Corn, Cows, and the Apocalypse (Part 1) (13 page)

-Beer Shot with an Adrenaline Chaser-

             
“Who’s that thinking nasty thoughts?”  Haden shouted more than sang, with my quick retort in the truck bed as we drove back home from the bar at dusk. 

             
“Nasty boys!”

             
“Me.”  Devin yelled back at us from inside the cab.  August leaned against the passenger door across from him still pondering her woes in silence.  

             
“Who’s that in that nasty truck?”  Haden amended the next line as she shouted it through the window. 

             
“Don’t you call my baby nasty!”  He said rubbing the dash.  Haden laughed forgoing the next line. 

             
“Hey,” I crawled to the window as an afterthought.  “Stop by the church, I need to see Priest.”
              Devin immediately glanced at August for permission.  She looked at me with the same concern everyone held for me when I mentioned Priest.  “What for?”  She asked as if she wasn’t searching for a way to dissuade, merely inquire curiously. 

             
“I haven’t seen him in months, I’d like to let him know I am alive, and not…in training anymore.”  Being beaten to a pulp was what I wanted to say, but I was actually making a concerted effort not to be a bitch.  A brat yes, but not a bitch. 

             
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.  It’s getting late.”  August said half-heartedly.

             
“Yeah, that’s why I want to stop now, rather than go back with the four-wheeler in the dead of night.”  I tipped my brow challenging her to choose between the options.

             
“You won’t be long, will you?”  She asked.

             
“You won’t even need to shut the engine off.  I just want to update him.  Assuming he’s not with his harem, I’ll be five minutes.  If he is, then no minutes, we’ll go home.”

             
August nodded to Devin and he made the next turn to head to the small white church on the gravel back roads.  As I pulled my head back, Haden jabbed my shoulder, rather painfully, but she didn’t know that. 

             
“Why’d we turn?  Where are we going?”

             
“To see Priest.  It won’t take long.”

             
Haden scowled, not quite the concerned look she had earlier, but still her version of it.  “What do you see in him?” 

             
I paused to think about that a moment.  “Pain, usually.”  I said before sitting back against the cab.  Haden lost her scowl.

             
When the truck pulled into the drive I hopped out and ran to the front doors to the church prepared for a fly by “hi.”  I couldn’t hear over the truck so I peered inside.  There was no evidence of carnal activities, so I slipped through the doors. 

             
The flickering candle light was no longer coming from the red wall sconces, but from a mixture of various wax candles, including some scented ones, that made the church smell like Christmas and Halloween at the same time.

             
I stopped midway down the aisle. “Priest?”  I waited to see if he was inside his dressing room, but I didn’t hear him stir.  “Priest?”  I raised my voice to unmistakable decibels in case he was too trashed to tell the difference between me and his hallucinations. 

             
I felt something was wrong more than knew.  Like the shiver you get when you aren’t cold or the one hiccup that has none to follow. 

             
I turned back just as August approached.  She seemed surprised that I sensed her, even though I wasn’t sure I actually had.  I’ll take credit for coincidences.

             
“What’s wrong?”  She asked surveying the room.

             
“What, I don’t know, nothing, something.  He’s just not here.  He’s always here.”

             
“Behind the altar.”  August nodded to the front of the church. 

             
I looked it over.  I saw nothing but a slew of drugs littered on the sacred table.  When I lowered my focus, I saw his feet sticking out from behind it. “Priest?”  I was asking myself, not calling to him.

             
My feet moved once I was sure something was wrong.  I rounded the marble table. Priest was on the floor, eyes narrowed.  His face was ghostly pale and residual vomit trailed down his cheeks.  It was a movie scene I never anticipated seeing in person. 

             
“Shit!”  I hissed diving to his side.  “Priest!”  I checked him for signs of life.  He was breathing shallowly and his pulse was weak.  “Priest!”  I yelled at him and slapped his cheek. 

             
“Lenore.”  August said softly. 

             
“No, August, he’s alive.”  I said. 

             
“I know, but…”  She trailed off and I looked back at her.  “There’s nothing you can do for him.  Either he’ll make it or he won’t.”

