How I Spent the Apocalypse (5 page)

“Yeah.”

“You hook us up, and I’ll put you on the air live. I don’t care what you say, and I won’t stop you.” I’m thinking he’d just become a true believer.

***

I spent the next six hours telling anyone
who could watch or listen—because I had the radio transmitter going, too—how best to survive any and all the disaster scenarios I could think of. I was completely drained by the time our link with CNN just died. When we ran in the living room and turned on the TV, NBC was reporting that a line of massive tornados had ripped the CNN building and most of Atlanta to pieces.

Lucy had been standing, helping me work the equipment, too keyed up to sit the whole time we’d been transmitting. Now she flopped onto the couch next to me and just stared at the TV as if someone had punched her in the gut, and she just couldn’t wrap her head around the why of it.

I got up silently and went to put some wood in the stove and shut it down for the night. It’s a nice one—airtight with a catalytic converter and a fan that blows the heat through pipes in the front. I’d only ever really had to fire it at night until the apocalypse because… Well I’ll explain that later.

“Thank you,” Lucy said, suddenly standing right behind me.

“For saving your life or making you the most famous reporter on earth?”

“That’s not really going to be worth much now, is it?” she said, an angry note to her voice that I figured I deserved.

“Sorry, I’m tired and I have a bad headache. I’m going to pop a couple of ibuprofen, get a shower, and go to bed.”

She looked panicked then. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Well you can bunk with me if you like, but I’m going to bed.”

“Alright. Can I get a shower?”

“Yes, but its water on, water off, soap up, rinse, and get out.”

She made a face, but nodded, so I think maybe she was starting to realize what sort of world it was going to be. Of course being the gentlewoman I am, I got my shower first. I had just finished putting on my pajamas in the bathroom, and already I was seeing what a huge imposition she was because normally—even if my boys were there—I would have just walked naked to the bedroom and gotten into my night clothes there. When I stepped out of the bathroom she was waiting there, which was flat-assed annoying.

“I… I have no clothes except what I’m wearing,” she said.

I laughed then, momentarily getting my sense of humor back. “Well, dear, this may be the worst part of the apocalypse for you. You’re going to have to wear my clothes.” The look on her face said she didn’t think that was going to work. I’m six feet tall, and she was maybe five-five tops, I weighed one-hundred-eighty pounds, she might have weighed one-twenty soaking wet.

I got her some boxer shorts and a T-shirt and she looked at me like I was from Mars. I shrugged, handed them to her and went to bed. It had been a long, hard day, and I no sooner lay down than I was asleep. I woke up because the cell phone was ringing. To tell the truth, I was sort of surprised it was still working. I guessed some towers must still be up. I answered it.

“Hello, Billy.”

“How’d ya know it was me, Mom?”

“No one else calls me, and certainly not during the Apocalypse.”

“We got out of the basement no problem. But listen, Mom. Both of the four-wheelers were trashed so we took parts off one of them and got the other one running, but both of us are going to have to ride it and there’s no room for anything but us and our guns.”

“You see any of your neighbors?”

“The Simpsons are out milling around. There’s nothing left of their house, though, except the closet they were hiding in…”

“Tell them to get your wood stove if they can find it and set it up in your basement. Should be stuff that will work for stove pipes all around there. Tell them to stack as many shingles—those should be everywhere—on the cement slab as they can. Let them have your survival kit and all your supplies. I have plenty for us all here.” And that was when I remembered that I had all sorts of clothes for Jimmy, and he was a lot closer to Lucy’s size than I was. It wasn’t like me to forget things. I guess the end of the world had me a little off my game. “Give them everything.”

“Herbert’s saying they’re going to try to walk to Mountainburg, and…”

“Mountainburg got hit just as bad, and they’ll never make it. You offer him what you’ve got and my advice and then get the hell out of there. Get home and sooner is better.”

I gave him a few more instructions then hung up, looked at the clock, saw it was nine and moaned. I’d gotten all of four hours sleep, but I still had to get up because I had too much to do to just sleep all day. There would be plenty of time to sleep when the next storm rolled in. People didn’t know it yet, but this one had just been the warning.

I got out of bed and realized that I hadn’t been alone. Lucy was in my bed and still sound asleep. I had been kidding when I’d said she could bunk with me. I certainly never thought Miss Prissy Pants would do it, but what the hell? I’d only slept on the one side of the bed since I started living with Cindy anyway.

I dressed, got my milk bucket and headed for the barn.

The goats were restless and hard to milk. Normally I just went to the milk room, they got in line, came in one at a time, let me milk them, and left. Even the rabbits seemed more skittish than normal, and the chickens and guineas started screaming as soon as I stepped into the barn. Now I could have said they knew something was going on, but it was probably closer to the truth to say that they weren’t used to being locked in the barn. The door was usually open, and they could come and go as they pleased. Being locked in the barn was different for them, and you know what? Probably that big storm the night before had spooked them because I didn’t get as much milk as I normally did, either, now that I think about it. There was light coming in the skylights, but it was overcast outside and there wasn’t enough light, so I turned on the low-wattage, compact fluorescents that mimicked sunlight that were the only bulbs I used. I had just finished feeding the animals when I heard a noise behind me and turned to see Lucy standing there in a pair of my boxers, a knot tied in the side to keep them from falling down, and one of my T-shirts knotted up to keep it up. Her hair, which had no doubt had too much spray in it the night before, was standing up all over her head, and her make up was smeared all over her face. She looked a sight but I didn’t laugh. Took everything I had, but I didn’t.

