“Stop!” The voice came from
the side as we squeezed through the partially ajar auto doorway. “Put up your hands!” It was a woman’s voice, intense, the probable
owner of the missing munitions from the tire store across the road, judging by
her orders. You just don’t give orders
like that unless you have the hardware to back it up.
I dropped the heavy bag of dog food and followed her
instructions. If she had wanted to, she
could have already fired, assuming she was armed.
“Please! I don’t want to
break these,” I heard Lise say.
“Turn this way,” was the next order, ignoring Lise’s request. We were facing a rather young woman, perhaps
in her early thirties, a bit unkempt hair-wise and definitely in need of a cut
but otherwise clean, eyeing us down the barrel of a 12 gauge.
“Hello,” I said, hoping to keep the situation calm, realizing that
it could turn sour at any moment. Just a
little twitch at this range, and both Lise and I would be seriously air
conditioned.
“Who are you?” she questioned, ignoring my greeting.
“We’re survivors,” I answered, allowing the stranger to remain in
control of the scenario for the time being.
“What are you doing here?” she continued. She had been inching closer and was now about
15 feet from us when a scruffy, malnourished animal, with peanut butter breath,
began to growl behind the female.
Momentarily, she took her eyes off of us, in an attempt to eliminate a
threat from behind.
Like that proverbial speeding bullet, Lise was on her. A brief struggle ensued, ending with the
woman lying on her back while Lise stood above, now in charge of the 12 gauge
and the situation. Slim, tail wagging,
came to my side.
“Slim, you have a really good sense of timing. What are you, a police dog?” I asked, patting
his scrawny body. Meanwhile Lise was
busy with her interrogation.
“Now, you’ll kindly answer some questions for me.” Lise was in no mood to tolerate resistance or
nonsense as she addressed the female.
***
“Debbie. I’m Debbie,” she
answered obviously shaken and with trembling voice.
“Besides you, how many others are there?” Lise pushed the gun closer to the lady, as if
its proximity would make the woman more verbal.
I detected hesitation in Debbie’s voice, like when I had had to
question students at school and they were hiding something. “Just me,” she answered. I pulled my gun and approached the prone
woman, aimed the gun at her chest and questioned her again.
“You’re lying. You might be
able to fool her, but you can’t fool me.
Your mouth is saying one thing, but your body’s saying something
else. You’re hiding something
important. What is it?” I asked Lise to move the 12 gauge off to the
side while I kept the handgun trained on our guest reclining on the asphalt.
“I’m telling the truth. I’m
alone,” she repeated. “Why would I
lie?” But the more she spoke, the more
obvious it became that she was not being forthright. Lise, who was amazed at my behavior with this
stranger, began to see where I was coming from as she studied the woman.
We were both concerned at this moment. Who were the others? Men?
Women? Children? How many?
Lise, now with a gentle, kinder manner, typical of the young lady
that I had fallen in love with addressed her former foe. “You have children, don’t you?” Then she continued, “Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you. We are as you are. We are truly survivors. We are not the enemy.”
But, she continued to insist that she was telling the truth. When all else failed, I decided to make one
last attempt to squeeze the truth out of her.
“Lise, we’ll just have to take her back to camp with us. We’ll leave the bike and get a van. There are lots of them sitting around. We picked her up and started toward the
nearest dealership to find a van with a set of working keys. It had been years before that I found out
that even the key to ignition wouldn't work on the new vehicles unless the code in the
key matched that of the ignition system.
Slim wanted to jump up into the back, but he was in no condition to make
it. I lifted him in. Then after having located some duct tape, we
strapped Debbie into the middle passenger seat while Lise sat behind her with
her hand gun aimed at the back of Debbie’s head. We didn't want any trouble in
the vehicle. There was none, until we
made it to the highway. When Debbie suddenly
realized that we were actually going to take her away, she suddenly freaked
out.
“No! I can’t leave. What will they do without me? Please don’t take me away.” Debbie’s eyes began to water as tears
streamed down her cheeks.
