The Pandemic Diaries [Books 1-3]

by Callahan, K. W.

  As we stood in the street discussing what it could be, I felt a sharp sting on my right butt cheek. I jumped in surprise and let out a little yelp, at which point we heard a child’s laughter coming from behind us.

  Well, to make a long story short, we quickly realized that it was Travis (Erika’s son). Apparently, he’d gotten hold of a BB gun and was taking pot shots at us while we walked. As soon as Dylan realized what was going on, and before I could stop him, he had run over, grabbed the gun away from Travis, and pushed him down on the ground. It was slight reprisal for his actions in my opinion, but I told Dylan to stop it. Travis immediately started crying and yelling for Dylan to give him his gun back. A minute later, Erika showed up demanding to know what “WE” had done to her son, who was now fearfully clinging to his mother and telling her that Dylan had pushed him down and taken his gun.

  I calmly tried to explain, but Erika wasn’t having any of it. She immediately got huffy and told me that MY child was out of control and treating her son like a bully. I tried to show her the wound on Dylan’s arm, and I told her about mine as well. I couldn’t exactly show her the point of impact, considering its location, although by the end of the incident, I felt like telling her to give it a big fat kiss. But it didn’t matter. Erika said that I was lying and that Dylan had made the injury to himself or that it was a bug bit. She said that there was no way HER Travis would shoot another living creature, let alone another person, that he was too good a boy and that SHE had raised him right. She said that if Dylan laid another hand on her son, we’d have “more shit on our plates than we’d know what to do with” – her words, not mine.

  Yeah, and I’M the unfit mother.

  Then she told me that I needed to get my kid under control and that she expected me to discipline Dylan accordingly, but that judging from my parenting, she wasn’t counting on that happening. Boy is that the pot calling the kettle black!

  Then she grabbed the gun away from Dylan and stalked off with Travis in tow.

  I was so stunned by the blatant ridiculousness of the situation that I honestly didn’t know how to respond. I was angry, astounded, confused, and somewhat in shock that someone could take a situation in which their child was so obviously in the wrong and turn it around like that. Even worse, it somehow left ME feeling as though I was the offender.

  Sheesh! What a nut job!

  Thursday, April 17 th

  9:52 p.m.

  Ugh, what a night! It started so nicely but ended so badly.

  Chase had come over for dinner. He stayed for a few board games with Dylan and left around 7:30. It was a nice evening – nothing special, but that’s fine with me. I’ve learned that sometimes the best nights are the seemingly insignificant nights.

  At around eight, there was a knock on the door. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say ‘knock’; it was more of a pounding. I just though it was Chase returning to pick something up he’d forgotten. I figured the banging was his way of screwing around with me – he does stuff like that sometimes.

  But it wasn’t…it was Erika…a DRUNKEN Erika.

  As soon as I opened the door, I realized my mistake. Before I could stop her, she’d pushed herself halfway inside and jammed a knee between the door and the frame to keep me from closing it.

  Then she let loose with a verbal tirade the likes of which I’d never heard before. As soon as I’d heard the first string of profanities, I sternly told Dylan to go to the bedroom. He lingered a moment, curious as to what this lunatic wanted. He has grown very protective of me since Chris’ passing. But another firm warning from me sent his little tail hustling.

  Meanwhile, Erika was going on about me and Chase, and about Dylan, and about how I was a thief of not only stuff from the store but of men too, and that I let Dylan get away with murder, and that I was a dumb bitch, and on and on.

  At this point, I still had her wedged between the door and the doorframe. I had my foot against the bottom of the door as leverage to keep it in place. Meanwhile, Erika kept on yelling so loudly that it was embarrassing. Several neighbors in our building had opened their exterior hallway doors to watch the scene. And boy was it a scene!

  After what felt like forever, but probably wasn’t even a minute, I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to get rid of this raging psychopath. I could smell the alcohol on her breath and was trying to convince myself that it was only the booze talking. I thought that Erika and I had gotten onto a pretty stable – I might even say “good” – footing until we got to Glasgow, and I didn’t necessarily want to throw all that away over a couple silly incidents…at least not until she brought up what she felt was my poor parenting again. There’s just something about her criticizing how I care and HAVE cared for my children since the flu that really burns me up. It sets me off like nothing else, and when she said that I had “let my daughter die”, I couldn’t help it; I went ballistic. It was probably the one thing she could have mentioned that would set me off like no other. I changed from a relatively calm, cool, and collected – what I would consider “sensible” – woman, into a bull in a china shop. As soon as she uttered those words, the transformation was almost instantaneous. I went from a combination of confusion, embarrassment, and honestly being a little afraid, to my own rare form of raging bitch.

