Read Online How I Spent the Apocalypse by Selina Rosen - Free Book Online Page A

of my outside clothes and there’s Lucy, still dressed for the outside, and I had to tell her, “You’ll get warm quicker if you take off your coat and all the shirts and extra socks you’re wearing.” She started peeling off layers, and I didn’t even ask her why she was still following me around even though the boys were there to pester all piss out of. I decided it was like some take on Stockholm Syndrome and tried to just ignore her. “You should strip by the stove.”
    We warmed up by the fire, and then I went to check the computer. As you might have guessed Lucy had followed me. I had a text message. At first I thought it was from the mayor of Rudy asking for my help, and I damn near deleted it. Then I saw the “junior” after the name and knew it was his son.
    Why did I damn near delete it? Because the mayor of Rudy had never done anything but make fun of me and glare at me like he thought if I looked at small children they’d wind up wall-eyed or hump-backed. Hell, once he’d even called the cops and tried to have me hauled in because he said I threatened him. All I did was tell him if he wasn’t ready he was going to die with everyone else, and I wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t insist on telling me that I was crazy. If that old son of a bitch wasn’t dead, he should be, and I sure wasn’t going to do anything to save him.
    But it was his son who was asking for my help, which meant the old son of a bitch was probably dead, which served him right. The boy wasn’t his father, thought, any more than my boys are me, so I took a deep breath and read his message.
     
Katy,
Thirty-four of us have made it through the storm last night. I am trying to get them to work together, and they are trying, but none of us really knows what to do. Can you help us?
 
Please,
Roy Cockrun JR.
     
    A guy like this kid’s dad should have a name like Cockrun. Though Running Cock would have suited him better, but then he wasn’t an Indian.
    I was hoping the kid was a nice guy who didn’t deserve the name.
    I guessed he had a satellite phone. Everything else would have likely been useless already.
    Where are you now? I asked and was surprised when he answered right away.
    We are in the old Baptist church. It didn’t take much damage.
    It was an old rock building, not too big, with a full basement. Less than a hundred feet from a big hill—that would have protected it. My mind worked quickly.
    Send five people to gather up all the blankets, clothes, and mattresses you can. Doesn’t matter if they are wet now; they’ll dry. Send five to gather all the food you can. Everyone should dress in layers and take turns being inside. Find a wood stove. There was one in the general store. Get it. Send ten people to start gathering wood. Get all the wood you can gather—pieces of houses and fences—anything that will burn. Drag everything up close. Worry about cutting it later. Stack the stuff that will go in a stove now in one pile and the long stuff in another. Get them started, but you stay here. I’m not done yet.
    “What’s going on?” Lucy asked at my back.
    “Thirty-four people are holed up in Rudy; I’m trying to get them lined out.”
    Roy ’s message came back, Done.
    Josh Wintery had all those blue plastic barrels for sale. He got them from the baby food plant and all they had in them was banana purée. Send five people to collect as many as they can find. Do you still have water?
    Yes, in the tower, but I don’t know for how long it’s running out of broken lines everywhere.
    Have your barrel brigade find some hoses and hook them up somewhere. Put the barrels in the basement and fill them with water. Did the town ever win their bid to get on natural gas?
    No.
    I remembered the church had a huge propane tank.
    Turn the gas heater on in the church and start warming it up now. Send someone out and tell them to turn off all the tanks they can find before anything has a chance to make a spark and blow one up.