The day after: An apocalyptic morning (34 page)

              "Drastic? How drastic?"

              "There's really no telling," Paul said. "But just remember that you and, to a lesser extent, me, are going to be the focus of her insecurity. You saw her reach for a gun today down on the bridge. Keep that in mind."

              The house was a simple, 1600 square foot, three-bedroom single story. It had a two-car garage and a muddy backyard with soggy, dying grass. The smallest model available in the Garden Hill subdivision, it had probably been worth close to $250,000 before the comet impact. The previous owners - Bob and Vickie according to Jessica - had decorated it tastefully if slightly effeminately. The carpet and the padding were top of the line, the kitchen appliances - useless as they all were now - were of the highest quality, and the furniture was all name-brand and expensive. In the bedroom was a large, King-sized bed with a canopy over it. One of the other bedrooms had been used as an office and contained a computer desk and some bookshelves. The third bedroom was decorated with a mobile and had a large, oak crib in it. Skip tried not to think too much about what had happened to the baby that had once slept in that crib.

              "Now the bathroom," Paul said, as he led him through the tour, "is the most important room in the house."

              "Oh?" Skip replied, wondering if he was kidding or not.

              "Yes indeed. It is where your water supply, your bodily functions, and your laundry are all accomplished. Now the toilets are just like the ones in the community center."

              "Meaning that you can still use them," Skip said.

              "Right. As long as you dump enough water down in them after you finish your business, they will still drain down into the septic system and you will still be able to refill them with fresh water. We'll have Ted - he's our resident plumber - come out later today and rig up a hose assembly from the rain gutter for you. He's devised a little device that lets you tap into all of that water draining off of the roof. It plugs into the bottom of the gutter and gravity feeds through a hose and a nozzle right into the bathroom through the window. That will be your toilet water and your laundry water, but I wouldn't advise that you drink it straight. For drinking water you should fill up a five-gallon bucket with rainwater and don't let it sit for more than a day or two. We've been putting a few drops of bleach in our buckets just to make sure we don't catch any nasty bugs. Remember, we don't have a doctor here and we don't have a lot of antibiotics either."

              "You say we do our laundry in here? How does that work?"

              "It's not a power Maytag, that's for sure. Every household is given a laundry soap ration for the week. Just fill the tub with some water, throw in some soap, and then let your clothes soak for a while. Squish them around a little bit and then rinse them off until the soap is gone. Then rig yourself a clothesline someplace in the house. Most of us use the formal living room part since that's pretty much a useless waste of space anyway. I'd advise doing your laundry every day. If you let it build up and then try to do it all at once, it takes a long time for it to dry and the house gets unbearably humid."

              "Amazing," Skip said, feeling a little bit of unreality wash over him.

              "What's that?"

              "It's just kind of strange," he said. "Not too long before I was wondering if I was going to be able to survive from day to day. Now, I'm pondering the best way to go about installing a clothesline in my new Garden Hill home. It's probably the way my dad felt when he came home from Vietnam. They kept him in combat in the jungle right up until his very last day. And then, on day 365, a chopper came and took him out and flew him to Saigon. He climbed on a plane and eighteen hours later, he was in Seattle waiting for a flight home. I never understood him before when he tried to tell me how weird that was, going from a deadly jungle where VC are trying to kill you to the streets of Sacramento in the USA in less than 24 hours. Not even when I came home from the Gulf War did I understand it. The Gulf War was pretty much a pussy war in comparison. But I understand now. I really think I do."

              "Yeah?"

              He nodded. "Yeah. I only wish my old man were still alive so I could tell him. It's unreal. It's hard to grasp."

              Paul looked at him, his face deadpan. "Molly bolts," he finally said.

              "What?" Skip said, having no idea what he was talking about.

              "Molly bolts," he repeated. "That's the best way to install the clothesline. We have a supply of them back at the community center."

              Skip started to laugh. Paul, dropping the straight face, joined him.

              About two hours after lunch Skip was up in the main office with Paul, going over some maps of the town that had been made since the impact. For the most part they were crudely done and not even close to scale but they did show the topographical features around the subdivision fairly well. The two men were discussing various ideas about defense while Jessica and Dale, both at their own desks, worked on some items of their own, one or the other occasionally throwing in a negative comment or two that was mostly ignored.

              "Look who finally decided to join the living," said a voice from the doorway.

              Everyone looked up to see Janet standing there, a bleary looking Christine next to her.

              " Christine," Skip said happily, standing up to go greet her. Seeing her in fresh clothes, her blonde hair neatly combed, it was a little like looking at a different person. "Look at you. You're clean!"

              She giggled a little tiredly. "Yeah, it took me two tubs full of water to get everything off of me but I finally found some skin underneath there."

              "I know what you mean," Skip said, feeling a little pang of guilt as he was reminded of his own bath last night. "That's about what it took me as well. Did you get something to eat?"

              "Yes," she said. "Janet took me down to the gym and gave me some of the rice that everyone had for lunch." She scratched herself on the shoulder, making a sour face. "These clothes itch, Skip. And they feel so rough!"

              He nodded. "Mine too," he told her. "Give it a few more hours, you'll get used to it eventually."

