The No Where Apocalypse (Book 2): Surviving No Where (13 page)

I shouldn’t say nothing ever passed our place. However, three people hardly count as a threat.

A few weeks after our encounter with Clyde and his gang, a woman and a small child passed, heading north towards Covington. Daisy and Marge ran after them, imploring the pair to stay with us, at least for
 
a few days. I told them later their plan, while admirable, was plain stupid. We couldn’t afford the luxury of two non-producing strangers. Thankfully, the woman said she had relation they were heading to, north of Covington.

About a month after that first snow, a single man passed our driveway. He paused, studying the house; no doubt noticing the smoke rising from the chimney. When he saw me stand in the living room and cock the 30-30, he left without even so much as a wave.
 

Another few months later and winter took hold in full force. It was similar to my first winter alone. Either snow fell, or the wind howled, or there were clear blue skies and the temperature never bothered to push the zero degree mark on Lettie’s outdoor thermometer.

As best as we could tell a good three feet of snow covered most of the scene. In places where the wind collected it, snow stacked up as high as ten feet. The road was impassable. Even on foot, no one could make their way through.

Still we remained vigilant.

Violet began to show by midwinter. Her mother and Daisy noticed the first bump back with the early snows. Within a month, Lettie stopped each time the pair passed one another, smiling and patting the new life growing inside the 15-year-old…or was still 14, Daisy seemed to be mixed up and refer to her as both. By the time another month passed, she became uncomfortable — as did we all.

“I’ve never been so fat,” Violet bemoaned one afternoon, checking her progress sideways in a mirror. “Did you always get fat, Daisy?”

It wasn’t a new question, so Daisy was ready…again.

“You’re not fat,” she sighed, letting a smile warm where her words no longer could. “You’re healthy. Completely healthy and normal for someone your size that’s having a baby.”

 
Violet glanced at her skeptically. “You always say that,” the teen replied, going back to staring at her growing mid-section. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Holy crap,” Lettie shouted, entering the warm living room. “Who let the hippo in?”

Daisy’s eyes and mouth shot opened as Violet spun towards Lettie. Before she could counter, the old woman began to laugh.

“Well, that’s what you want to hear, ain’t it?” Lettie questioned. “You want someone to tell you how big you are. Just so you can feel sorry for yourself.”

Violet shook away the words empathetically. “No, that’s not what I want to hear at all. I was just asking—”

Lettie took her hand and rubbed it tenderly. “You look fine, darling. Even your thin face has filled out a little.” She let go of the teen and grinned at Daisy and me.
 

“You should have seen my sister when she was pregnant with her third child. Or maybe it was her fourth.” Lettie raised a hand to her chin and stroked absentmindedly. “Doesn’t matter. The point is Virginia was the size of a water buffalo by the time Ralphine arrived. And she never lost an ounce of that weight before she died.”

I didn’t know what was more shocking in the old bird’s story: That her sister had died, or that she had a niece named Ralphine.. I mean, who would ever do that to a baby?

“I think I like Daisy’s answer better,” Violet replied, coming by us to sit on the couch.

Lettie laughed once and tossed a hand at her. “Have it your way then. You’re still the same skinny little shit that walked up my driveway more than a year ago. And with your genetics, you probably always will be.”

Watching Daisy stroke Violet’s stomach, I heard her speak. “Has she been active today?”

Violet nodded, stretching her back. “The past couple days actually. I think the vitamins are helping, if that makes any sense. But I still feel bad about the food.”

She had good reason for her remorse; Violet was the only one of us eating three meals a day. And the only one still on full rations.

Year 4 - late winter - WOP

Our food supply ended up horrid. Dizzy and I killed six deer before the cold forced us to give up hunting for the season. The six deer were yearlings, which were terribly small with so little meat to offer.
 

Two of them were actually fawns. Those were the worst. Not because of the quality of their meat. No, they were the best eating. The cold truth was that a fawn lasted two, maybe three meals for the eight of us.

We cleaned our plates well, each and every meal. I used my fingers, or a small hunk of flatbread Lettie crafted. The women used forks and spoons to be sure they got every speck. Libby and Nate simply lifted their plates and used their tongues, as did Dizzy. Marge wasn’t pleased at first, but with each passing meal, she seemed to understand more and more.

