How I Spent the Apocalypse

by Selina Rosen

  Yep, I had it alright then. Everything was absolutely perfect.

  Now hold that thought.

  Chapter 17

  I Hate It When That Happens

  ***

  People are stupid. That’s why it’s all going to end and that’s why so many people are going to die. People will watch the weather. They’ll hear that there is going to be a record-breaking cold front and that it has busted main water lines in some small town that isn’t theirs. What do they do?

  Nothing.

  They don’t do anything. That isn’t their town so they think they’re safe.

  Would it kill them to fill a couple of bottles so they have drinking water, fill the tub so they have water to flush the commode with, do a load of laundry so that if the water lines freeze they have clean clothes?

  Knowing that people can freeze to death they will live someplace and have only one source of heat. Your house is all-electric and the power goes down because of ice. Guess what? You have no heat. How smart is that?

  Look, you live someplace prone to flooding you ought to be moving right now. If you don’t want to move just on the chance I’m right that the world’s going to fall into catastrophe then at least have an escape plan mapped out. All over the country there are remote areas that have small cabins in the mountains by a lake or a running stream. Make plans to pack your survival kit, get in your car and go there. And don’t wait till the last minute, either. The second you think there might be trouble—go. What’s the worst that will happen? You’ll miss a couple of days work and have a nice vacation.

  These cabins are small which makes them easy to heat. Try to find one that advertises fireplaces or wood stoves. They’re secluded, away from big cities, and comfortable.

  You can’t leave your brain at the door and think you will survive this apocalypse.

  Do you know why I never say anything about surviving fire? Because you can’t. You just have to run away from the flames. Every kid learned in school about not opening doors, crawling on the ground, stop drop and roll. If there is a catastrophe that includes fire you have only one course of action—run away from the fire. I shouldn’t have to say it because it should be obvious to anyone, but if I don’t it’s a sure bet someone will run into instead of out of the fire and then as they’re burning to death scream out that they didn’t know.

  People are going to die by the millions not because there is no hope of surviving the apocalypse but because they’re stupid. Don’t be stupid; make a plan. If you’re someplace you don’t want to be then try to ride out the worst of it and then move on. But move on to someplace you already planned to go and make sure you can actually get there.

  ***

  Lucy and I were up early for no apparent reason, so we’d decided we might as well have sex. Which we did until we needed a nap—which I would have taken, but then I heard the radio.

  I got up and ran in to hear Roy saying, “Katy, dammit! Can you hear me? There is some idiot buzzing us in a plane!”

  I grabbed the mike up and pressed the button. “What did you fucking say?” I asked, really not sure.

  Since I’d answered Roy calmed down some and said in a much clearer voice, “Some idiot has been flying over us for about forty-five minutes now.”

  This was when I knew what had made us wake up to begin with. We must have heard that plane; it just didn’t register. But we hadn’t heard one in so long that it had roused us from a sound sleep. Of course once we got… busy, well then we weren’t likely to hear anything till we finished.

  I tried for ten minutes to make radio contact with the plane without any luck, so I thought the worst but I wasn’t even close. We got dressed, got our flack jackets and rifles, jumped in the pickup truck and headed for town.

  That’s right the pickup truck because I didn’t want to be all-out-in-the-open like if there was some kind of trouble.

  We got to the bridge just as the idiot in the plane decided to land on Main Street. Needless to say this had everyone in town running around like idiots, waving guns in the air and shouting.

  It looked like the plane was going to run out of road before it could stop and then it just stopped. I drove up close to it and jumped out, rifle in hand.

  “Stay in the car.”

  “Dammit, Kay…”

  “Stay in the car!”

  I took the safety off my rifle and walked towards the plane. Roy and a big guy named Bobby Jack joined me.

  The door on the side of the plane opened and came down with a crash that made us all jump and then an arm was stuck out and it was waving a white handkerchief.

  “I come in peace. Seriously,” a young female voice said. And then she stepped out of the plane. Short, but well built, bronze skin, blonde hair and dark brown eyes.

