The Girl's Guide to the Apocalypse (18 page)

Carefully, I climbed through the window and broken glass. The house was empty and had sustained a good amount of disaster-related damage. We crept through to the kitchen side of things and poked through all the cupboards. There were things like rice, rotting vegetables and cheese, salsa in a can, some tampons. I stashed those under my shirt while Tigerlily looked frantically from one cabinet to the other.

“There’s nothing here,” she said. “There’s nothing here!”

“Relax,” I said. “Rice, salsa, maybe we can just improvise something.”

“We. Do. Not. Improvise.”

Tigerlily’s face was tight and she talked through her teeth. “Our Lord wants spaghetti and meatballs and
that’s
what he’s getting!”

She clawed through the storage spaces and did manage to find an old bag of pasta, so that temporarily calmed her down. With nothing else to find, we hiked down to the next house, where once again she smashed a window and made me enter first.

“How long have you been with Darren?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Sorry – uh, our Lord.”

She beamed. “Almost a month. But it feels like forever. Just one big beautiful forever.”

I nodded. “I’ll bet.”

“And don’t try to talk to me about the way things used to be,” she said defensively. “I don’t care, I don’t remember and none of it is important now, anyway.”

“Deal,” I said as I opened a pantry door.

“Some people think it was so great back then, but it’s not,” she said. “We’re much better off now, and I’m so sick of having to defend what I was doing and how I got here. So don’t ask me about it.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

She stood in the middle of the kitchen now, breathing heavily. “My family told me to come home over six months ago and they even sent me money for it. And I didn’t, because no one ever thinks I can do anything on my own. But I can.”

“Of course,” I said. I pulled out a jar. “How does our Lord feel about Alfredo sauce?”

“He didn’t say,” she said. “I had the best job, working at the Circle K. I could drink Mountain Dew and watch TV all day and then my boyfriend asked me to start borrowing from the store, which I did, and then I got caught and fired. I was looking for a job, but no one wants to hire a high school dropout who got fired from the Circle K for stealing!”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Didn’t you look into getting your GED?”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry to pry.”

She hoisted herself up onto the counter and continued to talk.

“You know what really burns me, though?” she asked. “My sister thinks she’s so special because she got three kids and lives in Utah. What’s so special about that? She’s been engaged three times. Who fucking cares?”

I shrugged and kept zeroing in on what sat on the shelves. “There’s rolls down here, but they might be a little stale.”

“You keep looking and you keep looking now!” she said. Her crunchy hippie persona was long, long gone at this point.

Eventually, we made it back to the house with merely a half bag of pasta and a jar of Alfredo sauce to show for our efforts. I had, however, learned plenty about Tigerlily, despite her insistence that she had nothing to talk about and was an absolute closed book on the subject of her background. I learned she had a seven-year-old daughter she hadn’t seen in six years, and she was pretty proud of her job at Circle K.

“I used to deal drugs with my ex, but that was awful, so don’t ask me about.”

“Okay.”

“You meet a lot of bad people selling and buying drugs. I don’t want to talk about it, but this one time, this guy stole my Led Zeppelin sweatshirt and never gave it back.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Stop asking me about it!”

“Tigerlily,” I said. “How has Darren, I mean, our Lord, made things better? I watched him eat those closest to me. Although it’s good to see that Priscilla’s okay.”

“Who?”

“Mountain Spring. It just seems odd that no one is fazed by the fact that your Lord thinks eating people is fine.”

Tigerlily’s face turned an eerie calm and her voice became quiet and smooth. “He’s wonderful. He tells us stories, gives us important life lessons and provides us with food and shelter. He’s not only the leader of us but the rightful leader of the world. He’s currently writing a manifesto that will bring harmony to all nations.”

“Harmony being terrorizing small communities?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she was flippant. “He inspires us everyday to rebuild things better than the way we were given them.”

We walked up the road as I took in the various tributes to Darren along the way. His initials were carved out in trees and someone had tried to position rocks on the ground in the shape of his face.