Violet wept openly at most meals, seeing her plate heaping with as much food as she could squeeze in, noticing ours were sparse of the same. Words of encouragement from everyone but her little brother did little to slow the tears. Usually it was a hug or a kiss from Libby that helped her. Some nights even those acts of kindness failed.

We ate two meals, a late breakfast and an early supper. Every third or fourth day, as often as we could stand it, all but Violet ate one. Lettie placated the little ones with dry sugarless cookies she made every week. As Violet grew, and remained healthy, we shrank. My stomach growled most days, even after a meal, albeit small. Marge estimated we were taking in an average of 600 to 800 calories a day. Violet, she said, was getting close to 1,500. And even though she was well fed, the only thing that grew on the girl was her midsection.

We became lethargic, our sense dulled from starvation. Sure, we were eating, but only about half the amount we needed to stay alive. We had to do something, even if it meant an act of desperation.

“I can’t eat,” Violet stated one chilly evening. This had become commonplace.

“Can’t?” I asked, tipping an eye her way. “Or won’t?”

She set down her fork demurely. “I won’t. If you won’t eat, all of you, then I won’t.”

Daisy chased to her side. “Come now, dear.” She lifted a forkful of food to her lips. “It won’t do you or that little girl inside of you any good if you don’t eat.”

How the women of the house had decided Violet’s baby was a girl was beyond my comprehension. It actually gave Dizzy and I a good talking point some days. The crazy antics of the female persuasion.

“Eat your food, Violet,” I groused, picking at a plate only a quarter full. “This is the way it is. And we all agree on that.”

“Well I sure don’t,” Nate argued. “I can’t figure out why she gets all the food and we get to starve. That just don’t make no sense.”

Marge’s chair scraped on the floor as she turned to her son. “Now, Nathan. We’ve been over this many times.”

“And it sucks,” he protested, stealing a bean from his mother’s plate.

“It’s the way it is for now,” Marge insisted, rubbing his mop of growing hair. “Things will get better this spring.”

“By spring you’ll all be dead,” Violet gasped, covering her face with her hands, sobbing harder. “And if none of you are alive I don’t want to be either.”

As was the usual ending for most meals, the girl pushed away from the table and dashed for the stairs and the refuge of her room. And as always, Daisy grabbed the teen’s plate and chased after her. Marge broke into tears and left the room. Dizzy pushed away from the table and went after her with a sorrow filled face.

Later that night, the wind blew so hard that it drifted over the only door leading outside.

All we needed now was for someone to get sick. Then the end would come for all of us…mercifully.

Year 4 - early spring - WOP

The first trouble came with a slight sniffle. Within a day a cough developed, followed by sneezing and an all-out runny nose. Lettie had a cold.

Alone I worried that this was the beginning of the end. That was how it would happen, I surmised. We’d all die in bed sometime. Defeated by something that didn’t slow down most healthy people. Unfortunately, we were anything but healthy.

Daisy followed with the same symptoms, with Nate bringing up the rear. We quarantined more than a third of our group due to the common cold. Worry for me became panic. Something had to be done.

We needed fever reducers: aspirin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofen. Canned fruit wouldn’t hurt, Marge added one afternoon. “I think I can make it to Covington,” I said to what remained of my group, minus Libby. No one reacted. “I can take as many 12-gauge shells as I can carry and see if they have anything left to trade for.”

Violet shook her head wildly. “Covington’s too dangerous,” she insisted. “You need to try Amasa. It’ll be safer.”

However, Amasa had two strikes against it already. First, it was twice as far as Covington. In three feet of snow that could mean the difference between making it or not. Second, travelers had warned us by the dozens that Amasa was a ghost town, with nothing but empty homes and corpses. “It has to be Covington,” I insisted. Even Violet’s tear-filled eyes couldn’t change my mind on that.

“And what if they don’t want to trade for shotgun shells?” Marge asked. “What if they just laugh at you and send you back? What good will that trip accomplish? I say you stay, Bob. We’ll get through this somehow.”

