by Anselmo, Ray
The breakfast meats were another matter – first she had to remove the burger patties (now the consistency of boot leather) and thoroughly clean all the beef grease from the dehydrator. By the time it was ready to put the sausages and bacon in, it was after 10 p.m. and she was ready to drop. No room for the waffles – they’d have to wait for tomorrow. She turned on the machines and left to leggo the Eggos at the store.
But tired or not, she showered and went to bed with a smile on her face. In just a week she’d gone from panic and mourning to settling in, preparing enough food to ideally last a good long time, and generally adjusting to epic disaster. She’d done better that anyone who knew her would’ve expected, including herself. “Good job, Kel – you’re a champ,” she said, patting herself on the back.
Kelly plugged in her phone to charge, took her lithium and settled into bed, happy with her work and herself. Whatever happened tomorrow, she planned to be ready for it.
7
DARK
She wasn’t quite as ready as she’d hoped.
When Kelly woke, it was well past sunrise, but she felt refreshed, comfortable … and confused. She was sure she’d set her alarm clock the previous night. Had she forgotten in her tiredness? She looked up …
… it was blinking. 4:51. Blinking meant it was running on the battery after …
“Oh, crud.” After the power went out. She still hadn’t gotten a watch, so she checked her phone. It was 74% charged, and the time was 9:06 a.m. So the power went out around 4:15. Was it still out? Was it out permanently?
She stumbled out of bed and tried the light switch. Nothing. Out to the kitchen, where she opened the fridge. Nothing. Doublepluscrud.
“Well, Kel, you knew the day was coming,” she grumbled. The electricity was gone, probably for good. Probably running water was too. Every plan she had involving either was shot. That meant she’d have to build fires to cook, that she’d have to bathe and wash clothes in the ocean (she’d forgotten to fill up bathtubs, but that would’ve been a temporary solution anyway). She’d have to drink bottled water and set up rain barrels before the autumn rains. She’d have to dehydrate …
“Ugh. Triplepluscrud!” The dehydrators at the farm would’ve stopped too – and only halfway through loads of very perishable foods! She’d have to go up there immediately and see what she could salvage … no, wait. They had a gas generator – she could finish up the current stock as long as there was enough gasoline to do so. Whew. She threw on a change of clothes, hopped in the car and drove up to Holy Green, hoping for the best.
It wasn’t the best, but the dehydrators had run until the juice cut off, about six hours. So the food she’d put in was a bit past half-done, as the ambient heat had moved the process along. She went to the generator to see what could be done to finish the work.
Bless the Holy Green people to whatever afterlife they believed in – they’d kept the generator manual on a shelf not six feet from the machine. According to the book, the Wen 56551 was a 5000-watt generator with a 389cc overhead valve engine, a spark arrestor and an automatic voltage regulator, and met National Park Service safety standards. More to the point, it would run for 11 hours at half load on a full 6.5-gallon tank of gas.
She checked the gas gauge to see how much it had. About half a tank. Doing the math, that would give her about five hours running time, enough to just finish what she had in the dehydrators provided she turned off everything else on the farm. If she wanted to do any more, though, she’d have to get more fuel. Good thing she’d printed out all that stuff on siphoning.
“So where does that leave me?” First, she needed to start the generator and get the dehydrators back into action, then go through the farm and turn off the lights and whatnot. Go to the store and deal with the rest of the frozen food. Go home and deal with everything in the fridge and freezer. Siphon some gas from the vehicles of her choice. Find a watch that didn’t need a battery. And either build a fire or drag out someone’s charcoal barbecue grill before dinner. Oh, and search for candles.
It was looking like a very busy day. And ideally, it should all be done by sundown. “Marvelous,” she muttered. But energy spent complaining was energy she wouldn’t have for productive work, so shut up and get to it. She started the generator – it used a simple pull cord, like Dad’s old lawn mower – and the dehydrators hummed back to life. One down. She went through the farm buildings, turning off or unplugging every other item that required electricity, so she could save it for the dehydrators.
In the process she rediscovered the farm’s storage rooms, which she’d passed through during her search for bodies but hadn’t recalled until now. There were literal tons of fruits and vegetables there, waiting to be shipped. The once-fresh stuff was in bad condition and would have to be chucked, but they’d dried a lot of their produce too. It was all there, and all hers. “Scoreboard!” she cried.
For the next hour, she threw out all the spoiled fruit and veg and hauled the dehydrated food to her car. She’d need to make three trips to get it all back to the Matchicks’, but it would be worth it in the long run. “Thank You, God,” she said several times as she ferried all the food home. It seemed like she should thank someone.
As she hauled the last loads into the den, she realized she needed to ponder the storage issue a little. An old-fashioned root cellar was what she was lacking. The Matchicks’ house – well, her house now, in the absence of any Matchicks – didn’t even have a basement. She had to find somewhere with a stable climate to put all her victuals, or she’d lose it as fast as she gathered it.
