by Anselmo, Ray
She surprised herself by eating most of it – she must have been hungry indeed. She scooped the rest into a plastic container and put it in the fridge (might as well use the appliances while you can), thinking she might take it with her on the next day’s rounds so she wouldn’t have to stop for lunch. That, of course, was contingent on actually having an appetite.
On to the bathroom, where she stripped, showered and scrubbed a little more thoroughly than usual. She threw on her favorite green flannel pajamas and, before settling in bed, remembered to turn off her alarm clock. There were no schedules to keep now. Score one point for the plague.
She wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, but it was 8:51 when she woke up from a nightmare about zombies roaming through town looking for brains or other fatty foods. They devastated a KFC, she recalled as she rubbed her eyes, only Sayler Beach didn’t have a KFC. Well, dream logic. She brushed her hair, wondering if she should eat before resuming … her current project. She finally decided she’d need the energy and plowed through a bowl of cereal and an apple, then put the fire suit back on, got her tools and leftovers and headed to the delivery truck.
That was how it went for the next three days. Wake up. Eat. Dress. Drive down each street and break into each door. Remove bodies. Release pets. Go to the next one. Try not to think about it too much. Stop shortly after sunset. Drive home. Change clothes. Mourn. Make dinner. Shower. Sleep. Have nightmares. Her schedule didn’t need any clock but the sun, didn’t need any agenda but getting the job done.
By Thursday evening it was done, or as done as it was likely to get. Every man, woman, nonbinary and child she could find from the ranch to the Zen farm to the Nature Conservancy buildings down on the point was bagged and in the back of the truck. Which now rode pretty low on its axles – three-hundred-some bodies packed in like sardines pushed it well past its recommended carrying capacity. Now all that was left was deciding what to do with them.
She’d already decided part of it, she realized as she cut into her steak that night, the daily crying jag already behind her. Burial simply wasn’t an option – she’d need earthmoving equipment to dig a mass grave, and didn’t know where she could find any or how to run it if she did. Cremation made more sense, but for that she needed a safe location, and Marin County in late summer was already prone to wildfires. A building would be a better option.
But the reason Marin was prone to wildfires was that it was prone to trees. The Nature Conservancy building would’ve been perfect – big enough, isolated from the rest of town but with a paved road leading to it. But it was surrounded by trees on all sides, with branches reaching far enough that a fire could jump from them and head up to town in a literal flash. Everyplace else she could think of was either too close to town, too close to the forest, or had no way to get the truck there and back.
It wasn’t until the next morning that Kelly realized she’d been thinking about the problem from the wrong end. She’d been looking for an enclosed space to put the bodies in … but weren’t they already in an enclosed space? She didn’t have a use for the truck once she was done with this – and given what she was doing with it right now, she’d rather not use it ever again. She just needed a safe spot to take care of it.
And if she would no longer be using it, she wouldn’t have to worry if it was bogged down in sand, would she?
A 17-foot U-Haul is not build for off-roading, especially not on steep downgrades. She rode the brake all the way from the Sayler Beach parking lot down the access path to the beach proper, hoping and praying that it wouldn’t tip over. Unless she was badly injured, she’d be able to get out, but one more difficulty on top of all the others would do her no good. She finally wrestled the beast down to the beach, where she got halfway to the water before it was up to its axles in grit.
She got out and looked around – good, not a plant within a hundred feet except some washed-up seaweed. Then she went to the passenger-side door and hauled out a few more things she’d gotten from the store – some big sorting tubs they used for produce, a gallon container for making juice, a case of charcoal lighter fluid, a hundred feet of twine and an eight-foot metal ladder. Cremation, redneck style. Good thing she had the fire suit.
Using the blunt end of the fire ax as a hammer and the crowbar as a chisel, she punched a hole in the bottom of the truck’s gas tank and let it drain into the sorting tubs. Once that was down to the occasional drip, she used the gallon jug to scoop it and splash it into the back of the truck from the ladder, aiming high so it would hopefully soak all the bodies. She tossed the sorting tubs except one in on top when they were empty.
Next, she broke out the lighter fluid and sprayed every other part of the truck, inside and out. She unrolled the twine, cut it in half with the ax blade, and used it to soak up the last of the gasoline in the remaining sorting bin. Chucking the bin into the cab, she shoved one end of the first piece of twine into the hole in the gas tank, one end of the other under the nearest body in the back, took the other ends and moved as far from the truck as she could without pulling the twine free.
That was it. It was all set. She took Ganj’s Zippo lighter out of her pocket. “God, please protect me from what I’m about to do. I release the people of Sayler Beach into Your keeping. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. May light perpetual shine upon them.” She sighed – it was all she could think of to say. “Amen.” She crouched, lit the homemade wicks, stood and ran away as quick as the fire suit would allow.