  I quickly stepped back to allow the door to open about another foot. I think the act caught Erika by surprise and she kind of lurched forward and then hesitated, almost as though she didn’t know whether to come inside or stay put. She stood there, momentarily silenced, halfway into the apartment. Before she could make a decision as to what to do next, I rammed the door back hard against her, smashing her in between the door and its frame. I could tell that the force of my blow had caught her off guard and kind of stunned her. It also pushed her back so that she was almost completely out of the apartment. I then pulled the door back toward me one more time and put all my weight against it to close it. Erika was in a bad spot. She took the majority of the violently closing door’s blow to the face. While I couldn’t see it happen (as much as I would have liked to), I guess it blasted her onto her ass in the hallway. I reopened the door to see her sitting there on the floor, crying, blood streaming from around her hands where they were cupped over her nose. I was suddenly hit by a wave of guilt and the desire to help her, but then I remembered her words and decided against it.

  I gave a quick look around at the questioning stares of my neighbors who were still watching wide-eyed, then closed and locked the door behind me.

  I’m still trying to calm down from the confrontation. I just don’t know what the hell is wrong with that crazy bitch. So I caught your man. So the fuck what!? If you’d done a better job landing him the first time, he wouldn’t have been back in the pond for others to catch. What the hell am I supposed to do about it? She had more than enough time to get Chase if she really wanted him. But she blew it, and now she needs to get the hell over it. She’s screwing around with one of the Glasgow men now anyway. Reggie, I think his name is. He hangs out with Barker (if that tells you anything), and he seems like he’s kind of a sleazebag. Plus, he drinks a lot. The two are a good pair (and you can read that as Reggie and Barker OR Reggie and Erika). Erika was probably with him before she came over here. Hell, she was probably with BOTH of them, knowing those weirdoes.

  I think that this new world is kind of screwing with people. They’re thinking they can do what they want and act how they want since there isn’t anyone around to tell them otherwise. It’s starting to feel a little like the Mad Max apocalypse here. I mean, we have Gerald and Barker, and our town’s security people, but we don’t really have a sheriff or town constable or anything. Our group is just so damn small, and we’re so concerned with protecting ourselves from outsiders that inside the town itself, we all just kind of looking out for ourselves. But now I’m starting to worry. I’d like to bring up nominating someone for the position of town sheriff, but on the other hand, I really don’t want to open my mouth. It could backfire,
and we could get someone like Reggie or Barker who would only abuse their authority and make things worse.

  I just know tonight’s events are going to bother me for days to come. I have a bad habit of rehashing things like this over and over again in my mind, replaying them and analyzing why they happened, how they happened, and how I could have handled them differently. Maybe I should have invited Erika inside to talk things out over a glass of wine. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened the door in the first place and just pretended I wasn’t home. Maybe I should never have confronted Travis about the BB gun incident.

  See…there I go. I’ll be up all night trying to get inside Erika’s warped mind to figure it out, and it won’t do any good. You can never get inside someone else’s head, nor would I want to, especially when they’re as screwed up as she is.

  Friday, April 18 th

  6:53 p.m.

  Chase stopped by work today. He wanted to know what happened with Erika last night.

  See? Didn’t I say news travels fast around here?

  So I rehashed the whole thing, giving him every detail I could recall regarding the brief yet highly charged incident.

  Then Chase dropped the bombshell. Erika had been over at his place before mine. He said that she was drunk and acting all lovey-dovey toward him, telling him she wanted him back. According to him, he told her that it was just the booze talking and that she needed to go home and sleep it off. Apparently, she wasn’t thrilled with this response, and his rejection is what must have really set her off before she came over to see me.

  Great, just what I need right now, something else to make me look bad in front of the other townspeople. As if my reputation wasn’t tarnished enough by the whole store inventory incident. Like I said, I don’t care that much what people think about me, but when people have a certain perception of you, it can make life more difficult. And life is complicated enough these days without people going out of their way to make it more difficult.

  9:09 p.m.

  Well that was fun. The hits just keep on coming. Gerald and Barker came to discuss what happened with Erika yesterday. They had already spoken to Erika, as well as several of my neighbors to hear what they had to say, and now they wanted to get my side of the story.

  That was all they gave me to go on. They didn’t tell me what Erika had said or what the neighbors had told them. But I had nothing to hide, so I simply told them the truth. It’s all I could do; and frankly, I think I did a hell of a job retelling the night’s events in a detailed, systematic, levelheaded account that covered everything and ended with Erika plopped on her ass in the hallway with a bloody nose.

  The two men listened quietly until I was finished, never interrupting with questions. Once I was done recounting the tale, they informed me that Erika had told them that I hit her without provocation after she came over to have a civilized conversation regarding an incident that transpired between our two sons the other day.

  I couldn’t believe her nerve. Come to MY house, yelling, screaming, and trying to push her way inside, and then tell people that she had come to have a “civilized conversation”. What a witch!

  The two men told me that after talking to my neighbors, my version of the story was closer to theirs. They said that there wasn’t much to be done if what I told them is indeed what happened. But they advised me that it would likely be in my best interest to keep my distance from Erika for a while.

  I told them that I had absolutely no problem with that, and that other than the incident with Travis the other day, and the deal with Erika last night, I haven’t had many dealings lately with her anyway.

