How I Spent the Apocalypse

by Selina Rosen

  Oh how the mighty have fallen.

  ***

  The next day went as planned but that didn’t mean it was any walk in the park. We had to warm the dozer engine anyway then once we got it started Billy plowed on ahead—literally. Now see a D-6 dozer was built to tear up huge trees and dig great big holes in the earth, so pushing a few feet of snow and some tree branches, pieces of houses and cars out of the way was nothing. Still, the going was slow because it has a top speed of about fifteen miles an hour. It pulled Matt’s big hay trailer, Matt pulled the small one with his tractor behind that, I followed on the four-wheeler with my small trailer behind that carrying more fuel for the dozer. The truck plaza was gone but we could see where it had been. One of the men with us had worked there and knew right where the tanks were, so using an electric fuel pump Billy had rigged for the purpose—and later gave to the Rudy crew so that they could more easily get gas from the tanks at what used to be the grocery store—we refilled the dozer to make sure we’d have enough and then we moved on.

  Matt’s boys and Jimmy came with us and we picked up five more people in Rudy to help us. Matt said that by God he was going to take first pick of the food, and I said I reckoned on how that was fair enough since we were using his two big trailers and his tractor.

  It was cold, but I think everyone that went didn’t notice so much because it wasn’t as cold as it had been. Let’s face it, we were all just really tired of being all cooped up inside, and it was nice to have different people to talk to, even if most of them seemed to purposely avoid me most of the time. I even let Lucy drive part of the way there just because she wanted to I was in that good a mood.

  When we got to All ‘n More as luck would have it—the good kind not the bad kind we were all sort of getting used to—it had been completely missed by the tornados but immediately covered with snow, so the roofs on most of its big, expansive steel buildings had buckled or fallen completely in. The grocery store was a smaller building but the roof had still sagged and was mostly being held up in the middle by the shelving system inside. So precarious to say the least.

  We decided we’d come back when winter ended and get anything worth getting from the entire complex. No one, including the owners, were there because there was no smoke coming from anywhere and that year… Well if you didn’t have fire you were dead. No one else had claimed it, so I figured that meant it was all ours.

  Right then all we were interested in was the food, and as much of it as we could haul off. Of course we had to be careful because like I said the roof was mostly caved in and the whole thing could come down at any minute. In fact, I gave Lucy the job of watching the roof for any sign of immediate trauma, any shift. She mumbled that I just didn’t think she was competent to help do anything important, but I just ignored her.

  It was weird because there was a lot of snow that had blown in once the roof gave, but for the most part it was pretty clear inside and we were able to shore up the roof with a few well-placed metal struts we’d found. Cans had frozen and were all pushed out but that didn’t matter because they hadn’t had any chance to unfreeze and it wouldn’t be hard to keep them that way. They’d be fine to eat, at least until they thawed out.

  Most of the stuff in glass bottles was ruined except for the oil and an entire pallet load of honey—both of which I had them load first. Matt immediately said he and his crew were getting a case of each. I took a case of each, too, even though I had plenty of oil and I have my own hives that I rob and so far my bees were fine—I’ll explain this more later. The dry goods were all fine, even the stuff packed in paper, because the snow was what had taken the roof out and it hadn’t been warm enough since it started to fall for it to thaw enough for anything to get wet. We just brushed any snow we found on the sacks and containers off and loaded them up. There were huge walk-in freezer units all stuffed full of every kind of frozen food, and of course none of it had thawed out.

  We loaded up everything we had room for and headed back for Rudy. You did NOT want to be out after dark. Even though the daylight hours weren’t warm, night was as dark as anything I have ever seen—no light to reflect off the snow, and the minute the sun went down the temperature plummeted by twenty degrees and kept falling. So we rushed to unload. I took my small trailer full of what I wanted and Matt took half a trailer full of supplies for himself and his family. Everything else we left in Rudy in a garage that had been mostly still standing and that the Rudyites had shored up and fixed for the purpose of storing food.

  Now I know what you’re thinking, why did I take anything at all? I mean what kind of greedy bitch am I? I probably had more food than we needed. Hell, I had animals and plants still giving us fresh food every day. Well, I’ll tell you why, because I had given a lot of my stockpile away and like I said there was no way to know how long this little ice age was going to last or if what I’d put back would in fact be enough. Our growing seasons were bound to be shorter for years which meant we weren’t likely to be able to grow all the crops I would have liked to.

  I figured without me those folks would all—every last one of them—have frozen or starved the first week, and I didn’t owe any of them a God-damned thing. Hell, none of them had ever even been nice to me before this, just ignored me and took their children’s hands and pulled them close when I walked by. I was always just that crazy bitch who built the fortress because she thought the end of the world was coming at best. At worst I was that heathen dyke who they wanted God to smite. Part two of that was that I couldn’t trust those people to ration the way I would have done. They might use everything that should have easily lasted them another six months in two and then I’d have to feed them again, and if I did… Well, I just needed to hedge my bets.

  I helped them more than enough. I don’t feel guilty for restocking my larder. Hell, it was my idea.

