How to Find Peace at the End of the World (5 page)

I put grocery shopping aside for a while. I pick out a mini-fridge and a mini-freezer and load them up and wheel them outside on the flatbed car. I de-box them outside and toss the boxes aside. I plug in the two tiny appliances and restart the generator. I can barely tell but they boxes shudder to life under my hands. I open the doors and the little lights come on. They hum to life. Yes. Then I turn off the generator. I plug the fridges into the outlets marked alt and get off the truck bed. I start he car and go back and check on the fridges. They’re on and humming again. I take the bungee cord I’d found in Wally world and lash the fridges down tight as I can. Then I jam the other stuff against them so they won’t shift around too much. Wait a second, what am I doing? That’s going to start a fire or something. I stand there and consider for a few moments how I’m going to mount the boxes. Then I head back inside. I return with all sorts of hardware, brackets and pieces of lumber, and power tools too. I’ve always been sort of handy with tools and in no time I have a stand that will keep the vents on the boxes clear so they can hum along while I drive.
This modification done, I get back to the more important task: I walk through the food aisles looking for things that will last. I stop by the produce section, all the rows and rows of bright orbs stacked atop one another. In a few weeks they won’t be anything more than pools of mold. I grab a few bags of apples and oranges. Bananas. Kiwis. No pineapples. Hate pineapples. Unopened cases of berries. Carrots. Celery, even the celery will no longer be of this supermarket world (probably should stock up on peanut butter, too). All the things I might not have an easy way to get very soon. I think I need more carts. I get two more and lash them to the first with belts from the clothing section.
Bread. Need some bread. What lasts the best? Croissants? Or those radioactive white, calcium enriched rolls you can get in the bagged bread aisle? I go with a mix of all of them, not really knowing what I’ll get sick of.
The freezer aisle stumps me. Most of the stuff is still frozen solid. Heck, the doors haven’t even been opened in hours. I won’t be able to handle very much, of course. The freezer is a luxury but it aint all that large.

