How I Spent the Apocalypse (44 page)

Think about it. You’re crazier than a two-peckered goat you better be a world-class scrapper.

Lucy ran up to Samantha to help her up, as if I hadn’t hurt my fist on the bitch’s face. Where was my compassion? “Sam! You alright, Sam?”

“I’m fine.” She tried to shove off Lucy’s help but couldn’t actually stand by herself so gave up.

“That was completely unnecessary, Kay,” Lucy said in a scolding tone.

“You’re taking her side? She was talking shit about me. I’m not going to let her talk shit about me in my own truck.”

“That really was uncalled for,” Lucy said to Sam. Which let me know just how on the fence Lucy was because she couldn’t really decide whose fault it was.

We got home without me killing Samantha mostly because she kept her fool mouth shut.

At the house Lucy got some ice for Sam’s jaw and sat her at MY kitchen table while I started to make dinner with my hurt hand. I mean… well it wasn’t all that bad, but Lucy might have at least asked if I needed some ice.

The girl was in good shape, almost too good. As if she’d spent the apocalypse in a spa and that got me to thinking. I didn’t say shit, though just kept making dinner.

“How’d you find me?” Lucy asked Sam.

I was liking this shit less by the minute because it was more and more obvious that Lucy was glad to see the dwarf who I now realized was at least five years younger than Lucy—which was not helping me with my insecurities regarding the future of my relationship at all.

The radio started making noise and I went to check it, more than a little pissed off because I didn’t want to leave them in the room alone together. It was Billy. He’d heard because of course with the two-way radios and nothing else to do news traveled really fast ABS. Gossip became everyone’s favorite past time.

“I’m really sorry, Mom,” he said, after explaining that he’d heard about our visitor from the sky.

“Sorry… You just naturally think she isn’t going to choose me,” I said. I was pissed as hell because I was thinking he was probably right.

“I didn’t mean that, Mom,” he said.

“No you’re right, she’s young and good looking and she can fly a plane. I’m just screwed ’cause if I kill this girl Lucy is never going to forgive me and short of that I just don’t see how I can come out of this a winner.”

“Lucy loves you, Mom. I know she does,” Billy said.

Did she? Hell I didn’t know. I usually thought she was just with me because I was the only queer chick around. Because I was the one who had saved her. I got off the radio with my son and started back for the kitchen. I could hear them talking so I found a good place, hid and listened.

“…you don’t know anything about her,” Lucy said.

“Come on, Lucy. She wants to kill me, you know she does. And she’s like a hundred years old! What is this like Stockholm syndrome or something?”

“She’s not old and I don’t have to explain it to you, Sam.”

“Look. I’ve been through hell, Lucy. I probably would have just given up if I hadn’t heard your voice on the radio. The only thing that kept me alive was thinking about you, about being with you again.”

Now I ask you, how do you compete with crap like that? That’s just what it was by the way—all crap—because there was no way that girl could have gone through all the shit she talked about and looked the way she did, just no way.

“I’m sorry, Sam, but… If it wasn’t for Kay I’d be dead. We’ve been through a lot together and I have a real connection with her. I love her.”

So that made me feel some better.

“What about me?” Sam asked. Her voice was choked. “What about me? Did you even think about me when you were fucking her? You thought I was dead, but did you even wait for my body to cool off before you started banging her? I’ve been fighting for my life out there and you’ve been here in basically the only truly safe place in the world and did you think about me even once?”

“Of course I did, all the time at first, Sam. But I learned that you just can’t dwell on what’s gone.” She stopped then no doubt listening to see if I was on the radio, which I wasn’t. “Kay, are you listening outside the door?”

I stepped out of my hiding place, walked into the kitchen and just started cooking again. Sam glared at me and I glared right back, daring her to start something I knew I could finish.

It was a crappy situation for everyone involved. I know that now, but at the time I didn’t even care how Lucy felt about it; I only cared how it made me feel. You know like everything that came out of Samantha’s mouth was correct and that Lucy was only ever with me because she was extremely horny, I was there, and there weren’t any options. Now that there were options I couldn’t hope that Lucy would choose me unless I killed Samantha and then… Well then Lucy was just going to be pissed off for the rest of our natural lives and she’d never forgive me.

So the way I saw it I was just screwed.

They kept whispering to each other at the table the whole time I was cooking and I could only make about half of it out but they were mostly fighting the way a married couple did and that certainly wasn’t doing anything to make me feel better about what I was more sure by the minute was just going to be me alone for the rest of the ABS.

Then I was eating my dinner the way you do when you’re angry and sad at the same time. You know, picking at my food for a few minutes not wanting to eat anything, and then just stuffing food in my mouth as hard and fast as I could hardly chewing it and mostly swallowing it whole just because I wanted everyone at the table to know I was mad.

Maybe that’s just me.

It was pretty quiet and then Lucy just had to ask the dwarf, “So, where were you when the worst of it hit. How did you make it?”