“Who are they?” Lise asked quietly, but stressing the word “They.”
“Promise me that you're not them.
Promise that you won't hurt my babies.” Lise had been right. I pulled over to the side of the road and
made a U-turn.
“Miss, we have no intention of hurting anyone. We know exactly what it feels like to meet
strangers. We are human, just like
you. We have been hiding out from
whatever or whoever those things are, just like you. We are not the only ones. We're not unlike you. We do what we
have to, to protect our family. We don’t hurt people, we don’t eat people, but we sure are happy to
see people. There are just a few of
us. My name is Warren.”
“And I’m Lise. Where do you
call home?”
Seeming to be a bit more relaxed now that she had surrendered so to
speak, she said, “You were right. My two
children survived with me. I've been
returning to the store regularly to get supplies. I saw you come here this morning. You’re the first people I’ve seen in…how long
has it been, two and a half years? I
wanted to believe that you were human, but when the creatures attacked us,
there were some with them that looked just like us. I couldn’t be sure.”
“We can understand that,” I reassured.
She had been smart. When the
attack began, she had been near the meat department. While the store personnel in that department
had run out into the store to see what all the fuss was about, Debbie, who had
been shopping with her two children, and had caught sight of the invaders,
slipped back into the freezer and hid at the back of the room behind several
carcasses of beef. Sometime later, the
door had been opened, but it shut just as quickly. We weren’t sure why this had turned out to be
a safe place, maybe it had something to do with the cold. Neither Debbie nor we could figure it out,
but she survived the original attack.
She was nearly frozen when she finally decided to leave. The store was pitch black inside and so after
a brief encounter stumbling over overturned shelves and canned goods, she
decided to remain inside for the night rather than suffer broken bones in a
fall. She would have to look after her
children.
***
We turned down a nearby street and parked beside a small
inconspicuous home. “This is it,” Debbie
said. “My kids will be hiding
inside. That’s what they do when Mommy
leaves to get food.” I noticed that the
store was visible from the house. Debbie could see
every movement from this vantage point if she wanted.
“Good location,” I complimented.
“I wonder why this home wasn't wrecked at the time?”
“Maybe, because it was for sale," Debbie suggested. "Nobody was living
in it. When they were gone, all I saw
was clothing lying on the ground. There
were no clothes inside this house. It
was so creepy. I got the feeling that
those things could see through the walls." That had made a lot of sense, because we too had
noticed that houses without residents hadn't been damaged.
When Debbie was out of ear shot, Lise spoke quietly. “Warren, you really scared me with that
gun. What if it had gone off? We wouldn’t know about her kids and she’d
be…” She left the sentence unfinished.
“You needn’t have worried Lise,” I replied. While you were busy with her, I removed the
clip and the cartridge in the chamber.
The gun was completely empty.”
Lise got a chuckle out of that. "Mine was empty, too."
I wasn’t ready to trust Debbie fully at this point, so as I slipped
out of the van, I put my gun behind me in my pants, this time fully loaded. I needn’t have worried though.
“Do you mind if our friend comes inside? I'd like to feed him.”
“Sure, as long as he won’t hurt anyone.” Debbie had good reason to question her safety
where Slim was concerned, considering how he had reacted to her at the
store. I began to marvel that he might
be a police dog after all.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” I said, but was sure he would behave
himself. I did wonder why a dog would
bond to a new person so quickly, but was happy that he had. I really liked large breed dogs and I was
going to do my best to make sure that this one would once again be considered a
large breed.
We slipped in through the back door.
Once inside, I quickly made a place for Slim on the porch, borrowed a
bowl, filled it with packaged dry dog food, and watched him scarf it down. “Wow!
You sure are a hungry puppy.”
Debbie shouted, “All clear!”