I wonder if the Beast’s bank of four regular sized car batteries that my boss had one day popped the hood to proudly show me, can handle the draw from two mini appliances. Look at me. Planning like this thing is going to be long term. Hours hence, when I get to Dallas I’ll be sitting down to a hot meal I bet. I shake the thought away.
I swing towards the back of the store to the drinks section. I’d already loaded up on bottled water the day before. I eye the racks of “fresh squeezed” orange and apple juice in their stay fresh containers. I grab a couple of those, too.
I pass over all the other aisles, all the various stuffs of conspicuous consumption and I find, even in the state of puzzlement and...remorse...that I’m drawn to these little baubles. I remember telling Amy my need for a new blender very recently. I remember spending a now seemingly embarrassing fifteen minutes talking over the phone about it, actually. A blender. Now my eyes caress it before I have a chance to scoff and shake my head. I begin walking through the rest of the store, my eyes flowing past all of the errata, all of the flotsam of human civilization, for something I might need. I have to laugh, actually, running against all that social conditioning. New microwave. Bean bag chair. Papa-san. Fishing poles. Golf clubs. All things I had ear marked in my other life as needs. All things that now cause another reflexive twinge. All here for the taking. You’d wanted it, right? No, not really. I push the cart on. In the automotive section I grab a few more batteries before I realize I have no ideas whether the ones I have are even sufficient for the Beast. I leave my cart and walk outside, pop the hood, take note of the batteries. Back inside I grab four of them and twelve cans of Fix-a-flat while I’m at it.
I hop over the counter of the pharmacy. Some antibiotics that I know about, some pain killers, some modafinil, some bandages. I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing so I take some OTC stuff too. I swing by the center back section and grab some boots and rain slicks. I pass the guns. Guns. I’ve always liked guns. It’s just that I’ve always also been kind of intimidated by them. I grab a couple of shotguns, because I hear shooting them is fun, and since I can’t find the key to the handgun counter, I take one of the batteries and throw it at the case from afar. I retrieve the battery, none the worse for wear and take a few revolvers and handguns and boxes of ammunition accordingly.
With these in hand I go back out of the store. I can feel the doubts and the raw emotions of the morning fading. I feel that hopelessness and fatalism evaporate as I walk out into the unnaturally bright winter morning. Instead, in my core I feel the sogginess replaced by a steel resolve and an itch to get these things in my hands loaded and shooting. I park the carts beside the Beast and don’t even bother loading the contents. Instead, I sit on the tailgate of the truck and read the little gun care, loading and shooting guide sponsored by the NRA that I had also grabbed. Quickly bored, I toss it aside and simply take the box of nine mil ammo and begin loading the cartridge of one of the handguns. A few of the rounds fall out before I realize I am loading the shells into the wrong caliber gun. I retrieve the book and read a few more passages. Confidence bolstered again I pick up the right caliber handgun and begin loading the nine mil shells. I put the cartridge into the handle and try to slap it in to the gun like I’ve seen in so many movies and TV shows but it falls back out into my lap before I can do it. I grab the cartridge again and ease it into the gun. Who knew being a badass was in actuality so complicated?
I raise the gun and extend my arm and take aim at the windshield of the Dodge Charger in the next parking aisle over. I center an imaginary dot in the center of the windshield in the groove of the gun’s sights and pull the trigger. Click. I put the gun down carefully and pick the book back up and examine it a bit more. Then I pick the gun up again and attempt to cock it. Attempt one is limp and the top part of the gun snaps back and nips the tip of my finger. Oww. I go slow with attempt two, wary of shooting the tip of my foot off. I stop in the middle of attempt two realizing that remaining seated Indian style on the back of a pickup truck while cocking a loaded gun is probably grounds for losing your bad-ass license or something, in addition to being a good way to shoot your own balls off. I stand up and give it another go and this time the gun cocks successfully. I take aim at the Charger’s windshield again and pull the trigger.
Woo. I am not prepared. There’s a lot more kick on the gun than I had suspected and I miss the top of the car altogether. Downwind, at the edge of the parking lot, the side of the clock gable of a bank building shatters into a million pieces. I cock the gun again and take aim for the center of the Charger’s window. I pull the trigger and the gun snaps back again and it’s as if things go in slow motion: the car window seems to spiderweb with veins over its surface and a depression turns into a black hole, the drawn representation of a singularity as the entire surface collapses into tiny shards. I woop and holler until my throat is hoarse. I take the gun back up and empty the clip into the cars in the parking lot. Twelve more shots and half the cars in the lot have smashed windows and the car alarms are going again. Crap.

But worth it. Easily.

I take some shells and load up the shotgun next. I make sure to rest the stock against my shoulder and pull the trigger. I almost lose my balance and go flying backwards. I don’t hit a damn thing, that’s for sure. I decide that leaning forward while I aim down the gun is a better bet and it is. I and spend a good hour peppering the hoods of the alarm blaring cars from a distance until they shut off. The Ram is the toughest, and by my count takes fifteen shots before it’ll shut up.

I make sure everything is unloaded before I wrap it all up in a canvas bag from the store. I put it all in the small seats at the back of the Beast’s cab. Before leaving to go back into the store I double back. I take two revolvers out of canvas bag and load them up again. I stow one away in the driver side door pocket of the Beast and I tuck the other into the waistband of my pants, making sure the safety is on before I do. Feeling better I head back inside to finish up.
11:30 AM. I’m all packed up and ready to hit the road. I’ve vowed to myself that I won’t let some misplaced sense of attachment keep me to any particular place or thing. Well, that is, of course, except for Amy. To get to Dallas and to get back to my fiancée, that’s my only goal now.
I had found the Beast actually had interior accommodations for plugs, well, except for the ground plug, so I went back into Wally world and got a pair of wire clippers. Then I swung back around and picked up a little college dorm room microwave and snipped the ground off. Then I hooked the microwave up to the interior outlet and turned the engine over. I’d said a little prayer before, of course. The Beast started, no problem. The microwave did not spark into flames. I patted it where it rested: for all the frozen items I’d had stocked in my minis: Hotpockets and Bagel Bites galore. I have resolved, of course, not to use it until I am stopped and the other appliances are unplugged, of course, lest I become a walking irradiator.
So, I’m back on the road again. I take the overpass bridge to the other side of the freeway and merge. Less than half a mile down the road I come upon my first major obstacle. An overturned eighteen wheeler, of course. The trailer has smashed into the side of the HOV lane and lays in two pieces like a broken egg, ripped cardboard boxes and smashed washers or dryers lay across the highway. I would actually have had a little room had the cars following the tractor trailer also crashed into it and come to a rest. Naturally, they were funneled down into the side of the highway farthest from the concrete barriers and created a little wall against the concrete barriers on the other side of the freeway. I back track and decide to begin taking the feeder roads to avoid situations like that, and to be able to make use of both the straight-thrus and the exits and bridges and underpasses in case there is a snag on either side. I get on and make good time, screaming down the feeders at eighty miles an hour. I probably get in a good six miles, taking alternately the feeder roads and the bridge intersections. Then the construction starts.
Morning rush hour. 7:35, yesterday. Construction on the 45, 610 intersection has funneled traffic into three lanes. The other lanes are stripped of their concrete covering, just a mush of mud and a tangle of sharp rebar. The feeders are non-existent and the ramps onto 610 are equally clogged, as is 610. The cars are jammed up against each other, as if a thousand brakes were released all at once and all the cars idled into each other, which is more and more likely what happened, as much as it bothers me to admit. There were gaps here and there where people put things into park. Who puts their car into park on a busy freeway?

