How I Spent the Apocalypse

by Selina Rosen

  Yet I was feeding that billy goat. I know it doesn’t make any sense.

  So now you’re asking why did I have to stay out there to keep the two roosters from fighting. Two reasons really. First, what if you only had one roster and it died? Well eventually there would be no chickens at all because I have to tell you that except for me and a few of my cohorts who managed to keep flocks alive through the apocalypse—one of them by moving the chickens into the house with them—there were no chickens, no live ones after the snow cleared. Not in our part of the world anyway. Also I have two different kinds of chickens—Production Reds for eggs—so I have two-dozen hens and a rooster at any time. And I also keep four silky hens and a rooster at all times because a silky will set on a golf ball. See I want my laying chickens to lay all the time, and with the light in the barn making sure they always have at least twelve hours of daylight they do always lay. I’m tricking them but I don’t care. What I don’t want my laying hens to do is to go broody because you see when they go broody they stop laying and they set on the eggs. It’s just a pain in the ass to try to break them up, so they bred the setting gene out of laying hens. However I still need to raise chicks and I don’t want to screw with an incubator—though I do have one—so I have the Silkies who lay about a dozen eggs and decide it’s time to set. I take all but one of their eggs and give them the Production Red eggs to set on and hatch. That’s how I get new hens and extra roosters to eat and to keep the billy-goat company.

  Any way, I was just sitting in the barn with a stick pushing it between the roosters every time they started to fight and watching the goats sort of running in and out of spaces they hadn’t been in before. The goats kept screaming to tell me that I should notice they were doing things they weren’t supposed to, which I mostly ignored while I wondered whether I could talk one of the boys into cleaning up the goat shit out of the wood hall or if I was going to have to do it myself.

  Then I… Well I felt it before I saw it. See, I was leaning against the door to the greenhouse, and like I said before the top part of it is wire, when all of the sudden for the first time since November I felt the warmth of sunlight on my back. When I turned around there was full sun in the greenhouse. Let me tell you nothing feels like sunlight—nothing.

  Oddly enough, all of the animals stopped what they were doing, walked to the middle of the barn, and just looked up at the sun shining through the glass of the greenhouse—well at least the part we had managed to clear after the last blizzard—I swear they did. I figured this was how Noah and the animals must have felt when the clouds parted and they saw dry land.

  I quit worrying about the roosters fighting and even the goats getting into things they shouldn’t. I opened the door to the greenhouse, walked out, closed the door behind me, and just looked up at the sun rushing in. The equipment had showed a front of warmer weather, but I hadn’t dared to hope the sun might actually come all the way out.

  “Lucy come here!” I yelled.

  She was there in seconds. I could see the word “what” form on her lips and then it vanished and she was looking up. I saw the sun hit her face and she smiled. I think it was the first time I’d seen her—to actually look at her—in real sunlight. She walked over and hugged me and I hugged her back.

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. Her voice choked with emotion.

  I just nodded then kissed her forehead.

  Of course then the roosters got into it back in the barn and I had to go break them up. Lucy had followed me into the barn. “Kay, is it over?” she asked, her voice hardly above a whisper.

  I knew what she meant, and for some reason I just knew it was. “I think so, baby. I think the worst of it is over. The dust, or at least most of it, has to have settled or we still wouldn’t have full sun.”

  And we might have had us a real moment right there if that wasn’t when all the animals decided to show their asses at once. Then I was just trying to get everyone back where they belonged and none of them were cooperating and Lucy I guess was suddenly so happy that she just couldn’t stop laughing—which wasn’t much help but was the most amazing thing I’d heard in a long time. You know—just uncontrolled bliss.

  ***

  Of course it was a couple of weeks before the temperature actually got above freezing, and then the melt was slow—which was actually a good thing because as it was I was afraid of massive flooding and had warned everyone who wasn’t already above the flood lines to be ready to head for higher ground.

  Surprisingly, having all that sunshine made us more restless not less so. We could almost see the end and we were all ready, way ready, to be out of that house and away from each other.

  I had a guitar and all the books to learn to play. I had always wanted to learn but was always waiting for that magical time when I had plenty of time to devote to it. So I had been trying to play off and on since the end of the world because—let’s face it I finally had the time. After months of mangling the guitar and putting everyone in the house through agony every time I tried, I finally admitted the awful truth—I was never going to be able to play the guitar. I just didn’t seem to have any ability to do it. I had always thought I could do anything I put my mind to but I had to admit that I was wrong about that. Playing guitar was simply something I couldn’t do. However Lucy learned to play in just a few weeks and Lucy became not only really obsessed with playing but she got really, really good quick.

  So there are some things you are meant to do and some things you aren’t and the best way to see what you’re good at is to try everything and see what you can actually do instead of just always saying I can’t and never seeing if you can.

  I can’t play guitar. Now I know it for sure.

  Is it really sappy and sort of a chick thing to say that listening to and watching Lucy play the guitar just makes me incredibly hot? Of course I think that’s why I always wanted to play guitar… You know, because chicks would think it was hot.

