How I Spent the Apocalypse

by Selina Rosen

  “Liar,” Lucy said.

  I laughed then stopped. “I don’t know. I hope months, but realistically… it could be years.”

  “How long can we last here?”

  “Indefinitely if we can keep the animals and the greenhouse going. Of course eventually we’d have to thin our herds down, maybe eat that snake you love so much… We should be more than able to make it through this, Lucy.”

  She nodded and didn’t push it. “I’m sorry, Kay,” she said looking at her hands.

  “No I’m sorry.” And I was, too. “I should have kept a closer eye on you. I should have known.”

  “You can’t take care of everyone and watch out for my stupidity as well.”

  “You’re the only one I should be worried about taking care of at all.” I moved a stray strand of hair out of her face and kissed her cheek. Then I put my arms across her shoulder and whispered in her ear. “If you ever do anything stupid like this again I’m going to kick your ass.”

  She laughed. “Why Kay, you do say the sweetest things.”

  “I’m serious, Lucy. I’m not some ogre. You’re hurting, you tell me and let me fix it before it turns into something like this. I’m crazy. Everyone knows I’m crazy but what’s the worst I was going to do? Scream at you for being a dumbass? Big deal, Lucy, so what? Isn’t it better for me to be a little upset than to have all your fingers fall off?”

  “You said I’d be fine.”

  “You will be, but you didn’t know that.”

  She nodded and laid her head on my shoulder. “Now I do feel really stupid.”

  “Good, you should.”

  She looked at her hands where they lay in the bowl of warm water. “They’re starting to feel better.”

  “Good.”

  It turned out it really was pretty minor. In a few days she lost a few layers of skin, but except for a couple of days when she could hardly use her hands she seemed to be physically fine. She was sort of quiet and a little withdrawn, though. I couldn’t tell if it was because her hands hurt or if the meds were affecting her, or if it was something else.

  We were in bed—which face it was really the only time we were free to talk to each other because it was the only time we could be sure of being alone. She had her back to me and I has holding her, just smelling her hair because let’s face it she didn’t feel up to any sort of hanky-panky.

  “You ok, baby?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Getting hurt, letting myself get hurt in such a stupid way, it’s just got me thinking about things. Believe it or not it’s got me thinking about the future. What’s it really going to be like, Kay?”

  It was a good question. I wasn’t completely sure, but I knew what I hoped for and found that I was happy to share my ideas with her.

  “Well I think the sun will start to break through the dust and debris in about three months. There will be a lot of flooding, a lot of mud. Deep mud. But once the thaw starts in about a month the ground should start to dry out. We’ll release our stock from the barn, plow our garden, and plant. I’m thinking to feed the population in Rudy we should plow up the old airfield and plant it. Of course we’ll finish cleaning out everything of use from All ‘n More and the people in Rudy will need to build personal shelters for themselves. I’m going to send my boys and the girls to live in the old house and then you and I will have our house to ourselves and…”

  “That’s great, Kay, and I know you’ve got that all planned out because you’re brilliant, but I was thinking about the world as a whole. Will there ever be shops again? Are we going all the way back to the wheel? Am I ever going to get up and have to decide what I want to wear to a party or is our whole life just going to be work and practicality?”

  “I don’t think so. I think you’ll find you’re going to have even more time to pursue hobbies and things you care about.”

  “That’s just it, Kay. I didn’t have any hobbies and all I really cared about was my stupid job.” She wasn’t close to tears, but she was pretty upset. “We haven’t been able to make love for two days because I stupidly screwed my hands up and… well what else is there to do to pass the time?”

  “I think it’s a pretty good way to pass the time.”

  “Oh I’m not saying it isn’t but… We can’t just do that all the time and since I haven’t been able to help get the wood or take care of the animals or work in the greenhouse… what do I do?.”

  “You could do the news cast on the radio,” I suggested. After all wasn’t that her real passion? Wasn’t that the same job?

  “But I’m mostly useless there now, Kay, because I don’t know anything. I don’t even know enough to keep from getting frost bite. I’m not like you I don’t know how to tell them what they need to do. Hell, I can’t even read the satellite images and tell them what the weather’s doing, which let’s face it in my old life if I’d had to be the weather girl it would have been a huge demotion and now it turns out that if I could be the weather girl I’d be one of the most respected people in the world right now. When people listen to their radios they want to hear your voice you comfort them and give them hope. When someone radios here they want to talk to you, they want you to answer their questions. I couldn’t do it. Half the time I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. And we’re out there in the cold and everyone is working and I’m watching to make sure the roof doesn’t collapse like I don’t know you aren’t just making up something for me to do to get me out of the way and…”

  “Geez Lucy, that’s the whole thing isn’t it? Lucy, you dumbass. That wasn’t a nothing, made up job. It’s true that I didn’t want you in the building in case the roof did collapse. There really was a good chance the roof could go at any minute even after we shored it up. Snow is heavy, heavy enough to damage the roof in the first place. I needed you to watch the roof because my sons mostly do what I tell them to do and I don’t have to explain to them what I mean so they were my best help. I didn’t want any of the others on look out because, to tell you the truth, if me and my sons had the roof fall on us then they might think that would save them all a lot of trouble because then they could just ride on out here and take everything we have. I needed you to watch out for us because I know you wouldn’t let the roof fall on me or my boys, you wouldn’t let it fall on anyone and you… Well you have the keenest eye I have ever known. Even without your glasses you see more than most people. I knew that if that roof would have shifted you would have screamed your head off and we would have had time to get out.”