I consider my options for a moment. I could go the six miles back down the highway the way I came from and take the Beltway all the way around until I meet 45 again on the north side of the city. But then, the beltway isn’t going to be much better. Actually, it’s probably going to be like a deathtrap. Well not a death trap, but I have this fuzzy feeling that I’ll be even more likely to encounter clogs on the toll road, especially with both sides strictly bracketed by thick walls of concrete. It doesn’t have the wide open grass median, which I had been counting on, that is, until reaching this intersection where neither feeder nor open grass are available.

I note that the stopped cars look almost like a shaggy multicolored carpet thrown over the freeway, a carpet that while having very long and tough hairs and giant gaps, may very well be navigated by a bug, a Beast, with legs as long and spindly as mine. I back the Beast up, fully intending to make a Big Foot run, like the ones I remember from the Monster Truck nights my dad used to take me to up in Topeka. Far enough away, my eye zooms in one particular area where a car has smashed into another and has created something that seems almost like a ramp.

I idle there for a few more minutes, my mind going through all the various scenarios, worst case, that could happen. In my mind my foot falls solidly on the Beast’s gas pedal. Decades of physics engine based video games have equipped me with just such foresight, or so I like to believe. Well, for one, the Beast could carom off the side of the car and go flying into the mud and protruding rebar of the undressed sections of the freeway. That is possibly the worst outcome. Well, my mind then greets me with another possibility,that I could carom into the protruding rebar after a quarter flip of my car body, the rebar impaling my car through the windshield or the roof of the Beast, leaving me an eternal human skewer. Nice. I begin to wonder if this video game developed capability is a boon or a curse. Although, there is another distinct possibility. And for this I rely on the tens, if not hundreds of Monster truck nights sprinkled throughout my childhood. For this possibility to bear out, I will need suspensions that are just springy enough, for it involves a slight jog to the left right before I leave the ramp, and a glancing of two tires off of a high UPS truck stuck in the mess. Otherwise it is imminent death, either for me or for the Beast, and I’ve already put too much effort into this baby so that if I lost her, it would be a definite emotional set back, to say the least.
I take in a breath and let it go slowly. I focus and my gaze settles in on that ramp, the exact movements that will produce the outcome I want playing through and through my mind. Enough. I ease down and the Beast lurches forward, toward the ramp. My arms twitch, ready to produce the movement slight enough so that the Beast will present the correct wheel to rebound off the UPS truck and hard enough so that it wont go straight off into the pit of mud and spikes.
The impact is much harder than I expect. Like this morning I am knocked forward and again hit my head against the steering wheel in the SAME MOTHERFUCKING PLACE and I jerk the wheel much too hard, as if in reaction to the impact. I jerk the wheel so much in fact that I can feel the top heavy Beast tip and go flying wheels forward towards the pit of mud and rebar and I hunker for the eventual impact and impaling.