  Lucy and I were in the office one night. She was playing guitar and singing real low and I was checking the charts. She was playing that song about fire and rain and such which I thought could be taken as sort of apocalyptic, but still I waited till the song ended to say something, which was even more a sign of the times.

  “We’re going to have to go dig up all the bodies in Rudy and get rid of them.” ’Cause let’s face it that’s not just something you break up a song to say.

  Lucy sighed. “Just when I thought there was no down side to the snow melting.”

  Because you see that’s why the bodies had to be dug up and gotten rid of—because the snow was melting and the last thing we wanted was to try to move the bodies after they had thawed. They sure had to be dealt with way before they started to rot. Now I’d had the town’s people knock down a bunch of bamboo, tie cloth flags to the sticks, and drive them into the ground at the armpit of every dead body. There are two kinds of bamboo around Rudy, the small cane that was native to the area, and giant, hardy, tree bamboo which I had bought and planted along the creek because bamboo can be used for everything from animal food to clothing and planting it along the river bank would help stop erosion.

  Why the arm pit? Because then when you dig down around the flagpole you aren’t likely to hit the body in its face or its groin, which just seemed wrong to me. I purposely hadn’t looked at all those little flags flying above the snow every time we’d traveled to Rudy but it became really apparent that Lucy had.

  “I counted over a hundred and fifty flags one day as we were driving through town.” She put the guitar down. “Roy made a map of where the corpses are. When I told him how many flags I counted he said there were at least seventy-five in the other church, the one that took a direct hit from the tornado, but that they’d only planted one flag there. Kay… Why do we have to help? I mean couldn’t they do it themselves? Haven’t you done enough for them?”

  “You don’t have to go, Lucy. Actually, I don’t want you to go.”
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  Lucy smiled. “Is this yet again another time when you say you don’t want me to go with you but you do but don’t want to be responsible if I do something stupid and get frost bite?”

  “No this is a time when I really don’t want you to go because I don’t want you to have to deal with dead bodies. It’s something I’d like to protect you from.”

  “I’m going if you’re going, Kay. Hell, I didn’t know any of those people. If you’re tough enough to do it, then so am I.”

  “Yeah, but I hated most of them,” I said. But I didn’t argue with her. I’d sort of learned that didn’t really do me any good anyway.

  No one expected it to be an easy job and no one was looking forward to it, but it was one of those things that had to be done and could no longer be put off. The sun was out and the snow was melting. Billy used the dozer to push the debris and snow off the ground around the ill-fated Assembly of God on all four sides. Since the most bodies in the area were in the church, it seemed to make sense to bury everyone else there as well. And then… Well, there were seventy-five bodies we didn’t have to dig up.

  Matt had a blade on the front of his tractor and since the tractor was smaller and easier to maneuver Matt would pick a flag and start pushing snow. I would follow with a team of three of the Rudyites with picks and shovels in my four-wheeler trailer. Matt would scrape most of the snow away and then we’d go to work digging till we got the bodies up. Then we’d load them on the trailer behind my four-wheeler, take them over to the church, and go to the next flag.

  We swapped out every hour who was driving and who was digging. After her first body I was able to convince Lucy that she’d be more help watching the kids and letting other people come work. She agreed, not because she thought she needed to be harbored from the horrors of the truth as much as because of the frostbite. You see she was fine but having had it her hands now got colder quicker, and having had it she had a very real fear of getting it again.

  When Billy had cleared all of the snow and debris from around the church foundation—because let’s face it the foundation was really all that was left—I had him start clearing the snow and debris off the roads. Not an easy task mostly because it was hard to find them. It helped that he knew about where they were supposed to be.

  Now this might seem like a frivolous waste of fuel and time, but here’s the thing. There was five foot of snow when the melt started. We’d only lost about a foot of it when we started this project and there were little rivulets of water running everywhere. That water needed to be able to free flow somewhere away from Rudy. It needed to be directed towards the creek if at all possible, and the town needed some protection from the rising water from the creek when all this snow melted. So Billy used the snow and debris he cleaned off the roads to make temporary levies.

  It took us most of three days to dig out and move all the bodies. Then Billy used the dozer to dig a six-foot deep trench around the church foundation and then he used the dirt to bury the bodies good and deep. See the trench should keep the composting bodies out of the ground water. Of course I was hoping the cement slab and what was left of the church walls would help do that, too.

  By the time we were done I think everyone was a little numb. Weird stuff went through my head the whole time we were doing it. When my shovel had been the one to reveal old lady Hubert’s face, just for a second I could see her working in her yard on a summer day in her stupid bonnet tending her roses with a look of concentration on her face—not unlike the look that was frozen on her face as we chipped away the snow from her body and loaded her into the trailer.

  As we drove our four wheelers back over the river on the last day I could hear the ice crack a little and knew it wouldn’t be long till that river was running again. We were going to have to build some sort of bridge, but I couldn’t even really think about that.