  Lucy obviously hadn’t listened to me because I heard her say at my shoulder even as I lowered my rifle, “Samantha?”

  “Lucy!” The woman jumped down from the last step to the ground, ran over and embraced my woman.

  “Son of a bitch!” I said.

  It sucked; if anything in my life had ever sucked more than Lucy’s girlfriend coming back to life and showing up on our doorstep did then I don’t know what the hell it might have been. And just why hadn’t Lucy told me that her dead girlfriend could fly a fucking plane?

  Lucy was still hugging that woman and then they were kissing on the mouth and I just screamed out accusingly towards her, “I knew it! I knew you were going to ruin the apocalypse for me!” Then I stomped off in the direction of nothing.

  “Kay, wait! Kay!” Lucy called after me. In seconds she had caught up to me but I just kept walking fast, making her run to catch up. “Kay, seriously wait.”

  I didn’t so she jumped on my back, her arms around my neck.

  “What the hell!” I said. But I kept walking with her hanging on my neck like some deranged little monkey.

  “Kay please don’t be crazy for a minute.”

  “That’s a lot to ask.” I quit walking and grumbled. “Of all the crappy luck. Bazillions of people dead and she’s fine. Better than fine, she’s hot.”

  Lucy let go and walked around in front of me. She looked up at me. “Kay, I don’t know what this means. What’s going to happen...”

  “You kissed her on the mouth, Lucy. In front of me and God and everyone else you kissed her on the mouth,” I said accusingly.

  “She kissed me. I kissed her back. I wasn’t thinking. Kay… what are the odds?”

  “Oh great, I guess this is fate, too.”

  “Of course it is, Kay.”

  I looked to where Samantha was obviously trying to come after Lucy and where a bunch of the town’s folks were making sure she couldn’t.

  “Beautiful. Fucking beautiful!” I started stomping around, waving my rifle and my hands in the air. “Where the fuck does this leave me, Lucy? Huh? Where does this leave me?”

  “I don’t know, Kay. I don’t know. I haven’t even had time to process this, but don’t treat me like this is something I did to you. Please, Kay, think about it. What if that was Cindy who stepped out of that plane?”

  I quit stomping around, tried to put myself in her position for a minute, and then just said the first thing that popped into my mind. “But it’s not Cindy who came back and well… I’d still pick you Lucy, I would.”

  “We don’t even know what she’s doing here. What she wants…”

  No idea? Really? I have no idea why that made me so much madder than I already was, but it did. I went from calming down to being hyper-enraged in like ten seconds.

  “Oh I know what she wants, but I’m damned if she’s going to get it,” I said. I started back towards the plane and Samantha.

  “Kay, Kay, don’t do anything crazy. Kay, let me at least tell her about us before you…”

  But I was already back to the girl and her fucking plane by then.

  “What’s going on?” Samantha asked Lucy, not me.

  She was so sane sounding, so together
, that I instantly hated her guts.

  “Sam I think…”

  “What!?” I yelled in my usual I’m-about-to-kick-someone’s-ass style. “You just shorten all your lover’s names? Isn’t that fucking cute. Not special because that would mean you only did it to one of us!”

  I stuck the barrel of my rifle right in Samantha’s face and she froze.

  “Listen, Lucy’s my woman now. Mine. And no one is going to come swooping down from the sky and take her away from me.”

  “Kay, for God’s sake!” Lucy grabbed the barrel of my rifle and pointed it at the ground. Lucy has never actually been afraid of me one bit which is probably why I’ve always been crazy about her.

  “Don’t you call me Kay. You call me by my full name, Crazy Katy, ain’t that right!?” I said.

  I was glaring at everyone because well I was just mad at the whole world right then. They all pretended to be looking somewhere else which made them all look a little ridiculous and me even madder. I mean let’s face it, BBS those people had never done anything but ridicule me. This was bound to give them all a good laugh or at least something to talk about. In an instant I had gone from someone they looked up to, the person who had saved and sustained them, back to that poor crazy lesbian that lived in the bunker.

