Alone: Book 1: Facing Armageddon (20 page)

     The question was somehow made easier by the fact that they’d never come knocking. He’d never been faced with that horrible decision.

     But it still troubled him.

-44-

     Hi Baby.

     Yesterday
was the second worst day since the blackout began. The only day worse than yesterday was the day you and the girls disappeared from my life and got on that plane. The day of the blackout itself. As bad as that day was, this one was almost as bad.

     I think this is the fourth of July weekend, although I’m not quite sure because I’ve sort of lost track of the days. I know I need to do a better job, so I’ll know when it’s time to harvest the crops and will know when winter is coming. But some days I go to the calendar and honestly can’t remember if I already crossed off a day. I don’t know if it’s my memory that’s going, or my mind. Maybe both.

     Yesterday I buried Anthony and Sally Nance. Also their three children, Joshua, Jacob and Antoinette. They called her Toni.

     I know, you don’t have a clue who I’m talking about. Remember the people who moved into
4027, the house next door? He brought over your
Good Housekeeping
magazine when it wound up in his mailbox, remember?

     Anyway, I know you never knew their names. I didn’t either. It took me a little bit of work to find them. I had to look through the mail they had on their kitchen counter to get Anthony and Sally’s names. The kids
’ names were a little harder. I found a big sign, drawn in crayon, on one of the bedroom doors, that said, “Toni’s Room. Yucky Boys Keep Out!!!!!”

     Actually, it had three lines of purple exclamation marks. That girl meant business.

     I had just about given up on the boys’ names, until I found a portrait hanging on the wall with the caption, “Joshua and Jacob, age three.”

     I know I’ve lost you, so I’ll go back to the beginning.

     Four days ago I heard five gunshots, over the course of several minutes. I could tell they were coming from next door.

  
  I’ve heard enough shots, spaced evenly apart, over the last few months to know what it was. I’ve come to differentiate a shootout between homeowners and looters, and a family committing suicide. Always before, though, the suicides were down the street, or on the next block, or somewhere off in the distance.

     This was different. This was right next door. These were people that you and I actually talked to, but chose not to know.

     Something, and I still don’t know what, made me go over there. During the daytime. I broke one of our most basic rules of survival, and risked everything, to expose myself in broad daylight.

     But like I said, I had to go.

     They didn’t answer their door. I knew they wouldn’t. I wound up breaking into the back of their house.

     Looking back, I think it was God telling me to go over there. I think he wanted me to witness what I’d done.

     I didn’t realize how thin and frail they’d become until it came time to move their bodies. They were withered away to almost nothing.

     And I could have saved them.

     There was no food in their house. There was a bowl of grass they’d plucked from the yard, on the kitchen counter.

     While I was over here, bitching about having to eat
green beans and ravioli from cans, they were eating grass from their back yard, in a desperate attempt to stay alive.

     They’d turned themselves into little more than cattle, because they so desperately wanted to live. And I had it within my power to save them and didn’t.

     I have plenty. I could have given them your share, and the girls’ share. I could have killed some rabbits for them. I could have done the Christian thing to do, and kept them alive.

     And I could have gone a step farther. I could have shared some of our seeds with them. Helped them set up a water collection system, and given them some of my water until the rains came. I didn’t do any of that. I was so damn smug in the knowledge that we had planned ahead. We had provisions and plans that would enable us to get by. I had no pity for those who didn’t prepare, as we did.

     And now I know I’ll burn in hell for letting them die. God wanted to show me what I’d done. And here’s the thing. I’m okay with it. If anyone deserves an eternity in hell, it’s me.

     I felt a need to make amends. Or maybe it was another God thing. Maybe He put it in my head that the least I could do was give these people a decent burial.

     That’s why I needed their names. I wanted to say a prayer for each of them after it was done. And I felt like such a scumbag that I let them die, and didn’t even know their names.

     I wrapped each of them in a white sheet. For some odd reason, I thought it would
hasten their journey to heaven or something, I don’t know… or maybe because it made them look more peaceful.

     I had to drag Anthony. Although he was only half the size he was when he came knocking on the door that day, he was still too heavy to carry.

     I put him in the grave first, then crawled in with him to push his body to one side.

     And I apologized to him.

     I was able to carry Sally. She was a grown woman, yet she weighed no more than Beth. I placed her on the ground next to the grave and then climbed inside to lower her body down. I know you met her once. I never did, and I found myself wondering what kind of woman she was. I wondered if she was the kind of woman who would forgive me for letting her die.

     I placed the children on top of their parents, the boys on the outside and Toni in the middle. Big brothers should always protect their sisters, even in death.

     It sounds silly, I know. I know they couldn’t feel it. But I just couldn’t bring myself to shovel dirt on any of their faces. I filled in the graves by shoveling dirt at their feet. Gravity slowly caused the dirt to roll down off the pile and cover them all up, but I just couldn’t shovel dirt into the faces of people who once breathed and laughed and cried.

