How I Spent the Apocalypse (30 page)

She was right. I knew she was. Jimmy lost his mother when he really wasn’t old enough to not need her, and let’s face it in the boys’ life I was a sad replacement for Cindy. I was obsessed with doing my own thing. I took care of them and I loved them but I never did all the little things that she did for them.

“Nature or nurture?” I asked.

“What?” Lucy asked, momentarily stopping my massage.

“Don’t stop rubbing. I’m asking do you think it’s all about who your biological parents are or do you think it’s who and how you were raised?”

“I’m not like my father was, and as much as I loved her, I’m not like my mother, either. Billy was already a toddler when you started dating his mother, but he acts a lot more like you than Jimmy does. Hell, Billy walks the same as you, he talks the same way you do. Every once in awhile I’ll see your facial expressions on Jimmy, but I see it all the time on Billy. So who can say? I don’t think Jimmy is anything like his father, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just think he’s…”

“Sort of a jerk.”

Lucy laughed. “I didn’t say that.”

Billy slung the door open then making us both jump. “Mama, Jimmy really left he really did.”

“I figured he would,” I said calmly.

“You want me to go after him?”

“No.”

“Are you going to go after him?”

“No.”

“Mama, that dumb ass can’t walk all the way to town in this cold. At least let me go get him on one of the four wheelers and take him to Rudy.”

“He wouldn’t get on with you right now; you ought to know that. And I’m not going to go and kiss his ass to get him to come home because if I do then he’ll show it the rest of the apocalypse and just ruin it for everyone.”

“Mama… He could die out there.”

“Could but won’t,” I said.

“Mama, I really think…”

“Then stop.”

“I feel like this is all my fault.”

“Because you asked him to get off his dead ass and get some wood? It’s not your fault, he was in a mood. He just wanted to throw himself a hissing fit and…” I smiled then and turned to look at Lucy and said proudly. “He
is
like me.” I turned my attention back to Billy. “Look, he’ll either make it to town or to Matt’s, or he’ll come home, or he’ll freeze to death in the snow and ice. If he does that will be completely his decision. We have to let it be his decision, Billy.”

Billy nodded, his shoulders slumped, and he started to leave.

“Shut our door on the way out.”

Which he did.

Lucy started rubbing my back again. “Maybe you should go after him, Kay.”

“No, I meant what I said. Whatever he’s going to do needs to be his decision or he’s just going to make himself and the rest of us miserable. That’s good, baby.” I rolled onto my back and looked up at her. “So, you’re stuck with me—screaming adult kids, bad back and all. How do you really feel about that? You might as well tell me because, seriously, what’s it really going to change? You don’t really have any choice.”

She smiled and kissed me gently on the lips. “I’m happy with you, Kay. He’s wrong, and you know why I think he’s wrong.”

“Because fate brought us together.” I laughed, but grabbed her and drug her down to me and hugged her—probably too tight. “Whatever you want to think, baby.”

***

Now I know what you’re thinking
—that Jimmy didn’t come back right away because he got hurt, and Billy and I had to risk life and limb to save him and from that day forward he just stopped being a jerk. Or you’re thinking that he makes it into town, turns them all against me, and winds up leading them in a battle against me—which I of course win only by killing my youngest son and as he dies he says poignant words of apology to me and I forgive him and he forgives me and then I cry into the snow, my tears turning to little icicles. Or he gets found by some renegade group of military survivalists and brings them back to kill me, and he finally does kill me only to realize that I was right all along and now he has to lead and leading isn’t as much fun as he thought it would be and…

This ain’t a work of fiction people!

About an hour after he left he comes back home, his clothes packed with snow, his teeth chattering, and just runs in the house and starts stripping by the stove.

“Cold?” I ask as Lucy and I walk in from the kitchen as if nothing of interest had taken place that entire day.

“Yeah… I’m sorry, Mama,” he said.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry, Lucy.”

He couldn’t look at her, so I’m thinking he was more sorry about screaming at her than he was for screaming at me.

“That’s alright,” she said.

“No it wasn’t all fucking right,” I snapped at her. She just shrugged making a face that said that she knew at this point in the game there wasn’t much she could do to really piss me off—which, by the way, is never a good place to be in a relationship unless you’re the one that can do no wrong.

“It was a crappy thing to say,” Jimmy said, “and I shouldn’t have said it.”

He had stripped all his gear off and some of the chill was coming off. “Can I talk to you Mama… alone?”

I nodded, and when he’d had a few more minutes to warm up we went into the office and closed the door. “So… what’s with all the shit?”

Jimmy was obviously trying to think of some more intellectual way to say what was on his mind but then he just let it out. “You’re getting it at least twice a day and Billy and Cherry are just fucking all the time and my wrist hurts from jacking off and I’m starting to think Harriet is sort of pretty.” Harriet was one of the goats. “And Evelyn… Well she isn’t really my type and she obviously doesn’t like me, and well it’s like she’s the last girl on earth and she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Look… Right now that girl can’t think about anything but dragging around feeling sorry for herself and your type was always tight-assed, mean and crazier than a shit house rat… and I’m thinking she’s all of that and more. Even if she’s not your type… well as that old song goes… if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. After all, that’s obviously what Lucy’s doing.”

