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

to by the privet bush, she cleaned herself up and buried the result. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do. She really needed to dig a deep hole and build a privy over it, but … well, what did she know about carpentry? You hit a nail, it went into the wood, you hoped it stayed there. She didn’t think that would be enough to do it right.

Returning to the house, she slumped into a chair at the dining room table. Wow, she was really worn out. She knew she needed to eat, to hydrate, to take something for the pain, but moving was an effort. What had happened to her?

Boy, was that a dumb question. The end of the world as she knew it had happened to her. She’d cremated an entire town’s population. She’d prepared months worth of food. She’d siphoned entire tanks of gasoline. She’d established dominance over several dogs and one raccoon. She’d moved a dozen cars off the highway. She’d run from hither to yon for twelve straight days, doing things she never thought she’d have to. Tired? She was fortunate to have not broken down entirely!

“I need a day off,” she whispered as if it was a revelation.

Well, why didn’t she take one? Other than eating and medicating, she’d taken care of everything remotely urgent. She had food to last her at least until spring, and that wasn’t counting all the non-perishables at the store. The Accent’s gas tank was over half-full, and she had enough fuel to top it off and fill it at least once more even if she didn’t swipe another drop. Everything in the store that needed to be thrown out had been. She had everything else she needed for the moment. And besides, it was Saturday. Ideally, she’d be sitting with a bowl of cereal watching cartoons.

In the absence of cartoons, she settled for the cereal. She didn’t have a jug of milk in the now-empty (and now-unpowered) fridge, but she did have a can of condensed milk in the cupboard, and that, some dried orange slices and Honey Bunches of Oats would do for a balanced breakfast. She also put away a pint of water, two Advil and the lithium she’d forgotten last night. And when she was done eating, she rubbed aloe vera gel into the pinker spots on her skin. Ah, that was better.

So what to do with her day off?

After almost two weeks of nearly non-stop and largely necessary activity, she wasn’t sure how she should relax. Not that relaxing was her area of expertise anyway – ADHD, like PMS, social phobias and eating disorders, was a “comorbid condition” (delightfully grim phrase) with bipolar disorder, and she was far more comfortable doing something than not. So was there something relaxing she could occupy herself with, letting herself recharge for whatever dropped on her next?

“What she usually did” was her first thought, until she realized that would be impractical. Topping that list was movie watching, but the only way she could manage that was to take a video player up to the Zen farm and fire up the generator or hook it up to a car battery. Video games were out; so was anything that would’ve been online. She wasn’t a heavy reader, and the Matchicks’ book collection leaned heavily toward computer programming languages …

… but there was one book she’d planned to read – LaSheba’s journal. And she’d thought about starting one of her own. And there were always lists she could make – she’d been thinking about one of long-term survival projects. All of which she could do sitting down or lying down.

“Problem solved,” she sang as she gathered up what she needed: LaSheba’s diary, the ubiquitous yellow legal pad, a blank book from the office, two pens, a bag of dehydrated cream cheese disks, a bag of Doritos and two bottles of water. She piled them all on the coffee table in the living room, opened the blinds for sunshine, sat on the couch, leaned against one arm with her legs stretched out, and took a couple to deep breaths, consciously untensing her muscles.

One she felt sufficiently chill, she picked up a pen and the pad:

Possible long-term activities:

Move that semi off the highway

Forklift in town?

Learn how to use heavy equipment?

Worst-case: big pickup with grille guard for shoving

Build privy or something similar

How deep to dig?

How to build shack (?) over it?

House to house hunt/catalogue items

How detailed?

Check vegetable gardens?

Draw map?

Move canned/dry goods to store or home?

Harvest crops at Holy Green

Sept/Oct? What crops are growing there?

Plant crops at Holy Green

Mar/Apr?

Where to find seeds?

Rain barrels – what to use? Where to find?

Find horse & learn to ride

Equipment up at ranch to north

Any horses still hanging around there?

Explore E. Marin (after semi moved – drive there)

What to look for besides people?

Learn how to handle gun

Pistol? Rifle?

Search for them during house to house?

That was a substantial list. The most important items seemed to be the first two – shoving the big rig aside would open up possibilities, and having a workable toilet at home would just save a lot of headache. She put stars by those two. Unless something more urgent came up, she’d begin addressing those over the next week – she could start tomorrow or Monday, depending on how long she decided this vacation would last.

She set the pad aside and picked up the blank book next. She’d journaled before, but usually it only lasted for a few months. Then she’d miss some days, get back to it for one, miss some more, really buckle down for a week, miss a while, and pretty soon it was two months without an entry and she wondered why she’d bothered in the first place. She rarely looked back at