Eupocalypse Box Set

by Peri Dwyer Worrell

  When his business plan was in place, a wagon full of live turkeys creaked its way down the main road, getting everyone supplied for Thanksgiving.

  Jeremy bought five turkeys with the last of his silver and a handful of amoxicillin he’d found in Joanne’s medicine cabinet. Surrounded by a puddle of water and colored grease, the remains of dissolved plastic bottles of various lotions and potions, the plastic bottle had been mostly intact, the powder from the chalky antibiotic tablets protecting the bottle from the inside. Yet the bottom of the bottle stuck to the floor of the cabinet, and the bottom four tablets were ruined.

  He had found a wood stove in an abandoned house and liberated it, and Joanne spent the three days leading up to Thanksgiving serial-roasting turkey after turkey. The neighborhood dogs assembled in a cheerful pack in the driveway, and children would stop in the street, savoring the smell.

  When the holiday rolled around, Ryan, Lori, Missy, and several other families showed up with a big covered dish of roasted sweet potatoes (“No marshmallows, sorry,” Lori said). They had assembled three primitive tables from wood doors. Joanne had brought out all her stored table cloths to create a vast feast. They got set up out on the gigantic deck connecting the little cottages that comprised the B & B.

  They all gathered around the tables, adults at the taller tables supported on sawhorses, and the children at a lower table in between supported on empty propane tanks. Everyone was scrubbed clean and dressed a little better than usual: cotton dresses for the girls and women; cotton shirts and jeans or slacks for the men and boys. The food was steaming on the table in big dishes and pans. The places were set with a motley array of different china patterns and some hoarded paper plates (the cheapo, uncoated, paper kind were the only ones that had survived).

  As hostess, Joanne had the head of one table. In deference to tradition, she turned to the eldest man present, Scott Beiser, to play the ceremonial role of patriarch. Scott was seated on her right side, and she turned to him and asked, “Will you say grace, Scott?”

  He rubbed his gray beard for a moment, then intoned, “Let us pray.” Everyone bowed their heads, even the agnostics and atheists. “Lord, we thank you for bringing us through this time of trial. We thank you for the blessing of seabutter, which you have brought to us like manna to the Israelites in the desert. We thank you for our family, friends, and neighbors, and we ask you to bless this meal we share together. Amen.”

  Everyone muttered “Amen,” except for the charismatic evangelical family at the end of the table, the Smiths, who raised their hands and shouted “Amen! Hallelujah!” in loud voices.

  With that, they dug in. Platters and bowls were passed, beverages were poured. Spats and quarrels broke out at the children’s table and were put to rights by parents. The Thanksgiving tradition of eating to excess was celebrated with gusto, though their appetites were a little lighter than they might have been, Before. Even though they’d been filling out since they’d figured out about the seabutter, the fattest people there were just barely plump. There were no drive-through burgers and no pizza delivery. So many things done by machine, Before, were now done by muscle power and the sweat of one’s brow. More trips were made on foot. Sugar was a prime barter commodity. When the meal was over and the bakers in the group brought out their pies, little gasps of delight came from everyone.

  After dessert, they participated in the penultimate part of the Thanksgiving Dinner ritual of the late, great, United States of America. They sat in their chairs, leaned back, and put their hands on their stomachs, groaning about how full they were.

  “I just wish there was a game on!” Said Scott.

  “I brought a football,” said the teenaged Jed. “Anyone wanna play?”

  “I do!” several other boys and young men chimed in.

  “Wait one minute.” Jeremy stood up. “Before we all scatter to our own activities, I have something I want to bring up.”

  Thirty-four adult faces looked at him expectantly.

  “We’re blessed to be near the ocean, where we can get enough to eat and feed our animals from the seabutter.” The Smiths put their hands in the air, murmuring amens. Jeremy mentally noted that he’d better not use any more religious language, or this would turn into a revival meeting—which was emphatically not his intent here. “But have you thought about the people who don’t live near the ocean? The big factory farms are dead in the water. The supply of non-hybrid seed is a tiny fraction of what’s needed to grow grain. They don’t have enough grain to eat, much less press for oil. I just came down from Indiana, and the further north you go, the closer people are coming to starvation.”