“I heard the most ungodly noise,” she said, rubbing her eyes and only making the mascara thing worse. I’m guessing that trying to shower my way and finding no cold cream—since I didn’t own any—she hadn’t even tried to get the makeup off.

“Guineas,” I said pointing.

She just nodded silently. She was shivering with cold—and it
was
cold—which wasn’t usual for the barn and certainly not the greenhouse. That’s right, the corridor that leads from the house to the barn is filled with a stream and a greenhouse, and this is why I normally didn’t have to light that stove until night. See, as long as the sun was shining that greenhouse and stream heated the entire house. Water is a perfect heat sink—it grabs the heat, hangs onto it, and then lets it go slowly. Of course the same was true of the concrete floor and the walls until they met the glass.

Now how did a greenhouse stand up to a tornado and giant hail? Well about eight years ago one of my listeners who knew I loved to recycle and knew that I was specifically looking for “aquarium” glass called and told me they were redoing a part of the aquarium he worked in and that they were getting rid of all the old “glass.” I bought it for a fraction of what it costs new and hired an eighteen wheeler to move it here for me.

Do I have to keep reminding you that the listeners gave me a bunch of money?

Anyway, once I had that I sort of built to it. The top of the greenhouse used to be a walk-through that went under a shark tank and the “glass” in the rest of the house was formerly pieces of the front of a five-hundred-thousand gallon Beluga Whale tank. It’s fifteen-inches thick and reinforced. It isn’t going anywhere unless something none of us could hope to live through hits it.

The whole place—the corridor, the house, the shop, the storage building, the barn—is all under the ground five feet and then gets its height in the domes which are all above ground. It’s an engineering marvel that I for one am quite proud of considering I had no formal education and learned everything I know from reading books, listening to people, and hands-on experience. I worked construction. That’s right, you didn’t know I was a construction worker. Well I was. I worked every kind of construction—road crews, bridge crews, metal crews, framing crews, excavation—you name it; I did it. And I paid attention and asked questions. Think about it. I got paid to get an education in engineering and construction.

I grabbed the milk bucket and headed for the house where I closed the door between the barn and the corridor. It is a Dutch door; the bottom is solid and there are actually two top doors, one is solid and the other is wire because the truth is the greenhouse warms the barn and the barn warms the greenhouse.

But today it was cold. Too cold for the plants to be happy.

I turned the lights on in the greenhouse, too. I only ever use them when the sky is dark because otherwise the plants get plenty of light. But the lights won’t heat the greenhouse. So I open the door to the house and leave it open. I strain the milk, put it in the fridge. and when I turn around there is Lucy again, freezing and shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds.

I don’t say anything. Me, I would have wrapped myself in a blanket as I got out of bed, or I’d go back to bed when I realized it was cold, but I was a survivor and this girl wasn’t. If she’d been anywhere but right here she’d be dead already. She was… Well, not stupid, but she had not a lick of common sense. Or probably closer to the truth was that she’d been raised with a silver spoon in her mouth, had everything she’d ever wanted handed to her on a big, gold platter with a side order of diamonds, and just had no idea at all how the real world worked. Now she was going to have to find out the hard way, and I might have felt sorry for her if her all-but-crawling-up-my-ass wasn’t driving me nuts.

I walked into the living room, opened the damper, and started messing with the stove. I stirred up the coals and decided I didn’t need to take any ash out. Then I stoked it full of wood and in minutes I had a roaring fire. Lucy showed her first signs of intelligence for the day when she moved closer to the stove and started to glean its warmth.

I let the stove get going really good and then I walk across the room and turned on the fan. Heat rises. This fan forces hot air into an insulated duct that runs into and through the greenhouse where it has a vent and then into the barn. I had the storage room and the shop vents turned off because I don’t need heat there if I’m not in there. The shop also has its own heater that I can crank up if I’m working in there.

When I turn around there is Lucy again, not by the stove but only inches away from me. I lose it. “What the hell are you doing?” I demand of the woman who jumps about a foot in the air.

“I… I’m scared,” she says.

“And standing five inches from me at all times, what’s that doin’ for ya?”

“I… I… You’re the only one here!” She started crying. I felt bad then because she, of course, had every right to be scared. Her whole world had just for all intents and purposes blown up, and she was in the company of a strange, crazy woman stuck in… alright I’ll quit calling it a house, a bunker alright? There you go. Now are you happy? I live in a bunker, but don’t you all wish you had been? All things considered is it so crazy to live in a bunker?

“I’m afraid… I lived in Atlanta. I’m sure my family, all my friends, my boyfriend... They’re all dead. I just saw the guy I’ve worked with for the last six years ripped away by wind and then I’m just running, and I know you don’t understand that I’m upset because I doubt you get upset about anything, but I’m just a mere mortal and I have no idea how to even begin to find a place in my head to put all the hateful stuff I know right now. I’m just scared, alright? And as long as I can see you I’m not so scared. I know that doesn’t really make any sense, but at least if I can see you I know I’m not all alone. That I’m not the last person on earth.”