How I Spent the Apocalypse

by Selina Rosen

  “This is seriously your decision?” Samantha asked in a defeated tone of voice.

  “Yes,” Lucy said simply.

  “I could hardly sweat you for twice a month. She says twice a day.” And of course that would be the one thing of everything I’d said and done to the little bitch that got right under her skin.

  Lucy smiled at me, “She does this thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Lucy looked at Samantha, smiled smugly and said, “She loves me.”

  “So what happens to me now?” Samantha asked. Because let’s face it with people like her it always comes down to them.

  “There’s a group in Fort Smith. They’ve decided to scavenge instead of farm right away. They could probably use a pilot to scout things out for them,” I said.

  She nodded. “You going to take me to my plane or make me walk?”

  “Geez it’s only a couple of miles,” I said.

  “Come on, Kay,” Lucy said standing up.

  “Well fuck.” I got up to go pull on my boots and grab my keys. I was damned if I was getting dressed again. Lucy and I had a lot of catching up to do.

  “Will you at least come and say good bye?” I heard Samantha ask Lucy.

  “We can say good bye here. I think Kay has put up with enough shit, and frankly I’m done with you. I’m sorry, but I was done with you years ago. I just didn’t know how to let go. The truth is I don’t believe it’s fate that you’re here; I just think it’s a pain in the ass. So good bye, Sam.” As they say, hell has no fury like a woman scorned.

  As I walked back into the room she turned on her heel and started for our room. She stopped, leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I’m going to take a little nap. I’ll be here when you get home.”

  “Come on, chick, let’s go. Places to go and Lucy to do,” I said, shoving her towards the door.

  Chapter 18

  Your Survival Kit

  ***

  Regardless of whether you think I’m completely out of my bird or not, would it really hurt you to be better prepared? People die all the time in minor things like power outages, snowstorms and heat waves.

  There are some things that should be in everyone’s survival kit. Water—at least five gallons for each person in your household—non-perishable food items—at least enough to last a week. Blankets, a flashlight, some kind of self-contained heating source.

  But the truth is that a survival kit will be different for everyone depending on where you are, what you are most in danger from, how many people are in your family, whether you have a good, sturdy bunker on high ground or just a house that may flood.

  You live somewhere in a flood plain then an inflatable raft might be a good idea. You’re house isn’t well built for bad weather conditions, you may want to put back the materials to cover windows or strengthen roof supports or doors or if you can afford it don’t wait—do house repairs today that may insure your house will make it through a disaster.

  Some great items for your disaster survival kit that everyone should have besides the essentials are baby wipes, paper towels, paper plates, duct tape, plastic tarps, rope fasteners of all kinds, and hand tools—the more the better.

  I can’t take your hand and lead you all the way. I can answer your questions and give you advice but when it comes to the moment you’d better have personalized that survival kit to meet your own needs or you just flat won’t make it.

  That will be the future for those of us who survive to tell about the apocalypse. People will have to work together to survive but they won’t have to toil to make an asshole rich any more. Individuality will be important again. We’ll all find something at which we excel and we’ll trade in the things we love to do that we’re good at. There will be balance in the world again.

  ***

  Well I don’t know if that turned out to be true for everyone everywhere but that’s the way it worked out here in Rudy. Balance is all about working with what you have instead of constantly against it.

  I was right about our area and it being a good place to ride out the BS. There are more small communities here than just about anywhere else. There are groups of survivors who have thriving communities in Mountainburg, Chester, Kibler, Russellville and of course Fort Smith.

  Let’s face it; most of the people who lived through the BS were the ones who had the best survival kits, structures they’d built specifically to withstand a disaster, who’d stored up huge amounts of water and food. Mostly it came down to who had hoarded enough of whatever sort of fuel they used to heat and cook with. It didn’t matter how much food people had. At least here in the US if you didn’t have the heat you didn’t make it.

  Some people still bitch and moan and dream of the old days. They think we got bombed back to the Stone Age, but that just isn’t true at all. We have managed to hang onto things like electricity all of ours is just clean now. We still use vehicles. Hell, most places people still use gas because let’s face it there are hardly any people and gas stations everywhere with underground tanks mostly full and easy to access if you have half a brain. Gas goes stale it’s true, but you pop a little additive in it and it will still run a truck.

