How I Spent the Apocalypse (25 page)

I woke up, rolled over, looked at the clock, saw it was eight o’clock, and started to roll over and go back to sleep. It was when I did this that I realized that my ribs didn’t hurt. They didn’t hurt at all. I got up walked over and shut and locked the door then crawled back into bed and crawled up too Lucy’s back and started… well you know.

She laughed. “What are you up to?”

“My ribs don’t hurt,” I explained. Then she was all over me.

***

“Damn!” Lucy said looking at the ceiling.
“I knew you were good, but when you aren’t hurt… damn!” she said again.

“Yep, once you go whacked you’ll never go back,” I said and pretended like it was the first time I’d used the line as she laughed at my joke.

Then she got up on her elbow, looked at the clock, and her mood changed immediately. Now I need to explain here that I didn’t just give lip service to keeping track of the date. That clock gives the date and the time to the second.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Lucy sighed and flopped back on the bed looking at the ceiling again. “Nothing, nothing.” She just tried to shake whatever it was off, but she obviously couldn’t. I was just hoping it wasn’t something I did, so I didn’t push the issue because… Well I was in a good mood again and I didn’t want anything to ruin it.

***

Billy had made two extra chairs for the table
and Evelyn was finally able to eat with us so meals were a tight fit what with six of us at a table I’d built for four people, but we made do. Lucy was quiet. Evelyn hadn’t said much and I didn’t know if it was because she was still sick or if she was just quiet by nature. I should have been so lucky, but I’ll talk about that later.

Cherry… well between that girl and Billy and Jimmy just talking about this music group or that one and other crap I couldn’t care less about it would have been hard for Lucy and I to talk at the table anyway.

I went out to do the milking and take care of the stock and Lucy went with me. It turned out she actually liked animals, really enjoyed working with them, and wanted to learn everything about them. That morning though she was just withdrawn, which I didn’t get because I figured we had started the day pretty good. She didn’t really talk to me till she was getting hay to put in the feeders and let out a scream shrill enough that my otherwise-immune-to-yelling animals actually jumped.

I’d been cleaning the chicken pen and came running out to see what was wrong.

“Snake!” she shrieked pointing. “Snake!”

And let me tell you right now, that God-awful high-pitched screech that some women make when they get scared, I have never found that the least bit attractive.

I looked and saw the black, red and yellow tail disappearing into the pile of hay. “It’s just Fred,” I explained. “He’s a king snake. He’s not poisonous.”

“What the hell?!”

“He eats mice and bugs,” I explained. “The wire mesh on the chicken pen is too small for him to get in and steal eggs and he steers clear of the goats. He got into the river once and tried to get a fish but I beat him good and he’s stayed clear ever since.”

“Couldn’t you have a cat?”

“You have to feed a cat and they shit all over and there’s the fur and they don’t eat bugs…”

“Why can’t you have something just for fun? Why don’t you have a dog? I mean this is a farm don’t all farms have a dog?”

“Dogs eat a lot and they shit all over and they don’t produce anything.” Now the truth was that I loved dogs. The last dog I’d had I loved like one of my sons when he died of old age just three weeks after Cindy. I cried like a baby for three hours straight. I just never wanted to go through that again so… “They need food” was as good a reason not to have one as any.

“So you can’t do or have anything just for fun. Everything has to have a purpose!?”

I have you,
I thought, but was smart enough not to say it. I knew she was just upset about something and then getting the shit scared out of her by our nearly five-foot barn snake that wasn’t cute and furry like a cat was just a little much. I kept my cool remembering how she had defused me just a few days ago and that she was really good in bed. And let’s face it, what were the odds I’d find another good looking gay woman who would have anything to do with me any time soon?

“Why does everything have to serve more than one purpose? Is this your brave new world Kay? A world where practicality is everything and anything—everything that isn’t practical is just a frivolous nuisance?”

Now I guess I could have blown right back at her. Let’s face it, I’m a lot better at the crazy than she is, but even though I didn’t know why I knew that she was hurting.

“I’m sorry about the snake, Lucy. I should have told you he was out here, but he doesn’t bite and as you can see he’ll just run away from you.” I didn’t try to hug her because when I’m mad—even just upset—I don’t want to be touched. Like most people I figure everyone is just like me. “Listen, the weather has broken. It’s still colder than a witch’s tit outside but there is something that has to be done. I was going to do it myself but maybe you’d like to go with me just to get out of the house for awhile and… I promise it doesn’t serve any real purpose at all.”

Lucy seemed to start breathing then. “I’m sorry, Kay.” She’d taken to calling me that and I liked it so I didn’t tell her not to. “I don’t like snakes.”

“I don’t either, but I’ve gotten used to him.” Fact was I bought him. You never saw the pretty red black and yellow King snakes here, just the green and black spotted ones. There are at least two of them—a male and female in the barn. See, I hated snakes so much that when I found out that King snakes will kill poisonous snakes and eat them I got some. The pair had at least one batch of babies because I’d seen them out on the place. We called them all Fred. We don’t have any mice in the barn or greenhouse—or at least we don’t see any—and damn few bugs.