All she needed to add were the words, ‘By God’s Grace,’ and I would have lost it on her. But she didn’t and neither did I.

“I’ve still got some extra 45 shells,” I added. “I could take those. We know they have that caliber of weapon up there.”

Dizzy displayed his reluctance with the plan with a scowl. “You’re talking about carrying a lot of weight there. You’re not as healthy as you were last fall, you know.”

He was right, but also wrong. “We need this trade,” I continued, irritation filling my words. “We got to have this trade, but it can’t be a wasted trip. You’re all right on that.”

“I know what Matt Weston wants.” The extra voice startled us all. I looked up to see Daisy standing in the stairway, wiping her nose with a Kleenex. Her expression, tight-lipped and sad-eyed, told me she really knew. But I didn’t think I was going to like what it was. Not one bit.

She took a spot next to me and reached for my hand. Squeezing it tighter than usual, she inhaled deeply.

“Brendan was about one,” she began in a quiet tone, just over a whisper. “A man 10 years older than me took an interest in me. Made me feel special, not so alone.

“He was quite a talker, had a way of making everything sound so sweet and nice. Never pushed himself on me, nor made me feel cheap or used up. I loved the attention.”

She lifted her head and allowed her tired eyes to float amongst the group. “I gave in one night. Just one night. No big deal, right? We’d been seeing one another for three or four months by that point. He even told me he loved me; he said he loved Brendan too. I thought I loved him as well.”

Pausing, I noticed the pain on her face. “Just me being stupid me. Like some well-to-do young guy really felt that way. Well, I turned up pregnant and he told me it’s over. I pushed back; told him I was going to go to the County people, force him to own up to what he’d done.

“A few nights later a woman pays me a visit. Big diamond on her finger, she tells me Matt Weston is her fiancé. I’d better leave him alone, she claimed. Otherwise she was gonna tear me apart, do things to me I’d never dreamt were possible.”

I shuddered at the familiar words. Susan Weston hadn’t changed a bit in five years.

“Matt came and visited me and Libby once, when we were living in some dump with a girlfriend. Played with her a little, said he was sorry how things turned out, and gave me a couple hundred dollars. I was so desperate for the cash that I kept it. But that money made me feel so cheap, so trashy. Just like the whore his woman said I was.”

We sat silent for a few moments, each digesting Daisy’s tale. For all appearances, she was a confident, head held high young mother. Yet her demons still nipped at that outward shell.

“You are anything but,” Lettie announced from the doorway, her isolation also ended. “You are a decent human being and you need to always remember that.”

I saw Marge reach for Daisy’s shaking hands. “And you’re a good friend, Daisy. To all of us.”

Trying to smile through tears, Daisy looked at me. “Matt Weston would trade anything for five minutes with his daughter. Can’t say Susan will be too thrilled. But I really believe it will soften him up if everything else fails.”

My eyes glanced around our group. “So that means me, and Daisy, and Libby need to make the trek to Covington. Does that bother anyone else here?”

Dizzy and Marge nodded, Lettie remained stone-faced.

“Desperate times,” Lettie crowed. “Desperate times.”

Yes they were. The old gal was certainly dead on about that.

Year 4 - early spring - WOP

We needed two days of planning for our seven-mile excursion. Nothing about this trip was taken lightly. Everyone had a say; and all said their piece.

“No, please, no.” For the fourth time in less than an hour, Violet stood before me. Each time she begged me not to take what she deemed to be an unnecessary risk. Each time I turned away, ignoring her pleas.

“If something happens to Daisy, or God forbid Libby, I don’t know what I’d do,” she continued on her last effort.
Funny how she left me out
, I thought.

“Please, Bob, please. There has to be another way.”

I’d had enough whining for one day. “We need simple medicine, Violet,” I scolded. “We don’t have the luxury of sitting back on our hands right now. We can’t.”

“Maybe I should go,” she added, rushing her words, “since everyone seems so worried about me. I should be the one going.”

Turning briskly, I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Absolutely not. Never!”

Somehow she thought tears would help,
fat chance, young lady.

Watching her stomp away, I knew I hadn’t heard the last from the teen. But my mind was already set.