How I Spent the Apocalypse

by Selina Rosen

  We have taken care of all the animals and with any luck we should be back in time to do the evening chores as well.

  You were both sleeping so soundly we didn’t want to wake you up to fight with us.

  Billy and Jimmy

  But it was in Billy’s handwriting.

  “Wake us up! A Mack truck could have run in here and we wouldn’t have even turned over. The little fuckers doped us,” I said to Lucy, who had walked in wearing a pair of Jimmy’s pajamas and rubbing her eyes, still sleepy.

  “Maybe we were just tired,” Lucy said, shrugging and put some coffee on.

  “Maybe trained monkeys will fly right out of my ass, too,” I said angrily. “Fucking stupid little bastards.” I was worried sick about them, which of course just made me want to kill them.

  “How are your ribs?” she asked.

  They were actually better. A lot better, which just made me sure that I was right and they had just been bruised or cracked, not actually broken. “Well I’m not going dancing any time soon, but they’re actually pretty good. The little fuckers! They saw what the Lorcet did to me yesterday and they put some in that damn hot chocolate. If they come back alive I’m going to beat them to death, those stupid fucks.”

  “Actually that’s pretty smart. They really are your boys,” Lucy said with a laugh as she started to make breakfast.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  “That it sounds like something you would do if you had to get around you.”

  I was sure that made sense on her planet.

  She walked by me on her way to the refrigerator and I got a whiff of her. She smelled good, and I know she was wearing the same deodorant and using the same shampoo that me and the boys were because it was all we had, but it smelled different on her.

  She looked at me as if she knew exactly what I was thinking, smiled, shook her head, and put the eggs and bread down on the counter.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Nothing,” she said, and just started working on making breakfast. I mostly mumbled shit about how stupid my sons were the whole time she was cooking and we were eating. She just listened, so I think maybe she knew I just needed to blow off some steam.

  “They’ll call if they get in trouble,” Lucy said.

  “They are huge dumbasses and… I’m cold. Is it cold in here?”

  “A little.”

  “I bet the dumbasses didn’t feed the God-damned stove, stupid fuckers.” I got up with only a little twinge of pain, turned to Lucy and said, “My ribs are much, much better.”

  “Maybe they did you a favor, drugging you. Maybe you needed a good, solid…” she was counting, “...fourteen hours of sleep.”

  “Oh, I’m kicking their asses, Lucy. Just as soon as I get back to my full strength I’m going to kick their asses good. Don’t even try to talk me out of it. And if I have to go after the little fuckers with my ribs all buggered up… Well they just better hope I don’t have to go after their asses.”

  Lucy followed me into the living room and to the stove. I started to bend over to take care of it but I didn’t feel THAT good yet.

  “I’ll do it, Katy,” Lucy said. She opened the damper, stirred the coals, and threw in some wood. She let out a yelp.

  “Damn,” she said and shut the door.

  “What did you do?” I walked up to her and she held up her finger there was… Well more a timber sticking out of her finger than a splinter. I took her hand and pulled it out with my teeth.

  “Thanks,” she said. She took her finger, which had a speck of blood on it, put it in her mouth and sucked on it. I swear I nearly came in my pants. She pulled the finger out, looked at it and said, “It’s alright.” And then she looked up at me.

  Her face was right there, her lips. And she was looking at me that way; you know what I mean. That way. And suddenly I didn’t care how my ribs felt or if she was straight. I bent down and kissed her gently on the lips and when she kissed me back I wrapped my arms around her and I really kissed her and… Well she kissed me like I’d never been kissed in my life. Maybe I still had enough Lorcet in my system that the ribs didn’t hurt, and maybe I was just so fucking horny that over-rode even the pain, but in that moment I forgot all about my cracked ribs. I mean, come on, I couldn’t even masturbate because she was in my bed, and someone was always outside the fucking bathroom door.