Kelly sat down on the couch in the den. She needed to take a breather, and her brain was buzzing, trying to keep track of everything. Did she need an olanzapine? She didn’t think so, but she did need to downshift a gear and organize herself a little.
After a minute’s rest, she went to the kitchen, picked up the pad and pen and started scribbling again:
Today’s work:
Frozen food at store – prep or toss
Fridge/freezer at home – prep or toss
Siphon gas for car/generator
Find watch that runs w/o battery
Find BBQ grill & charcoal (build fire pit tomorrow?)
Find candles
Find basement for root cellar
It was a dauntingly long list, especially since it was already about noon. That gave her roughly seven and a half hours of daylight. But it wouldn’t be a tragedy if she didn’t finish it all today, just an inconvenience. She’d try, but she shouldn’t beat herself up if she didn’t go seven-for-seven.
Since she was home – and sitting in the kitchen, no less – the logical first item was to deal with the fridge. Thankfully she’d been whittling away at its contents for a week, so there wasn’t much left inside it, but she bagged up the remaining meat and vegetables to slice up for the next dehydrator run. Everything else went in the garbage. She almost poured the expired milk down the sink before remembering she couldn’t just wash it down the pipes, then tossed it in the trash too. Tomorrow she’d take all the trash to the store dumpster so it didn’t stink up the place.
Another one down, six to go – what next? Well, the generator only had a couple of hours left, so she should probably siphon some gas. But to do that, she needed to find some rubber tubing. Where would … oh, duh – they had some at work for emergency repairs on the produce sprinklers and the like. So, change of plans – haul the trash to the dumpster now, go through the frozen food at the store, steal gas from the cars in the store parking lot (sorry, Ganj, sorry, Bilbo, sorry Mrs. Li), then book it to the farm.
Throwing away stuff was quick, siphoning gas more time-consuming. But after an hour’s puffing using the two-tube method (so she didn’t have to worry about swallowing any), she managed to fill one five-gallon jug and half of another before completely draining Bilbo’s old Plymouth Breeze. Enough to give the generator one more night’s run with a little to spare.
Time was of the essence, so she head
ed straight to the farm. When she got there, the generator was almost to fumes, so she shut it down and checked the food. It was all done to a turn, dry as bones, so she packed it up and refilled the generator’s tank with a funnel she’d found next to the manual. All going according to plan. She could deal with what remained of the frozen and refrigerated food, get it on the dehydrators before sundown and check it in the morning, hopefully before the generator ran dry. Good times.
Returning to the store, she realized there wasn’t that much food left to prep – one dehydrator run would more than deal with it. Thirty minutes was enough to do all the slicing and dicing, but she didn’t want to start the drying too early – the generator would use up its gas tank in the middle of the night if she did. So she covered the food in the back of the store and started working on the rest of today’s to-do list: scavenging.
Watch, grill, candles, root cellar … watch, grill, candles, root cellar … she tried to come up with a mnemonic, but W-G-C-R didn’t lend itself to anything memorable. Thankfully it didn’t need to, since she found two of the four quickly. There were candles for sale at the store, so she hauled them all home and found more, ones the Matchicks kept for romantic evenings. That was a start – she could search other houses for more if she ran low. And Saul had an old-school Weber grill in the shed where she’d found the rake, complete with an unopened bag of briquettes.
But Saul and Toni, being techies, didn’t wear watches. Like a lot of people, their phones were their timepieces. The store stopped selling cheap wristwatches last year for the same reason, and those had been battery-powered anyway.
But the generator was filled, the dried food collected, the food to be dried prepared, and tow of the other four items found. She had a little wiggle room now. Enough to afford her a little house-to-house searching, anyway. Find a watch, find a dry basement. There had to be at least one of each in Sayler Beach. And she’d already broken into every house.
She walked next door to the Wilkinses’. They’d been an older couple, who’d bought the house as a retirement dwelling. And sure enough, within five minutes she spotted Henry Wilkins’ old pocket watch. It wasn’t ticking, but a little winding and it started humming right along. Old school for the win. She set it from her phone’s clock – she hadn’t used it much today, so it still had some life in it – and dropped it in her pocket. Pity the Wilkinses didn’t have a cellar.
But going to the house on the other side, the Alvarezes did. Keith Alvarez had a woodworking hobby, and the basement served as his shop. And since the Alvarezes had money, the basement was weatherproofed to the hilt to keep moisture away from the wood. That meant not only a nice place to store her dried food, but the scraps and planks lying around meant plenty of firewood as well. And she could store more down here if she liked – she’d just have to move the lathes and table saws and other machines against the walls for extra room.
Kelly sat for a minute and sighed happily. With the exception of company, electricity and hot water, she was finding everything she needed. She still felt sorrow for all the people who’d passed away, that couldn’t be denied. But with a whole town to glean from, the business of living was coming along well for her. It wasn’t ideal, but she was still breathing, and she had (or knew where to find) everything she required for many moons.