“How do you know he’s not just using you?” I said.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“You know how people are given power and abuse it? There are some people who have no real interest in helping others.” I let my voice trail off. “You know what, it’ll probably be different for him. As long as he doesn’t promise to bring in a chosen baby or something.”

“He’s wants one!” she snapped. “He just needs to find the right mate and he will bear a Messiah.”

We were almost at the house now.

“So is this mate application still open for interviews or has he picked his candidate?”

Tigerlily grabbed the door and went to open it. “It’s going to be me. He just needs some convincing.”

“Good,” I said. “Because that’d just be embarrassing for him if he asked me.”

She pushed her way in ahead of me and let the door slam in my face.

Later that night dinner was served, Alfredo on pasta with meatballs, by a tense staff. I didn’t ask where the meatballs came from. I knew enough about this guy to know that one shouldn’t ask for fear of being nauseatingly disturbed. Meanwhile, someone served Darren his meal in the dining room while the rest of us stood at attention, our backs to the walls.

“What the hell is this!” he yelled. “This isn’t marinara! Who serves spaghetti and meatballs with Alfredo sauce? Are we all just going to live like animals from here on out?”

We were all awkwardly silent. I stared at the floor, but I knew everyone else stared at me.

“It doesn’t even look like Alfredo sauce. It looks like you warmed over whatever Antigone threw up before we gave her away!” He looked at us all. “I demand to know who’s responsible.”

Everyone stared at me, so I figured I’d spare us all the building awkwardness and stepped forward.

“That would be me,” I said. “I brought you this.”

“Why would you bring this to me?” he asked. “I have a mind that has carefully been honed and sharpened for a greater existence, and you give me swill only good for rustic hill people to sup on.”

“It was a mistake,” I said. Someone jabbed me in the side and muttered something unintelligible. “Won’t happen again.”

The person on the other side of me jabbed me on the other side and muttered something just as unintelligible. Meanwhile, Darren stared at me with steely eyes.

“But what about right now?” he asked. “What do I do with this?”

“Perhaps you’d like to wait for me to whip up something in the kitchen,” I said.

There was a collective groan from everyone in the room.

“I don’t know the rules here,” I muttered.

“You’re a silly girl, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “It’s tough times, and I didn’t ask to be here.”

There was a gasp that went up. Everyone stared at me with eyes wide in horror.

“Do you not want to be here?” he asked. “Is there somewhere better for you to go?”

“No,” I said. “This is fine for now. I’m not complaining.”

His nostrils flared, and all I wanted was to appease him so I wouldn’t die in some horrible way.

“For now?” he asked. “
For now?
” He stood, paced and then waved his arms around. “This is all there is forever. You are standing on the edge of evolution, and you treat it like the waiting room for some free clinic on the bad side of town. You’re a silly girl, and you have no allegiances to anything, which makes you half-dead already.” He pointed to his dinner in front of him. “I am going into the other room to work on my manifesto. When I come back, I need to have a better dinner in front of me, not this this peasant shit.”

He exited the room. The minute he was gone, the rest of his disciples fell over themselves to get the offending bowl out of the room. Starshine marched up into my face.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “He’s very angry with you, which means he’s going to punish you.”

Tigerlily started to cry, high-pitched sobs that the others tried to quiet by putting their hands over her face.

“It was her fault! He’s going to come after me, but it was all her fault! She wants us to fail! She wants us to fail! Probably works for Batman!”

“Who is this Batman? Can anyone answer that?” I shook my head at Tatiana. “We couldn’t find anything. I asked her what she thought and she just talked about working at the Circle K.”

“She doesn’t like talking about that. Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t—”

“She’s a crazy bitch!” Tigerlily yelled. “Throw her out! She’s garbage! She’s going to mess everything up!”

“Get her out of here!” Tatiana yelled with such force it startled everyone into submission.

She ushered me into another room where I could still hear Tigerlily’s hysterics.