  Our lips parted for a second, both of us just catching our breath. Her chest was moving up and down and my own heart was pounding in my ears. If I had ever wanted anything or anyone more than I wanted her in that moment I don’t know who or what it was.

  I just couldn’t get my hands on her quick enough, and the more I kissed her the more I wanted her. Before I was aware I’d done it I had her shoved against a wall and my hands were up her shirt. When my hands caressed the flesh of her breasts she shook, and my blood ran so hot I swear I could feel it pumping through my veins. I moved my mouth to her neck and just started nibbling and kissing her throat.

  “Oh my God,” Lucy said, and her hands grabbed my ass and pulled me tightly to her and then she was grinding herself against me.

  My hands left her breasts and ran down her body till they were on the top of her pants. Elastic, elastic is a horny woman’s best friend. I was in her pants in seconds and then my fingers were caressing her. Then they were in her and her hands, which had moved to my shoulders, grabbed me in a death grip.

  “Do it, oh God, do it, do it!” she demanded, slamming herself against my hand hard. I started working my fingers in and out of her harder, faster, never forgetting to work her clit with my thumb. “Come on harder!” she yelled out. She was already coming and close to climax, so I knew two things. The woman was every bit as queer as I was and she liked it a little rough—which made her just about perfect.

  ***

  We wound up in bed taking turns on each other till my ribs were pounding and I felt like there was no blood left in my head at all.

  I was lying on my back looking at the ceiling just feeling like I’d really done something to be proud of, and Lucy was lying beside me making little circles with her finger on my stomach. “Christ! I never thought you were going to make a move on me.”

  “Me! You said you were straight,” I said in disbelief.

  “No I didn’t,” she said, a confused tone to her voice.

  “Come on! You said you had a boyfriend. Same difference.”

  “Oh, come on, you never had a girlfriend you called a boyfriend just to keep people from asking questions you didn’t want to answer?”

  “No,” I said truthfully.

  “How could you not know?”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “I thought it was obvious. Besides,” she sighed, “I had a girlfriend. In the beginning I didn’t want to have sex with you… Well, that’s not true because I did, but I didn’t feel like it would be right. I mean… there was a chance she could have been alive. Maybe she still is. Then one day I realized that even if she is alive I’d still rather be with you, but you just would not make a move.”

  “God, you are such a fucking girl! I would have jumped your bones in a heart beat if I had even the slightest notion that you were even remotely interested in me.”

  “And you’re such a guy! Why did I have to tell you? Why couldn’t you just tell? I was spooning you every fucking night for God’s sake. Besides you’re a fucking top and from what I know about tops they always have to make the first move.”

  Was I a top? I really wasn’t sure. I was just gay. I hadn’t ever hung out in clubs, read gay magazines, or been in with the hip gay culture. I did like to be in control sexually, but then I liked to lay back and get done, too, so… I don’t know. And does it really fucking matter? The truth was I’d always rather a girl made the first move because then I didn’t have to worry about getting smacked down emotionally or physically.

  “So… do you believe in fate?” Lucy asked.

  “Come on, Lucy.
Ten percent of the population was gay. The odds are really good that you’d be gay—a one in ten chance.”

  Lucy laughed. “So there is no magic then?”

  “I didn’t say that, and if I wasn’t all crippled up, and if I hadn’t already fucked you till my brain is numb, we’d make some more right now.”

  That was when the gate alarm went off. I was buck-naked, so was Lucy, and even though I’d been worried sick about them—until Lucy had taken my mind off of it—I wasn’t ready for the boys to be home yet. I got up and walked naked to the office where on the monitor I could see Billy undoing the lock. I could see Jimmy, too, and two more people. So my boys were home safe and they’d done what they’d set out to do and… I was going to kill those little fuckers just as soon as they got to the house.