And the children came running from somewhere in the house. As they saw us, they froze, I was thinking
that the youngest probably had never seen other humans other than its mother or
brother and certainly had never seen a person of color. The two of them looked at their mother and
then back to us. They said nothing. The young lad reached out and touched Lise on
the arm. She immediately slipped to the
floor. The boys stepped back for a
moment.
“It’s all right kids. These
people are our friends. They are here to
help us.” Then Debbie got quiet. She turned to me with a question mark on her
face and repeated, “Why are you two here?
Why today?”
“We’re on our honeymoon,” Lise chimed in. The younger boy began to poke and probe Lise’s
body. At one point, he seemed to be
trying to rub the color off as if it had been painted on. Lise giggled with delight. I doubted I had seen her happier except on
the first night we spent together. Looking
closer I detected an expression I had never seen before. What
was at the bottom of that!
“Honeymoon?” she repeated skeptically.
“Yup,” I said, and Debbie’s face betrayed her shock. “You’re surprised eh? Not as surprised as me, though, I’ll bet,” I
added. “We decided to take out the bikes
and do some camping, just the two of us.
We were just married yesterday afternoon.”
“That sounds pretty human.”
Debbie began to laugh, probably something she hadn't felt like
doing in quite a while. “Would you like
to have a tour of the place? Perhaps I
should show you to the uh…honeymoon suite.”
At the sound of those words, Lise jumped to her feet to stand beside
me. We nodded laughing, as Debbie led
the way through the house pointing out this and that, while Slim remained
constantly at my side. I wasn't surprised
to find a large bore telescope in the living room window trained on the store
area. It even had a special lens to
invert the image for terrestrial viewing; otherwise, she would have had to
watch everything upside down. Nor did it
surprise me to see a couple of loaded gun racks on the wall. The triggers had locks, but I hoped that she
kept the ammunition out of the reach of the kids, too.
There was the four-piece bath.
At the far end sat a relic of the war years, an object that decorated
many a bathroom in the wartime houses which were built, according to my
father’s recollection, to be shipped to England after the war to help rebuild
that bombed out country, but later, he said replaced by cold cash as being more
economical. I don’t know about the
accuracy of Dad’s tale, but what I was looking at was one of the old cast iron
porcelain coated tubs that sat on four foot-like corner supports. The overflow was high enough so that you
could get a really good soak. I
remembered that as a kid, I was able to hold my breath and submerge myself well
below the water. Be that as it may, I
didn’t expect that we would be fortunate enough to actually get to use it. It
had a wrap around shower curtain suspended from the ceiling that hung inside
the tub. A genuine toilet sat in the
corner. I was amazed to see that it was
not only unsoiled, but that it contained clean water.
Next, came the “honeymoon suite,” a small bedroom by most post 2000
standards, but large for this house and was probably where the parents had
slept in years past. A double bed
squeezed itself between a dresser and a night table and a closet hid behind the
door. A flower box filled with herbs
flourished in the sunshine pouring in from a south window.
***
We spent the rest of the day with Debbie while she related her
personal experiences since the day of the invasion. If it had been hard on us, it was doubly so
for her. She had lived in terror for
weeks, never knowing when or if she would be discovered, all the while thinking
that she and her babies were the only living survivors. She had remained in the store for quite some
time. It had only been in the last
eighteen months that she had dared to live more openly, risking being seen by
what she described as hideous creatures. Debbie seemed to relax more as we shared our
own experiences with her. Meanwhile,
Lise entertained the children who now climbed freely onto her lap.
***
As we ate a simple meal of canned beans and pineapple, Debbie
continued to share, but her reminiscences were occasionally marred with
tears. Yet, she pressed on, accepting
her emotional response as the medicine her mind needed in order to began to
absorb the reality of others, us. This
was no ordinary woman and it was due to this fact that she was able to maintain
her sanity while their lives had been in constant jeopardy. I realized at that
moment, that without a doubt, wherever we found survivors in our travels from
this point on, they would be of only two kinds, the very strong or the extremely
lucky. Where did we fit in?
