How I Spent the Apocalypse

***

***

***

This is a work of fiction.  All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-937105-22-8

Electronic Edition Copyright © 2011 by Selina Rosen

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.  Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology should send their inquiries to Yard Dog Press at the address below.

Yard Dog Press

710 W. Redbud Lane

Alma
, AR  72921-7247

http://www.yarddogpress.com

Edited by Selina Rosen

Copy & Technical Editor Lynn Stranathan

Cover art by Mitchell Bentley

First Print Edition October 15
^th
, 2011

First EBook Edition October , 2011

Printed in the United States of America

0 9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

***

***

***

For Roland and Zeb.

I hope this isn’t the future you inherit

Chapter 1

Don’t Leave Home Without It

***

Don’t try to travel during the disaster.
Unless you have days to get the hell out of Dodge you’re much better off to stay put and hunker down. In other words, if you waited till the last minute to try to make it through the apocalypse you’re probably already screwed, so you might as well stay put where at least you have some stuff.

If you have to leave because a river of lava…or just a river…is headed your way, then take your survival kit, all your food, as many blankets and sensible clothes as you can, and get while the getting is good. But if you leave empty handed you will be as screwed as you would be if the lava hit you.

Don’t wait till the last minute to go when every other idiot is trying to get away. You’d be better off on a rubber raft than stuck in traffic ’cause even if it’s a river of lava at least you’ll go quick—without having to hear idiots honking their horns as if that could magically clear sixty miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic. And then there’s all the screaming as the lava consumes them.

And for God’s sake when evacuating don’t be one of the idiots who runs out of gas. Turn the car off if traffic is stopped. Carry gas with you. Real survivalists always keep their gas tanks in all their vehicles full and have an extra five-gallon can full at any given time.

If you’re on any coast and you hear something apocalyptic may be happening then if you’re smart… Well if you were really smart, you would have already moved years ago… But if you’re still there just load up all you can and head inland. Find a nice park with cabins or get a hotel room in a small town. Hell, move in with family or friends.

Our most likely doomsday scenario will be caused or made worse by climate change. I know—every right winger in this country seems to think this is something liberals made up to scare us into regulating big business and doing without all that big crap you just have to have—but just because some idiots refuse to believe in something doesn’t mean it isn’t real. I mean come on! People were convinced the world was flat—some still are—that doesn’t make it flat. If you’re on one of the coasts and you want to survive—get inland. If you’re in a big city—get out. You might have done everything right but your neighbors won’t have and they will kill you and take your shit.

Inner-city gangs will likely be killing everyone else to live. If anyone survives in the big cities they will most likely be exactly the sort of people we least needed to have survive. They will have survived not because of their wits but because there is strength in numbers and they will be willing to kill to get what they need.

The only trouble thugs might have is that they are all idiots. Let’s face it; smart people don’t buy into the things a gang promises. With no one to inhibit them, the morons will most likely do their drug of choice till they die. Of course, in the meantime, they won’t have any trouble at all killing you to take your food, water, or prescription meds.

Now as soon as you land someplace if the worst hasn’t happened yet—and if you’re smart you saw the signs and got out in plenty of time—take any credit cards you have, go to the store, and max them out. Buy all the dry goods you can. If you’re afraid you won’t have a way to cook beans and rice or other grains, then get peanut butter, canned meat and honey—lots of honey—even sugar. Both give you quick calories. Max your cards out buying sleeping bags and other survival-type stuff. After all, if the worst happens you won’t have to worry about paying it off. Even if civilization does survive enough for debt to still be a problem, well… Would you rather be dead or have a little debt?

Grocery stores have already been emptied when you get there? Head for a feed store. They sell several animal products that can be consumed by humans. Wheat bran, rice bran, and ground corn come to mind. Use your head. Only get full-grain products and stay away from pelleted feed with chemical additives.

So there are reasons to evacuate even at the last minute, but for the most part if you’ve waited till the apocalypse begins to leave the coasts or the cities it’s probably too late for you anyway. As a basic rule, don’t travel once the apocalypse has started. Look, Flo Jo couldn’t outrun cancer, and you won’t be able to outrun the tidal wave, the hurricane, the tornado, or the blizzard, either.

***

Yep, that’s the kind of sound advice
that I used to hand out on my weekly podcast entitled,
Living Through the End dot com
. A long title I know but sort of catchy and not the sort of thing people easily forgot. It had over three million loyal listeners. Their donations didn’t make me filthy rich, but they did give me more than enough money to quit my job about eight years before the end of the world as we knew it and allowed me to devote all of my time—and all their money—to preparing for the coming disaster.

Although I’ll be completely honest and tell you that I didn’t need their money or the time because I’d been preparing for the inevitable since I was a kid, and it turned out that what I had without all the cool shit I managed to put back would have been enough. Having money just let me do it bigger and better. It allowed me to help other people, too. The truth is without the money me and mine would have made it, but lots of other people wouldn’t have.

And having all the really cool shit… Well it really livened up the ole apocalypse for me.

As a kid I started doing things like hording batteries and food. Soon I’d escalated to spending time my teachers thought I should have spent studying, playing sports, or socializing with my peers trying to figure out where the safest place in America was.

Of course the joke’s on them because turns out I really
didn’t
need to learn any of that crap I told them I didn’t need to learn, and I’m alive and most everyone else is dead. So na na na boo boo.

About now you might be asking yourself why I knew. How I knew. Am I some modern-day prophet, a psychic?

Nope. If I was, my own life wouldn’t have had so many snags, would it? What I am is obsessive compulsive and crazier than a shit house rat. I’ve had recurring nightmares of the destruction of the world for as long as I can remember. I have no idea what started the dreams. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my parents loved disaster movies and I’d seen way too many of them from my crib. Or maybe I was one of the few people who paid any attention at all to the news. But the dreams were what started my obsession with doomsday.

Also… Well, I’m really smart. I know that makes me sound egotistical, but it’s also true. I heard what people were saying about global warming—later changed to Catastrophic Climate Change in the hope that stupid people would quit saying, “Where’s my global warming?” every time it was colder than shit. And I read too much—or so my trailer trash family would say over and over. I swear what really saved me—and through me a big slice of mankind—was my family disowning me. I never would have amounted to shit if they hadn’t kicked me out on my ass when I was sixteen.

Anyway, I read a lot, so I knew what was going on in the Middle East. While we were farting around over there trying to keep our fingers on the pulse of one of the biggest oil veins in the world, stirring up all those idiot, radical religious fucks in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan—giving them someone besides each other to hate—Pakistan and India were on the verge of a full-out nuclear war that was also driven by religious dissent.

Any idiot with a TV should have been able to see that our government had been taken over by people whose own religious beliefs said we were way past Armageddon and who were mostly into stuffing their already-full pockets. They didn’t give a good God-damn what happened to the people, the economy, or the world when they were done with it.