  Chapter 8

  Everything Can Have More Than One Purpose

  ***

  If you weren’t well prepared, or you were prepared but an unforeseen catastrophe took out part or all of your supplies, then you aren’t going to be able to run to your nearest Wal-Mart and get what you need. And nine will get you ten you aren’t going to find what you need just lying around on the ground at your feet. You’re going to have to be able to take what you can find and make it into what you need.

  Don’t wait till the last minute to start seeing how things might be used in the future; start right now. Look around yourself at what you have in your house and what other people might have in theirs. What could be repurposed and how might you turn one item into another? What could your washing machine be turned into—part of a wall, storage for water, a wood stove?

  Let’s say a volcanic eruption is spewing ash. Well, ash is very heavy and you can’t breathe the shit; it will kill you. You have to cover all your windows and doors as best you can. If you were smart you kept a store of plastic sheeting and duct tape. If not then wet sheets and use those. But here’s the big problem—the one problem that people who aren’t in that immediate blast zone don’t think about. The weight of the ash will start to crush buildings if it gets too thick. Rooms with shorter spans may be safe, but the roof in say your living room is a long span. Unsupported it cannot stand up to the weight. With volcanic ash it doesn’t take much—an inch or more can cause problems—but snow, if there is enough of it, can cause the same problem.

  Don’t wait till the last minute to start thinking about what might make good support pillars. You have books, you have furniture, turn them into pillars to support your ceiling then crawl into the attic and use the same sorts of things to shore up your roof joists above your pillars.

  You’ll have to think on your feet because even if you were ready for ten different scenarios you may get hit with one you never thought of.

  Plastic bottles are and will be everywhere. The obvious thing is to fill them with potable water, but they could have hundreds of different uses. They could be tied together and made into flotation devices, filled with sand and used as weights to hold down tarps, cut in half and used as scoops or bowls. You could flatten them, tie them to sticks, and use them for oars. They could be used as insulation, burned as fuel, any number of things.

  Think about what might be there and how you could use it. Most everything you are using today could be used as something else.

  ***

  I greeted the boys in the shop—fully dressed even if we did it in a bit of a hurry—and before they could even get the shop doors closed thundered, “Which one of you little fuckers had the bright idea to dope mommy?”

  “We didn’t,” Jimmy said.

  Boy can look anyone else right in the eye and lie. He tries to lie to me, but he can’t look me in the eye and do it so I know when he’s lying.

  “Which one?” I demanded.

  “Mine, Mom, it was all my idea,” Billy said. “It was just a couple of Lorcet. You needed the sleep anyway.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare… and you doped Lucy, too. What the hell for?”

  “Because I figured she would wake you up because she knew you didn’t want us to go,” Billy said.

  “Fucking little assholes!” I roared.

  “Mom, we’re all freezing,” Billy said.

  “Alright everyone come on in but Billy. You can by God stay here and clean up all the gear.” I glared at him through slitted eyes, daring him to defy me. “When I get better I’m going to kick your ass when you least fucking expect it.”

  Lucy took my hand and started leading me back towards the house, nearly skipping. I heard the boys giggle, knew they knew what had happened while they were gone, and my face turned red.

  “Shut the fuck up!” I ordered them, which just made them both laugh louder.

  Lucy looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back. “I want to kill them you know,” I said to her.

  “I know, but they’re alright and we’re more than alright.”

  I untangled my hand from hers and put my arm across her shoulders, not caring that it hurt. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as alright as I am right now.”

  “Me either.” She put her arm around my waist, careful not to hit my ribs.

  The boys and the girls—who were so bundled up you couldn’t see them at all—rushed past us and we stopped in the greenhouse to cop a quick feel.

  “Mom!” Jimmy screamed down the hall at us.

  “What!”

  “Evelyn is sick. Can you come check her out?”

  “Sure!” I sighed, and Lucy and I walked into the house hand in hand.

  They stank to high heavens, no doubt because they hadn’t had a bath since the apocalypse. They smelled like BO and bad breath and smoke and days of clothing-filtered bean farts.

