The Girl's Guide to the Apocalypse (15 page)

I rolled my eyes. “Nice,” I said. “So what do you normally talk about with these women?”

“Well,” he said. “I’d introduce you.”

“Great.”

“I’d have them take a vote on whether to keep you or send you back?”

I was annoyed. “Then what was the point of sending Joaquin the charm school graduate to come and find me?”

“A good manager finds good help,” he said. “I thought you’d like to be considered.”

I was pleased. Finally, I had Robert’s approval.

The women, seven of us total, all of varying ages and body types, happily sat around his feet, drinking in every word he said. Beforehand, he took me aside near the section with paper shredders. Once the women had gathered in the food court section, he paced back and forth, looking at each one. Joaquin sat on a counter where pizza had once been sold, glaring at me. I turned away.

“Ladies,” Robert began. “We have a new member to the family,” he said. “She is to be accepted. We have been on a great journey together, and I’m considering her for a pivotal role. She’s going to make us a better organization as we begin to fulfill our goals for this new world.”

“I love you, Robert!” one of the women cried.

He winked at her. “Right back at you,” he said. “Verdell, get up here.”

I obeyed and took inventory of these women’s faces. There was no acceptance there. There was judging. A lot of judging—not to mention a unanimous look in their eyes that none of them were going to call me friend.

Rebecca raised her hand. “Excuse me,” she snapped. “You seem familiar.”

I nodded. “Yes. You gave me a shot. Then you and Robert ran away and abandoned me there at the quarantine. But you were in love, so…”

I just let my voice drift away, which didn’t faze her in the least bit. She snapped her fingers.

“I remember you,” she said. “You’re that monster who was responsible for six deaths at the quarantine.”

I empathically shook my head. “No, no, no, no,” I said. “You’ve got it wrong. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“That boy’s only crime was to love you,” Rebecca said. “And you threw him away like garbage. All in exchange for some sandwiches.”

“Not true,” I said. “This story has clearly gone off the rails.”

“You stole food from a child and then hit him with it.”

“Nope,” I said. “Not true.”

“I heard you fed another boyfriend to Darren Warren,” she said. “
The
Darren Warren.”

“These are all rumors,” I protested, raising my voice. “Does no one check their sources?”

“I was there,” the woman said. “I remember it. Darren was a monster, and you found him food. You got away. It was inspirational.”

I gasped. “Hey, yeah!” I said, vaguely remembering her as one of Darren’s minions. I also remembered her tying Bruce down on the ground as Darren went to town with one of his cannibal ceremonies.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Rachel.” She offered her hand to me, which I shook.

“But we’re getting off track,” I said. “And Robert will tell you, I didn’t feed my ex-boyfriend—”

The women folded their arms, except for Rachel.

“I’ll vote for her,” she said.

“Look, for those of you still in doubt, we had long since broken up since the incident,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter since I told him not to get involved, but he did anyway. I cannot emphasize this enough. It was his choice. Ask Rachel—” I gestured to her. “They would have killed me.”

“Remember,” I gestured with my arms. “Did. Not. Kill,” I said. “Robert, you remember. You tell them.”

He rubbed his hands together. “Well, I really wasn’t there, so I couldn’t say what did or didn’t happen.”

“Come on,” I said. “Really?”

He shrugged. “I like the strong arguments coming out of this discussion.”

“She set fire to a house that had four unarmed men inside,” Joaquin said.

The women gasped, almost simultaneously.

“That was you!” I said. “And no one asked you to participate.”

“The point is,” Robert addressed his followers, his risk management book open in front of him like a preacher with a Bible. “She’s a survivor and a very seasoned one. She has skills that we are going to find invaluable as we take this new world by storm.”

One woman raised her hand. “Can she fix that dripping in the bathroom?” she asked.

“I’m really more of an organizer than a tinkerer,” I said. “Still don’t know how to cook over an open fire.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “You’re a murderous shark, and we’re going to make the most of that.”

He slapped me on the back, way too hard, and laughed.

“Why is that so funny?” I asked.

“Let’s put it to the vote,” he said. “Raise your hands for no.”

