How to Find Peace at the End of the World (4 page)

Some of the stuff feels unnecessary. Laptops? Phones? really? I check my phone and notice my signal is still somehow going through. Even the power at home is still on.  I should find a satellite phone or something. Something for satellite Internet. Internet! I pull out my phone and check the Internet by the Wi-Fi at my house. I check the websites, global websites, and find them mostly still up. Again, that unsettling feeling comes over me as I confirm  that nothing has been updated since early this morning or late last night. How is this possible?

I decide, for the sake of sanity, not to think about it. I put it out of my mind. I was going somewhere, remember? Dallas. Amy.
I’ll have to pick up the stuff I don’t have on hand, of course. There’s a gun store on the highway feeder near my house. The fresh food I’ll get at Wally-world.
I’m about to get back into the Beast and pull out when I look down the street and notice a door half open. Was that open this morning? I try to make myself believe it was, but I’m not so sure. I grab the axe from the Beast, I have no idea why in particular, and go down the street to the end of the cul-de-sac, the farthest house in. I pull the axe back and with a swing knock the door the rest of the way open. Nothing. All that greets me is a newspaper still in its translucent plastic bag. I don’t really remember this neighbor. I want to say it was that older lady with curly hair, the one with liver spotted skin sun tanned into leather. The one that always wore much-too-short jogging shorts while mowing the lawn. I walk further inside, and despite what I know of the morning and the world as it is, I still feel like I’m intruding.
I walk further inside and my memory is vindicated. The older woman’s hallway is framed with pictures of her and some husband that I never saw. I never saw the children and grandchildren either. I’d always wondered about her story. I don’t feel like staying to find out more, though. I know it’s going to depress me. I simply make a quick orbit through her house. Pretty standard. I am struck by how normal and even familiar things are, now, in a stranger’s house while they are not here. She had not cleaned up and the signs of life, so common seeming, are still around: the crumpled pieces of clothing, the unwashed dishes, bathroom strung with curly, blond hairs. Maybe that last part aint so familiar. I’m in another person’s house, burglar like. I see her diamonds, her watch, and I could take it all Scott free but none of it holds my attention all that much. Time, I feel almost like time is the most precious commodity, now, yet there might be something just a bit more precious here. I linger like this.
Maybe I find it in her fridge. I find Tupper-ware containers. My eyes scan over things unidentifiable in their condensation covered coffins. Then my eyes double back.

Whoah.

I see a particularly large container lined with paper towels. Peeking out above the paper some really dank buds. Medical? Dealer grade? Does it matter? Not to me, not right now. I grab the container and a fudge pop from the freezer. Interested, I look in her pantry. There are cokes in her pantry, a 24 pack unopened and I take it. In the dusty recesses above, my eyes catch on something else, a row of things shiny and slippery like glass eyes. I locate the string to turn on the bare bulb and do so. Jars. Must be at least ten or so jars of pickled food and preserves. I reach up and remove a bottle. It’s large. A two quart mason jar. The lid is sealed with melted wax. The contents inside continue to move even after I’ve stopped swirling the jar around in my hands. Eggs. Pickled in clear vinegar and black pepper. I remove the other jars and set them on the counter and realize a bounty: watermelon rinds, mushrooms, some vegetable slaw, corn relish, apricot conserve, green beans, asparagus, and the large two gallon jars packed full of homemade jerky. My childhood in a pantry. I wipe my hands on my pants and look around. I need to take these. I unseal a jar of jerky and snap into one of them. So good. I realize I haven’t really eaten today, unless you count the donut I had in the morning. I look at the other jars. I am loathe to unseal them. I take the jar of jerky with me and grab the Beast and bring her out front of the old woman’s house. How should I secure my treasure? I take a comforter from the woman’s house and lay it down on the rubber lined truck bed, and then using the grooves already there, stack the jars in between layers of the thick cotton fabric. I tie everything in the bed down with bungee cords. Diamonds and watches. Hah! These jars and the bud, especially after today, are worth more to me than all the diamonds in the world, and that’s the truth. Thank you old lady with too tight running shorts. Wherever you are.
9PM. I’m so tired. There’s a possibility, I tell myself, that if I go to sleep right now, in my own bed, I will wake up tomorrow and everything will be back to normal.
I ate for dinner what I found in my neighbor’s refrigerators. I don’t know what but it made me feel better. I called it a block party. The Thomlassens brought some quite delicious pot roast. The Churofs were second place with meatloaf. Who knew I lived next to such gustatory powerhouses? Sorry for the wordiness. I get that way when I am drunk. Yes. I imbibed. I partook. The Smiths brought an excellent bottle of Pinot Noir. The Carroways some Modelo Negro, my favorite beer in the world. The Roque’s contributed a generous helping of Tamales. And I can’t forget the old jogger lady’s preserved goods. I sacrificed a jar of pickled green beans. Delicious. I ate them all, the entire two quart jar. Call me bloated.