  By the time we had knocked all the snow off ourselves and the four wheelers and had put up the supplies we’d taken we were all just freezing and exhausted. I was sure glad that Cherry had kept the fire stoked in the shop as well as the house because it made the whole knocking-the-snow-off process a lot more comfortable.

  We all stripped off our outerwear by the stove and bitched about how cold we were.

  “I have no balls, none,” Billy said, and he wasn’t referring to some sissy thing he’d done. “I swear they have crawled all the way up in my body. All the way.”

  “Ah… mine, too,” Jimmy said, as if his brother had insinuated he had balls and it was a bad thing. At that point in time I had no idea whether he had finally talked Evelyn into having sex with him or not, but Evelyn wasn’t sleeping on the couch and he had been less annoying, so I assumed he had. But when Jimmy bitched about his balls and Evelyn brought a blanket in and wrapped it around his shoulders I knew by the huge idiot smile he smiled that they were doing it.

  I’d laid in enough rubbers and KY to last an army a lifetime, and I said a little prayer that these idiots were going to be smart enough to use them. Imagine being a huge obvious dyke and walking in and ordering twelve cases of assorted condoms. The least the horny bastards could do was use them.

  Now you might be wondering why I didn’t buy a bunch of birth control pills and IUD’s and such. Well I’ll tell you why. Rubbers are the only thing that helps protect people from STDs, but guys would rather die than use them. Why? Because they can’t get off? Bullshit, a guy always gets off. They didn’t use them because it meant they had to actually think about someone and something besides their dicks. They were embarrassed to have to stop and put one on, such silly-assed shit as that.

  If women faced with the apocalypse didn’t have enough sense to make a guy put a condom on, then they deserved to die in childbirth. Survival of the fittest.

  Is that harsh? Look, if you haven’t found a doctor who can perform a C-section for your community, then chances are very good that if you get pregnant you’ll end up dead. See, for most of the history of humankind if a woman couldn’t give birth to a ba
by vaginally she died, which was awful but it meant that women who couldn’t have normal births didn’t reproduce. In two generations modern medical science managed to make a situation where nearly as many births were C-section as were vaginal. They undid generations of selective breeding.

  And we over populated the planet and destroyed our world and had to start all over again because men didn’t want to wear condoms. So, in the new world women will learn to tell men no or they’ll die in child birth. It’s that simple.

  Of course fear of death has never made women tell men no, so it likely won’t now. I’d brought a huge box of them to Rudy hoping they’d be smart enough to use them there, too, and they all acted like no one was having sex, which was just fucking stupid and I didn’t believe it for a second. People—well most people—we at least want to believe we have some privacy when we are doing it. The people in Rudy were saying they weren’t doing it and pretending that they didn’t know that everyone else was out of common courtesy, and then I come and bring them a huge box of rubbers.

  I don’t expect people not to have sex. Hell, I think they ought to get as much as they can but wear a damn condom. This time, everyone replace themselves and stop. It shouldn’t have taken an apocalypse to make people protect themselves and each other, to realize that they should have two kids and stop. Two is enough for any couple—three’s pushing it, and anything more than that in a world already bulging with people is just selfish and stupid.

  In the future when people look back at this time they will realize that the whole thing crashed only because men wanted to have all the sex they wanted and didn’t want to wear condoms or do anything at all to stop the spread of VD or unwanted pregnancies. Come on, men invented religion. Why do you think there was all that shit about women coming from men—by the way how the hell did they figure that happened, a rib? Come on—and be fruitful and multiply—what dumb ass thought that was a good idea? I mean maybe when there are only two of your species, but when there are so many of you swarming across the face of the planet that you can’t fart without someone else hearing it?

  Everything has always been about serving a man’s fucking penis. I’m not just saying that because I’m a dyke, and as I’ve told you before I’m no man hater. The truth is the truth. Money and power—it’s all just the means to the end—which is more sex, which is really all men care about. Which there is nothing wrong with that but—wear a damn condom!

  Before women get to thinking they’re so superior I think the shit women care about is a lot stupider than sex. Everything comes down to “Do I look good in this?” And not for the opposite sex, no they have to look better than other women, they have to make other women say, “I wish I looked like that,” or they’re not happy with how they look. When they have sex they aren’t normally physically satisfied so they do it for two reasons and two reasons only—to get control of a man or to have babies—and half the time when they want babies it’s only to control some man.

  This is why I believe that all women are basically queer. Men are a means to an end, and they don’t care what men think only what their girlfriends think and…

  Well I don’t give a damn what I look like or what anyone thinks of me. In fact, let’s just tell it like it is and say that I care a lot more about sex than just about anything else.

  But I digress… Anyway I was standing there just warming my ass, listening to the boys’ sudden argument about whose balls were the coldest and hoping that they were both using rubbers to have sex when I noticed Lucy wasn’t by the fire. I saw her cover-alls hanging on a hook but she was gone. I shrugged and started to just stand by the fire but then something told me to go check on her. I mean after all at that time I usually couldn’t pry Lucy off my ass long enough to go to the can.

