How I Spent the Apocalypse

by Selina Rosen

  She nodded, though I could tell she wasn’t happy with me. Which is what happens when you tell someone something they know is probably right but they just don’t want to hear or think about it.

  We went to Matt’s, wished he and his a Merry Christmas, dropped off some supplies and got some more beef.

  It wasn’t till we were alone in our room changing our clothes with the door closed that Lucy said anything else about the altercation at the church.

  “Katy… you don’t really think… you don’t think they’d really come after us?”

  “They will if Roy can’t shut Ken up.”

  “And you’re just going to let all those people—those kids—starve? You aren’t going to help them anymore?”

  “Not if they don’t prove they’ve shut Ken up. But don’t worry about it because I’ve had some time to think about it and if they can’t shut Ken up I’m going to kill him myself. I kill him for spouting shit, then none of the rest of them are going to be in any hurry to spout the same sort of shit.” Surprisingly, this didn’t seem to make Lucy happy.

  “Kill him? Kill him Kay?!” Lucy screeched.

  I looked at her like she was from Mars. “Well, yeah.”

  “It’s just that easy for you?”

  “If he’s going to try to get me, turn the town against me and build an army to come after me and mine? Yep, it’s that easy for me to just kill him.”

  “Surely there is some other way.”

  “What would that be, Lucy?”

  “Maybe he’ll just shut up on his own. I mean I would, you had your gun in his nuts… up his nose…”

  “You really don’t understand religious nuts, do you? He’s not going to shut up on his own. He’s convinced God wants him to spread his truth.”

  I didn’t really understand why we were having this fight, and I guess Lucy didn’t either because she just let it drop right there. Believe me, if she’d been really sure what she was mad at me about she would NOT have let it go… ever. I realized that Lucy wasn’t really mad at me. That like me she was mad at Ken. Maybe more than me because first he must have reminded her of all the reasons she’d never been able to just be herself and second he was forcing my hand. Finally, somewhere in her brain she knew as well as I did that the only way to deal with Ken Porter and people like him was to kill them before they could spread their venom.

  ***

  For the record, I didn’t have to kill Ken Porter. Roy told the group what I’d said in front of Ken, but Ken wouldn’t shut up. In fact, as most preachers had always done, this just seemed to give him more fuel for his fire. You know the whole, “See how the devil runs from the word of God? See how the sinner turns to violence and wants to raise their hand against God’s servant? They want to shut me up; therefore, I must be speaking the truth.”

  Well apparently they all tried to shut him up for about a week, but he just would not shut up till every last person in the building wanted to kill him. Let’s face it, you’re being told that if this guy doesn’t shut up that you’re all going to die. You already didn’t really buy his shit anyway because… Well a church full of praying people get killed by a massive tornado and you’re all huddled in one room and the only reason you’re alive at all is because of some godless, lesbian heathern, then your faith in whatever higher power you may have believed in has to be a little stretched. Then this guy just keeps spouting the same shit you’ve been told is going to kill you all, and you’re most likely tired of hearing it anyway because it just doesn’t ring true to you anymore even if you believed the crap in the first place. Well it’s only a matter of time till he walks out to the outhouse and he just never comes back.

  Roy said even Ken’s wife told him that she thought it would be best for the group if Ken just died. And he said she winked and added, “If you know what I mean.” Apparently Ken was just flat a bastard. It reached a point that every time there was a moment’s silence Ken started flapping his jaw. Everyone told him to shut up, but the more they told him to shut up the more he wouldn’t. They beat the living crap out of him twice and that didn’t help. Then one day… Well, he went to the outhouse and he never came out, at least not on his own. Someone had stuck a knife in his liver. To this day no one will say who, but I think it was Roy because after that he became the kind of guy who says it’s my way or the highway and no one ever questioned his right to lead again.

  ***

  We had each picked a dish and made it and then ate a huge Christmas dinner buffet style. We butchered a rooster, and as I ate it I started to wish I’d raised some turkeys because the truth was except for what wild or lost domestic animals happened upon places like our birdhouse or Matt’s hay barn, I doubted much wildlife—much less domestic stock—would survive this winter. Too cold, nothing to eat, snow for water, and no one to take care of them—which is why domestic stock, especially, was doomed.

  I noticed at one point that it got very quiet, and when I looked around I realized that I was really the only one eating in that good ole glutinous style that the holiday demanded. As I looked at them they all looked a little blue, which pissed me off no end because I was in a really good mood, such a good mood that even my run-in with that preaching idiot—I’ll speak ill of the dead if I want—hadn’t dampened my spirit.

  At first I tried to ignore their obvious mood, but then Evelyn started crying. She jumped up and said, “I’m sorry. Excuse me.” And then just ran out of the room. That’s right; it turned out the girl wasn’t quiet at all. She was, in fact, a huge drama queen.

  “Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick,” I muttered.

  “Katy, for God’s sake,” Lucy snapped at me. Then she got up and went after Evelyn and Cherry went after Lucy. That’s fems for ya. All have to go be as miserable as whichever one appears to be the most miserable.

