Paleo / The Doomsday Prepper

by David Liss

  “Family life is complicated, Trip. But we’ll figure things out,” I said.

  “No doubt. And you’ve always been a top performer here, one of the best agents in the stable. But in times like these, some people lose their heads.” Trip gestured out the window, to the city of San Antonio that seethed below us. People wore paper masks and garbage bags over their clothes when they went out now, for no good reason that I could see. They just felt the need to put an extra barrier between themselves and a world that was no longer respecting its own barriers: Fault lines ran through the middle of shopping centers. Lava bubbled in suburban lawns. The earth buckled and seized and quaked, seven, eight times a day or more. “Sometimes when people lose their heads, they also, unfortunately, make decisions that impact themselves, impact the company. I guess you know I’m talking about the Beal policy.”

  “Jeff Robert and Marissa,” I said.

  “Big policy. Real big,” Trip said, crossing his leg at the knee. “Just way out of line with expected earnings. Let’s call that red flag number one.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And they’re relations of yours, yes? We’ll call that red flag number two.”

  “That in no way impacted my thinking on the policy. They’re my wife’s second cousins. I don’t really even consider them family, to be honest.”

  “Sure. Makes sense. But the trouble is—and I call this red flag number three—Marissa is as of this morning, a very short time after the policy kicked in, the subject of a missing person’s investigation.”

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  “This surprises you?”

  “Of course it does,” I said. Jeff Robert—that scheming bastard. He’d sat at his kitchen table and lied to me. He’d even teared up when we talked about funeral expenses. I was going to swing him around by his pony tail when I found him. I’d all but painted a target on his wife’s back and now whatever he’d done I was paying for it, too.

  “Because I read faces, and I would say yours, right at this moment? Surprise is not the feeling I’m getting.” Trip’s admin, Crystal, came in with an empty box. “Right on time,” Trip said, grinning.

  * * *

  Our whole neighborhood was plastered with signs.

  LOST DOG REWARD IF FOUND

  Cormac’s face looked out at me from every telephone pole. Friendly, Loving Pup the flyer said. I shook my head in disgust. Jeanette’s stitches had come out, but the puckered red marks left by Cormac’s teeth still oozed and stung. It brought tears to her eyes to have the wound cleaned.

  I drove home with the contents of my desk in a box on the passenger seat. A much younger and happier Lisa and the two baby girls smiled in the photo on the top of my box. Whatever else I did or didn’t bring to the table, I’d always brought my paycheck. Lisa had never been able to reproach me for that.

  I pulled under the carport and slammed the door. I believe in keeping a positive attitude but I saw no silver lining here. I opened the lid of the garbage can and hurled the box down into it.

  “Bad day, neighbor?” Hank said. He was standing square in the middle of my lawn with his arms crossed over his chest. The shirt he had on was sleeveless and a large bandage pad was taped over one of his impressive biceps.

  “Real bad,” I admitted.

  “Same here,” Hank said, but he smiled about it, as if he were kind of enjoying himself.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked pointing to his arm.

  “Not where you can see,” Hank said, but he began peeling the tape off the top edge of the bandage to show me anyway.

  “Want a beer?” I suggested.

  “Love one. As long as you don’t have to go in the house for it.”

  “The house is where we keep them.”

  “Oh, we better hold off then. I’m here to make sure nobody goes in to that house until it’s safe to do so.” Hank pulled the bandage away from his arm. I didn’t make a sound; I just took it all in and began to calculate my odds of escape. They weren’t good.

  “What’s going on, Hank?” I said. “Have you been talking with Milo?” There was a fresh tattoo on his bicep, a dog’s head in profile. A large tear dropped from its eye.

  “I went by the Alamo Prepper’s storage unit this morning.”

  “But why would you?” I said, trying to contain my horror.

  “That’s not important. But I guess you know what I found there. Anyway, first thing I did was give that poor dog a proper burial. Next thing, I went to INKitUP! to have something made to honor him. He was the best goddamned dog.”

