How I Spent the Apocalypse (4 page)

She said she needed to use the bathroom, so I left her to it and cringed when she flushed the toilet. We never flushed unless there was a turd in it. You certainly don’t waste water during a disaster. Of course I had more than enough water, but I don’t believe in wasting it.

I don’t believe in wasting anything.

When she came in and sat down she had obviously combed her hair and washed her face and hands, which more or less undid everything I’d done. She sat down on the couch nowhere near me and watched the TV with a sort of blank stare. I had turned the local news back on. It didn’t sound good. There were at least six funnel clouds that had been spotted, and one had hit the ground in Rudy proper. The hail was golf-ball to soft-ball sized, and what the tornados and wind weren’t destroying it undoubtedly was. Oklahoma City and Tulsa also had tornado warnings. The few pictures they had of Fort Smith were so bad that I couldn’t even tell what part of town they were picturing.

My cell phone rang. It was my boys, and this time Jimmy was on the phone.

I was never so glad to hear anyone’s voice in my life. “Mama, we’re OK how are you?”

“Great now that I know you’re alright.”

“It hit us. Billy’s really upset. He’s sure his house is completely gone. We can’t get the basement door open.”

“Put Billy on the phone, honey.”

“Mama…”

“Billy, don’t even try to get out of the basement tonight and don’t worry about the damned house. Ain’t none of it gonna matter now anyway. You enjoyed it while you had it, and hell, boy, the bank owned more of it than you did anyway.”

“What should we do, Mama?”

“Did you bring your chain saw and axe down in the basement with you?”

“Yep.”

“Is it wet in there?” I asked, quickly making a mental note of how far they were from the river and deciding they were safe.

“Not really. House was on a cement slab.”

“Then get comfortable. There is another storm right behind this one, and it’s full of tornados, too. In the morning if the storms are gone saw your way out. Remember not to use the chainsaw if it’s going to take you more than a few seconds to get out because you’ll wind up with carbon monoxide poisoning. If you can find your four wheelers, pack what you can and get your butts home because you are only going to have a very small window of time before the next storm front hits. If you have to, you hike out, you hear me?”

“Will do, Mama.”

“Be careful. I already broke one of my rules. Don’t make me break another by making me come after you.”

I said good night to my sons and then closed the phone. I needed a drink. I got up to go to the fridge and get a beer and then I’d get back on my blog and start answering some of the thousands of questions that would be coming in. I’d try to pick the ones that were asked most, the ones that seemed most urgent, but the truth was I couldn’t answer them all, there was just no way. There would be people on the edge needing an answer that I could have provided that would be the difference between life and death, and I’d miss them, and I just couldn’t worry about it. I was all wireless, and I had the radio station and the ham station up, so I’d do all I could, hope that at least some of the people I was answering were able to get the answers they needed some way, and just work till I dropped.

“You have kids?” Lucy asked.

“Two boys.”

“Why aren’t they here?”

She might as well have spit in my face her question made me that mad. “Because they’re grown men now who think they know every God-damned thing and they don’t listen to me because people like you have gone out of your way to make them believe that I’m fucking out of my tiny little mind.”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a mere whisper. I just ignored her apology, got my beer and went in to try to help “my people,” not really giving any thought to what I was going to do about Lucy. She would be a waste of food and time, and I just knew she was going to be nothing but trouble. In short I was sure that girl was going to ruin the apocalypse for me.

A thunderclap sounded loud enough to make me jump. I ignored that, too, and just started answering questions.

Ted in Illinois said there was already a foot of snow on the ground. But the ice had come first—two inches of it—and it had broken every tree and power pole as far as he could see. He had plenty of food and had just finished filling everything that would hold it with water. He had a fireplace, but he wasn’t sure he had enough wood, and his house was already getting cold. They were projecting wind chills as low as twenty below over night.

His question was the same as many of the ones I was getting from the northern states. They were used to long, cold winters, but not prepared to be off the grid at all and certainly not during record cold temperatures. And I knew this winter was going to be colder and longer than anything even they were used to.

I went right to the radio and computer. I told them everything that I knew was going on. Then I read Ted’s question out loud and told them, “Use utilities to heat and light your home till they all go out. Only then get into your wood supply. It may be that some people will keep services all through the apocalypse. Other places it could last for days. If you have a wood stove or fireplace, pick that room. Otherwise pick the smallest room in the house with the least windows. Only heat this room. The more people that do this the longer the power will last. Fill any cracks around the windows with plastic wrap or aluminum foil then hang several layers of blankets or stack mattresses or furniture over any windows in the room. This will help you insulate that room. Hang a blanket over the door you intend to use to come and go. Bring all your food blankets and clothing into this room. Bring any of your firewood into the house and put it in an adjoining room. When the utilities give out, then and only then, start burning your wood. Ration it like you do your food and water. The idea is to make the space habitable while wearing several layers of clothes, not cozy enough for shorts and a tank top.