She wasn’t usually heavy on church or prayer – a childhood spent with Mom would be enough to burn Joel Osteen out on religion. But she’d never stopped believing, and once in a while her fragile faith came out to stretch. “Thank you, God, for all this. Comfort anyone else who’s left on Earth, if there is anyone. Help me to stay balanced and act wisely and … not take anything for granted. I don’t want to be that person. Keep me safe, please, and, um, if you have anything specific You want me to do, find a way to let me know. Thanks again. Amen.”
As she left the Alvarezes’, she looked at the list, and found to her surprise that she’d done everything on it, with a couple of hours of daylight to go. Would Wonders never cease? She’d missed lunch, so she decided on an early dinner. Securing the Alvarezes’ door with a bungee cord – she only had to worry about pets getting in, not humans – she returned to the Matchicks and hauled out the grill. Soon it was full of charcoal, smoldering nicely, and she put a pot of pasta and bottled water on it. Then …
Then she slapped her forehead. All the non-dry food in the house was at the store, prepped for dehydration. Oops. She walked back to SBN&N, shaking her head. But she’d had a lot on her mind that day – something was bound to slip. It was a minor kerfuffle.
By the time she came back with some swai fillets and a small red cabbage, the pasta was done. She drained it, put the fillets on to grill, chopped up the cabbage and put it in the pot with more bottled water, then added margarine, canned Parmesan and a little garlic salt to the pasta. When the fish was done, she put the cabbage on, ate her fill of the swai and noodles, then drained the cabbage and had some of that, plain. The leftovers she sealed in a plastic container, figuring that even without refrigeration it would keep for tomorrow’s lunch.
That left time for one last task. Driving to the store again, she loaded up all the prepared food, took it to the farm dehydrators, set it up and fired up the generator. If her good fortune held, she’d wake up with or before sunrise – and before the gasoline ran out. That would probably be the last dehydrator shift for a while, but if she needed to do it again, there were still plenty of cars and trucks to swipe gas from.
Strange as it seemed, things were going well – by apocalyptic standards. No zombies, no warriors of the wasteland, no nuclear radiation, no climate collapse, plenty of food and clothing and shelter, hopefully enough water to get her to the rainy season, definitely enough gas to keep the Accent running for some time. As bad as it was, it could’ve been a whole lot worse.
And yes, maybe the other shoe would drop and she would find herself between a rock and a hard place. But a lifetime of mood swings had taught her how to force herself to be optimistic, until it had become habit. That habit was serving her in very good stead right now.
Sitting in her car at the Zen farm, she watched the sunset, feeling lonely and yet content. She would manage. She would get through this – if there was anywhere to get through it to. She would survive. She found herself humming “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” then decided it was a little too morbid and stopped.
Once the sun disappeared behind the Pacific, Kelly drove home. She thought about lighting a candle and staying up, maybe reading LaSheba’s journal, but she was tired from a full day’s activity and a big meal, so she changed into her PJs and took her lithium in the dark, then went to bed. No shower, of course – that ship had sailed. Tomorrow morning she’d try bathing in the ocean.
8
PACK
Having gone to bed so early by her usual standard, Kelly did find herself awake before the sun. Hm. This must have been what it was like before modern industry – wake early, work all day, collapse into sleep once the sun sets. She’d suddenly become an 18th-century peasant except for the horseless carriage and sturdier dwelling.
But bathing in the creek – or in her case, the Pacific – would have to wait until she drove up to the farm and checked the dehydrators. She dressed, grabbed a piece of dry toast for a snack and hopped into the car, checking the gas gauge as she started it. Good – still half a tank left. That would be about six gallons if the gauge was accurate. When it got low, there were plenty of SUVs with big tanks around town to siphon from. It would be a long while before she had to worry about running out.
The generator was getting low on fuel when she arrived at the farm, but everything in the dehydrators was ready to pack and haul off. She had the previous day’s to-do list in her pocket, so she unfolded it, turned it over and started making a new one:
Today’s work:
Bathe
Breakfast
Check store – what else to do?
Find good flashlight/batteries
Prep Alv
arez basement for root cellar
Move food into root cellar
Siphon more gas?
Read LaSheba’s journal?
She was starting to hit question marks – things she could do today, but didn’t have to. Had she done all the urgent things? Well, she probably had. Food and water, she had plenty – it was just a matter of organizing it and keeping it safe. Shelter and clothing had been in good supply all along. Transportation was taken care of as long as her car didn’t break down. She had lithium for another week or so, and wasn’t running out of any other medicine. And she hadn’t needed to defend herself from anything.
Fifteen days since she’d called in sick. Eight since she found the world had died on her. One since the power went bye-bye. It seemed like half of forever, but it was only half a month. And she was getting by. She missed people, and still mourned her friends, but she was in fact surviving. That was something.
She brought the dried-out food home, ate a little, then grabbed a bar of soap and two towels and headed for the water.