  “Cormac was dangerous.”

  Hank held up a hand. “Don’t speak his name. I don’t want to hear his name on your lips. You fat coward.” I didn’t see what fat had to do with it. Fat was a temporary, fluctuating matter of body mass that had no bearing on my character either way, but people always seemed to throw it in when they wanted to be insulting.

  “So I sat there in the chair with tears streaming down my face while a green haired kid with a nose ring cut into my arm and I asked myself who? Who would do such a thing? What miserable son of a bitch would kill that dog and dishonor his corpse that way? And then I remembered you, the biggest joke in the entire AP group. Your pathetic little port-o-potty wasn’t there, because you took it out and then you stuck my dog in there to rot.”

  “He bit my kid’s face, Hank.”

  “That’s bullshit. Cormac never hurt the innocent. He just didn’t have it in him. But I’m sure he gave you a fight the day you took his life.”

  “Actually no,” I said, brushing past him. “And I’m going in my house now.”

  “Oh no. Too risky. I want you alive.” Hank wrapped his arms around me, restraining me.

  “Excuse me?”

  Hank was a protein-shake-swilling, bench-pressing monster. I struggled, but I immediately saw there was no way I could break out of his grasp.

  “I can’t risk you getting hurt by a stray bit of shrapnel,” Hank said, spitting in my ear as he spoke. “I don’t want a scratch on you. I want you in perfect health so that when the day comes, you won’t have any excuse. And now you won’t have anything to help you either—no shelter, no supplies. Nothing but your own stupidity and weakness.”

  “You asshole,” I said. And then the explosion knocked us both off our feet.

  * * *

  The sky was the wrong color. The grass beneath me pressed its sharp blades into my back and there was a roaring in my ears just as Milo had said there would be when the yellow-brown Gulf poured into our neighborhoods and drowned us all. I was stretched out on my front lawn, watching big gray puffs of smoke blow over the roof of my house. Hank Schoenfeld had blown up our shelter.

  * * *

  Hank was long gone when I dragged myself off my lawn and into the house. The panes of the windows that faced the yard had been blown out. I swept up the glass and stared out the empty window frame into my lawn. There was a medium-sized, smoking pit in my backyard and some scattered debris, nothing useable. I took a beer from the refrigerator and began to board up the back windows. I felt an odd sort of peace. I had no supplies, and without a job, no means to replace them. I had nothing but my wits, which I was now dulling with as much beer as I could hold. When I finished the job, I put the hammer on the coffee table and stretched out on the couch.

  * * *

  The texts woke me. It was the worst day of my life: I had a serious beer headache at two-thirty in the afternoon, there was a smoking pit in my backyard, and I was unemployed. The prospect of bringing Lisa up to speed on all this was more than I could bear to contemplate. Worse yet, I remembered, as I sat up on my couch and fumbled for my phone, while my living room spun around like a carnival ride, my reputation was in tatters. By now it was all up and down Alamo Mutual that I had been complicit in some kind of an insurance crime. I’d walked out with as much dignity as I could muster, but the cardboard box in my arms made it all too clear that I’d been canned.

  And yet, in spite of all this, my pho
ne was lighting up with texts that were oddly congratulatory, many from industry contacts. You called it, man!

  I responded with some ambiguous emoji, not knowing what to make of these messages and not wanting to set people straight either. That would come later. My head hurt too much now. I stared out our picture window. A thin stream of groundsmoke was blowing over the roofs of the houses. Lisa and the girls were getting out of the car. She was still in a workday blazer, with her hair tied up in a way I have always especially liked. It broke my heart a little. In profile she looked younger, like the vivacious girl in a college sweatshirt I remembered. The woman now walking up to my front door weighed herself daily and watched the balance on our credit card creep always in the wrong direction and had walked in on her husband sharing Mee-Maw’s blanket with a stranger. The difference between the two Lisas wasn’t simply time; the difference was me. I had taken the life out of her somehow, and I was about to do it again.