  I pulled the barrel of my gun out of Lucy’s hand and slung it over my shoulder in a less menacing pose. I looked at Lucy. “I’m not going to be played like some fucking moron. If you want her then get on the plane with her and get the hell out of here. If you want me get in the fucking truck.”

  I looked at Samantha. “Either way I want you out of here.”

  I started for the truck but Lucy ran around in front of me. Like I said, Lucy wasn’t afraid of me. Everyone else yes, Lucy no. “Kay, please calm down.”

  “I can’t, Lucy,” I said. I realized only then that I was actually working really hard not to break down and cry like a fucking little girl in front of everyone.

  “Yes you can, Kay, you can. You aren’t as crazy as you want everyone to think you are. You’re upset and I understand that you’re upset and why. But when you aren’t upset you’re the most rational person I’ve ever known. Please listen to me. I didn’t do anything to you. Sam…”

  I glared at her.

  “Samantha didn’t do anything to you, either. We don’t even know how she found me yet. I’m not trying to do anything to you and neither is Samantha. I don’t want to go off with her and leave you and I don’t want to send her off without even talking to her. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen one way or the other. I haven’t had even a second to process it. She’s alive and she’s here and I… we… just have to deal with that in a way that we aren’t going to have any regrets about later.”

  Dammit all, she was right. If Lucy had to choose right then and she chose to go with Samantha I’d be kicking myself in the ass the rest of my life. And if I just made Samantha go without letting Lucy really have a chance to decide where she wanted to be then she was always going to wonder if she’d made the right choice and…

  Well sometimes being rational just sucks. I nodded that I’d calmed down and the next thing I knew everyone had loaded all Samantha’s gear in my truck and Lucy was sitting in the cab of the truck between me and her old girlfriend. Though I was glad to see that she was closer to me. In fact, she seemed to be trying hard not to touch Samantha, which made me feel good till I realized she was probably just doing it to keep me from killing Samantha which was after all my first instinct.

  The cab was real quiet and it was hard to know what either Lucy or that freaking dwarf were thinking. But I know what I was thinking. Come to think of it, we were ALL probably thinking, “Well this didn’t turn out like I wanted at all.”

  Because let’s face it—not that I cared—but it had to suck for Samantha at least as much as it was sucking for me. I mean she obviously managed to survive somehow and had found a plane and flown here no doubt because she’d heard Lucy on the radio. She’d been expecting to come here, be reunited with Lucy, and have some really good catching-up sex and now she must have known I wasn’t likely to let that happen.

  I figured Lucy was trying hard to think of a way to keep us both because the bitch was just that horny.

  “Promise me you won’t kill Samantha,” Lucy said to me.

  “Oh come on…”

  “Promise. There are other ways to deal with people and with problems.”

  “Wow,” Samantha said. There was an obvious hint of anger to her voice. “That’s sweet. I’m a freaking problem. I fly halfway across the country in a taped-together plane and all I am is a problem?”

  “Way I see it,” I spat back.

  “Kay, I’m serious.” Lucy just ignored what Samantha had said because of course you always have to deal with the seriously crazy one first.

  I glared across the seat at Samantha. “You touch my woman and I’ll fucking kill you.”

  “Your woman. Christ, Lucy, I realize there are slim pickings in this BS world, but Neanderthal woman, seriously?”

  I pulled the truck over, stopped it and started to jump out. Lucy grabbed my arm, hanging on tight and trying to keep me from getting out of the truck.

  “Calm down, Kay. Samantha has a black belt in taekwondo.”

  “Let her go. I’m in an ass-kicking mood myself,” Samantha snarled out.

  I shook Lucy off then. “Black belt my fucking ass. I don’t give a good shit. Taekwondo my ass,” I mumbled as Lucy ran behind me, hanging onto the back of my shirt. By the time I reached the other side of the truck Samantha had struck some stupid-assed fighting stance. I shook Lucy off, walked right up to the fucking dwarf, blocked her half-assed kick and slugged her in the face hard enough to drop her to the ground. Then I was just jumping around like an idiot mainlining steroids.