  As I drove home with Lucy’s hands wrapped tightly around my waist all I could think about was why I didn’t feel sadder. I admit to being crazy, but was there something more wrong with me that I could treat something like digging up and moving the dead like just another job that had to be done? And wasn’t it just that? Just another job that had to be done? Even the thing with Mrs. Hubert’s hadn’t left me feeling like we were moving a person. They were dead bodies; that was all. Whatever had been people about them wasn’t there anymore, and they were just a biohazard that had to be dealt with properly. Matt and I had even had to dig up the Burkholder boys from where he’d put them and brought them down to bury. We actually made jokes the whole time we did it about how much better they smelled and looked.

  There would be more bodies. There were houses all through these hills and people in or thrown around most of them. Not just people but cattle and other animals. But we had no way of knowing where those were and we’d have to wait for a full thaw to go looking.

  It was a morbid thought—the whole we’ll pack a lunch and go looking for the dead thing.

  I must have been more upset about the whole thing than I thought I was because when it was my turn to shower I just kept the water going. The melt had the cisterns spilling over and the waterfall was running so there was no reason to conserve water, but I was so used to taking a quick shower that I normally did. Not that day.

  Lucy walked in. “Honey, you alright?” she asked. So apparently I was in there even longer than I thought I was.

  “I’m fine.” I grudgingly turned the water off. I got out and grabbed a towel.

  “It’s alright to be upset, Kay. It was a horrible thing to have to do,” Lucy said.

  I nodded. “You alright?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I was after I took a really long shower. Seriously, Kay. I dug up one person. You dug up dozens. It’s alright to have a meltdown.”

  Wow! Permission to have a meltdown. Is it any wonder I was crazy about Lucy Powers? “Actually, honey, I think I’m more upset that I’m not more upset,” I said. As if it made sense.

  Lucy nodded like she understood that, even though I was pretty sure she didn’t. In that moment I was pretty sure that Lucy was perfect in every way.

  Chapter 16

  Don’t Do Anything Stupid

  ***

  When the sun finally comes out and the snow starts to melt you’re going to think the worst is over and want to just relax. There will be no time for that unless you’re well away from any lake, river, stream, or even a wet-weather wash.

  Don’t do anything stupid. Rushing water and extreme cold are two things that will kill you quick. Use caution in all things you do; you can’t just run to the hospital if you get hurt.

  It’s going to be a lot of water. An incredible amount of snowfall means an incredible amount of water crowding frozen rivers and streams which are probably already full to capacity.

  All that snow melts and the world will turn to mud. Don’t try to plant in mud. You will have to wait till the ground is dryer and remember—whatever the time of year—that what you are dealing with is early spring. So plant only crops that do well in early spring—greens peas, beets, carrots and such.

  Keep rationing your fuel; it could still get ugly cold at night.

  As soon as it is safe to do so, start trolling your area for everything you can scavenge. Take everything you find because you’ll find a use for it later and if you don’t it still didn’t hurt anything to take it. Do NOT try to take stuff from another survivor. If they have something you want, see if they will trade for something you have. If not, then move on. This will be an odd time in which wars could start over a shovelhead.

  Here’s a good and inexpensive way to hedge your bets to make sure you have stuff to trade that will be really needed. Start hitting yard sales, flea markets, second hand stores, and buy any hand tools you find even if they don’t have handles. Handles can always be fashioned from sticks if nothing else, but metal working… Well it might be awhile before some areas can get something like that going and some never will, so those things will be the gold of the future.<
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  ***

  The rain started falling hard and warm one afternoon and you could almost see the snow melting. It fell for just three hours but when it finished we only had about a foot of snow left. I wasn’t too surprised when I got the panicked call from Roy telling me that the creek was almost to the top of the levies. It was a lot of water, but it shouldn’t have done that—not this quick. I knew what that meant. An ice dam had formed somewhere downstream.

  See, the river was frozen solid and then as things start to melt those giant sheets of ice start to break free, float on the water, shift and then they float away… Till one of them get’s caught on something and then others back up behind it and it forms a dam. Then the water starts to back up, too.

  There were lots of things to impede the flow of the river. Trees were down everywhere, hell most of the bridges were out. The Rudy Bridge was down and I imagined that was where this problem originated.

  I was wrong, of course. The Rudy Bridge had already been washed completely out of the creek by the force of the water. There was so much water in fact that I could barely make out Roy and some of the other people on the other side of the creek. Roy had his walkie-talkie.

  “We’re screwed, huh?” he asked. Because he was right. If they had to run from the water at this point, they’d have to bug out in a couple of hours, on foot and without most of their supplies and no real destination in mind.

  “Look, if you have to bugger out bundle up good and just head for All ‘n More. You know there is plenty of shelter, food, and everything else there. It’s a long hike, but you can make it,” I told him. “I’m going to ride down the creek and see if I can find the ice dam.”