“Listen to me, “Tatiana said. “There’s a lot of BS that goes on here, but if you want to save your life and not turn into a meatball slathered in Alfredo, you play by the rules, you talk the jargon and pretend like your drinking the Kool-Aid. I don’t know when this is all going to end, but at least you’ve got a support system that will protect you. So just follow my lead.”

“I don’t know if you know this, but I saw him kill my boyfriend,” I said. “He ate him. He’s a monster.”

“Yes! We get it! You keep saying that over and over. You lost someone,” she said annoyed. “This is just the world we live in. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice your Judeo-Christian ethics, you’re going to be serving someone who does.”

“So this is where it all ends,” I said.

She shrugged. “Not a lot different from working at Mitchellwide, I’ll tell you that.”

She opened the door for me and made a gesture with her eyes.

“Let’s get this done, lovers!” she sang. ”Let us feed our Lord with the salt of the earth raised in holy unity with the food of the gods.”

As the door closed behind her, the rest of the followers made a unified “oooommmm” sound.

I don’t know what they served Darren, because I was locked in a broom closet, but what I can tell you is that it smelled delicious, which I hated myself for admitting. I knew full well it probably had a face, a name, a family and credit score at one time or the other.

He ate in silence and no one spoke for the duration, even when he got up to leave. I heard the chair scrape against the floor and the door shut. Then I heard dishes being cleared and footsteps approach the closet. I fully expected to see Tatiana, but instead it was one of the gunmen who’d brought me to the house in the first place.

“What’s happening—” I tried to speak, but instead I was just grabbed roughly and pushed into Darren’s presence.

We were in his library—and by library I mean a room that still had remnants of its former tenants. The wallpaper had baseballs and bats on it, there was a giant poster tacked up on the ceiling of a model in a bikini. I must have kept staring up at it because Darren cleared his throat at one point.

“It’s too high for anyone to get down,” he said. “You learn to ignore it.”

I nodded.

He sat at a desk, one that was small and clearly not made for adults. His chair was short and didn’t give him the authority he probably felt he should have, but I knew it was best not to bring it up.

“I took you in as a favor,” he said. “I believe in favors. I believe that in what you put in the universe comes back to you.”

I nodded.

“I also knew a woman’s loyalty and devotion is just as easily managed as a dog’s, but you have to acquire the right woman for that job. Your master assured me that you are easy to please and rarely put up a fight, so I was happy to take you in.”

“Damn you, Robert,” I muttered under my breath.

“Pardon?”

I furiously shook my head.

“I realize you are unfamiliar with the protocol that I lead my commune, so I will not dole out my usual punishment,” he said.

I nodded.

“But I will make sure you remember your mistakes,” he said.

He snapped his fingers, and his two gunmen grabbed and ushered me out of the room. The rest of the house watched as I was escorted out of the house and outside into the van.

“Guys,” I said. “Where are we going?”

They didn’t answer me, but they did drive me to a nearby park. There was still play equipment out, although badly damaged and hardly usable. From there, they dragged me to a tetherball pole, placed a collar and leash around my neck and tied me there.

“Wait, guys!” I said as I strained against the leash. “You can’t just leave me out here!”

Both gunmen walked away, but one of them stopped and watched me for a few moments. I reached out toward him.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I said. “I could just spend the night in the van. It’d be our little secret.”

The gunman stared at me, but was slowly following his coworker to the van. They got in, slammed the door and drove away. As if on cue, almost as if God wanted to reassure how much He hated mankind and this story being told, a storm of rain began to fall, light at first, then progressively heavier. It was miserable as I stood there cold.

I couldn’t even sit down. When the rain did stop, I became aware that there’d be roving gangs somewhere, just lurking around, waiting to take the middling healthy white girl away with them. I tried to loosen the collar, but it was locked with a heavy padlock, making the strain on my neck unbearable. I thought back to the day of that earthquake. Maybe I could have run, maybe I could have found my family and been a thousand miles away from here.