     And who I helped kill.

     I said a prayer over the grave when I finished, and asked God to take these good people to heaven with him. I didn’t ask for forgiveness, though. I don’t feel I deserve it.

     It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
But here’s the thing…

     If they had come to my door asking for food and water I likely would have turned them away. I know that. In all the time we were prepping, we went by the prepper’s creed, which is, in effect, you can never stock too much or let people know you have extra. You don’t know how long it will last or when something will no longer be available. I likely would have sent them away, thinking that I had to conserve our extra food for the day when you and the girls came home.

     And as harsh and heartless as it sounds, I know this:

     If someone else comes knocking on our door tomorrow I will struggle mightily. Do I help them out and risk them coming back, maybe by force, when they need some more? Do I give them food and water, and risk them telling others I have
it?

     Or do I refuse to answer the door? Do I let them go away, knowing that they, and possibly their children,
might starve to death because I was selfish and greedy?

     I know, it’s not likely to happen. There’s a big sign on the front door that says the house is empty. And anyone looking in the picture window out front will see empty rooms.

     But still, I feel like a monster. I feel like I gave up my right to consider myself human when those five people died and I could easily have helped them.

     I took
ten of the rabbits and put them in a big box. Then I took them out in the front yard last night in the darkness and set them free. There’s plenty of grass on the lawns for them to eat, and the morning dew will give them water to drink.

     I’m hoping that some of them will make their way down to the storm ditch at the end of the street. There’s high grass there and the water pools for weeks after a heavy rain. I have no doubt that most, if not all, will survive.

     I also found the literature that the pet store gave us when we bought the rabbits. It’s odd that I never read it before.

     It turns out that they will start breeding when they’re six months old. Each female can have several litters a year, from seven to fifteen babies
each time.

     That’s a boatload of rabbits.

     My hope is that after a few months, there will be a few hundred rabbits out there for the survivors to trap or hunt. And that maybe with no stray dogs to threaten them, they’ll populate faster than people can kill them. Maybe in five years they’ll be the primary source of protein for this whole part of the city.

     I did something else too.

     I found the literature for the corn we bought. I had a lot left over when I planted the crop, and it turns out that this variety grows from seed to harvest in only seventy two days. I should have known it wasn’t long because ours is almost ready to cut.

     Anyway, there’s still enough time left to plant and harvest a second crop before the winter comes.

     I took the seeds that were left when I finished planting, and put aside enough for our own second crop. Then I divided the rest into four equal piles.

     I put each pile in a zip lock bag and made four identical signs. Each sign said “Corn seed. Do not eat this. If you eat it, it’s only one meal. If you plant it, it will feed you for months.”

     I also made four identical sets of instructions. I wrote how to prepare the ground, how to catch water in rain buckets, how to plant the seeds, how to water each plant individually and how often.

     In other words, I told them everything I’ve learned from being a farmer so far.

     I also told them to plant the seeds immediately so they could harvest their crop before winter. And to save enough seeds from their crop for another planting in the spring.

     And I asked them to put aside some of their seeds to share with a stranger, and to ask that stranger to keep it going.

     I went out last night, since as I said I couldn’t sleep anyway. About a block away I turned over a trash can in the middle of the street. I put a sign and a set of instructions underneath one of the bags.

     Then I went another block and did the same thing.

     I put the four bags of seeds on four different blocks.

     I hope whoever finds them can resist the urge to eat the seeds on the spot.

     I didn’t have any wheat seeds left over. But the wheat is ready to harvest now, and it’s still time to do a second crop. I plan to take some of the seeds from the wheat crop and do the same thing.

     Call it my penance for letting those poor people die.

-45
-

     Dave finally got some sleep the next day. He could have slept through the entire day, but he forced himself out of bed in the early afternoon. He knew if he slept all day he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. And he wanted to get his sleep schedule back on track.

     He started his corn harvest that afternoon. He looked through the piles and piles of miscellaneous literature that he and Sarah had printed off the internet in the previous year and a half. There were literally thousands and thousands of pages, and little organization. They basically printed out anything and everything they could find that they thought might be useful, tossed it into several boxes, and left it there to sort later.

     During the two nights he couldn’t sleep, Dave had sat in his safe room and gone through the boxes by candlelight, sorting and stapling and labeling.

     It was in the last box that he found information on how to harvest corn and store it for long term use.

     It was grueling work. Cutting the ears of corn from the stalks was the easy part. Removing the corn from the ears would be considerably harder. And it could wait for a few days.

     He had to get the second crop in the ground so it could start growing.

     After he removed all the cobs from the stalks, he pulled each one up from its roots. The ground was still relatively soft, even after the growing season, and he found that if he worked each stalk back and forth a few times, it came out with just a hard tug.