Joaquin, Rebecca and one other woman raised their hands.

“And to stay?”

The rest of the women raised their hands. Robert rubbed his together.

“Guess that’s that.”

We spent the night in that Costco. The women slept in large dog beds, but I was banished, newbie rule, so I spent the night on a pile of hoodies in a bin, which I found decently comfortable. I woke up a few times during the night, able to hear Robert and Joaquin, muttering. I looked up to see them drawing things over a dry erase board.

Costco had an amazing amount of old breakfast pastries still in plastic covered packages that Robert’s clan chowed down on. They were stale and tough, but it was food. Robert ate handfuls of Apple Jacks out of a massive four-pound box while perched on a counter with an empty soda dispenser.

“Ladies,” he said. “Let’s get our weekly staff call up and running.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Some things just will not die, Apocalypse or not.

“Call?” I asked. “Who are we calling?”

“We’re calling our hearts and minds together. We’ve been enormously blessed,” he said. “But it’s a waste to have all these resources and not make the most of them. So we’re going to be entrepreneurs and start a business.”

I raised my hand. He waved it away.

“My wives. And Verdell,” he said. “You’re all so beautiful, and it’s a shame the world as we know it, doesn’t know it. So as of this moment on, I’m turning this Costco into a gentlemen’s club. I’m taking suggestions for names.”

I raised my hand again. “What about me?”

“Look, I wouldn’t say you’re classically pretty, but—”

“What if it’s a question
and
a name suggestion?” I asked.

“That name better be good.”

“H-How about Robert’s Ill-Advised Mistake?” I sputtered.

“Question denied.”

“This is a terrible idea,” I said. “And you’re putting us in danger.”

Over the next few days, the girls worked really hard. They built an area with supplies from the store that made it look somewhat presentable as a strip club. They made a sign that just said, “NAKED GIRLS” and hung it up outside. Four additional women straggled in from the outside, begging for shelter and a job. Robert sent me to turn them away and then me again to chase them out of the store after one of them pushed me down and ran inside. I chased her down and told her she could keep a supersized jar of applesauce if she left. She agreed, but more importantly, people started to come in—people who looked worse for wear, near zombiehood, but still willing to part with whatever they had for the chance to see a strange woman’s nipples. They lined up even before Robert opened the doors.

Rachel cornered me while I tried to bathe in the small sink in the bathroom.

“We have a problem,” she said. “None of us want to strip.”

“Thank god,” I said. “I was concerned we’d be setting feminism back a peg.”

“Okay.” Rachel nodded. “But no one wants to tell Robert. It might hurt his feelings.”

“I get it,” I said. “No one likes to hear no, but if you appeal to his sense of logic, he’ll get over it eventually.”

“Exactly,” she said. “That’s why we thought you should be the one to tell him.”

I sighed. “Me? Why me?”

“It’ll be one of those feminist things that you really like to do,” she said.

“You don’t enjoy women’s rights?” I asked. “What woman doesn’t enjoy that?”

“Meh.” She was clearly bored by the subject. “Who has the time, you know?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” I gave up.

On the onset, I was dead against stripping for money. End of the world or not, I still had morals and I was not going to shame my mother, wherever she might be. I decided I would only say something when he inevitably asked me my opinion. Unfortunately, he never asked me. I waited and waited, watched in judgment as Robert’s wives made homemade costumes and put together talent acts with the minimal amounts of talent they possessed. It was just going to take too much effort, so I let it be.

I marched into Robert’s office, which was just the section with kids’ furniture.

“Robert, we need to talk.”

He sat up in a baseball themed bunk bed.

“What now?” He sighed.

“The girls will come out, but we’re not taking our clothes off.”

He frowned and folded his arms. “Who’s we?” he asked. “You’re not getting ideas, are you? I don’t know if we can afford to lose money if you’re up there.”

“I’m going to ignore that comment,” I said. “But the bigger issue is that no one wants to do it. So we’re doing a variety show, even though some of us aren’t convinced that there’s a lot of talent here.”

“Fine,” he said testily. “If that model doesn’t work, then I’m taking in women who will.”

“Respectful as always.”

“What about you?”