  I guess that if anything good has come out of this, I’ve at least learned that my neighbors will back me up when needed. While I’m not exactly sure what they said, it sounded like Gerald and Barker got a reasonably close version of events from them. I’m sure they probably got the best recounting from Lamar who lives in the apartment directly across from us. It makes me feel good that he’s there. I trust him.

  Saturday, April 26 th

  4:24 p.m.

  I’m happy to report that nothing more has come of the whole Erika situation. She pretty much just avoids me now like the plague, although when I saw her at the store the other day, she was sporting the remnants of two pretty good shiners and her nose looked a little out of whack. Oh well, serves her right for acting like a freakin’ psycho.

  Work has been good lately. The weather is holding – dry and sunny – and the temperature has been gradually on the rise. Jack and Jared have outlined the first week of May as the start of our planting season. We’ve really just been holding off in hopes of getting a good rain to saturate the ground before we start. We haven’t seen a drop of precipitation in several weeks. I hope this isn’t a pre-cursor to a dry summer. It could make our lives a lot more difficult. Once again, each week, we’re seeing fewer and fewer supplies come back from the scavenging missions, and the store shelves have grown increasingly barren.

  Saturday, May 3 rd

  4:14 p.m.

  We had a light sprinkle of rain on the morning of the first, and took it as a sign that we’d better get our tails in gear since precipitation in Georgia is apparently anything but guaranteed. We got most of our seeds in the ground, but now we’d like to see the skies open up and really give us a good soaking.

  We’ve been hauling in water for the crops since then. It’s been a real pain in the butt, and it consumes the majority of our workday. We’re making constant trips back and forth between the garden and the water house. The faucets there run almost non-stop to supply not just the community’s needs, but the garden’s too. We hate utilizing our fresh water for the crops, but there aren’t any other options.

  Barker hangs out at the water house a lot. It seems like he’s either “helping out” at the general store, where he eats all he wants for free, or he’s at the water house “supervising”, which pretty much entails making sure the generator is operating and the water remains flowing. One of the older residents – Bob is his name – is charged with the actual operations at the water house, but he is in his late 70s and tends to doze off or go fishing at Chase’s little pond quite often. Who can blame him? The work is monotonous at best – putting gas in the generator when necessary and watching large containers slowly fill with water. It’s about as exciting as watching paint dry, but it’s a necessary job nonetheless.

  In his spare time, Chase has been helping haul some water in from his fishing hole outside town to supplement our own efforts. The downside to that is that the pond is a good distance from Glasgow. It takes time and fuel to drive back and forth, not to mention manually filling the tank on the back of the water truck with bucketfuls of water. Chase has been looking for a good pump, but the ones he’s come across are too small or give him trouble. He said he found a decent one, but the water intake kept getting plugged up by the pond’s muddy water. He says at this point, it’s quicker for him to fill five-gallon buckets by hand than have to deal with a pump.

  Oh well, I guess it’s fine for now. We’ve got the water we need and we’re hoping to see some green shoots sprouting here shortly. I just hope we haven’t started too late with our planting. I trust Jack and Jared, but they’re used to the Indiana growing season, not Georgia’s.

  Wednesday, May 21 st

  8:57 p.m.

  I know it’s been a while since I last wrote, but time flies when you actually have another adult around to talk to at night. Yep, you guessed it; it’s official…Chase moved in!

  It’s so strange having another man in my life full-time again. And it has certainly taken some getting used to. Dylan seems a little weirded out by it too, but he likes Chase and they get along well, so I think he’ll become acclimated to the change pretty quick.

  Erika has stopped talking to Chase completely, and she acts as though I don’t even exist, which is just fine with me.

  I’m glad to report that there has been no more trouble from Barker, Erika, or anyone else for that
matter. I don’t want to jinx myself, but it seems like they’ve moved on to other things. I also think that Chase living here with me has also helped keep them at bay.

  I don’t think that Barker changing the store staff was directed at me so much as it was a way for him to get new people working there…HIS people working there…people he can control. But whatever. I don’t really care as long as it doesn’t affect me, Dylan or Chase.

  It’s so weird to write about Chase that way in here, but it’s time. I mean, I think I’ve done a good job of honoring Chris’ memory and not jumping into the sack with the first guy that came along. I’ve had my time to mourn, and while I’ll never get over the loss of my husband, I need to start the process of moving on at some point. And I don’t want to chance waiting any longer. I’m not getting any younger, and it’s not like new guys are popping into my life with regularity…not that I’d want them to anyway. Chase is about as good as they get…so for the first time in a long time, I’d say I’m pretty damn happy.

  Meanwhile, at the garden, we’ve seen our first green poking its way through the dusty Georgia soil (we’re still hauling in most of our water, as we’ve only gotten a light rain since I last wrote). I can’t wait until we can start harvesting!

  Tuesday, May 27 th

  2:25 p.m.

  Wow! All I can say is that it is warming up here BIG TIME! I’m glad the scavengers have found a lot of sunscreen because I have a feeling that those of us working outside this summer are going to need it. I got a wide-brimmed hat for my work, along with some loose fitting but covering clothes. Being a Midwest girl, my skin isn’t used to the sun beating down like it has been, and I need some time to acclimate.