              He filled her in on the developments that had occurred while she had been sleeping, telling her of his tour of the town and speculating that the vote scheduled for dinner that night seemed like it would go in their favor. "People seem to like us here," he said, casting a sideways glance at Jessica, who was monitoring the conversation. "At least most of them do."

              "Well that's good," she said happily. "I could get used to living here I think."

              "Of course you will be expected to work if we take you," Jessica said from her seat. "Don't get the idea that it's a free ride or anything."

              Christine looked over at her with distaste. She had already determined how she felt about Jessica and she didn't do much to hide it. "I have no problem pulling my weight," she said to her.

              "I certainly hope you don't," Jessica said. "I imagine you have some babysitting experience don't you? Most teenage girls do."

              "Babysitting?"

              "Yes," Jessica said. "We have a great many small children in town that need to be watched while their mothers are out doing their assigned tasks. I think you would fit that bill nicely. That will free up Janet or one of the other women who normally do that for guard duty or some other detail."

              "Babysitting?" Christine said a little louder, her face flushing a bit. "You want me to babysit?"

              " Christine," Skip said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Not now."

              "But, Skip," she said, turning towards him. "I'm..."

              "Not now," he told her sternly. "We'll talk about this later, okay?"

              "Do you have a problem with babysitting?" Jessica asked her, standing up and walking over.

              Before she could answer, Janet answered for her. "I would think," she said, "that Christine probably feels she would be more suited to guard detail instead of babysitting."

              "Guard detail?" Jessica laughed. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Send a child out with a gun and entrust her to keep a watch?"

              " Christine is not a child," Skip said, abandoning his effort to avoid a conflict on the Micker. "Neither is Jack for that Micker. Both of them have been surviving out in the wilderness with me for more than a week and both of them have been in combat situations twice now. They know how to shoot those guns and they know when to shoot those guns. They know how to maneuver under fire, how to communicate silently with each other, and I would venture to say that they are more qualified for that duty than anyone else in this town."

              "I would have to agree with Skip on this," Paul said. "Putting Christine in the day care center would be a waste of talent. Her services would be better used at a guard post."

              Now it was Jessica whose face was flushing in anger. "Not as long as I am a member of this committee," she said firmly. "I will not entrust our lives to children nor will I allow them to carry guns. This is not the Middle East. This is America."

              "That's where you're wrong," Paul said. "This isn't America anymore. There is no America as far as we're concerned. This is Garden Hill and Garden Hill and the people in it are all we've got. We have to make the best use of our resources."

              "I will not budge on this issue," Jessica said, turning away and stomping back to her desk. "No children on guard detail. No children carrying guns. That is final."

              "That woman is such a bitch!" Christine, still fuming, proclaimed as Skip led her through the abandoned streets towards their new house. In order to defuse the situation before it got completely out of hand, he had suggested that maybe it was time to go look at their assigned domicile.

              "Don't worry, Chris," he told her. "Jessica is kind of prone to making impulsive decisions like that. Paul is pretty effective at changing her mind when he really needs to. I've seen him do it more than once now."

              "What does he do?" she asked. "Throw holy water on her?"

              "No, he's just figured out that she's a lot of bark without much ability to bite. When push comes to shove she'll give ground, but it's more likely to happen if the object of the discussion is not right there. Don't worry, we'll get you on guard detail. Common sense will prevail."

              This made her feel a little better. Her mood was improved even more when they entered the house and started the tour. "All of this is really ours?" she asked, her eyes wide as she went from room to room, looking at everything. "We get to sleep in a real bed?"

              "We do," he said, seeing that the plumber had been there at some point and installed the hose assembly. "They're going to bring over some beds for you and Jack later."

              "A bed for me?" she said quietly, looking away from her perusal of the water system. "What do you mean? Aren't we going to sleep together anymore?"

              "Yes," he said, feeling uncomfortable. "We will. It's just that... well... I don't think we should tell people about us just now. Especially not before the vote. They might not understand."

              "Who cares?" she said. "Skip, I don't want to have to hide. You've seen how many women are in this town!"

              "And you saw the way that Jessica acted towards you," he told her. "She thinks of you as a child and no Micker what, she can't think of you as anything else. How do you think she'll react if she finds out that I'm sleeping with you? She'll try to have me exiled. And I imagine that a lot of the other women would see her point of view on that subject."

              "How long will we have to hide it?"

              "Until they get to know us better," he said soothingly, feeling like a complete ass, feeling like a criminal trying to cover his tracks. "Until they realize that you are the woman you are and not a child."

              She lowered her head sadly, dropping the garden hose back into the bathtub. "Oh Skip," she said. "Are you sure that this is the town for us? These people here are all so... phony."

              "I know," he said. "But this town is where we're gonna have to make our stand. Like Paul said, it's all we got."

              "What a mess," she said, walking over to him. "Can you hold me? I missed you so much last night."

              He put his arms around her, feeling the familiar curves of her body through the unfamiliar layer of dry clothing. "You smell so clean," he told her, inhaling the scent of apple shampoo. "And you feel so dry."

              She raised her head up and kissed his chin a little. "I'm starting to get wet somewhere," she said slyly, rubbing herself against him, letting him feel the weight of her breasts.

              "Are you now?" he asked, allowing his hands to drop from her back down to her ass. He gave the tight cheeks a squeeze. "You know, I've never seen you naked in decent lighting before."