  People came together all across the world and formed little villages not unlike the one in Rudy. Usually built around the best shelter of one of the members. There were plenty of materials to build with and people knew what they needed now. That’s another thing—we didn’t lose the knowledge of how to build good, tight, energy-efficient, storm-resistant homes.

  People didn’t elect rulers because they mostly handled their own affairs. Oh there was always someone like Roy who sort of shepherded the village, but mostly people made their own decisions and ran their own lives. They worked together to raise stock and tend fields, scavenge, and build each other’s dwellings, but people were truly free to find their true callings and follow them.

  Roy’s wife Belinda does nothing all day but make sure that no one takes more than their fair share of the things we scavenged from the railroad damaged store and keeps an inventory of who got what and how much is left. She marks what comes in from the field and rations it out accordingly to each family. She has become one of the most important people in town.

  The whole town works in shifts to cut enough wood to last the winter, to grow enough food and then preparing and storing the food in the warehouse. When people get along, when ego gets forgotten and they all work for the common good, it really is a beautiful thing.

  One of the men in town has become a writer. Now it turns out Raymond had always wanted to be a writer but let’s face it that was never an easy field to break into. Now he writes in his spare time using a computer. Lucy proofreads his work and then he prints enough copies for everyone in town and trades the books to them for anything they might have or a service they can provide that he wants. It turns out the guy is an amazing writer, and when people can’t just run in and turn on the TV they are more than happy to read a book. He comes in to the radio station—that’s what we call the office now—every day and reads a chapter on air. That’s right; he’s the most famous writer in the world.

  One of the Rudyites paints pictures, mostly of scenes from the world BBS, and people are only too happy to trade her whatever they do for her work. When Lucy got to decorating she traded for several paintings, but surprisingly Lucy didn’t want BBS pictures. She had her paint pictures of flowers and landscapes.

  By the way I like the way Lucy decorated and painted the house. It’s all bright colors and the place is a lot less bunker-ish these days.

  Getting back to what I was talking about… In a world with so few people being famous and respected is something everyone can accomplish simply by hard work and perseverance—both attributes that had been completely dismissed in the world BBS.

  Down at the Rudy rec-center different members of the community give different classes on what they’re good at. This can be anything from animal husbandry and medicine to sewing lingerie which… Well I’ve
got to tell you I’m never sorry when Lucy goes to one of those classes.

  People are learning skills they never thought they’d need like weaving cloth, sewing, and making paper. And they’re finding out that they like doing it. That there is a lot more satisfaction in saying “I made this” than there was in “I bought this.”

  A couple of guys found out they were pros at metal working, and they not only finished building the wheel for the hydro-electric plant but they built the town its own methane-generating plant which is inside a huge greenhouse the town built. The plant makes methane to run all their vehicles and while doing that it also makes compost for the greenhouse. The process even heats the greenhouse. They now work daily tearing cars apart and making windmills which they trade to other communities for the things Rudy needs. Around here and in the ABS they are very rich men.

  Some communities have been smarter than others about what they build to export. There was a paper mill in Russellville and they got the plant up and running. Now they do nothing all day but make toilet paper, and let me tell you people will travel far and wide to trade with them. They don’t have to work the land or raise livestock. All they have to do is make toilet paper and everything else is happily given to them.

  Cherry gave birth to a seven and half pound, twenty-one inch, screaming baby girl that she and Billy named Cindy. The baby came easy and I delivered her without a hitch. She is the light of me and Lucy’s life and a bit of a pain in the ass at times, so a normal, healthy baby. Billy and Cherry help us run our farm and take care of our stock. and of course Billy does dozer work for anyone who asks when the need arises. ’Cause in the if-you-find-it-first-it’s-yours world, that dozer belongs to Billy.

  There are lots of new people being born all over and lots of them are being named after me. Just in Rudy alone there is a girl named Katy and two boys named Kay. I was a little weirded out at first, but I guess as long as there isn’t a population explosion I’m alright with it.

  Evelyn took up with Matt’s oldest son, Randy. Did I tell you that Matt has a weird sense of humor? Named his younger boy Philmore. That’s right, Randy and Philmore, and with a last name like Peters. Anyway, every time Randy bitches about her to Jimmy he laughs and says he ain’t taking her back. I figure it’s only a matter of time till Evelyn heads to the out house and just never comes back. In the ABS no one puts up with her kind long.