  “Hi Daddy!” the girls screamed. I kissed them both as they ran upstairs to the playroom, shedding school books and lunchboxes, socks and shoes, all over the living room.

  “Eric?” Lisa said looking me over. I had no way of knowing how much of my day was obvious just at a glance, but she didn’t immediately demand my exit from the house.

  “I have some news,” I said, following her into our bedroom—hers now, really—as she hung up the blazer and stepped out of her uncomfortable shoes. The phone in my pocket kept buzzing.

  “Is that yours or mine?”

  “Mine. But it’s not important.”

  “Wait—it’s mine, too,” Lisa said and pulled her phone from her purse. I didn’t wait; it was easier to tell her without eye contact.

  “Lisa, I don’t have a job anymore.”

  “Oh my God,” Lisa said, looking at her phone. “You were right.”

  “Can we focus on this conversation for a minute? I got fired today, Lisa.”

  “Of course you did,” Lisa said. She was in the grip of some strong emotion, but to my surprise, it didn’t seem to be rage or pain. She put her hands on my face and kissed me on the lips. “Thank God you never listen to me.”

  I was disoriented by my midday drinks and my wife’s random burst of passion for me. I should have asked more questions but I didn’t, not till I was lying beside her in our bed completely winded, wondering how long it would take to get back in shape.

  “So this is all over,” Lisa said. Her eyes were filling with tears.

  “What?” I said, sitting up in bed. Maybe it was not a good sign what had just happened. Maybe it was some sort of sentimental preface to being served with divorce papers.

  “What does this mean for us? What’s your plan? I’m afraid,” Lisa said, and she burst into tears. I put an arm around her.

  “Lisa, I’ll do whatever it takes to save us. And that starts with no more prepping. The shelter is gone. The supplies are gone. And I don’t even care. I’m through with all that. Never again.” I was having a beer- and explosion-induced epiphany. I couldn’t prepare for the collapse of civilization; all I could do was spend each discrete twenty-four hour period that came to me trying to make things work again. Lisa and me and our girls—the important thing was that if we were all going down in flames, we were going together.

  “Are you kidding?” Lisa said. I grabbed her hand and pressed it to my heart.

  “I have never been more serious,” I said.

  “You don’t have a generator or MREs or anything. It’s all gone?”

  “Every last bit,” I promised. I began to give her a rundown of the events she’d missed while we weren’t speaking, beginning with my assassination of Cormac.

  “Well that is just priceless.” Lisa said, through her sobs. Our phones were migrating toward the edge of the nightstand from all the buzzing. I grabbed mine before it took a dive and began to read through the odd texts that had so puzzled me earlier with a clearer head. Friends, family, and colleagues had sent dozens of messages about major statewide earthquakes, a chain running from the panhandle to the Rio Grande. Volcanic activity had forced the evacuation of Austin, and an enormous sinkhole sucked up a swath of the northern suburbs of Dallas. Some were asking after my safety, others congratulating me for predicting the enormous state-wide disaster now at hand, and I had evidently replied to them all with the image of a disco dancer, some fireworks, and an obese cat riding a scooter.

  “It’s finally happening,” I said. On the one hand, it was the day I had prepped for, the day I had promised was coming, the day I had warned about till I was blue in the face. I tried not to let that go to my head; this was a human tragedy and there was no time to strut and crow and say I told you so.

  On the other, of course, I myself now had absolutely no preparations in place. Thanks to Hank, I was no better off than the nay-sayers who’d lived with their heads in the sand, in terms of provisions and supplies. The feelings I was feeling then could only ever be understood by a person who has been right all along but who then comes to find out that having absolutely called it in fact does them no good whatsoever.

  * * *

  Lisa evicted me from the bedroom and closed herself up in there with a bottle of wine. I put the girls to bed and spent the night formulating a Plan B in light of these new circumstances. In the morning, I shaved my face carefully for the last time and slapped my cheeks with aftershave. It was a new world, and I was a new man. And so right at the opening bell of this new order, I promised myself to live with absolute honesty. And more than myself, I promised Lisa.