  I looked up at the boys, smiled, shrugged and said, “Women.” As if that answered everything and then I went back to eating. Jimmy nodded, smiled and then he started eating, too. It was Billy who just couldn’t leave things alone.

  “They’re upset, Mama. It’s the holidays and our family is still all together except for Mom, but theirs aren’t.”

  “That’s not my fault,” I said, plainly around a mouth full of food.

  “Mama… Don’t you remember what the first Christmas after Mom died was like?”

  Well of course I did, and he succeeded in ruining the good happy I had going on because I did know why they were all upset, I had just been avoiding thinking about it. Even the boys had lost friends in this thing. I’d lost friends, too, and it wasn’t that I didn’t occasionally think about them, but let’s face it I’d been so obsessed that I’d distanced myself from my friends years before. And the truth was I’d always been too busy and too crazy to make any really close friends anyway. There were people I’d miss from time to time but it just wasn’t the same.

  I remembered clearly that first Christmas after Cindy died. I made a big dinner just like the one we were sitting down to that day—except we had a turkey. I really miss turkey. We sat down to eat, I took one look at her empty chair at the table, and I just lost it. Of course when I did the boys did, and by the time we quit crying our dinner was cold and it just ruined the whole day.

  “Son of a bitch.” I muttered, quit eating, and stood up from the table. I went to find Lucy. Frankly I didn’t care about the other two. Let them cry on each other. I found them in the greenhouse all three just talking in incoherent sobs in a manner I was sure would make all the plants sick and put the goats off their milk. Seeing Lucy cry made me feel bad. I just couldn’t take it, and if I hadn’t already known I was in love with her I would have known it right then because before when she cried I tried to comfort her but I didn’t feel anything except maybe a little annoyed and now when she was crying it just about broke my heart. It literally hurt me to see her so unhappy.

  Of course all that said I still had no idea what to say or do. I walked up to them and, ignoring the others, put out my hand to take
Lucy’s. Before I could take her hand she threw her arms around my neck, grabbed me in a death grip, and just started sobbing loud, raking sobs.

  “Come on, baby.” I half-pulled and half-carried her back to my room where I shut the door. Then I just held her and rocked her and patted her back and… felt completely useless and helpless and sort of sick to my stomach.

  “Everyone’s just dead, Kay,” she cried out.

  Now we’d been through this a couple of times already, so you would have thought I could have come up with something better than, “I know, baby. I’m sorry.”

  “I feel so alone today. Everyone I loved is dead. Everyone that loved me.” She sobbed.

  “I love you, Lucy.”

  She sniffled, signifying the crying might stop soon. “You’re just saying that to get me to stop crying, Kay.”

  “Is it going to work?” I asked with a smile. Then she just started crying hard again and I felt like a shit so I said, “Come on, Lucy. You know I love you.”

  “Do you?”

  “You have to know I do. If I didn’t love you, I’d hardly even care that you were crying much less feel like I’m going to hurl.”

  “I love you, too.” She sniffed again and I just knew she was covering yet another of my shirts in snot and tears, but this time I really didn’t care.

  “I love you, Lucy. Have you not noticed that I just sort of stand around grinning all the time? I know it’s wrong because everyone else just feels like a big, raw nerve most of the time and you’ve all lost so much, but I’m happy. I’m happy because you’re here and I love you and you love me. I’m sorry that I’m not all chewed up like everyone else is, like you are, but the only thing that has made me feel the least bit unhappy for days was when I saw you crying. Before when you cried it just annoyed me.” I thought this explained everything.

  Lucy actually laughed a little then. “Well thanks, honey.”

  “You know what I mean, Lucy.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  I handed her the handkerchief out of my pocket. Once again it wasn’t really clean, and once again she didn’t seem to mind. “I’m sorry about all the drama.”

  “First off, you didn’t start it. You know what, Lucy? When people cry for no reason that’s drama. When they cry over the death of everyone they knew and loved—that’s not really drama. I just forgot for a minute that you can’t always keep your grief locked away. That some things push it out of the place you stick it. Billy reminded me.”

  “I was alright till Evelyn lost it, and then I went to just comfort her and then Cherry came to help and we all just wound up crying.” Well yeah ’cause that’s what chicks do. “I’m sorry we all ruined Christmas dinner.”

  “Oh, I’m going to go eat my dinner, and so are you. Then we’re just going to come in here, listen to some tunes, and just lay in our bed in our room...”

  “Our bed, our room?” Lucy asked with a smile.

  “Yeah ours. Not mine any more—ours. We’ll just lay here, listen to some tunes, and talk and then later if our food settles and we have the urge maybe we’ll make love. But maybe we’ll just hold each other…”

  She pushed away from me looked up and smiled. “Oh… we’re doing it, bitch.”

  Chapter 13

  Making the Most of What You’ve Got

  ***

  Just because you’re short on cash doesn’t mean you can’t be better prepared for the apocalypse. You can’t afford bottled water? Make your own. Take your empty juice bottles, or even those old liter bottles everyone tosses out, clean them and fill them with water. If you’re afraid the water will get stale—some idiots believe water goes bad I think they’re full of shit but to be on the safe side—change the water every three to six months. Keep a lot of bottled water—at least five gallons for each member of your family—this should hold you over till you figure out how to make the water you find drinkable. Store it under your bed, under your furniture, in the bottom of a closet, wherever you have room.