  Evelyn was running a fever; she was dehydrated, way underweight, and barely coherent.

  “Diarrhea?” I asked the girl. She nodded. Too much cold, exposure sickness, it was a condition that used to only happen to idiots who tried to climb frozen mountains.

  “Cherry, get both of your clothes—all of them—off and throw them on the floor outside the bathroom. Billy will take them and put them in the washer. Then get a good, hot shower, both of you. She needs help.”

  Cherry nodded.

  Evelyn’s teeth were chattering.

  “Quick, girl. While you’re showering I’ll set up what we need.”

  I set up the couch in the living room to be Evelyn’s sick bed. Well, actually Lucy mostly made up the bed because I was still having trouble bending over. I put up the pole and set up the IV.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Lucy asked.

  “I can’t be sure, but I think it’s dysentery caused from prolonged exposure, dehydration mostly, maybe pneumonia.”

  “Why isn’t the other girl sick then?”

  “Well mind you it’s hard to tell through the twenty layers of clothing, but I think Cherry is a little thicker than this girl.” Which some confused me.

  “What?” Lucy asked, reading my features.

  “Well, Billy usually dates drop-dead gorgeous, total psychotic bitches with perfect bodies.”

  “And what sort of girls do you normally date?” Lucy asked with a sly smile.

  “Breathing,” I said truthfully. I’d never had a type. If I liked them and they were clean I could fuck them and enjoy doing it. Didn’t matter what they looked like. I’d never dated any crazy-assed girls like my sons because… Well women, even most really butch women—yes, even me—are different than men. I never slept with anyone I wasn’t considering for permanent residence in my life. And it’s a fact that you can only have one really crazy motherfucker in a relationship and I had that sewed up.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I’ve always had a soft spot for butch dykes with head problems.”

  “See, we’re perfect for each other.”

  “And yet you don’t believe that some things happen for a reason or that anything can be fated.”

  I sighed, finished what I was doing, and looked down at her. “And you keep calling ME a hard head.” />
  ***

  It was a good thing that I had so many clothes for Jimmy because getting to the clothes in the storage room would have been a royal pain in the ass and his clothes were the only ones that came close to fitting these two girls.

  I was right about the girls’ shapes, too. Cherry was about five-four and a little chunky with huge breasts and short, red hair. Evelyn was probably five-seven and thin as a rail, which made her look taller. From the looks of her I’d say she was probably borderline anorexic when this all started and weeks of tight rations hadn’t helped.

  I got the girl bundled up on the couch and then worked at getting the IV in. It wasn’t easy. The girl was so dehydrated it was hard to find a vein. Hell, I was lucky I didn’t get dust. She was so out of it she didn’t even wince. I finally found one and got the drip going.

  “We were fine,” Cherry explained, “till our wood supply got low and we had to start rationing what we had because every time we tried to go out and dig more up out of the snow we just damn near froze. Well we were mostly cold all the time but it was bearable… mostly, until we had to use less wood. I didn’t even realize she was sick till last night, I mean she hadn’t stopped bitching since day one so I had no idea that she really was sick… We were just so cold all the time.”

  “Yesterday Cherry told me Evelyn was sick. That’s why we had to go,” Billy said.

  “You didn’t, and you sure as hell didn’t have to drug Lucy and I,” I said, glaring at Billy.

  “Please ma’am, don’t be mad at Billy,” Cherry said.

  “Don’t worry about it, girl, and don’t call me ma’am. Key-rist makes me feel like I’m a hundred,” I said. “And don’t worry about your friend. She’s warm now. I’ll put some antibiotics in her line, we’ll get some warm chicken broth in her, and she’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t know that for a fact, of course, but having her sitting around worrying about the girl wasn’t going to help either. Truth was Evelyn’s pulse was thready and her lungs were rattley. She was suffering from hypothermia and I was pretty sure she had pneumonia.