Tales of the Derry Plague , Anselmo, Ray [fun to read txt] 📗

all of them on the east side of the peninsula, while she was inconveniently on the west side) so she’d have them when her phone died. She was sure she could dig up a paper road map somewhere.

Soon enough, the dryer was done. She unloaded the fire suit, threw the second washload into the dryer, stripped her bed and put the sheets and accompaniments in the washer, started both machines, dressed in the fire suit, grabbed the rake and the lighter fluid and drove over to the beach to check on the cremation site.

She was surprised to find some embers still glowing, and the storage section of the truck had collapsed. The smell was … she didn’t have a word for it, and hoped to never find one. She gritted her teeth and poked through the carnage a little, but everything – and everyone – seemed to have completely burned or melted. She sprayed a little charcoal lighter around anyway and stirred up the ashes and detritus, just for caution’s sake.

One of those fold-up aluminum beach chairs was sitting abandoned about fifty feet away, and she went and sat in it, staring at the pyre. All her friends in Sayler Beach were in there, bodies burned to husks. All her customers from the store. All her neighbors. She was all cried out from the mourning of the previous five days, but grief didn’t require tears. She shook her head and sighed and shrugged. What else could she do?

She needed someone to talk to, she knew that. There wasn’t anyone. Maybe there wouldn’t be anyone ever again.

She let herself slump in the chair as the pyre softly crackled and shifted. This was hopeless. She was alone, isolated, and so inadequate to the task of surviving in an empty world. She might as well throw herself in the ocean and be done with it, or slit her wrists. Let it all go, stop beating her brains out about it. What was the point of life when no one else was living?

No.

NO!

No, she’d been through this kind of depression before, too many times to count. Each time, she’d weighed the costs and benefits and had found it was worth it to keep on going. Why would this time be any different? If she’d made it, she was sure others had too. It was just a matter of finding them, and of staying alive and sane until she did. She could do this. It was the ultimate, the foundational Thing She Could Do, and she had plenty of practice.

She stood, folded up the chair and took it with her back to the parking lot. It might come in handy, and it wasn’t doing anyone any good just sitting there waiting for seagulls to crap on it. (The gulls, she noticed, were avoiding the burned-out truck and its cargo. Hopefully they’d keep avoiding it.) She shoved it in the trunk and drove home. Tasks 1. and 5. accomplished, tasks 2. and 4a. begun – not bad for a Saturday morning.

“You can do it,” she told herself as she pulled up to the curb at the Matchicks’. “You are stronger and smarter than the depression. You are stronger and smarter than almost anything you’ll have to face. You are still here, you have all your needs met, and you will prevail. Your record for getting through bad days is still 100%. Just keep it up.”

Kelly smiled. She’d found someone to talk to. Even if it was just herself.

6

TALK

Ironic. Kelly had talked to herself a lot, ever since childhood. Mom used to get all over her case for it (though frankly, there weren’t too many things Mom didn’t get all over her case for). “People will think you’re crazy,” she scolded. To be fair, some people did think she was nuts, so Mom wasn’t wrong. Those people weren’t necessarily wrong either.

But now, surrounded by an unpopulated town in the midst of what might be an unpopulated county (state? country? world?!), talking to herself – especially pep-talking herself – might be just the thing to keep her sane. “You go, guuuuurl!” she said out loud as she entered the Matchicks’ house, then laughed. Her first laugh in almost two weeks. It might be silly, but it felt good. She’d have to make a point to laugh, to chop through the despondency inherent in her current position.

She remembered reading about a practice at funerals in New Orleans – the “Second Line.” You went up to the coffin, sad for the loss of your friend or family member. But then you turned away and danced back down the aisle, celebrating their life and that you were still living. That’s what she needed to do, to balance the grief – Second Line the heck out of the situation. Don’t passively deal with it a la Marie Kondo, asking if this or that sparked joy. Make it spark joy! Beat it until the joy came pouring out.

Hm. Maybe do it cautiously, selectively. She didn’t need a serious manic episode any more than she needed a depressive one.

She took a deep breath. “Okay. what next?” she asked, looking over the kitchen and the produce she’d left on the counter. “What’s … hmmm … what’s the most urgent?”

That was a toughie when you had no idea what would happen next. But she could do triage on the assumption that tomorrow would be much like today, and likewise the day after and the one after that. She brought out the Things I Can Do list and went through it, marking it up as needed:

1. Check the pyre – relight if necessary. *

2. Analyze needs for future – food, clothing, shelter, transportation, MEDICINE, personal defense.

Food – see 4a.

Water – rain barrels? B4 rain, use bottled?

Clothing – not a concern. Shelter – not a concern

Transport – car, siphon/drain other cars, find a