  The people at the tables gripped their bulging tummies a little more tightly. They glanced around at each other, unsure where this was going.

  “But there’re still people growing fruit, stuff that won’t grow here. They’re growing nuts. Down by Corpus Christi, they still grow sugar cane. There’s a big opportunity for trade here, and the first ones into the market will be the ones who profit from it.”

  A few heads were nodding. “What’re you proposing?” someone asked.

  “Just this: we all have seabutter canned and set back just in case, right?” The women all looked side-to-side and reluctantly nodded, realizing they’d all had the same idea, and their pantries were all lined with jars full of the jelly-like substance. “Let’s start making more. We’ve all got horses, goats, mules, and such. We can use them to take wagonloads of petrobutter inland and trade for things we need, things we miss that we can’t grow or make here.”

  “You had me when you said ‘nuts,’” one of the Smith women said. “I miss my pecans!”

  “Apples. That apple pie was like Heaven.” someone chimed in.

  “Thanks. They were the last of a bag of dried apples I had tucked away.” The baker, Jordan Long, smiled modestly.

  Jeremy looked around. About half the faces held a look of active interest. From temperament or intelligence, the rest had no interest, and were disengaged, but he’d expected that. One or two looked skeptical or slightly hostile, but none of them spoke up.

  “Alright,” Jeremy said, “This time tomorrow, right here, will be the first meeting of the Bolivar Trade Partnership. We’ll talk about ownership and profit-sharing and all that then. In the meantime, let’s play ball!”

  The youngsters whooped and jockeyed to be the first ones down the steps. Jeremy and the rest of the middle-aged men followed behind at a more sedate pace.

  That left most of the women, the children, and Scott to clean up. “Some things never change.” Lori complained, looking at the mess on the tables.

  “It’s a Thanksgiving tradition,” Jordan said. “The menfolk with their football, and the womenfolk cleaning up and complaining about it.”

  “Hmph,” said Lori, picking a crispy piece of turkey skin out of the roasting pan. “At least we get to pick at the best parts!”

  Jordan’s mouth was bulging with sweet potato pie at that moment, so she couldn’t answer.

  General Hospital

  Drugged insensible most of the time on narcotics so that she’d stay still and her collarbone would heal straight, DD had spent a month under Greta’s care. DD began to have flashes of coherence. Dreams of nuns turning into yaller dogs who jumped onto ATVs and flew around the water tower like the witch in the Wizard of Oz, while the tornado turned into upside-down thunderclouds swirling over the Gulf, slowly faded into a hospital dormitory with high arched windows. The hospital-dormitory scene kept coming back and staying longer, and as it lasted longer, the ache in her shoulder would assert itself.

  At some point, she realized Greta must be weaning her off the drugs. She knew she should be glad, but the sweet opiate oblivion was so preferable to the discomfort that she found herself eagerly awaiting the moment when someone would trickle the bitter syrup down her throat. They’d then hold a glass of water with a paper straw and insist she suck on it until she drifted off again. Sometimes it was Greta, sometimes Cindy,
sometimes one of several other women. Greta was the only one wearing a nun’s habit. Sometimes there were other patients in the other beds, and sometimes their families would visit them, speaking in hushed tones behind curtains drawn around DD.

  As her painkiller dose diminished, she began to sit up and sip the water properly from the glass. One of those moments made her realize with a shock that she was wearing a cloth diaper.

  The indignity of that motivated her to try to get up, only to be easily pressed into her pillow by Sister Greta’s soft warm hand. “Now, now. Baby steps, child. You’ve been in bed for six weeks, and you’re very weak. Let’s start by getting some real food into you.”

  A few minutes later, she came back with a tray containing a bowl of some sort of pudding and a small porcelain cup of peach nectar. DD’s stomach had been quiescent, but suddenly emitted a twisting growl when she saw and smelled the food. Sister Greta let DD take the spoon in her left hand, made sure she was able to feed herself without shaking or dropping it, and watched her devour the meal.