  And people, if you’re sleeping on a waterbed guess what—hundreds of gallons of potable water—just don’t put that treatment shit in it. It turns green, who cares? A little algae never hurt anyone. Hell, some people eat the shit on purpose.

  Start saving plastic bags—all those stupid little sacks you get every time you go to the grocery store, all those plastic dog and other animal feed bags. Find a place in your house or in your yard and just start collecting stuff that would normally be considered trash, stuff that could be used to fill cracks or cover holes, build a shelter. Here’s an idea—get rid of all that useless crap that you’ve been hording that fills every space in every home in America and start filling those spaces with the things you will need to survive.

  Build your survival kit a piece at a time. Don’t try to buy it all at once and it won’t tax your income as much as that soda you buy every day or that candy bar you get every time you go to the store. As for food items, every time you go to the store buy a bag of dried beans, some canned food, or some jerky. Put it back and pretend you don’t have it.

  As I’ve said before, start seeing everything as something else and start putting back those things that might be useful if the worst happens.

  Poverty isn’t an excuse to be unprepared. Poverty is the mother of necessity, and as they say necessity is the mother of invention. Stop waiting for the government to fix things and get to work. Even if there isn’t a full-blown apocalypse, there’s a damn good chance that some disaster will hit your community and would it really hurt anyone to be prepared for that?

  Stop worrying about things that don’t really matter and start worrying about what really does. Stop thinking your kids need a new video game and start thinking about putting back the stuff you’ll need to get them through the end of the world as we know it.

  ***

  Of course the real problem is that too many people spent most of their time trying to find ways to get other people to do their work. They wasted all their time trying to make a job easier instead of just doing the job that needed to be done. They kept waiting till they had the money to do it right, but since they never had the money to do it right they spent all their money on brightly-colored plastic crap and useless electronic bullshit and they didn’t do anything to prepare. That’s why so many people died.

  Well that and the coldest, longest winter humans had seen since the little ice age.

  It had been three weeks since the New Year dawned in the age of the apocalypse. We all stayed up till twelve and made lots of noise. The girls all cried again and I began to wonder how long it would be before we could celebrate a holiday without them just having a complete breakdown.

  Lucy and I were working in the greenhouse. I was taking out some of the old lettuce and planting new seeds. The plants didn’t seem to mind that ninety-five percent of their light was artificial; they were thriving. No doubt all the CO2 from all the animals and six humans was helping, and of course I was still side-dressing the plants with compost I was making in a fifty-five-gallon turn-style compost bin I’d moved into the barn before the shit hit the fan. I had to keep the plants producing at peak because I was beginning to think winter might never end. The sun hadn’t penetrated the cloud cover in weeks, and the temperature just kept dropping. We’d had another small snowfall, but the big problem wasn’t more snow, it was just the lack of sunlight and the cold. I had the fake sunlight bulbs all through the house because I’d been afraid of this, and they was supposed to help keep you from getting the winter-time blues. Even that wasn’t the real problem in our house, the real problem was six people living in a house really built for three and everyone’s different personalities clashing into each other.

  Of course, as is often true one person was making most of the trouble. Evelyn was the real problem. Her passive-aggressive, narcissistic, bullshit was driving me and everyone else to thoughts of homicide.

  Cherry and Billy never seemed to stop talking except when they were screwing which they
were doing about six times a day. Can we say Nuvo-ring? Last thing we needed was anyone getting pregnant. God, heterosexuals are a pain in the ass!

  Jimmy was withdrawn and sullen and… Well, basically Jimmy.

  The only one who wasn’t annoying the living piss out of me was Lucy. At that point in time I think if she’d crawled onto the middle of the kitchen table and shit I would have applauded and acted like I thought it was performance art.

  We couldn’t watch a movie or eat a meal without someone snapping at somebody else and we would all get so stir crazy we made excuses to go out into the freezing waste land just to get the hell out of the house.

  But everyone else I could tolerate. No one else made me want to really kill them—except Evelyn. In fact, Evelyn was the reason Lucy and I were working in the greenhouse—just so we could get away from her.

  “I see them,” Lucy said, excitedly pointing down into the water. I knew what she was talking about. A bunch of fish had hatched about a week ago. I’d been trying to show them to her but this was when she admitted that she was a little near sighted and that she’d lost her contacts running to my house and her glasses had been in her purse in the car that had been sucked up and blown… Well God alone knew where.

  I walked over to look and saw about twenty of the little fuckers. We’d already gone ahead and eaten about fifteen of the bigger fish. “We’re going to have to eat five more fish if those all make it. The canal only supports about a hundred fish, so if twenty get born, well we get to eat twenty. If nothing else, if we don’t get rid of some of the big ones they won’t give the little ones a chance to grow.” There wasn’t a lot of fear of that, though, because the nursery is well planted with dense foliage, which gives them plenty of places to hide, and as I’ve said before the fish get plenty to eat. Cherry was doing the breakfast dishes and as we watched a piece of egg floated by. One of the little guys snagged it.