It was overcautious of her, but she only knew that afterward. The truck didn’t explode – much – but it did burn wonderfully. She watched it for a while, trying not to inhale through her nose. She’d read it in stories and had no reason to disbelieve it, but burning humans really did smell like pork – she could tell even through the scents of metal, plastic, rubber and petrochemicals. Once she knew it wouldn’t go out too soon, she walked back up the hiking trails and didn’t stop until she got to the Matchicks’.
When she arrived, feeling like every emotion had been scraped out of her, she tossed the fire suit into the coat closet, flopped onto the living room couch and stared at the ceiling for awhile, going through the details of the situation. She was the last person here. Everyone else had died. She’d given them the hillbilly equivalent of a Viking funeral. Later, either tomorrow or Sunday, she’d go back with another bottle of lighter fluid to make sure everyone had burned. Maybe she’d put up a marker of some sort in their honor.
It wasn’t even noon. But Kelly was comprehensively done with the day. She just hoped it was done with her.
5
ALONE
Kelly didn’t do much that evening. The comedown from a big project was always rough, and she’d learned to take a little time in the aftermath to ride it out. And a funeral pyre for an entire municipality was the biggest she’d ever tackled, she realized as she looked back on it. Certainly with the biggest emotional load, one she couldn’t even take the measure of yet.
So she was lazy. She showered. She watched the Matchicks’ Criterion DVDs of Parasite and Secrets & Lies – once again, taking advantage of the electricity while she had it. Lunch was skipped. Dinner was a bag of potato chips, several celery stalks and a tub of onion dip. Sleep was heavily interrupted by bad dreams, but eventually she got enough. Getting herself back to a good mental balance – or as good as she ever got.
But she never could keep laziness up for long. She had always been too responsible, too active, too damaged, too unbalanced, and they all reinforced each other. And they all kept her moving. Short of a major leg or back injury, she’d never get fat. Short of dying, she’d probably never slow down for too long. That was why that bout of what she now was sure wasn’t the flu was so surprising – it wiped her out for a week. It took a planetwide plague to do that.
Saturday, she got out of bed at nine, got dressed, made herself scrambled eggs with peppers and some toast, and …
She stared at her empty plate. And what? She no longer had jobs because, as far
as she knew, she no longer had employers or customers. No jobs meant no schedule. No schedule meant she could do whatever she wanted. So what did she want to do?
She had no idea. Except for sleep, meals and crying, she’d gone Mach 3 with her hair on fire from Monday morning to Friday morning. Then the Friday afternoon crash into Oscar bait and Ruffles to even the scales. She usually had things planned for every coming day, whether she was working or not, but first the plague and then the body collection had devoured her life. There were no future plans to fall back on, unless she made some.
But … what plans could she make?
She couldn’t make plans with anyone, obviously. No lunch with LaSheba or Sarah. No trip to the movies with Rav, as she was the only person in the area he knew who would watch a Bollywood flick. No non-date date with Pablo. No paperwork to catch up on at SBN&N. No one she could call, since no one she knew was answering.
Furthermore, she had no projects she wanted to pursue, and no hobbies to speak of. Work, sleep, eat, and find something innocuous to fill in the other hours – that was her life. Trying to add anything more had usually resulted in undue stress, so she just didn’t. It wasn’t a problem until now.
Kelly shuddered and stood up. “Okay, don’t just sit here – do something,” she told herself. “Anything. You can do anything you want. Run naked in the backyard. Steal a car and race up and down the streets. Scream and shout and let it all out. No one’s going to stop you. Just …”
No one’s going to stop you. But that also meant no one would join you. No one would cheer you on. No one would know. There was no one to know.
She sat back down and put her face in her hands. She didn’t weep, just sighed over and over. You watched those post-everything-went-pear-shaped movies with one man wandering the wilderness, and they never showed time spent wishing they had someone to discuss last weekend’s football game with. In the interest of grounding the story in reality, you think they would include that.
“Gah,” she finally said and stood up again. She was lonely, of course she was. She’d just built a funeral pyre for everyone else in a mile radius. She hadn’t had a conversation with anyone but herself in five – no, scratch that, twelve days. Since she got sick. The most socially inept introvert would be lonely in this mess. You’d have to be a hermit not to be. “So what are you going to do about it, Kel?” she grumbled sardonically.
Well … what she always did. Work, sleep, eat, and find something innocuous to fill in the other hours. She’d just eaten, and she wasn’t sleepy, but she could make some work for herself and fill time. And plan – she could plan. Plan what to do when the electricity and running water went. Plan how to live as the sole resident in an isolated hamlet. Plan where to go if she decided not to stay here.
Back to the legal pads in the office. Saul Matchick, despite being a techie, scoffed at the idea of a paperless office. He preferred scribbling things out first, said it helped him clear his head before he did the actual work on the computer. Kelly was much the same – sometimes you had to see things in front of you to sort them out. Besides, soon she wouldn’t have computers to work with, not unless someone decided to keep the electrical and telephone grids going. As always, if there was a someone out there who could.
