by Bobby Adair
Well, maybe in my mind it was like that. I was completely discounting the fact that Amelia so far hadn’t said anything about wanting to stay with me long-term. And who knew what Aunt Millie was going to want? Amelia said Millie was alone, but maybe she’d already baited her honey trap and caught a burly neanderthal stud bred for survival in a rough-and-tumble world of apocalyptic monsters.
The night’s hike wasn’t bad. The temps had settled out on the cold side, cold enough to make hiking long miles comfortable. The fog thinned out the closer we came to dawn. We didn’t look for shelter, though. We exited the highway, which had proved an excellent route for nighttime travel, and made our way south following Old River through neighborhoods of shitty little houses that had the crap beat out of them in the last hurricane. Flooding had left debris piles as tall as me. Cars and boats lay scattered across the land when the water receded. Tank farms, possibly still brimming with petroleum in various states of refinement, stood at the waters edge. When our path took us close to the river, I spied rows of barges, some safely at anchor where they’d been stored after their last use. Others had run up on the land, carried by the storm surge and dropped when the winds grew too tired to torment.
One item we came across was a two-seat plastic kayak, yellow on the bottom, sun-bleached white on top. The plastic seemed brittle to the touch and I had my doubts when Amelia suggested we pick it up and take it with us.
“It’ll probably sink,” I told her.
“You can swim, right?”
Of course. I nodded.
“Then who cares?”
With the height difference, it turned out it was easier for me to carry the kayak myself than to share the load with her. Still, I knew we weren’t far from our destination, otherwise we’d have had to make other arrangements. Carrying that heavy hunk of plastic for a mile wasn’t something I had the stamina for. Luckily, she also found a broken canoe paddle and a warped, gray board that would serve the purpose. We didn’t have far to go.
Reaching shore near a small tank farm where Old River dumped into the Houston Ship Channel, we found a sheltered place among a grove of wind-tortured oaks and stopped. Amelia directed me to put the kayak in the water. I tied a ragged rope to a tree and let the plastic turd drift in the current.
“It’s nice out here in the winter,” she said, as the sky was finally starting to shed its dark mantle. “No mosquitoes.”
Listening to the sound of the water lap on the rocks. I agreed. “Not many Shroomheads out this way? I don’t hear any.”
Amelia pointed back toward the highway. “A group of twenty or so lives up there in a warehouse. Another small clan stays across the highway. They’re both daytime clans.”
“I guess they’re not up yet.”
As the light grew in the sky, I saw the Battleship Texas anchored across the channel, a hundred year-old dreadnought that served in two world wars, ending its utility to the humans who made it by giving tourists a watered-down taste of war as it rusted its way into the silt. Standing a hair taller than the Washington Monument, the obelisk of the San Jacinto Monument stood tall in the sky at the center of a park on the far shore. In between, the ship channel was littered with boats and barges, some anchored in the deep water in the middle, others aground on the shore. More than a few had sunk in the shallows, and one was standing in the deeper water—bow down, stern up with a row of pelicans perched across its transom.
Amelia pointed across the channel. “Those two barges there. That’s where we’re going.”
“Weren’t there four?” I asked, sure she’d told me that.
Amelia showed me a barge stuck on a sandbar far from the pair she’d pointed out. “That’s one of the original four. It broke off and drifted away.” She stood up and surveyed the other floating hulks. Each was distinct in its own way, but uniform and interchangeable at the same time. How she told one from the other, I couldn’t guess. “I don’t see the fourth.”
I shrugged. No big deal, for sure.
“We’ll wait until she’s up and around,” said Amelia. “We don’t want to surprise her.”
“Makes good sense,” I agreed. No sense in showing up like a burglar.
“You can paddle out and talk your bullshit at her then.”
“I can paddle?”
Amelia pointed at the broken canoe paddle and the board. “One of those should work for you.”
“You’re not coming?”
“I guided you here. That was my deal.”
Not the way I remembered it. “You should come,” I told her. “I’m not going to abandon you.”
“Oh, it’s the hero thing, isn’t it? I’ve done fine on my own. I’ll be okay without you watching over me, Batman.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I argue. “We can make this work. You, me, and Aunt Millie, we’re the last three normal people left in the world.”
“Normal?” asked Amelia, pushing her hood back to display her warts.
“Those don’t matter. If you don’t come with me, I’m not going.” Miss Three O’ Clubs danced through my imagination, bouncing her tits and caressing her curves, reminding me how stupid my ultimatum was. She was what I’d be giving up. “We can hike back to Katy and maybe I’ll build my farm on the football field. Others will come along. There have to be more who survived. We don’t need Aunt Millie.”
“You’re an idiot.”
January 13th, second entry
Sometimes obstinance pays off.
With Amelia using the half-length canoe paddle in the bow, and me pushing the warped board through the water at the stern, we had the leaky kayak sloshing toward Aunt Millie’s barges. We knew she was up, having caught a few glimpses of movement. We didn’t intend to board. Instead, we planned to come in close enough that we could call out to her, and hopefully—fingers crossed, rabbit foot rubbed, four-leaf clover plucked—she’d invite us aboard. Past that, I had no plan.