“Why don’t you wait for me in the greenhouse, put some distance between you and Fred. I’ll come get you in a minute and we’ll gear up and go out to the bird house.”

“Bird house?” she asked.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

We had on all our gear. It was still cold but not unbearable. I hitched the trailer to the four-wheeler we had left with its snow mobile kit on. Lucy rode behind me and we drove to the “birdhouse.”

It’s really the old barn and it’s not far from the old house. Neither of which are far from the new house but over a rise so that you can’t see either from the house. Both were the prototypes for what I have now and were built when I didn’t have buckets of cash at my disposal. That both structures made it through doomsday shows that the new house is really overkill, and that you didn’t need a bunch of money to get set up to survive, but it sure didn’t hurt any.

We drove up close to the “birdhouse” and got off the ATV, immediately sinking up to our knees in the three-and-a-half feet of snow. By the way, when I say we had a break in the weather that means it was a balmy ten degrees with a wind-chill of fifteen below on that day.

I grabbed a bag of feed and started towards the “birdhouse.” As we approached, I pointed to all the animal and bird tracks in the snow leading up to and at the doorway. We walked down the ramp to the barn floor. The opening—usually big enough for me to drive in on my four-wheeler—was barely big enough for us to crawl through because the snow had blown in to fill it up.

Inside there was a stir among the birds. They still spook when they first see me. They calm down after the initial start. After years getting fed here the raccoons, possums, and squirrels just got out of reach and watched eagerly as they waited for me to put out food. They never panic any more. To them I’m the candy man.

I put the feed sack down and removed the mask and goggles from my face. I didn’t know if it was just a comparison thing but it actually felt warm in there.

“This is the birdhouse,” I whispered as hundreds of birds swarmed overhead, finally lighting.

“It’s huge,” Lucy said as she stripped her face gear as well.

“It used to be the barn. It’s the same size as the new one. Of course this one isn’t half full of hay and feed. When I built the new one I decided to make this wild-animal habitat. I figured they’d need some place to ride out the storm as well.” I started dumping the bag of corn into the old goat feeders. The last corn I’d put there was gone. “Wow, these guys have really started eating. There should have been some corn left,” I told Lucy. I checked the salt blocks and they were still mostly whole, so they’d last a good long time.

When I was digging down to build the old barn I hit a spring so I had dug it out and walled it up. It had only actually gone dry twice since I built the barn. It is a little half-circle trough at the back of the building. When I checked it there was no ice on it. That meant without heat the barn was staying above freezing which sort of amazed me. I showed Lucy. Of course now I think of it the ground water from the spring may have actually been helping to heat the building.

“Watch the birds; they’ll shit on you if they can. I suggest you don’t look up.”

She just nodded, her eyes focused on a coon who had jumped into a feed trough.

“They won’t attack and they’ve all had shots,” I added.

That was true. A couple of years before I’d decided that we didn’t need rabies or other animal-born illnesses in the post-apocalyptic world, so I’d tranked all the critters and once a year I gave them rabies shots and booster shots for other conditions.

Now coons and squirrels will raid your bird feeders and coons and possums will eat birds and their eggs if they can, but because of the way the birdhouse is built and the way I hung the feeders they can’t. The bird’s roosts and houses are all hanging from the top of the dome some fifteen feet above the floor in the middle. The three mega-sized feeders hang on chains from that same ceiling and can only be reached by the ladder I keep there, so until the coons figure out how to use the ladder the birds are safe. I grabbed the feed and started back in and that’s when I saw them: three does and a buck, all watching me and like me about knee deep in the snow. I now noticed the deer tracks going in and out of the birdhouse. I had a bale of hay because I had been throwing it in there for wild rabbits and to keep there from being something besides shit on the floor. I had wondered why it was all gone. Now I knew. The buck was coming closer and the does were following and I realized that like Matt’s zebras, lamas and buffalo these must have come from the wildlife refuge out by the highway because they were obviously tame.

I went back inside and just put down the bag of bird food. I grabbed Lucy’s hand and pulled her over to stand by the door. “Be very still and very quiet. I think I just figured out what happened to all the corn.”

Lucy just nodded.

I went back outside, grabbed the bale of hay off the four wheeler, and started back into the barn and just like I figured, here came the deer. They followed me right inside. I heard Lucy let out a little gasp and saw the buck turn to look at her. Then he just followed me with the does to where I dropped the bale of hay on the floor and cut the twine.

“Are they yours?” Lucy asked at my shoulder in a whisper.

“They weren’t but I guess they are now. The snow must be deep enough that they could clear the fence. I’m going to have to start bringing more feed and hay out here.”

“Can you afford to do that? Will you have enough?” Lucy was already starting to think like a survivor.

“Yeah, I have plenty, and if I run out of hay I can get more from Matt.”

We watched the different animals scurrying around eating. The deer were lean so I decided, weather allowing, I’d bring more hay and some rice bran in a couple of days. I pulled a bottle of antibiotics I’d mixed out of my pocket and dumped it into the water. This many animals in this small a space I figured it was a good precaution to just dose them every once in awhile. I’d dumped wormer in it the last time I was there. I’d worm them again in a week just to make sure the deer got wormed.