She sat on the couch with pad and pen and started writing:
Things I Can Do
Then she had to think about it. Did anything need doing? Rephrase: did she need anything done? No one else here did …
She needed another minute of sighing before she could continue. Dang. She underlined Things I Can Do, then realized there was something left over from the previous day:
1. Check the pyre – relight if necessary.
That, she’d already planned on, but it was helpful to get her started. What else? Hmmm …
2. Analyze needs for future – food, clothing, shelter, transportation, MEDICINE, personal defense.
3. Find books on roughing it/survival (or print off internet?).
4. Find other needed things – stockpile.
4a. Pull from SBN&N first.
4b. Then house to house?
Oh, she’d almost forgot!
5. Wash clothes esp. fire suit while you have use of washer/dryer.
That fire suit smelled like you’d expect it to after three days of sweat and week-old corpses. She almost hesitated to open the coat closet.
6. Find way to secure bldgs for future use/scavenging.
She’d left all the doors open to keep track of which ones she’d searched, but the search – for people, anyway – was over. The last thing they needed was weather or animal damage. All the stuff might be useful someday.
7. Make list of poss. places to go if new location needed or to find others.
If a forest fire wiped out the place or a Richter 9 earthquake struck or Mad Max’s buddies rolled through or she just couldn’t stand seeing all the old familiar places empty and lifeless, she needed a Plan B. Maybe Plans C through Z as well. Saying the future was uncertain was like saying the Grand Canyon was but a scratch.
She looked the list over and decided it was a good start. She went back through it and marked stars by 1. and 5. – those were things she could theoretically get done today. After some thought, she put one by 4a. as well. She wasn’t likely to finish raiding the store today, but it would at least be good to start it. Besides, she wanted another bottle of charcoal lighter if she needed to restart the pyre.
She snapped her fingers and added two more lines:
8. Read LaSheba’s journal, esp. last week’s entries.
8a. Start journaling?
Who knew what she might learn from her friend’s diary? Or her own?
Now more motivated and more organized, she got to work. First, she Googled how to wash a fire suit – oh, how she’d miss the internet! Then she threw it in the washing machine except for the boots, set it on cold and turned the appliance on. The stink was so bad she wouldn’t chance putting her other clothes in with it. She took the boots out back, sprayed the outsides with the garden hose, then let them air-dry and generally air out.
With the washer going, she walked up to SBN&N to pick up her car and the lighter fluid. While she was there she wrote a few more notes. The meat and other items in the refrigerated section had been sitting too long to be safe – it would all have to go in the dumpster behind the place. The frozen food was likely still good, but it would have a day at most once the power went. She’d have to pick through the produce, see what could be salvaged and preserved. The canned and dry goods could wait for later.
Food preservation – that was something to ponder. Could she teach herself canning? Did anyone own a dehydrator – maybe the Zen farm? No, a dehydrator would need electricity – she’d have to consider open-air racks and ways to keep the flies off.
For now she drove home with the charcoal lighter and some fruit that hadn’t spoiled. By the time she got back, the washer had stopped, so she moved the fire suit (now acceptably odor-free) to the dryer and put the rest of her unwashed clothes in the washer. She’d do her bedsheets next. Going to the little prefab shed in the backyard, she found a sturdy metal rake for later use.
With nothing better to do until the fire suit was dry, she began writing down ideas for item 2: Analyze needs for future. Food would be easy as long as the canned and packaged goods held out, but she needed to learn how to build a fire soon if she wanted to cook them. Fresh water might be an issue – she’d probably have to set up rain barrels or figure out how to desalinate and filter ocean water. Probably the former.
Clothing, she had plenty of; shelter, too much of. Transportation … as long as she stayed here, she could use her car until it broke down, provided she could siphon gas from other vehicles. Worst case scenario, punch holes in gas tanks just like she did with the delivery truck. Personal defense? Well, a few people in Sayler Beach had guns, but she’d never used one and finding more ammo for them could be an issue. Maybe a big knife or an aluminum softball bat would bette
r suit her.
Medicine … trouble. Medicine was created in big complex laboratories and manufactured in big complex factories in faraway places. They might as well be in the rings of Saturn for all it mattered. More to the immediate point, her pharmacy of choice was fourteen miles away in San Rafael …
… no. She could break into any pharmacy and get what she needed – it wasn’t like there were security guards to stop her as far as she knew. So … a quick Google search revealed over a dozen pharmacies in Marin County, the closest six miles away in Mill Valley. Walking distance in good weather. What she should really do is plan a trip to hit up all the drugstores and gather what she needed. It might use up much of her gas tank, but she’d only have to do it once. Then she’d have supplies for however long it took for the meds to expire. After that ...