a lot.

  With the perimeter up they were safer from wild animals and the occasional human who might stumble onto their camp, though that was unlikely these days. At first, after Graham’s camp established itself, exposure became their major concern. Now they realized they needed to keep an eye on his camp to keep its residents out of danger.

  After the women had kicked Dalton out of the kitchen, he wandered over to check out Sam’s work on the deer hides. This man knew how to utilize every part of any catch. No one else had ever learned the art of tanning, but Sam had it down to a science. With the colder temperatures, there were fewer flies to contend with, even though he worked with a smoke fire nearby to keep the pests away.

  “How’s it going, Sam?” Dalton asked.

  “Good, and you?”

  Dalton watched as Sam never broke the rhythm of rubbing the fat off the flesh side of the deer pelt during their conversation. After that, he knew Sam would layer plain salt over every inch of it, flat out. Sam had explained once that it drew the moisture out and helped keep the fur from falling out or decomposing. Because of the moisture in the air there, he often kept smoky fires nearby the pelts in progress and covered them loosely at night with tarps. After this procedure, Sam would soak the stiff pelts in cold water for a few hours, making them soft before the tanning process, which involved boiling a concoction. When it cooled he added volatile battery acid to it.

  Sam did not permit any observers nearby during this process, not because he wanted to hide a secret ingredient but because of the danger it imposed. Submerging and soaking the skins in the solution became the next step. Then the extensive rinsing process, and then hanging to let the pelt drain. Finally, he would add oil to the skin inside with a sponge and put it on a frame stretcher.

  Sam always made a point to neutralize the barrel of tanning solution with baking soda, keeping everyone far away, including himself, due to the toxic gas it emitted. Afterward he poured it over the gravel drive; it was no longer toxic to humans, but it kept some of the weeds down.

  He would check on the hides daily, and when they were dry in the center he’d take them down and rub them with a wire brush on the skin side, softening and fluffing it a bit so that it would be workable. Then he’d dry it even more. So far these tanned pelts occupied a small corner of the compound building in increasing quantities, waiting for their final use.

  Dalton knew Sam had never spent time in the military, but the experience would have been lost on the man. Sam said he’d learned everything he knew by being raised by his grandfather deep in the Montana forest. Dalton stipulated in the initial rules that all members must have spent some time in the discipline of the US military to join their group. After seeing what Sam could do, however, they made an exception.

  Tanning hides, hunting, tracking, snaring, fishing, knife fighting, bow making, and beer brewing were only a few of the man’s many talents. Not only that, but Dalton liked the man because he didn’t talk too much. They got along well and would often have a beer, sitting in lawn chairs at night, with little pressure to talk, and Dalton liked it that way.

  Sam’s sinewy frame, deeply tanned skin, and thick dark hair revealed him to be a true woodsman. Dalton guessed his height to be about five eleven. He’d never seen a man tread through the forest as quietly as Sam did, and he liked to go on hunts with him just to watch the way Sam manipulated various natural obstacles without a sound.

  Often the group would debate different decisions they needed to make, since Dalton required everyone to have a voice. This became the only cultural difference in the group, as Sam would often just act on his own expertise without consulting the others. It was automatic for him. It always ended up being the right decision anyway, but Dalton explained to Sam that he needed to consult them first before acting on something that affected them all.

  Sam didn’t have a problem adjusting to this. He wanted to get along, so when the issue came up for building the outdoor bathroom facilities, Sam waited patiently for all in the committee to have their say, adding to the design.

  Then he said, “You could put it there and do it that way if you want to breathe in the aroma right around supper time as the cool evening breeze floats this way. But I’d suggest you move it down the natural slope of the land here.” He pointed his worn index finger to the corner at the back of the sketch. “Dig two fifteen-foot holes to put the outhouses over, keep plenty of ash and wood chips to spread after use. Also, I suggest each father teach his boys to piss out behind it through the fence into the brush to help keep the deer and their predators away. But that’s what I’d do. Otherwise, you’re going to have a line forming in the morning with this many people and we’ll have to fill in the shit-Popsicle holes in the middle of winter when the ground is too frozen to dig new ones.”

  After Sam’s rare monologue, he walked off to work. They were all silent, imagining what a year’s worth of “shit Popsicles” would look like. Rick broke the silence by laughing, and then said, “Sounds good to me; let’s do it his way.” The others emphatically agreed right away without further comment and walked away to get two outhouses built in the newly designated location.

  Sadly, when Sam had arrived at the camp, he revealed his wife had died three months earlier of breast cancer. He and his seven-year-old daughter had stayed in quarantine together, and never showed any sign of the virus. It was tragic for the two in quarantine to suffer such a personal loss as they were observed and tested. Dalton attributed much of Sam’s quietness to mourning, though they never talked about it.

  Anyone could see that Sam had once been a very happy man. His daughter Adelaide—Addy, for short—greeted him each evening by jumping into his
strong outstretched arms, her dark ponytail swinging as he carried her to bed. She often fell asleep with him sitting at the edge of her bed. Dalton had seen Sam carry Addy to their quarters, walking in that same soundless way of his, many times.

  Dalton left Sam to his work and went back to what occupied most of his time: planning for the safety of these people. Rick was where he’d left him, watching The Days of Graham’s Camp, which was the soap opera name the preppers had given the surveillance videos. “Anything up?” he asked.

  “Nope, nothing but watching mud dry here,” Rick answered, leaning back in his office chair. “Something must have happened, though, to cause that dog to run off into the woods like that with Twin Number Two right behind him, her weapon at the ready,” Rick speculated. “What do you think about putting up a few more cameras out there?”

  “Is it integral to our safety, Rick?” Dalton asked, “or simply for our entertainment?”

  “I know we have to draw the line at what makes sense for us, but let’s say something happened to one of them out there and we couldn’t see it and the person died as a result. Wouldn’t you want to know how it happened, and if it could have been prevented?”

  “We’re not God, Rick. We can’t save them every time. I agree we should try to prevent any danger that comes to them that could also jeopardize us, like the men that came in the other night. But if Graham gets taken down by some wild animal, the lady will just have to take over. She’s capable. We can’t step in for stuff like that,” Dalton said, trying to convince himself in the process.