  I opened the door to my bedroom, which Lisa had left unlocked, I was encouraged to find. She was lying under the quilt, crying softly, while the doings of the president and other heads of state were reported by the last remaining local news outlet. So-called experts talked nonsense about keeping calm and sheltering in place.

  If Lisa heard me come in, she gave no sign. I let my towel drop on the carpet and approached her nude, so as to underscore my point: naked honesty. I looked into her eyes and I said, “Lisa, no more lies. From now on, I’m going to be totally, completely honest with you.”

  She was about eye-level with my midsection, which is not as toned as it once was and she gave it a cold, judging look. “I don’t even know if I want to apocalypse with you,” she said. It was like it made no difference to her, the fact our whole way of life was over. She hadn’t altered her attitude toward me even the smallest bit.

  I took a deep breath, keeping my rage in check. We had bigger problems than our problems, but trust Lisa not to get that. “I think we better get Dr. Laramie on the phone,” I said. Since I’d moved into the shelter, we’d been seeing our therapist twice a week. “And then we’ll load up the girls and go over to Blaine’s.”

  She sat up in bed. “Blaine’s? That’s your big doomsday plan? Un-be-lieve-able.” I thought that was a pretty interesting choice of words from a person who hadn’t believed any of this would even happen.

  * * *

  Dr. Laramie didn’t pick up, so I left a message apprising her of the scene in the bedroom and asking for a callback at her earliest convenience. I rousted Jeanette and Annabelle and scrambled them some eggs, which they picked at. A car alarm was sounding in the near distance and from one or two streets over, a beagle howled. All over Texas people were pouring coffee and wrapping their heads around the situation, which meant time was short.

  “Toilet, teeth, clothes, hair, socks and shoes, girls,” I said. “Fast motion.” Jeanette sprang from the table just like we drilled it, but I had to carry Annabelle upstairs and walk her through the entire morning routine.

  “What about Mommy?” Annabelle said as I buckled her into her booster. Lisa has never participated in any of our drills, but I swore to my girls that when it counted she’d be there with us. Now it was time to put my personal ambivalence about their mother aside and make that happen.

  “Mommy’s coming. Stay put, you two.” Back in the house, I kept my tone positive. “Lisa,” I called. “It’s tim
e to go, honey.” No response. The only sound was the bathtub filling. I got a running start and rammed the door with my body.

  “It wasn’t locked, Eric.” She has this way of saying my name—if you belong to a hated minority group, you’d definitely recognize the tone. There were bubbles in the tub and scented candles along the side. I clutched my chest. “I thought you were taking a Roman exit,” I said. “Oh thank God. Thank God you’re okay.”

  Lisa rolled her eyes. She’s always so cool, that’s what gets to me. Still soaping her feet like I hadn’t just busted down the door.

  “Lisa, in a civilization-ending event, the initial stasis is quickly followed by a period of widespread violence. For instance, when the Visigoths arrived on the outskirts of Rome in A.D. 410, for the first 48 hours they just barbecued and played wind instruments—”

  “Don’t get pedantic with me, you son of a B,” Lisa said, grabbing her bathrobe. We implemented a strict no-cursing rule in our home when Jeanette was born, and despite our ups and downs as a couple, we’ve both stuck with it.

  “You’re going in that?” I said.

  Lisa was padding toward the garage in her bathrobe and slippers. “It’s the end of the world. F it.”

  * * *

  Stockpile weapons and foodstuffs. Then hole up in the country, away from major urban centers. That’s how you come out on the sunny side of apocalypse, right? Common misconceptions. As we drove through downtown toward Blaine’s, I observed litter in the streets, and roving groups of men, two or three strong, likely to snowball into death squads within a 72 hour period. But I had to chuckle at some of the beginner mistakes I was seeing. At the corner of Commerce and Main, a man in bicycle gear was trying to buy some fruit stand melons with gold bullion.