“I was in the basement of my apartment building doing laundry when it hit. I grabbed a blanket, covered myself up, and just lay in the floor under the table. I heard it tearing the building apart and I could hear transformers blowing up and everything was… It was so dark. I’d never seen dark like that before. I just lay there trying to call people but my phone didn’t work.”

“But you had a satellite phone,” Lucy said. She sounded a little confused since some of the satellite phones we had worked for weeks after the BS. Frankly, everything the girl said from that point on just made me even more certain that she was full of shit.

“Don’t know what to tell you; it wasn’t working.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t see or hear anyone or anything. So I just lay there till the sun came up in the morning and then I got to work. I turned a dryer into a wood stove using duct work for a chimney. I crawled out the window because the stairs were covered in debris and I started dragging everything I could find down in there with me. Wood for the fire, food, bottles and bottles of water, blankets, clothes, a bed and then…” She pretended to choke on a sob and no, I’m not just being a cynic now. It was fake; I could tell it was fake. “I had a radio and when I heard you were alive then I knew I just had to live.”

“What a bunch of crap.” I said. Then I got up and rinsed my plate.

“Kay, come on,” Lucy said.

I nodded and sat down again.

The show wasn’t for me. It was all for Lucy, so Samantha just kept going on and on and on building a web of crap so thick my fat ass could have danced on it. How she’d tune the radio to my station every single day for just the few minutes of battery that she could spare to try and just hear Lucy’s voice. How she’d had to ration her candles and how dark and lonely her days had been. How she’d dug her way out at the end of the longest winter ever and immediately gone in search of a plane she could fly with one goal in mind—to reunite with Lucy. How she had struggled and worked to get the plane running and then had to keep stopping to find fuel.

On and on and fucking on telling this bullshit story which was punctuated every few minutes by how she’d done it all for Lucy. How much she loved Lucy.

You know like I wasn’t even there. And Lucy, well she was eating that shit up like a chemical toilet.

I finally left them alone and went to take care of the animals. I don’t think either of them had noticed I’d gone.

The goats could tell there was something wrong and seemed very sympathetic, so I told them all my troubles.

The rest of the evening I just did my chores and talked on the radio, giving out the weather reports, answering people’s questions, and all basically knowing just exactly where Lucy and Samantha were and what they were doing at any given moment but ignoring them at the same time—which wasn’t easy.

While talking to the goats I’d realized that nothing I was going to say about all the lies Samantha was telling was actually going to help me. I loved Lucy; I wanted her to be happy. That being the case I had to let her make whatever decision she was going to make on her own. She’d been going with this girl for years. She knew her, and by now she knew me.

Samantha was lying out her ass. Lucy wasn’t stupid, so if I gave the bitch enough rope she’d hang herself. I was sure of that.

I was going to work at being rational and fair and letting this whole thing be truly Lucy’s choice.

Of course you can want to act like a grown up and be sure that you’re going to and then. Well the minute Lucy walked into the office and closed the door behind her to indicate that she wanted to be alone with me the first words out of my mouth were, “You were really with that dwarf?”

Lucy smiled at me, no doubt because she’d already figured out that I was easily defused by her smile. “She’s the same height as I am.”

“That’s different, you’re a girl.”

She laughed and shook her head. “You’re so weird.” She walked over sat on my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck. I held her because well the truth was I didn’t think I’d be able to hold her much longer.

“I love you, Lucy.” That was all I could get out with out crying, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be crying with Samantha in the house even if I’d wanted to cry in front of Lucy, which I didn’t.

“I love you, Kay. I just… I have to figure this thing out. I have to see what it means.”

“It means she came looking for you. That’s all.”

“But why is she alive, Kay? How? Billions dead and…”

“She’s here to screw up my life, Lucy. That’s why she’s here. Just send her away.”

See all my very good intentions just gone.

“I can’t, Kay, any more than I can just walk away from you. I have to know.”

“Yeah, well I don’t want you to find out that you love her more than you love me.”

“I could never love anyone the way I love you, Kay.” And then she was kissing me and I was kissing her and then she broke down crying on my shoulder. The gist of it all was that she had put Samantha in Jimmy’s room and she was going to sleep in Billy’s and I was going to be sleeping in my room alone because apparently she needed to think and if she was in bed with me we’d have sex and then she couldn’t think. Which would have worked for me, but wouldn’t work for her at all.

My bed felt way too big and too lonely
and I figured I’d better get used to it because this was probably how it was going to be for the rest of my life. I got really depressed and fell asleep and had a nightmare that I was living in a basement knee deep in water and floating ice and Samantha and Lucy were living in my house. Of course they were fucking and I could see it all on the big screen TV in my basement.

Dreams are weird.

When I woke up in the morning I immediately jumped out of bed to make sure Lucy was in one room and Samantha was in the other.

They were both still asleep, so being crazy I screamed at the top of my lungs, “This is completely fucked up!”