For those of you without any combustible-type heating stove, if you have a tent pitch it in the middle of the room and cover it with blankets, clothes, anything that will insulate. If you have a Coleman stove or a lamp and fuel, use it only sparingly as you could get carbon monoxide poisoning. Candles are great. They will warm something as small as a tent more than you think and don’t have the problems of the gas-burning camping appliances, but you will need that type of appliance to cook on, so if you don’t have one and a supply of fuel get it now. You will basically be treating the room like the outdoors and the tent like home…

I don’t know how many more I had answered when she walked into the room.

“This place is a little claustrophobic.”

It’s true. The house is small. My office is the largest room in the house, and it’s only sixteen by sixteen. Less space means less to heat and cool—not that it took much to heat and cool anyway because of its construction—it also took less material to build it smaller.

“I didn’t build it for you,” I said, and just kept working.

“CNN is reporting tornados in Georgia, ice storms in Kansas and Missouri, and a tidal wave off the coast of Washington extending as far south as Baja.”

“Well at least that will put those fires out,” I mumbled and continued writing.

“It’s not funny; it’s horrible. Thousands are dying and…”

“None of those people are me. Look, chick, hundreds of thousands died yesterday in India and Pakistan, did you cry for them?” Her silence told me she hadn’t. “You know why you didn’t cry for them?” I didn’t even give her time to answer. “Because it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t anyone you knew. You weren’t there, and you didn’t see it, and part of you said they deserved it because they had done it to themselves. Well this—all of this—was caused by that action, but we also did it to ourselves. We have been pushing everything out of balance. We are parasites, and there are too many of us. We are killing our host, and now it’s shaking like crazy to get rid of us. The only ones that are going to make it, the only ones that deserve to make it, are the ones who are going to hang on tight for dear life. Now I don’t have time to talk. You can condemn me later, but right now I’m trying to save who I can.”

She didn’t go away, but she was quiet, just standing there, which of course bugged the living shit out of me.

“What?” I asked.

“I lost my cell phone. Can I use yours?”        

“Key-rist!” I pulled it out of my pocket and threw it at her. I was surprised some when she caught it. “Go someplace else to call. I’m trying to work.”

She left the room, but I could see her hovering just outside the door, which was annoying to say the least. Now the truth is I don’t really like to be alone. I’ve spent a lot of my life that way since the boys left home because crazy people—even famous crazy people—don’t generally have many friends. I had a few, but I’d spent most of my time alone working. I’d never had any trouble at all picking women up, but keeping them was another matter altogether. They were all over in love with me till they realized how crazy I really was, then it was, “Bye! See ya.” It was a shame, really, because I’m not really bad looking, I have lots of money, I’ve been told I’m a really good lover, and I was their best chance for making it through the apocalypse. Of course they’d all thought that the fact that I believed we were headed for doom and was preparing for it was the craziest thing I did. So, there you go.

All except Cindy. she’d known I was crazy, and really wasn’t all over the whole apocalypse thing, but she loved me and stayed with me no matter how much grief her family and friends—or even I—gave her. She saw my obsession with surviving a coming apocalypse the way most women see their husband’s fishing, hunting or sports-watching habit. You know, irritating, but if that’s the worst thing he does…

Of course she didn’t listen to me any better than those boys of ours did. About ten years before the apocalypse she was driving home from work. It was raining hard and we’d had a bunch of flash flooding. How many times had I told her, how many times had I warned everyone else? Hunker down till the storm or disaster passes; don’t try to go anywhere. But Cindy wanted to come home, and she drove through what she thought was just a few inches of water. It washed her right off the bridge and into the swollen creek. They said she drowned quickly. At the funeral people even told me that drowning was a painless way to go. I’m sure that’s mostly shit, and that they think that because they’ve never drowned.

To this day I have nightmares seeing the tow truck winch her car out of the creek, seeing her dead, lifeless body floating inside and sinking lower as the water ran out of the car till she was out of sight.

My boys think that’s what pushed me over the edge. They think I wasn’t really crazy till their mother died, but I was just as crazy just not as driven. And maybe I started the whole podcasting thing because I needed something to fill my suddenly empty life. Does the reason why I did it really matter now?

Love will make you crazy, and losing someone who loves you unconditionally… Well, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but I had her boys to raise by myself and nightmares of the destruction of the world, so I just threw myself into my work. Actually that was when I went to working only part time because I got two-hundred-thousand dollars in life insurance from Cindy, and I knew the apocalypse was right around the corner, so I started working hard on the new house. I’ll admit it now; part of me wanted the new house because I couldn’t stand being in the house I’d shared with her. It was too weird not seeing her there and even weirder when I did, because she was dead and that just ain’t right.

Anyway, like I said, I don’t really like to be alone. But right then I certainly didn’t want that girl around, so I wasn’t happy when she walked back in and handed me my cell phone saying, “The head of CNN wants to talk to you.”

“What?” I say into the phone. I’m not impressed by money or power or freaking titles—never have been. Sure to hell wasn’t after the shit hit the fan. Show me that you can make something useful from old newspapers, sticks, and duct tape, and then I’ll be impressed.

“Lucy tells me you have enough equipment there to send us feed.” I looked around me at all the equipment. I knew I did. Hell, all I had to do was send him a live video blog from my computer.