“I thought you said no one wanted to see,” I gestured to my entire body, “this.”

“I stand by that,” he said. “I just need to know what you’re contributing.”

“I’ll count money,” I said. “I’ll schedule acts. You sit here and continue to brainstorm bad ideas.”

I volunteered to set up a meeting room with a schedule for all the women, and that seemed to get him excited. He asked me to do inventory, and that’s when I realized that there would be some things that weren’t going to change anytime soon.

We were getting all kinds of things as trade—iPods that didn’t work, shoes, Wheat Thins, books, action figures, weapons, drugs, etc. Robert just took anything, but after a while I had to put a stop to it.

“Listen,” I said to him after one night as someone had used a broken belt in exchange for admission. “We’re getting a lot of junk here. We’ve got to crack down and start asking for things that are actually useful.”

Rebecca shrugged as she tried to play off her defensiveness. “You didn’t say what I could take.”

She then burst into tears and ran off.

“Honey bunches of oats, no!” he said, running after her. “Come back!”

After that, Robert weirdly agreed and we set up a new system. We took things like weapons, gallon jugs of water, tools for trade and some harder drugs, which I didn’t even want to touch. Some of the girls set up their own bartering system for private entertainment, which ended up being one-on-one conversation behind the aisle of feminine products. It turned out that most men were just really lonely, and the women seemed pretty keen on copies of
Twilight
books and bottles of perfume.

As much as the feminist in me disagreed with the business, it was doing well, and I was pretty proud of how our hard work was paying off.

Most were still afraid of me, but I helped barter for better things. One night a guy tried to grab one of the new girls to kidnap her. So I snapped to action, and by snapped to action I mean, I first ordered Joaquin to take him down, which wasn’t easy, given that he had downed an entire can of spray cheese and had fallen asleep immediately after. When that got me nowhere, I ran after him, brandishing a defunct fire extinguisher. The scruffy-looking vagrant was in the parking lot with the struggling girl, set and ready to cram her into his Kia Sorrento when I called out.

“Hey!” I shouted.

I swung and missed, but it was enough to strike fear in his heart. His eyes widened and his arms immediately let go of the girl, who fell to the ground, whimpering. He put up his hands in surrender.

“Sorry, man,” he said. “I thought she wanted to come home with me.”

He backed away as I came at him again with the extinguisher. I felt real power, which charged through my veins like an adrenaline rush.

“Do I come to your house and take your stuff?” I asked.

He opened the door to his car. “Look, help yourself to whatever you want,” he said. “I got a box of envelopes, some pens, a stuffed animal. I think it’s a squirrel.”

I looked down at the girl.

“You want to go home with him?”

She shook her head. “He was talking to me, and I didn’t want to be rude, so I let him carry me out—”

I held up my hand. “Sir—”

The man ducked into his car and started the engine. I didn’t think anything of the incident until Rebecca approached me one morning and sat.

“I have to tell you something,” she said. “A lot of the girls agree. You did a great thing last night, and we really appreciate you looking out for us.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot to me.”

“I have something for you,” she said. “We all picked it out together.”

She handed me a package wrapped in used paper towels. Inside was a green hoodie, something I had been sleeping on for the past few months.

“Oh, how nice,” I said and smiled too broadly.

Rebecca beamed. “You’re so welcome. You look great in that color.”

“That’s really generous,” I said. “I’ll probably keep it with that stack of hoodies I sleep with every night.”

She beamed and went to get up, but stopped.

“One last thing,” she said. “Maritza is pregnant and her water broke. You should probably do something about that.”

She left. I turned after her. “Wait, what?”

Maritza, as it turned out, was the third wife to join about a week prior and had originally been married to a bank manager months before. The Apocalypse happened while he was on a business trip to Minneapolis and she felt that was that. Then she met Robert during a seminar on productivity outside an abandoned RV where she lived with a gang of teenage girls called the Twerknuts. His message enchanted her so much she said her goodbyes and followed him to Costco where she hid under as many layers as she could to hide the fact she was about to pop. She made for a terrible dancer, especially to any song by Nicki Minaj, but at least it now made sense.