  “Get up you fucking weenie!”

  She tried a couple of times, but I’d obviously given the little bitch a concussion because she was just sort of wobbling around. Now I have no idea whether Samantha was any kind of black belt in anything or if it was just some shit she made up to impress women like Lucy, but I grew up in a family full of boys where if you couldn’t fight and fight well you’d likely as not wind up giving birth to your cousin’s retarded baby by the time you were thirteen and… Well, when you’re a big, huge dyke in a part of the world that hates homosexuals as a part of their religious practice, someone’s always wanting to pick a fight with you over some bullshit. You know what will teach you to fight faster than any kind of lessons you can take—where let’s face it most times you were sparing with someone who didn’t want to get hit any more than you did? Getting your ass kicked a half dozen times, that’s what. One hell of a teacher. You really get your ass kicked you learn exactly how it happened and how to keep it from happening again. Plus… Well I’d studied several martial arts as well.

  Think about it. You’re crazier than a two-peckered goat you better be a world-class scrapper.

  Lucy ran up to Samantha to help her up, as if I hadn’t hurt my fist on the bitch’s face. Where was my compassion? “Sam! You alright, Sam?”

  “I’m fine.” She tried to shove off Lucy’s help but couldn’t actually stand by herself so gave up.

  “That was completely unnecessary, Kay,” Lucy said in a scolding tone.

  “You’re taking her side? She was talking shit about me. I’m not going to let her talk shit about me in my own truck.”

  “That really was uncalled for,” Lucy said to Sam. Which let me know just how on the fence Lucy was because she couldn’t really decide whose fault it was.

  We got home without me killing Samantha mostly because she kept her fool mouth shut.

  At the house Lucy got some ice for Sam’s jaw and sat her at MY kitchen table while I started to make dinner with my hurt hand. I mean… well it wasn’t all that bad, but Lucy might have at least asked if I needed some ice.

  The girl was in good shape, almost too good. As if she’d spent the apocalypse in a sp
a and that got me to thinking. I didn’t say shit, though just kept making dinner.

  “How’d you find me?” Lucy asked Sam.

  I was liking this shit less by the minute because it was more and more obvious that Lucy was glad to see the dwarf who I now realized was at least five years younger than Lucy—which was not helping me with my insecurities regarding the future of my relationship at all.

  The radio started making noise and I went to check it, more than a little pissed off because I didn’t want to leave them in the room alone together. It was Billy. He’d heard because of course with the two-way radios and nothing else to do news traveled really fast ABS. Gossip became everyone’s favorite past time.

  “I’m really sorry, Mom,” he said, after explaining that he’d heard about our visitor from the sky.

  “Sorry… You just naturally think she isn’t going to choose me,” I said. I was pissed as hell because I was thinking he was probably right.

  “I didn’t mean that, Mom,” he said.

  “No you’re right, she’s young and good looking and she can fly a plane. I’m just screwed ’cause if I kill this girl Lucy is never going to forgive me and short of that I just don’t see how I can come out of this a winner.”

  “Lucy loves you, Mom. I know she does,” Billy said.

  Did she? Hell I didn’t know. I usually thought she was just with me because I was the only queer chick around. Because I was the one who had saved her. I got off the radio with my son and started back for the kitchen. I could hear them talking so I found a good place, hid and listened.

  “…you don’t know anything about her,” Lucy said.

  “Come on, Lucy. She wants to kill me, you know she does. And she’s like a hundred years old! What is this like Stockholm syndrome or something?”

  “She’s not old and I don’t have to explain it to you, Sam.”

  “Look. I’ve been through hell, Lucy. I probably would have just given up if I hadn’t heard your voice on the radio. The only thing that kept me alive was thinking about you, about being with you again.”

  Now I ask you, how do you compete with crap like that? That’s just what it was by the way—all crap—because there was no way that girl could have gone through all the shit she talked about and looked the way she did, just no way.