  She smelled the food first: a rich, garlicky smell. “What is it?”

  “Seabutter. Try it, it’s good.”

  DD tried it. It had a salty flavor and a greasy feel on her lips, but it was brothy and rich-tasting as well. “Fat and protein?” she guessed.

  “It seems so. This is just steamed with a little salt and garlic, but it’s very versatile.”

  “Hmm.” DD took another spoonful. “I like it.” She slurped a few swallows of the pear nectar. She ate only a few ounces of the seabutter, which made her shrunken stomach feel incongruously full.

  Her medication began to kick in, and she pushed the tray away and sank into the bed. The next thing she knew, the light was different and Cindy was sitting on the bed. There was a new tray on the nightstand.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” said Cindy. “Greta says you can eat like a normal person again. Let’s sit you up.” Cindy reached for DD’s bad right arm, and DD took her hand lightly but used her left hand on the bedrail to pull herself upright.

  Still wearing a damn diaper. And I look like skin and bones! She noticed that there was a sheet of waxed cloth on the bed as well.

  Cindy held the water glass for her, but tilting it was awkward, so DD took her left hand and guided her. Cindy watched her closely as she drank. So intent. With a strange intensity in her face, Cindy fed her a scrambled egg and watched her gulp a cup of orange juice, which left DD wanting more.

  “I’m still hungry.”

  “Well, that was the last egg, but we have some seabutter. Would you like that?”

  “Sure,” DD said.

  “Okay. Here, you’re supposed to start taking your medicine in pill form now.” Cindy poured her another glass of water and gave her half a tablet to swallow. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  But another woman came in a few minutes later. She introduced herself as Sister Margaret. She was younger than either DD and Cindy, late twenties or thirties, with a pleasant, oval face and coarse, mousy hair.

  DD talked to Sister Margaret while they ate. “So, this is a nunnery?”

  Sister Margaret smiled. “We call it a monastery. But yes, we’re a Benedictine order of nuns, the Order of Saint Abigail. Not all the women you met here were nuns. There are twenty-eight of us in the Order here at present, and fourteen lay women.”

  “And this seabutter—what is it, exactly?”

  “Divine providence,” smiled Sister Margaret. “That’s the best I can tell you. It started washing up on the beaches and wetlands of the Gulf not long after the machine sickness began. Fish and crabs and sand fleas eat it, and well, so do we. It’s saved hundreds…thousands…of people from starvation this year.”

  “I wonder what it is.” I need to know if it’s something to do with p. davisii. Under certain conditions, alkanivorax species produce lipids. I don’t recall what their composition is.

  No internet. We took it for granted, Before, that we could always just look things up. The only place I know to find that information is in the books on the shelf in my office in Houston—if it’s even there anymore. She began to feel pleasantly warm and hazy as the drug kicked in.

  Over the next few days, she met two more of the nuns, Sisters Catherine and Veronica, as they eased her out of bed (no more diapers, yay!) and off the pain medication. They gave her a shapeless sort of shift and some primitive slippers to wear around the monastery. In hopes of rebuilding all the muscle she’d built up over the past year on the road and on the farm at Sutokata, she began to walk the halls and then the grounds, frustrated by her lack of suitable footwear.

  The Monastery of the Holy Cross had been established here some two hundred years previously, not far from what became Mississippi’s beach communities. The grounds surrounding the hospital, church, and the nun’s living quarters were considerable in size. Without grounds-keeping help or equipment, the periphery had become overgrown.

  The three main buildings formed a kind of courtyard, and the interior was laid out as a formal garden, with low brick walls, flowers, a kitchen garden of herbs. The nuns and their protégées had focused their energy here, and they managed to keep it tidily weeded, mulched, and swept. It was the depth of Mississippi’s mild winter now, so most of the beds were empty, the summer herbs like basil gone and the woody stems of the rosemary leggy with graying leaves. But the glossy leaves of the azaleas and tea olives were still green, and the garden was a peaceful place to stroll. Sadly, a small pond had been filled in with sand and gravel. With no electricity for the pump it was a mosquito nursery.