The invaders had visited the store more than once, but did not
venture near the cooler again. When the
stench had become unbearable and she had determined by vigilant surveillance
that the invaders appeared to have vanished during the night hours, she had the
eldest, her son, watch the baby in a more agreeable part of the store, while
she carefully stole outside to search for a safe place to move.
What she determined was that the houses had already been emptied of
survivors. This was much the same as
what we had discovered when we had returned to check for survivors back
home. Seeing no one during the night,
she assumed that they had left. This
caused her to be careless, when she should have been paying better attention and
proceeded to step out openly during the daylight hours. While in a nearby neighborhood, she came
across two of the enemy. She was certain
that one of them had looked directly in her direction; however, the two
suddenly altered direction and headed away from her. This struck a familiar cord with me, but I
said nothing about it. She eventually
found this house and took possession.
***
In spite of our new found friend’s apparent openness and
friendliness, having had a shotgun pointed at us earlier in the day kept
replaying in my mind. As I lay awake in
the “honeymoon suite,” I tried my best to keep that proverbial one eye
open. I got up to jamb a chair again the
door knob, hoping to at least gain a few seconds before we were brutally
murdered in the middle of the night. I
imagined the size of the hole that a 12 gauge could make in a wooden door. Staying awake proved a difficult task, as the
atmosphere was pleasant: the sheets were clean, the bed soft and warm. The whole room lacked the humidity and
coldness of the grotto. And then, there
was Lise, who happily latched onto the idea of this being a “honeymoon
suite.” A single night in my cave was one thing, but I wondered to myself if I would ever survive the honeymoon.
I awoke with a sharp pain in my side; Lise was attempting to wake me
with a well placed elbow while calling my name.
“Do you smell that?” she asked excitedly when I stirred. Until she mentioned it, my nose, which
seconds before had been fast asleep, hadn’t noticed the aromas that were
wafting into our room. Lise was up,
dressed, out the door and down the stairs, drawn by the saliva inducing smells
from the kitchen. I followed more
slowly. Entering the room a couple of
minutes later, I scanned the table.
“Fried Eggs? Toast? Home fries?
Corned beef? Where did you get
fresh eggs?”
“Well,” she explained, “I have some birds living in the house next
door.” At the mention of birds, she had
detected the question mark on our faces.
“They’re leghorns. You know,
chickens, the white ones.” Understanding
returned. Lise and I had wondered just
what kind of eggs we could be eating. “As
for the other things, I have been making my own bread from the white flour I
get from the store. I used to have whole
wheat, but that turned rancid. I think
that had something to do with the wheat germ.
I guess I didn’t tell you about my…my garden.” She had hesitated just a little at the mention
of her garden, as if she'd not really meant to reveal this secret and I
could understand her reluctance to share such an important commodity with
strangers, but it half tumbled out, so she'd finished her
sentence. “And the corned beef came from
the supermarket.”
I didn’t want to worry Debbie about her prize garden, but we also
needed to create a reliable food supply and she seemed to be an intelligent and
capable person when it came to getting to the basics. “Debbie!
I was wondering if you would be willing to show us your garden? I realize that this is probably very
important to you and I would like to see how you have been managing. I mean, you’re able to cook, you’re not just
eating out of cans. You’re certainly able
to defend yourself. And you’re raising
two children under the most trying of circumstances.”
Debbie became quieter and I thought some of the expression that she'd had on her
face the previous day suddenly began to reappear. She was having an inward battle: would she
trust us or should she not. She knew by
now that we were not the invaders, but she didn’t really know us. We had only met the previous day, so in her
mind, we still could be an enemy. Had we
come to spy her out and take what she had?
As well armed as she was, she was still vulnerable. After all, hadn’t Lise disarmed her and
weren’t we now occupying her home?
As she made no reply and concern was apparent on her face, I felt it
necessary to explain our situation and needs.
“Debbie, we need someone like you to help us with some of the problems
that you’ve overcome. You'd be an
asset to our group. At present there are
seven of us. The three of you would make
us ten. And, as the saying goes, there
is strength in numbers. Please?” I left the question the air. Debbie changed the subject.