I’ll need to take some cans somewhere to replace these greens. For some reason it feels extra important now to eat right.

I fell asleep, a little food coma, on my couch while watching the videos of our trip to Orlando. The happiest place on earth was also Amy’s happiest place on earth. In one shot she’s running up to goofy, throws an arm around his lanky neck for a big hug. She’s covering her eyes: she’s not even on the ride yet. We’re standing outside in line, waiting to ride the Tower of Terror. The elevator doors open up and all the people in the ride are revealed and then the elevator car drops. Amy closes her eyes and does this cute little scream/moan. “Do we have to go on the ride?” she says. “Oh come on,”  a voice deeper than I am suddenly used to answers back. Is that really my voice? I think to myself. Was I really there? Do I remember that? I feel like an intruder, watching my own video, as if I had broken into my own house and was right then watching somebody else’s home video.
I am much too drunk to drive. I’ve come upstairs and gotten into bed for a real reast. Tomorrow, then.
No. I have not done what I intended: to escape this hot zone, to go in search for my fiancée. Call it sloth. Call it my slacker ethic. Call it immaturity. I feel OK. No chemicals in the air have yet caused me to dissolve into a puddle. Bolstered by my find in the old woman’s house, I made the rounds through the rest of my neighbors’ houses. I took the fire axe to their doors. Imagine their surprise when they reappear tomorrow and find all of their wooden doors splintered open. Actually, that’s an exaggeration. Well, they’re splintered, but not with the fire axe. Too much work and possibility for self-harm. No, I only broke down the Foster’s door. Then, I took Scott Foster’s motorcycle, a big beastly Harley, and ran all the other doors down. Dinged the front fender pretty badly, of course, and by the last door on my street, the fender was so smashed in that the front tire went flat. Oh well. I went through all the other houses and found basically nada. Zip. Well, really just the same old crap I had in my own house: the 60 inch plasma televisions, the PS3s, the Xboxes, computers, games, movies, brushed aluminum appliances, jewelry, shoes, vibrators, crap. I reveled in my childishness, of course. I threw tables out of bay windows. Not just tables, but chairs and couches and dildos. I rifled through panty drawers. I found cameras and took all the memory chips (I’ll look at them later). I removed hard drives. This got to be a thing. The ultimate act of voyeurism. But there was something else too. I was hungry for them. Every time I found something like that, one of these electronic caches, I laughed gleefully, a kid on Christmas. It made me feel less lonely. Less pathetic. By the end of my rounds I’d collected thirty six hard drives, fifteen memory chips. A handful of photographs that I deemed good enough to take with me. Don’t judge, non-existent observer, but I took a photograph of the Grosser’s seventeen year old daughter. So beautiful. I’ll throw it away, I’ll burn it before I get to Amy’s. I took also the pictures of the other kids on the block, the ones I would chase dogs with, the ones I would buy ice cream from the truck for. I wonder if their parents ever thought me strange, weird, this single older man running around like a kid himself. I took all of this for non-perverse reasons of course. I wanted, standing there in somebody else’s living room, to surround myself with life. What if I struck out tomorrow and found nothing all the way to Dallas and in Dallas found nothing and nobody and farther north nothing and the nothing continued for as far as I went, always ahead of me by so many steps? It is such a desolating feeling, this racing with nothing. So I grabbed at something. Surely this is something. Surely these preserves and this handful of pictures, surely these ones and zeroes are something? They are, they must be, because even these things make me feel less lonely, less alone, bolstered. I have these things. I take them with me. Tomorrow I can strike out, then. So tired now. Tomorrow.
8 AM. The static of the radio alarm wakes me. I wonder why the radio station doesn’t have one of those loop back programs to play their old stuff if they don’t happen to be there. And what about all that pre-taped content they have? The shit you think of hungover. I bolt upright, remembering my errant dream: that everything of the day before had only been some sick joke, and people had begun popping up from behind bushes and trees, from storm drains and manhole covers. Surprise! Surprise! It was all a sick sick sick joke. There wasn’t any plane crash, silly. The alcohol from the day before enlarges my brain pan. I bring a hand up to my forehead and accidentally press too hard on the bump from the car going over into the ditch. A deeper throb swallows my whole head.