  She returned to the hospital dorm and was happy to notice her canvas backpack was there. The pack had been a real find, though the occasion of finding it had been sad: it was in the attic of the Larssens, the couple who lived down the road from Sutokata. The husband had been an insulin-dependent diabetic, and when the drug ran out, his days were limited. The Sutokatans had checked on them periodically while he lost his eyesight, then slowly slipped into the oblivion which ended his life.

  They’d dug his grave, and then they’d checked on his wife every so often. Mrs. Larssen wouldn’t accept charity, but she would trade with them, and apparently Mr. Larssen had been in the Army in his youth. DD had been delighted to barter for this old pack, still intact because it had neither nylon thread nor plastic buckles.

  She opened the metal buckles now and found all the clothing that had been stowed in the ATV, laundered and neatly folded. She pressed her face into a T-shirt and smelled the faint yet sharp odor of lye soap and sunshine. Her boots were on the floor next to the pack—leather uppers from a pair of good commercial work boots stitched to home-made layered-leather soles with hempen twine, then padded with cotton. She quickly changed into her own clothes, gratefully setting aside the loose gown and slippers the nuns had provided. She cinched her leather belt as tight as it would go and still found her pants slouching over her hips. Need to make a new hole. She laced the rawhide strips and tied her boots low on the ankle, then set out for a real walk.

  A quarter mile from the main building, following the remains of a former macadam path which was now sandy gravel, she had to sit on a stone bench. It was plainly going to take her some time to get her legs and lungs back.

  The path became uneven as it entered a copse of live oaks hung with drooping Spanish Moss. She slumped on the bench, defeated, and then looked up. She gave a gasp: a ghost!

  She pressed her hand to her chest, laughing. The “ghost” was a woman wearing a heavy beekeeper’s jumpsuit and a wide-brimmed hat with copious layers of translucent white cheesecloth veiling her face. “Oh, you almost scared me to death, there. I thought I’d seen a haunt!”

  The beekeeper flipped her veil up. “No, it’s just me. I’m Sister Barbara, and you must be DD.”

  “Guilty. Do you keep bees?” That explains the waxed cloth. Beeswax has functional side groups that would keep the P. davisii from digesting the ester bonds, or at least slow it way down.

  “No, I ju
st like haunting the woods and scaring Sister Greta’s patients to death.”

  Ouch. Well, it was a stupid question. “Is there a lot to do with beehives in the winter?”

  “Not really, but you need to check on them every so often. I don’t really need the gear, but I hate getting stung, so I wear it anyway.” The nun took the hat all the way off and perched like a bird on the bench next to DD. She had a poised look about her, like she might take off into the air at any moment, and a way of inspecting one with her bright hazel eyes while turning her fluffy brown head at an angle. “It’s nice out here in the afternoons. I guess we’ll need to get out here in the next couple of months and clear out the weeds and creepers. These woods can get overgrown with wait-a-bit and air potato pretty quickly.”

  “Once I get to feeling a little better, I can help out. I want to earn my keep.” DD said.

  “Well, that’s kind, but it’s part of our mission to care for travelers. We’re a Benedictine order.”

  “You know, I never thought of the rural South as a big place for Catholics.”

  Sister Barbara smiled. “Oh, my goodness, where’d you get that idea? Back when Northern businesses were hanging signs saying ‘no Irish need apply’…are you interested in history, dear?”

  “Always.”

  “Well, the Know-Nothings were tarring and feathering Catholics in Massachusetts and burning Catholic churches in Pennsylvania back then. A lot of Catholics moved South, where people were more tolerant. For a long time, Catholics—and Jews—felt safe in the South and nowhere else.”

  “Hm. Well, you learn something new every day!”

  Sister Barbara rose. “Are you joining us in the dining hall tonight? I think you’ve only met the hospital staff so far. The rest of us are dying to hear your story. News is such a scarce commodity nowadays.”

  “I guess I can, if Sister Greta says it’s okay.”

  “Great. Well, I’d best be getting along then. See you at supper!”