“Would you like to take a bath?”
“A bath? We’d love to.” Lise leaped
at the opportunity. “I haven’t had…” Lise stopped talking for a second while she
thought about what she was saying. “A
warm bath?” she asked emphasizing the word “warm” with disbelief evident in her
voice.
“Of course,” Debbie responded.
“What other kind is there?”
“Well, where we live, a warm bath is sometimes a swim in a pond,”
Lise replied.
“And a shower is dancing around in the rain,” I added.
“What do we have to do, boil
some water?” Lise continued.
“Do? Just turn on the
faucet.” Debbie was smiling again. “You’ll find towels in the bedroom closet and
if you want bubbles, you can find soap and things under the sink counter.”
“Did I say that you'd be an asset?
I must have meant a miracle,” I added.
Lise was way ahead of me this time.
By the time I got to the bedroom to change, she was already in the
bathroom. She began to run the water to
check the temperature. Steam rose from
the tub as she inserted the plug and turned the faucet on full. Bubbles began to multiply as the water
climbed towards the overflow. Before
jumping in, I locked the door and checked my housecoat, generously supplied by
our host. It was still there and the
safety was off. How paranoid I could
be! Maybe!
We took turns scrubbing each other all over and changed ends so that
each could enjoy the sloped back and slide deep into the hot water. We'd tried to be clean at our hideout, but this was
luxury to us. Never had a campout seemed
so comfortable. Like little children in
a swimming pool, we laughed and played.
Eventually, we both lay in the sloped end, Lise lying in front of me, her
naked back and bottom stuck to my equally bare chest and abdomen, my arms
wrapped around her, as we just relaxed in one another’s company.
We had been there for maybe an hour, sometimes letting out a little
water to replenish it with more hot when suddenly, there was a knock on the door. “Just to let you know, I’m taking a trip to
the supermarket. I’ll be gone for about
half an hour or so.” It was Debbie.
“Just a second,” I shouted from inside climbing out of the tub and
heading for my robe. “There’s something
Lise and I want to show you. Could you
wait for a minute and we can go together?”
At that, Lise, trying to be the comedian piped up with a line of her
own. “Just what did you have in mind to
show her, Warren?” And with that, she
too stepped out of the water.
“Sure,” came the answer from the other side of the door. I had put on my bathrobe by now, took out my
gun, unlocked and opened the door a peep.
Lise, in the mean time, was right behind me and I was afraid she might
jump out in front of the open door and attempt some more jumping jacks. I opened the door a bit more, and while sticking
my face in the opening a little, also pointed the gun at the door, knowing that
if there was trouble outside, the wood panel would not present an obstacle to
the lead projectile. There stood Debbie with
her 12 gauge in hand. My worst fears
seemed to be realized, but before I could say a word, Debbie, who probably had
noticed the expression on my face, nodded to the gun saying, “I always take
this with me when I go shopping. I’ll
wait down stairs.”
***
I stopped the van in the fire zone just beside the front door of the
tire store. It was necessary to stop
here before going for groceries. We
headed directly to the sporting goods department where I found some emergency
blankets like the ones we presumed had been protecting us in the original
encounter with the aliens and related the story of our miraculous escape. Debbie was immediately interested in creating
clothing out of the fabric. While we
were there, she also felt that it would be a good idea to pick up some extra
cartridges for the 12 gauge. When we
were done, we headed to the grocery store to pick up whatever it was that
Debbie wanted. But Debbie had one more
stop to make.
***
Debbie’s garden was not near her city home. In fact, we had to drive several miles north
of town before we arrived at a yellow brick house well off the road at the end
of a gravel drive. I'd always admired these old homes. Driving down dirt roads through the county, as
an adult, I had kept my eyes open without success, hoping to spot one exactly
like my grandmother’s which had been demolished to make room for a new home.