God. It was all real.

After retching into the wastebasket by the bed I dial her again. "
You’ve reached the voicemail of Amy Seager, junior partner specializing in-”
I listen to the whole message. I call again and don’t hang up until her voice fades and the beep interrupts me.
I get up and go to the window. The street is as I had left it. The garbage truck is askew across the Gregory’s lawn where I had left it after trying unsuccessfully to operate it. All of the doors on the street are still busted in with the front fender of Roque’s Harley Davidson. The Harley is still tipped over against the Churof’s mailbox.
I try not to think about her, about Amy. But here she comes anyway. The way I’d tortured myself, yesterday. Amy wanting to dance across the plaza underneath Cinderella’s castle. Her taking my arm despite my objections. The camera wobbling as I try to dance, less than gracefully, while not dropping the thing. The passers-by smiling and nodding, thinking they know what’s up. God. Hung over. Fire in my belly. I need to get to Dallas. I stumble away from the window and take the piss I’ve been needing to since before I woke up. I stand there a long time. I flush: I still have water pressure, at least. Electricity. Check. Water. Check. How long is all this supposed to last after the apocalypse? No, don’t think like that. Quarantine. Once I go far I’ll plop out of this nightmare bubble. Plop.

I shake myself dry and go in look of appropriate attire. It’s balmy here in Texas, even in the middle of winter. But that doesn’t mean it won’t get colder as I go north. I decide that dressing in layers is the best way to go. T-shirt, long sleeve flannel. Thermal tights and then jeans. I pack all the skiing clothes from our trip up to Colorado that I had missed the previous day. I grab a few jackets and my heavy coat. Can’t have enough, really.
After I am done, after everything from yesterday is packed up, I survey my work. I survey the street. I am hesitant. The grasp that this place has on reality, on being a real thing already seems tenuous, like I am the only spectator, the last thumbtack holding it on the board. What happens when I leave this place again? Will it simply disappear?

I take my time getting behind the wheel of the Beast. I take my time starting the engine up. I take my time shifting into first and edge the Beast down the street. I stop for longer than I need to at the stop sign, which now is any stop at all, really. I stop and I look in the oversized rear view mirror. I look and feel myself tearing up. C’mon man, pull it together. I take out the phone, turn it on. I call Amy. “
You’ve reached the voicemail of Amy Seager, junior partner specializing in-”
 I feel like going back for the rest of it. I feel like being the ultimate example of one of those people you see on TV, a hoarder. I feel like finding an eighteen wheeler and moving my whole neighborhood with me. A fleet of 18 wheelers a hundred deep chained one to the next: move not just my street but my whole neighborhood. Everything. Surround myself. C’mon, c’mon, this is not the way a man should think. A man should now be striking out, not so much as a glance in the rear view. What is this? Tears? Get on with it Cholo. Get on with it cabron. You can’t afford this. Get on with it, or just get out of your truck and put it in neutral and lie down on the very street and let the back dualie wheels run over you. Might as well if you don’t go right now. Hit the gas motherfucker. Fucking pussy. ALRIGHT! FUCK! Yay for motherfucking pep talks.