  Jimmy has mostly been playing the field—which is pretty limited in Rudy—but seems to be pretty serious about the woman he’s dating now. He built his own house in Rudy proper and lives there. He comes out almost daily to help me run the radio show, but spends most of his time doctoring animals and is considered our town’s vet which seems to suit him really well.

  Samantha took my advice and went to Fort Smith where she quickly became one of their most valuable players. The group in Fort Smith grew a little as people who dug out joined them. They worked non-stop that first summer making Northside High School into housing that could be more easily heated. Surprisingly no one worried about it being too hot any more. They dug out the building’s old, abandoned boiler system, rigged it to run on combustibles, and reconnected it to serve the main building. Classrooms became apartments, and they scavenged the entire city for what they needed. They filled every space they weren’t living in with anything useful they found.

  They started raising crops the second year, but Sam went out to Fort Chaffee, found an old army troop-carrying type helicopter, and started taking a couple of guys with her. They would fly around looking for things to scavenge, so they are still by-and-large a scavenging and trading community.

  There were four doctors, some staff and some patients who had ridden out the BS in a hospital basement in Dallas. Because of the hurricanes that had been slamming the Gulf Coast, the hospital had filled its basement with K-rations and survival gear, including a massive back-up generator hooked up to propane tanks. The hospital got hit by one of the hundreds of tornados that basically cleared a huge swath through the middle and south of the country. Fortunately for them, one of the survivors was the maintenance guy and he got the power shut off to the damaged part of the building and was able to get everything running to just the basement.

  Remember that people—thirty-five people, most of them doctors and nurses that we desperately needed in the ABS—were saved because of the janitor.

  Sam went and got these people and distributed them throughout the country to the different groups. We wound up with a very competent RN who it looks like may be my new daughter-in law.

  Sam found love, too, in the form of a huge bull dyke who could carry her in the palm of her hand. She found her on one of her scavenging expeditions, which seemed appropriate. It seemed weird to me that she could go from someone like Lucy to someone like that, but Lucy explained that Sam was a switch and I pretended to know what that meant.

  Lucy and I are in the middle of our third winter together. I think we’ve gotten closer every year. It’s for sure that each winter has been a little less brutal than the one before, but they’re still long and cold. They give Lucy and I plenty of time to make love and lay around reading, watching old movies, eating popcorn, and talking about the BBS.

  To me the world is better now. But then for me nothing really changed except people quit treating me like a pariah, I got a really hot woman that I love and who loves me, and my sons grew up and became the men I hoped they’d be instead of the men I was afraid they’d turn into.

  Some people say I’m egotistical.

  Some people call me a prophet.

  Some people say I’m their savior.

  Karma still calls me Santa Claus.

  Lucy always calls me Kay.

  But most people around here still call me Crazy Katy. As long as they smile when they say it that doesn’t bother me at all.

  About the Author

  ***

  Selina Rosen’s short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies including Sword and Sorceress, Witch Way to the Mall, Fangs for the Mammories, Strip Mauled, Turn the Other Chick, Anthology At the End of the Universe, the two newest Thieves’ World anthologies, Aoife’s Kiss, and Here Be Dragons.

  Her novels include Queen of Denial, Recycled, the Chains of Freedom trilogy, Strange Robby, The Host trilogy, Fire & Ice, Hammer Town, Reruns, Sword Masters, Jabone’s Sword, and Black Rage.

  Her mystery novel, Bad Lands, was the first Holmes and Storm Mystery and was also co-written with Laura J. Underwood. Bad City, also co-written with Laura J. Underwood is due out late fall, 2011.

  Check out her website (www.selinarosen.com) for her continuing series, The House. It’s posted in episodes—approximately two per month.

  In her capacity as editor-in-chief of Yard Dog Press, Ms. Rosen has edited several anthologies, including the five award-winning Bubbas of the Apocalypse anthologies and two collections of “modern” fairy tales including the Stoker-nominated Stories That Won’t Make Your Parents Hurl.

  If you haven’t already looked for her on FaceBook, why not?

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  About the Cover Artist/Designer

  ***

  Mitchell Bentley has shown his creations from coast to coast and border to border, though mainly throughout the Midwest or plains states—often at General or Literary Science Fiction Conventions. Mitchell has been honored with several guest positions and has won many awards. He currently works on a variety of speculative pieces, commissioned work and publications.

  You can view—and purchase—much of his fine artwork at http://www.atomicflystudios.com/.

 

 

 
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