***
As I walked around this one, I couldn’t help
but remember Grandma’s yellow brick country place. Her old house was close to the road. Little of the acre on which the building was
situated was wasted on parking. It was a
two story, but unlike the one I was presently looking at, it didn’t have so much
of that cubic shape like many of the yellow
bricks that are still standing, and it didn’t have the steep roof like this one.
The house looked a little like a side split, but without the split
level. The portion on the west side
stood closest to the road and featured a door without a stoop, while the
remainder of the east side sat back about fifteen to twenty feet creating an L
shape. Nestled completely in this L was a covered wooden porch, complete with a
trap door that led to Grandma’s cellar where she kept her milk and other things
that required cold.
At the north east end, there was a summer
kitchen just outside of which was a large pump from which we got water for
washing and cooking, but I remember that I never drank that water. I was afraid that a rat or some other rodent
had curled up in the well and died. I
remembered my father driving down the road for drinking water from a
continually running tap that we referred to as a spring. On some of these
trips, I got to drive the old car. Drive
is a rather colorful word for steer, as I never actually sat behind the
wheel. I just turned it this way and
that, trying to keep the car in the middle of the narrow gravel lane. Later,
after the farmer died, his sons who then owned the property shut it off so that
it was no longer available, but that was long after we had grown up and Grandma
had gone to meet her maker.
There was no real living room in the
house. The kitchen/dining room was a
huge open space. My parents always
stayed in a room on the west side of the main floor. That may have served as a living room with a
pull out bed. It was private for my
parents though. There was a large
assembled glass covered puzzle of a Spitfire hanging on the wall that I assumed
had been pieced together by my uncle.
The room was also home to an old piano.
The only other room on that floor belonged
to my uncle who stored so many car and motor cycle parts in it that it smelled
more like a garage than part of a house.
I wasn’t supposed to go in there, but whenever I had the opportunity, I
used to like sneaking in to peer at the various pieces of machinery. I discovered some radio parts on one of my
visits.
A set of stairs that would never pass
inspection today, accessed at the northwest corner of the kitchen, led to the bedrooms upstairs. The steps were so close together and narrow, I
used to climb them on my hands and feet as if they were a ladder, rather than
take the chance of walking upright.
Grandma’s room was off to the left, while mine was to the right. There must have been another room in the
upstairs, but I can’t remember it now.
Too many years have gone by and I was just a little squirt at the time.
I never mentioned a bathroom. That’s because there wasn’t one, not on the
first floor, not on the second. Water for
doing dishes, washing, cooking, was heated on the top of the wood stove or in
the copper tank on the side. Baths were
not a regular occurrence, due to the work involved but we
did have to wash. As for laundry, I do
believe that Grandma had an old ringer washer that she filled with the hot
water from the tank. There was no
running water, even though there was some electricity. I don’t know if anyone had thought of buying
an electric pump. The other part of the
bathroom was located well away from the house, just a step or two from the
garden. That is another story.
I had spent many summer days living with
Grandma, and I was feeling a little nostalgic thinking about picking those
giant black berries beside the barbed wire fence that kept the cattle off the
road, or digging in her sandy garden.
Then there was the fishing under the bridge or just having a cold soda
at the gas station on the corner.
Growing up had happened too fast. It seemed that I had just closed my
eyes one day and yesterday had become today.
I could remember all those wishes as a kid when I would say, “I wish I
were older. I could drive a car,” or “I
wish I were twenty-one.” And dad would remind
me not to wish my life away. He was
right of course. He was almost always
right. Whatever life I had now, I was
not willing to give away.
***
In the world of reality, in the rear, beside an outbuilding, we had
our first view of Debbie’s garden. Being
early in the summer, not everything was ready to pick and eat. However, rows of carrots and beets were
showing a lot of tops, but the roots were going to be a while developing. The greens, spinach, chard, mustard, and
turnip were already being eaten. “How
did you manage to make such a large garden,” I had asked.