The pelicans lined up on the boat stern watched us push clumsily through the cold, brown water, not the least bit spooked. Gulls flew overhead, coming in for a close look, and laughing as they flew off. At least that’s what their squawks sounded like to me. Snarky fuckers.
With a hundred yards to go, maybe a bit more, I saw the form of a thin person come out of one of several shacks built on the upper deck of the barge. I squinted, realizing suddenly that my eyes weren’t quite as good as they once were. As I watched, a naked, thin person in a gas mask, I assumed Aunt Millie, sauntered to the starboard side of the barge and turned around. Unfortunately, my vision at that distance being a tad blurry, coupled with my unfamiliarity with the jerry-rigged purpose of the different things onboard, left me at a loss to guess what was coming next. Too bad about that. On reaching the rail, she spun around, seated herself on a board suspended over the side of the barge, and relieved herself into the brown water ten feet below.
I was too shocked to turn away. I heard the tinkle of her piss echo, and I heard a dull plop-splash, followed by a second.
Ack!
Just like that, Aunt Millie was off the board and headed back inside her shack.
Double Ack!
Sure, it’s natural. Of course it is, but damn, it wasn’t the kind of thing I ever wanted to see. Never. Not once.
Amelia looked over her shoulder at me, a big grin on her face. “Aunt Millie.” She giggled as she turned to face forward, digging the paddle into the water to move our little boat toward the goal.
“Be careful, where you put that paddle,” I warned, because it was the only smart-assy thing I could come with up through my mortification. “I’m not going to clean it off if you get it soiled.”
January 13th, third entry
At twenty yards, Amelia suggested we stop. “Any closer, and she might hit us if she comes out shooting.”
“If she does shoot,” I suggest, “swim for it. I saw it on a show once. Bullets can’t travel that far through water.”
“I know.”
I rolled my eyes.
/> Amelia glanced at me, took a deep breath, and called, “Aunt Millie!”
Millie heard. She moved around noisily inside one of the shacks on the deck.
“Aunt Millie?”
Quiet followed.
“Please, Aunt Millie. I found someone. He’s normal.” Amelia hesitated and then added, “Like you.”
I expected it, but still, it startled me when a thing burst from a door and ran—and I hesitate to use that particular word, because there’s no verb I can think of that explains just how it clickity-clacked its way across the deck to brandish a shotgun over the railing. But that wasn’t even the worst of it, not by far.
It was wearing a gas mask. It had a pair of pink kiddie sunglasses with white polka dots affixed over the eyeholes. A scraggly main of gray hair stuck out impossibly far from its scalp in every direction. I think something in my head popped a fuse trying to match up voluptuous Miss Three O’ Clubs from the back of that card with the ancient spider skeleton draped in wrinkled grandma skin waving a gun at me.
My God, it has to be a thousand years old!
“I told you,” its mean, thin voice rasped over the water, “get the fuck out of here and don’t come back!”
“Aunt Millie,” Amelia pleaded. “I’m fine. I told you.”
That’s Aunt Millie? For real?
“Who’s that retarded hillbilly? You fuckin’ him? You like ‘em old, don’t you, you little sniffy cunt? I always knew you and Amon were humpin’ like rabbits in the washroom when you thought I was asleep.”
Retarded hillbilly?
“He looks mean,” Millie cackled on.
“Ma’am,” I said, “I’m…normal.”
To Amelia, I whispered, “Please tell me that isn’t Aunt Millie. It isn’t, is it?”
Amelia looked at me like maybe I did have a learning disability. “You couldn’t get that from the context?”
Millie shouted at us. “What are you whispering, you little bitch?”
That didn’t stop me from asking Amelia, “What happened to her? I thought you said she was my age.”
She looked at me, and then glanced back at Aunt Millie. “Aren’t you?”
“What?” I shouted, as my ego shriveled down to the size of a desiccated rat testicle. Millie had to be at least thirty years older than me. “How can she be your aunt?”
“I never said she was my aunt.” Amelia shrugged. Small misunderstanding. No biggie. “She was my mom’s aunt. I just always called her Aunt Millie because that’s what my mom called her.”
“If you think you’re going to play pokey-pokey with me,” shouted Millie, “you’ve got another thing coming.” She pointed the wavering barrel of the shotgun at us.
I pushed my board through the water, pulling the kayak back.
“You better go,” Millie shouted. “I’ll shoot you so full of holes—” That’s where she lost me. She screeched a string of word-like babbles I couldn’t decipher. The shotgun boomed across the water. A thousand water birds jumped out of their roosts and flapped into the air. Even the disinterested pelicans decided it was a good time to go.
Luckily, the shot didn’t splash the water anywhere near the kayak. Neither me nor Amelia felt the need to dunk ourselves in the frigid water. We did double our efforts to put some distance between us and Aunt Millie’s pleasure barge.
Aunt Millie shouted insults at us and fired the shotgun a few more times as we retreated. We didn’t try talking to her again.
When we neared the shore, Amelia said, “We probably shouldn’t pull out here. The infected will be coming. The shotgun will have them interested and out looking for breakfast.”