  “I… I thought you just wanted me out of your way. That you took me just because I wouldn’t stay home and then told me to watch the roof just to keep me out of your way.”

  “Lucy… do I make you feel like you’re in my way?”

  “You did at first.”

  “That’s because you were at first,” I said with a laugh. “You aren’t in my way now. I love you. Look, just because I don’t believe in this fate thing you put so much store in doesn’t mean I don’t think we belong together. Lucy, I wouldn’t want to do the apocalypse with anyone but you.”

  Lucy leaned her head back into my shoulder almost purring, “Oh honey that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Chapter 15

  Deal With the Dead

  ***

  Never assume the worst is over. In fact, the more it seems like spring is just around the corner, the closer you better watch those food stores. Just because the waters start to subside or the ice starts to melt doesn’t mean you can start to plant, and even if you can plant, you can never bet on a crop coming in. You’ve all heard the saying “Don’t count your chickens till they hatch” well you’ll come closer to being right about how many eggs will hatch into chicks than you will how much food bare land will produce.

  You will be better off if you were able to stay where you live and you already have a garden, but let’s face it; most of you will not have been raising all of your food so you’ll need to plant more land.

 
; Continue to ration till you run out of food or the crops come in. Even then remember that you can’t eat everything you get; you have to put some back. In the post-apocalyptic world no one should be fat. Everyone ought to always be eating just the amount of calories they need to eat. Have canning jars and lids and drying racks put back so that when the time comes you can actually store your food safely. Buy garden seeds even if you don’t have a garden and don’t need one right now. Then be sure to put a bunch of fresh garden seed back and replace them every year with new seed. If you do keep a garden, buy double what you need every year and use half the seeds from last year. Rotate out your stock and always be ready to plant twice what you need. After the apocalypse never plant all your seeds at once. Read some books on how to save seeds because after the world ends you won’t be able to go to the store and get them any more.

  If you make it through the worst of the shit and can make the land work for you, then your space will become a little oasis of humanity. That’s all the world will be for quite a while—just small villages where a handful of families live. There won’t be cities anymore. When and if you walk up on what’s left of the cities, you’ll see them for what they are—the dried-up bones of a dead era. Their husks will be the dinosaur bones our children’s children find.

  As soon as you can leave shelter safely you will need to take care of the dead. All of the dead—animal and human—must be gathered up, burned, or buried, preferably away from your population center. Rotting carcasses are a sure way to invite disease and predators—if there are any left. Make sure you don’t get rid of bodies in your watershed area and continue to boil your water ALL of your water. When possible, get your water from ground sources like natural springs, old wells, or dig new ones if you can. Remember that if you are getting your water from a river, stream, or creek, unless you are at the headwaters you have no idea what that water is running over, around, and through.

  ***

  It was a damn good thing we got those supplies when we did because the next day we had a storm come in worse than all the ones before—more snow and even colder temperatures. Roy said the snow had banked up past their windows on the west side of the church. I told them to leave the snow alone because at this point it was breaking the wind and actually helping to insulate the building. It was a rock building, so it was safe to just leave it alone.

  I knew what we were in for, so I had already brought extra hay and feed and a whole fifty-five pound bag of rice bran to the birdhouse for the wild critters. We had dug some downed trees out of the snow and replenished our wood supply as well, and it was a damn good thing, too. For the next two weeks straight there was always a light snow falling and the temperature never rose above zero.

  We had plenty of food for the animals and for us, and the plants in the greenhouse were still producing well so we had fresh vegetables for everyone. In fact, we had a batch of peas that were just coming off as the snow started to fall and the temperature started to drop and they kept making all through the blizzard.

  I noticed it first with the goats and chickens. They were used to running the whole place and now they were basically stuck in the barn. It’s a big barn, but it isn’t outside. They had artificial sunlight twelve hours a day, clean water and plenty to eat, but they were getting bored. In part I was sure that it was because I had finally run out of pumpkins. The chickens loved to have me take a machete and open a pumpkin for them. They had all sorts of vitamins and nutrients and they would pick on one pumpkin for a week.

  I’d chop one a week up for the goats, too, and they would happily eat it. It was something different, something to break the routine and now… Well, we were out of pumpkins. There were six of us and the greenhouse easily fed us but there wasn’t a whole lot left over for the animals.

  The goats and chickens weren’t the only things getting restless. We were all tired of being cooped up inside and way tired of each other. We spent less and less time in the living room as a group and more and more time in our separate rooms with our respective mates. I noticed that Evelyn and Cherry would gravitate towards the kitchen or the greenhouse just to get away from the boys or each other, and Billy and Jimmy would start a fire out in the shop and find some project they just had to work on alone or together for the same reason.