             
I narrowed my eyes at her.  “Can’t we…adrenaline shot!”  I blurted out my feeble movie learned first aid. 

             
“No, that’s not going to help.  His heart isn’t in trouble it’s his lungs.”

             
“A cold shower to shock him awake?”

             
“No,” August shook her head again somberly.  “There’s no more 911 Lenore, there’s just common sense and antibiotics.  That’s it.  Let him be, and I’ll check on him tomorrow.”

             
“No,” I shook my head.  “What if he dies?”

             
“He’ll die either way, or he’ll live either way.”

             
I looked down at Priest’s pale face.  I got the feeling this was intentional.  If God wouldn’t invite him, he would crash the party.  “Then he’ll die or live with me by his side.”

             
“Lenore, he could be out for hours or days.  Please don’t ask me to leave you here.”

             
“Fine, then let’s take him with us.”  I negotiated. 

             
August sighed and knelt beside me.  Her eyes were more sympathetic and supportive than I expected.  She really did love me.  As angry as I still was, I loved her.  It was just not an option with her.  It was hard to look at her, because I knew if she asked me to, I would leave with her.

             
“I wanted to save you this pain.  I didn’t want you to have to watch him die like…this.”  She said correcting whatever she initially intended to end with. 

             
“I know.”  I nodded.  “I used to bring stray cats home by the litter.”  I sighed.  “Wouldn’t he have a better chance with a warm fire and a slap in the face every couple hours?”

             
August smiled briefly at my non-joke.  “And what if he doesn’t survive?”

             
My eyes danced over hers, trying to decide which one was not going to hypnotize me with kindness.  I shrugged.  “I never got to keep the cats anyway.” 

             
She looked down at Priest.  “Are you sure he wants to be saved?”

             
“I know he doesn’t, but we’re the heroes right.” 

             
She put her hand firmly on my shoulder.  “Just once though okay.  I won’t have you spending your post-apocalyptic life caring for a man who doesn’t care about himself.”  I nodded, but she pulled my shoulder to get a more affirmative answer. 

             
“I’ll save him once, after that he’s on his own.”  It still sounded strange putting limitations on my heroism.  I couldn’t imagine Superman handing out punch cards for rescues.  Only one rescue per year and ten total per lifetime.  At any rate I understood what she meant.  To her, Priest was a lost cause, destined to be among the “Day Tens.”

             
Satisfied with my resolve, to limit my resolve, August and I loaded Priest up and took him back to the house.                

-Overnight G
uest-

             
“Like this?”  I asked August for the third time.

             
“Not so hard.  You’re just stimulating with pain, not trying to bruise him.

             
I eased the pressure of my knuckles on Priests sternum as I rubbed them up and down his chest.  “Is this all I can do?”

             
“If he starts to stir, try to wake him up.  Conscious is always better.  If he stops breathing, resuscitate.  Keep his airways clear and…”  August chuckled.  “…pray.” 

             
I rolled my eyes at the quip, before responding.  “I’m sorry to put you in this position.  I know you’d rather he just die.”

             
“I care about you.  I don’t want him to hurt you.  By that reasoning, I want him to live, very much.”

             
“Thank you.” 

             
August left me alone to tend to my patient by the living room fire.  We laid sheets and blankets down to protect the carpet from any unintentional body functions upper or lower.  Without much to do but play nursemaid to a coma victim, I cleaned him up. 

             
I washed the vomit from his face, and put drops in his half lidded eyes to keep them moist.  In a, perhaps fruitless, effort to encourage breathing, I removed his clergy collar and unbuttoned his shirt.  I couldn’t help but touch his chest to feel his inhalations and heartbeat against my hand.  Despite the joke, I did offer a silent prayer that was more an observation than a plea.

             
You didn’t want him before.  Why take him now?
 

             
After repeated efforts to wake him, I finally gave up and settled in for the night beside him.  Close enough to hear his slow breaths.  Throughout the night, I woke to him rousing, but he was out again too fast to bother doing anything else.