  I found her in the bathroom and the door was locked. I wondered how long she’d been in there and then something made me knock on the door. “Honey, you alright?”

  “I’m fine.” It was a lie; I could tell by the sound of her voice.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “Nothing.” Another lie.

  “Open the door.”

  “Dammit, Kay…”

  “Open the door or I’ll break it down.” I wouldn’t really. I had the key, I’d just go get it and unlock the door, but you never want to yell, “Open the door or I’ll go get the key where it’s stuck in the back of the silverware drawer and unlock it!” It lacks any sense of urgency.

  “What’s wrong?” Billy asked.

  “Go away; I’ve got it,” I ordered. He nodded and walked away.

  “Lucy, open the door.”

  “Kay…” She sighed and then I heard the latch twist and I pushed the door open.

  She looked some startled and hid her hands behind her back.

  “You hard-headed little dumbass,” I said, knowing exactly what was wrong. See she’d told me the batteries had run out in her gloves about half way through the day. I should have packed extra gloves and batteries and normally I did but I’d flat-ass forgotten. I’d offered her mine, even suggested we swap back and forth, but the silly little bitch kept insisting her hands weren’t cold.

  “Let me see them,” I ordered.

  Lucy held out her bright red, slightly-swollen hands and just started crying. “I really was fine until I got wet.”

  I started the water in the sink going, got it luke-warm and stuck her hands down in it. She flinched. “How did your hands get wet?” Because you see when you’re wearing water-proof gloves and it’s so cold that unprotected water will freeze solid in ten minutes, it’s sort of hard to get actually wet.

  Lucy was quiet except for the crying.

  “You little dumbass, how did your hands get wet?!”

  She cried louder but still didn’t answer.

  “In a second I’m going to leave you here alone to thaw and go find your gloves.”

  “I put them on the heater.” She cried still louder.

  I’d brought a kerosene heater with us so that everyone could take turns warming themselves up. Lucy had taken her gloves off to warm her hands by the stove because the gloves will keep your hands from freezing but they can still get cold. Without thinking she’d sat her gloves on the heater. See, people who have never been around heat that didn’t come out of a register in the floor didn’t always understand that fire burns. They caught fire and she had to stomp them out. It not only burned up the heating unit in the gloves—turns out there was never anything wrong with the batteries and she’s damn lucky they didn’t blow up—but it burnt the rubber-proof coating off and actually put holes in her glove. Once that happened any time she touched snow her own heat melted it till her hands were wet and every time the wind rushed through those holes it had been miserable. At least she wasn’t stupid enough to take the gloves off. Of course she didn’t tell me any of that till later. She was too busy crying and I guess it was then that I realized why she was so upset.

  “Oh, honey.” I took a second to kiss her cheek. “There are degrees of frost bite just like there are degrees of sunburn. This is actually pretty minor.” I turned on straight hot water then and kept it on till the water in the sink was almost too hot. “It’s going to hurt like hell, but you aren’t going to lose any fingers.”

  I left her there and filled a dishpan with warm water and Epsom salts and moved her to the living room. The kids were smart enough to go away for which I was glad. I bundled Lucy up in a blanket, sat her close to the stove, set the dish pan in her lap and stuck her hands in it.

  “Why the hell didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Because you already think I’m a dumb ass.” She cried. I handed her a pill and a glass of water and she took the medicine without question.

  “I don’t think you’re a dumbass,” I said. She just glared at me. I went over what I’d said in the last few minutes. “Well it was a pretty stupid thing to do, Lucy. You’re damn lucky it’s not a whole lot worse.”

  “You were busy. Everyone was so busy and
I was mostly just in the way and then I do something stupid and you want to share gloves with me and… Well the minute you would have seen them you would have known what I did and I didn’t want you to see that I’d burnt up my gloves because I knew you’d think I was just a huge dumb ass and… I used to be smart, Kay. Everyone used to say how intelligent and informed I was.”

  “You are.”

  “No I’m not, not any more.” Lucy cried again. “Is it supposed to hurt this much?”

  “Let’s see, the blood in your hands started to turn to ice crystals and now you’re thawing it out. I’d say yes, it’s supposed to hurt a whole lot. The Vicodin should kick in soon. Give it a minute.”

  “You didn’t want to take me with you in the first place and then I did something stupid and… I just didn’t want you to know.”

  “That’s not true.” I smiled at her. “I did want you to go with me, but I have to say that I don’t so that it won’t be my fault if you do something stupid and wind up with frost bite.”

  Lucy laughed then so either the Vicodin was working its magic or her hands were starting to warm up. Lucy stopped laughing and looked up at me. “Is it ever going to warm up out there?”

  It was a good question. There was just no telling how long this was going to last. Everything had been perched on the edge for so long and then well everything just seemed to get pushed over at the same time. The little ice age had lasted several hundred years—though climatologists and historians were always arguing over just how many hundred—but if you’re living in it all you care about is that it’s cold. I knew it shouldn’t stay this bad, I knew the world should start to right itself, but all that equipment I have and limited knowledge of how it works and what I’m looking at will only get you just so far.

  “A few months at the most…”