  Lucy and I spent a lot of time on the radio. This weather front—even though it was the worst one yet—didn’t kill many people. See… Well let’s just tell it like it is—by then anyone who wasn’t a real survivor had already died. The people who had made it this long they were hard-core people like me who had prepared way in advance. They’d had a plan from the beginning and had over-stocked everything they could just in case. Or they were people too damn stubborn to just lie down and die, who were also smart enough to problem solve their way through just about anything.

  These people still occasionally needed help, but more and more they had the same problem our group did—they were all going stir crazy, too.

  One night as Lucy and I lay in bed after doing it till our brains were numb I said, “You know what’s saving us?”

  “Huh?” Lucy didn’t understand what I meant.

  “The reason we aren’t all trying to kill each other. I mean it’s tense but nothing like the people we’ve been on the radio with.”

  Lucy laughed and wrapped herself around me. “Tell me ole sage of the apocalypse. Why aren’t we all trying to kill each other?”

  “None of us really knew each other till this thing started. I mean there are three couples in this house and none of us were couples when this started. We aren’t bored with each other because everything is still new and we still have lots to talk about. Imagine if we were like Fred and Belva.” A couple we’d talked to that morning who were on the verge of killing each other and who said the only thing keeping them going was listening to the books on tape we broadcasted. “They’ve been married thirty years. They don’t even like each other any more and they know every damn thing about each other. They’ve heard each other’s stupid-assed stories and jokes thousands of times already and now they’re stuck in an eight-by-sixteen-foot living space where they can’t get away from each other and they realize that they actually hate each other.”

  “It could also be that we have more room than they do and… Well there are six of us so we aren’t stuck with just each other for company,” Lucy said. Then she made an unhappy noise and I would have almost bet she was about to talk about she-who-was-a-thorn-in-everyone’s-side. “Then of course there’s Evelyn.”

  “That girl… She’s like a caricature of a human being.” I laughed without much humor. “I have never in my life met someone as… as…”

  “Selfish, self serving, self centered and devoid of any redeeming qualities.” Lucy supplied with a smile.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “But she gives us all someone to hate, which keeps us from maybe taking closer looks at each other.”

  I looked at her with raised eyebrows. “What are you trying to say?”

  Lucy laughed. “That maybe we’d want to kill each other, too, if we were stuck in an eight-by-sixteen bunker and we only had each other to talk to with no Evelyn to annoy us.”

  “You have a point. Daily I think about just sticking that girl out into the cold.”

  “I think everyone does, even Jimmy.”

  “Maybe especially Jimmy,” I mumbled. “Of course the one thing that Evelyn accomplishes on a positive note is that she makes Jimmy look resourceful, bright and hardworking—by comparison of course.”

  That was when the screaming started. Billy and Jimmy were fighting again, and then I heard something crash to the floor. I jumped up, pulled my pants and a shirt on, and ran out of the room. The boys had broken a bookshelf in the living room and were trying to break each other. Of course Billy was winning. “Knock it off!” They didn’t listen to me, so I picked up the fireplace shovel and knocked them each in the head. They went reeling away from one another, rubbing their heads and said at on
ce.

  “Ow, Mom!”

  “Stupid little pecker heads tearing up my shit!” I was pissed, too. It was just a shelf; it could be fixed easily enough, and none of the books looked damaged. That didn’t matter not to me. “What the hell could be so important that you’d risk fighting in here? Maybe break something important, something we can’t replace fucking around like idiots!”

  “He started it!” they both screamed at once.

  “I don’t give a shit who started it. Don’t you get it? We’re, stuck in this house together. There is no place else to go. We have to get along; it isn’t a choice, not a suggestion. You think you two fuckers and those two air-headed girls don’t get on my last nerve? I built all of this by myself. You dumbasses didn’t help me do it. Hell, you thought I was as crazy as everyone else did. Jimmy even wanted to have me committed at one point just so he could clean out my bank account… Oh don’t look so surprised, Jimmy. You guys didn’t take a dump that I didn’t know about it ’cause I had you followed by detectives. Yeah, that’s right. Why? Because I could afford to and you’ve always been a couple of dumbasses, that’s why. What the hell were you fighting over anyway?”

  “He was flirting with my woman!” Jimmy accused.

  So… he started it. He decided his brother was flirting with his “woman,” and so he hit him and then Billy had to kick Jimmy’s ass.

  “He’s a retard!” Billy screamed at his brother.

  “Yeah I know,” I said with a sigh. I noticed Cherry and Evelyn were just sort of standing there. Cherry looked mortified, like she couldn’t believe the huge idiots would actually hit each other, but Evelyn she had this look on her face that I knew meant there had been flirting but it wasn’t Billy who was flirting with her. No, Evelyn had been flirting with him—no doubt because she wanted the big, good-looking one not the little, scrawny ugly one. Cherry wasn’t worried. She knew where Billy’s heart was. He was totally and completely in love with her and she with him.

  I glared at Evelyn, who I would come to refer to as the fly in the ointment of my life—well actually that was a bit of a mouthful so I just called her fly girl which she never understood and which made Lucy laugh every time I said it because she did know what I meant.