             
The next morning, he was still alive, and that was the only improvement, aside from not having to clean up vomit.  The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but Haden came in off her post.  She looked over the scene of me sprawled beside Priest fretting about respiration, brain damage, and other such things I didn’t understand.

             
“Get some air.  I can watch him.”  She commanded.

             
I shook my head.  “I know you guys don’t care about him.  I don’t expect you to help him.”

             
“I don’t, but I’m not offering to help him, I’m offering to help you.  I’m running on three hours of sleep, and you still look less rested than me.” 

             
I almost smiled at her for the joke, but I could tell from the dryness in my throat and eyes that I probably looked worn down.  I nodded and pushed myself up off the floor, regaining most of my bipedal mammal status.  I grabbed Priest’s clergy collar off the fireplace mantel and I headed outside to bathe my worries in fresh air.

             
Haden grabbed my arm before I hit the door.  It wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t know that.  “You know he can’t save you, don’t you?”  She didn’t mean my life.  Her eyes were stern, begging me to protect myself. 

             
“I know.”  I whispered.  “But there’s still a chance I can save him.”  I didn’t mean his life either. 

  
 
-Day Tens-

             
Ten days.

             
That’s how long it took to come to terms with the post-apocalyptic world.  I mentioned that I spent three months bathed in self-pity, doubt, shame, and loneliness, before I reconciled with my fate.  But the first ten days were still the hardest.

             
I may have offered a playfully satiric description of day one, but allow me to reign in any humor and once again express that one minute I was a hard working under paid clerk.  The next I was standing in a sea of dead bodies. 

             
The formula for that conversation in your brain goes something like this. 
This can’t be happening.  Why is this happening?  What do I do?  Please, God no!  Please, God NO!  PLEASE, GOD NO! 
If you reciprocate the integer times ten to the 100
th
power you begin to form a picture of my thought processes taking place over the first forty-eight hours. 

             
This is key, because within that first 48 hours, everyone on Earth is thinking the same thing.  Even the greatest of tragedies pale in comparison to the electric spine tingling psychic energy that was produced by this event.  It was within those first two days that everyone knew, without abjuration,
the truth
. 

             
He was there. 

             
And we were not in His good graces.

             
Into day three the electric energy of thousands upon thousands of collective thoughts faded away.  We started to think about survival.  Panic set in fast, but it quickly eroded when we realized the demand for food and water was at an all-time low.

             
On day four people started vandalizing, either in anger or just because they could.  It’s a strange desire, but somewhere in our human DNA is a gene that insists when the world goes to pot, we must break glass and spray paint profanities on walls.

             
Day five, the anger fades because you realize no one is going to punish you.  Just to the left of the vandalism gene is the gene that creates our desire for punishment.  Technically the gene should be on the right, but what can you do.

             
Day six is when you start to feel the emptiness.  That’s when you realize that you aren’t going to wake up.  It’s not a dream.

             
Day seven and you’ve reached a week.  This should be the transitional day, but it’s not.  You become numb.  Everything that’s happening is happening.  That’s all the farther you get with that pseudo-philosophical thought process.  It’s real. 

             
Day eight, you are depressed.  It goes without saying, but there is something horrifying about turning the calendar back to that dreaded day of the week. 

             
Day nine, you’re angry again.  It doesn’t matter at whom and the point is moot.  You just can’t stand that all of it has been left on your shoulders to figure out, to survive, to penance.  

             
Day ten.

             
It takes ten days to realize that you just came full circle, and you are about to repeat it again: atonement, loneliness, numbness, sorrow, anger.  Rinse and repeat.          

             
Day ten was when the second wave of bodies arrived.  They didn’t receive the astounding shock value that the millions received, but to those remaining, the death of even one more person near them was intolerable.  Incidentally, those who died after the apocalypse don’t crystalize.  They just rot where they lay. 

             
The “Day Ten” suicides were a lesson, a warning, and a silent question that no one wanted to ask out loud. 
What’s going to happen to me when I die?

             
Priest should have been a day ten suicide.  I wasn’t sure if he didn’t want to die or if he just didn’t want to piss off God
that much.
  Either way he had made it over a year without accidentally overdosing.  I wasn’t about to just let him give up now.