I wipe a flannel sleeve across my eyes as I pick up speed. The nondescript houses begin passing with greater frequency. I find I can do it, I can ignore stop signs, blow through intersections. A few minutes later I’m at the main intersection with the Wally World and the strip mall. I stop in the mostly empty Wal-Mart lot. I break down. Yes, I admit, I break down. You’d do the same in my situation, non-existent omnipresent reader. You’d do the same if you were down here and not up there. I break down for a good five minutes thinking of Disney and National Lampoon and Amy and then wipe a sleeve that comes away smeared with snot. I get out huffing air and walk towards Wally World.
I am on a mission. There are tick marks left on this checklist. There are grocery carts all around, still full of plastic bags of groceries spoiling in the sun. There’s a car with its trunk still open, front door still open. There’s a flash of colored pattern that catches my eye. I go in to take a better look, to convince myself everything is OK. It’s what I thought: a car seat, empty. I look closer: the harness is still buckled in. The scene progresses before my vision: the woman putting her child into the child seat, buckling him, a golden haired boy, in, and going back to attend to the groceries, just a few random things she’s picked up before dropping him at day care. Halfway through she hears a cry that stops her dead. Her hand pauses on the plastic bag handle. Then, she, and the little flagging arm that peeks from the side of the car carrier simply disappear, as if being erased by the pink end of a giant pencil. I shudder. No time to think of these things right now Dan. I keep walking. The lights are on. The doors still eerily open. The interior is antiseptic: like walking into Wally world at 2 AM because you’ve had a late night smoking and playing games with your online friends and you’re feeling the munchies come on.
But then the aisles are also comforting in a way. I am suddenly confronted with a world of choices and they soon squeeze out almost any room I have in my mind for grief or doubt. I am, for a brief moment, just another Western shopper again.
I’ve amended the list I made yesterday. I want to take some fresh food with me so I want to grab one or more of those fridges that kids use in their dorm rooms. I think I can fit it into the foot well of the passenger seat of the beast and maybe even power it with one of those converter things, which I need to get here, too. I had contemplated briefly yesterday whether or not I should just find an RV and take that with me up to Dallas. You know, travel and stop in comfort and all that, but I think the way before me is going to get hairy. It might be a terrain in which thirty three inch tires and a ten thousand dollar suspension system would come in handy. Mini fridge on a converter it is.
In fact, I forget the groceries for a while and wander, cart-less, to the appliance section of the store, looking for the mini-fridges. I am delighted to find that they make mini-freezers too.
I go back outside to the parking lot on remembering something in the back of the truck I’d noticed yesterday. I open the truck gate and climb onto the bed skirting around all the shit I already have on there. On the back of the cab I find the diamond steel plated box between the two tool boxes on either side of it. On the bottom of the plated box are a row of those covers you see on the outside of houses that go over electrical outlets. There’s lettering on covers. Some of the covers read “Gen” and others read “Alt.” It’s a power console. Under the diamond plate steel must be a power generator. The plugs marked alt must be a direct line to the Beast’s alternator. I examine the outside of the steel case and locate a keyhole. The Beast’s key works and the front panel opens up in two pieces. Inside is a bright red gasoline generator. The clear gas reservoir indicates that it’s three quarters full. I push the starter button and yank the cord and the generator whines to life. I cheer and my triumph echoes through the empty parking lot. I feel self-conscious for no particular reason and turn the generator off again,