“I said I was sorry, Mama. I was just mad and just said the first shit that jumped into my head. Anyone can see she really does like you. What am I going to do, Mama? There isn’t really anything to do all day and I just sort of feel alone. I know we’re all stacked up in here like cord wood, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt this lonely in my whole life.”

“Why don’t you try talking to the girl explain the whole we ain’t got nothin’ else to do we might as well screw thing.”

“I’ve never been good at talking to women, you know that, Mama.”

“Well, you could start out by telling her that there are all these people in here and yet you still feel all alone because I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut hole that’s how she feels, too. Just talk to her. You got nothing to lose; it’s not like any of us can seriously get away from each other.” I stood up from where I’d been sitting. I started for the door and was just going to leave him with his thoughts but then that mother thing kicked in and I turned around.

“You know why it always seems to you like I favor Billy?”

He shook his head no.

“Because you were mine. I cut your cord. I was the first one that ever held you, and you were MY baby. I had to work very hard to never let Billy know that you were just a little more special to me than he was.” He got up, ran over, hugged my neck, and just started crying, so I rocked him like I did when he was a baby. For just a minute he didn’t seem like such a giant pain in my ass.

Just for a minute.

Chapter 14

Hording and Scavenging

***

Most doomsday scenarios will include a long
, very cold winter. Unless you are near the equator this is what you’d better prepare for. You can’t have enough fuel for heat or enough food. Look, even a normal winter without utilities and not being able to go to the store to get groceries will be the hardest thing you have to go through. Realize that communities used to spent most of their time getting ready for winter, and that there was a reason for it. You have no idea how much food and fuel it takes, so when you think you’ve put back enough—put back some more. You will be able to get water from ice and snow, but food is going to become scarce fast. Know where every possible source of food is, every grocery store, every quick pick, every restaurant, any place where you might find food, and don’t wait till your food is getting low to go on scavenger expeditions. Do them in any break in the weather—but only if it is above freezing or better—and before fear of starvation can even think to come into play.

If you didn’t put them back you can make snow shoes out of nearly anything—tennis rackets, wicker baskets or chair bottoms, pieces of fencing, anything you can tie to your feet that isn’t too heavy and that will make your foot wider and keep you from sinking up to your ass in the snow. Make a sled—easy to do out of any number of things—old street signs and car hoods or trunk lids, or garbage cans. Plastic kiddy pools, come to mind, not to mention you might be able to find actual sleds in department, hardware or sporting goods stores—don’t make more than one trip and make that trip count. Load up with everything you can haul.

***

Face it, most of the people who made it
through were the people who, like me, had been preparing mentally and physically for years. Strengthening their homes to stand up to whatever might happen, putting back lots of supplies. But there were lots of people who made it who did it by the skin of their teeth like Tom in North West Texas who had hunkered down in the basement laundry room of the apartment building he’d been living in. The town had been hit by a twister and hit hard and like they had in Fort Smith most of the residents had buggered out. But even though he hadn’t done a damn thing to prepare, he’d faithfully listened to my podcast, and when the shit hit the fan he’d been in that basement with every container he could find at the last minute full of water, his toolbox, a two-way radio, and all the food in his apartment. The basement had been all that was left of his apartment building and as everyone else—who wasn’t dead already—was running as fast as they could to get out of town to someplace else, he was scrounging food and fuel anywhere he found it and dragging it into that basement. He made a heater out of one of the dryers—ingenious really. The place he found the most food had been what was left of a pizzeria. At one point he told me he was down to eating a soup he made by boiling water and throwing in two packages of Parmesan cheese and one package of crushed red peppers.

We weren’t in any fear of running out of food. I had already figured it out and even with the extra mouths to feed and if for some reason everything in the greenhouse suddenly died and we had to eat all the animals we still had a five-year supply of food. While this winter was bad and we hadn’t seen the sun in weeks and I didn’t plan to see it soon, you could still clearly define day from night. So as bad as this apocalypse was it wasn’t as bad as it could have been if say the Yellowstone or Krakatau calderas had done their worst.

Since they had tapped the Wal-Mart for food and other supplies, the people at the school in Fort Smith were just fine. Plenty of food and plenty of fuel, and they had found ways to make themselves ever more comfortable. In short, they were learning to think like survivors instead of people waiting for someone to come and save them.

The folks in Rudy, though, were running really low on supplies. Here was the problem; if I was going to let them starve then I should have done that to begin with. As long as I was feeding them and helping them out they weren’t going to come after me and mine no matter how much more we had. How did I know that? I told you I studied history. People only ever rose up to fight the “power” when the power had all and gave them nothing. As long as I was sharing with them, as long as their bellies were full, they weren’t going to risk almost-assured annihilation by coming after us. I was in a position where I was sure I had more than enough food and supplies to be able to make it through and keep feeding the people in Rudy, but tapping my own stores to feed them without really knowing when the winter might actually end was breaking about a dozen of my own rules.