With water pooling a few inches deep in the bottom of the boat, I reluctantly agreed. “Where to, then?”
“Not to Aunt Millie’s,” Amelia laughed.
I couldn’t help but laugh, too. As much as my post-apoc princess dreams hinged on Miss Three O’ Clubs, I couldn’t help but see the stupid venture across Houston for what it was, a unicorn chase. Maybe it was time for a new plan. “Have you ever been to the Caribbean?”
The End, For Now
Actually, by the time most of you read this, Book 4 will already be out there in the cyberbibliosphere. Grab a copy.
Reviews & Signups
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On the subject of Reader Reviews, please know that they are very helpful to indie authors. If you have a moment, when you’re back on the website where you purchased this book, please take a moment and select a star rating and (if required) say a few words about Dusty’s Diary. Your feedback is appreciated!
And for any of you who read enjoy reading that sort of thing, I’ve included the original prefaces below from when I published each of these books individually.
— Bobby
Credits & Such
Cover Design & Layout
Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a. 187designz
Editing or Proofreading on at Least One of the Diaries
Kat Kramer Cathy Moeschet
Linda Tooch Rob Melich
Margaret Ferguson
Technical Consultants & Research
John Cummings: Military
Kat Kramer: Construction, Geography
eBook & Print Layout
Kat Kramer
Foreword to Book 1
I hate to have to do this, but let me start with a WARNING. This is a short book. If you’re on the inter-webs and peeking at the sample before you spend your $0.99 (or whatever that converts to in the local currency) then you’re reading this, so please keep the length in mind. If it bothers you to spend $0.99 on a short book, thanks for looking, but you might move along to your next choice. You can buy a lot more words in some other books for the same price. (Though, personally, I do feel it’s worth your time AND investment!)
Moving right along.
I know, if you’re a reader of my other books, you’re either saying “What? Another series?” or “Yippee! Another series!”
Well, funny story about that. After the release of The Last Survivors, readers started asking, “What happened? How did the world get to that place three hundred years in the future where everything had gotten so different?” Dusty’s Diary was conceived to be a novella-length attempt to answer that question. Unfortunately, I started writing it with this character Dusty in mind, and everything took off on a path of its own.
While Dusty’s Diary attempts to explain those years when society was collapsing and people were turning into the monsters that live in The Last Survivors, it also—because sometimes my imagination just won’t behave—developed this character Dusty who, quite frankly, upstaged the rest of the story. He decided that his stupid little rants and his quirky humor were just as important—possibly more important—than explaining the history of the disease and the slow process of society’s disintegration.
Of course, after a few chapters I was on board and having a blast with the writing. Characters with no propriety filter on their thoughts are fun. So be careful with your expectations when you download a copy of this book. In tone and style, it isn’t anything like The Last Survivors; in fact, it’s much more similar to the Slow Burn series, with a bit more raunchy, twisted humor folded in.
I don’t know whether I will spin this book off into a series or not. Frankly, that depends. If it sells well and gets good reviews, what can I say? I’m a sucker for compliments and royalties. If you’d like to see the story continue, tell a friend about it, leave a review with the retailer where you bought it, sign up for my mailing list, or leave me a message on my Facebook page.
In closing, I’d like to say that Dusty’s Diary is a bit of a reaction to the weighty problems facing the characters at the end of Ebola K, Book 2. I literally started writing Dusty’s Diary the day after I completed Ebola K
. I think I needed something to lighten my mood, something to have fun with. This book did the trick. It was a blast to write, as I channeled my inner “dipshit.”
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
— Bobby Adair
Foreword to Book 2
After two years of losing hope, I’ll bet you never thought this would happen. Dusty is back. And there will be a book three, without the two-year wait.
For those of you who took the time to read the Foreword in book one, you’ll know that I was in a bit of weird emotional state when I wrote it. And the thing about writing, at least the way I do it, is that I try my best to imagine I’m in the skin—in the life—of the character I’m writing. It’s a weird sort of way to venture into someone else’s existence, to get lost in it for a while.
Another weirdness, and I think many authors probably experience it, is that when I finish a book, it’s hard to look back at it and see anything but its flaws. I took some chances with book one, especially with the rough style, purposefully poor grammar, immaturity, and crass humor of it. As more time passed, I grew embarrassed because it wasn’t my best, most polished effort. It was just too raw.
We casually watched the reviews come in on book one over the past couple of years and were surprised that it resonated with so many. Still, I wasn’t sure if there would ever be a book two.
That’s the opinion that lived in my mind for a long time.
It wasn’t until several weeks ago, when very perceptive Kat saw some familiar frustrations bubbling under the surface, and she suggested I write another Dusty’s Diary…purely for therapy.
Without a thought, I told her, “No.” After all, she was the one who told me before I published the first Dusty’s Diary, that it would be the end of my writing career. She wasn’t a fan. But one night in July 2017, she turned it on in the car and started listening, and after a couple of chapters called to tell me there was a relevance she’d never completely understood, and that I needed to write another. “It’s short,” she argued. “You could write in within a week.”