Debbie, not one to brag, responded in one short sentence that told
all. “I’m a farmer’s daughter.”
“No kidding.” I was truly
surprised, but then considering how well the garden was doing, she was either
telling the truth, or she had an exceptionally large green thumb, or quite
possibly, she was a green thumb but with added appendages. “How did you happen to settle on this place
for your garden?”
“Did you think I found this place by accident?” She paused for a moment before
continuing. “This was my parent’s home. Or at least it was until recently. I’ve planted a garden here since before I can
remember. When my folks got a little
older, I began to take over most of the work, not that they were helpless mind
you. It was just that Dad had other,
more important farm business to take care of.
Besides, it gave me a reason to visit regularly.”
“Everything seems to grow really well here,” I said. “If we could create a garden like this, it
would be great.”
“We had a lot of animals, pork, beef, sheep, and of course hens. There was always lots of manure, so on the
garden it went. See how green the leaves
are?”
“Yes, they are that. Listen. There must be more places like this around
with surplus manure piles that are well composted by now. If we could find some way to move it to our
site, would that be helpful?”
“I really believe in using natural fertilizer, and so far, haven’t
needed to use any chemicals. The garden's thrived
for years. Well, almost. I had a lot to do after the aliens showed up,
because I couldn’t get to it to weed, so in the spring, it looked
terrible. But now, it supplies all the
fresh food we need.”
“But this was a lot of work.”
“It took a while. By the way,
if you are seriously thinking of gardening, I have been saving seed, and I've been doing
this for two reasons. The packaged ones in
the stores will eventually be used up. And,
stored seed doesn’t last forever. Seed that is stored at too high a temperature
or humidity, like the stuff that’s put out on the shelves every year won’t
germinate after a while. What that means
is that you may plant several rows of vegetables and nothing will come up. So, whatever you do, save some of your seed
for next year in a cool dry place, or you may not have a crop the following
year.”
“I’m really impressed, Debbie.
You are an expert.”
On the drive back, I informed Debbie that we would be leaving the
next morning. Our honeymoon wasn’t over
quite yet. There was some exploring we
wanted to do. We would be back in town
in twelve days. If she were willing
to join us at our hideout, she'd be welcome.
The choice was hers. If she didn’t
want to, we would understand. "Debbie, for the longest time,
we thought we were all there were. Now
we're realizing that the world may have many more survivors. Think about it, will you?"
***
Sitting around Debbie’s table for a late night coffee, I had other
questions. “Debbie, where are you
getting the water from?”
“I have a well.”
“And lights, and a stove,” I added.
“I don’t actually use the electric range. That takes too much power. I have a gasoline generator that I use to
pump water from our well. The well was
here, fortunately. A lot of places along
this road have them.”
“How do you heat your water?
We had a really good
soak this
morning.”
“Gas.”
“You mean you’re gas is still flowing?”
“No, not that kind of
gas. It’s propane. When I moved in, the gas wasn’t flowing any
more. However it was supposed to get
here from wherever it comes from, there isn’t any now. That truck parked beside the house a couple
of doors down, it’s loaded with propane, and it’s supplying all our needs. Dad tried to teach me to be independent and
innovative.”
“I’m sure he would be proud.”
I suddenly thought about Slim.
“Would you be able to do me a favor?”
“If I can. What would you
like?”
“It’s kind of an imposition really.
It’s Slim.”
“Slim? Oh, the dog. What about him?”
I could see that Debbie wasn’t a friend of our new pet. But Slim couldn’t fit on a bike. And he didn’t have the stamina, healthy or
otherwise, to run along beside us, even if we drove slowly. So first, I had to convince Debbie that she
and Slim could get along and really like one another. I began by telling her about my own large
breed. Then, I asked her if she had had
a dog on her farm. I was delighted to
find out that she had, and sure enough, it had been another large breed, a
German Shepherd.
Her eyes sparkled as she reminisced.
There had been those races through the grassy fields and shallow
streams, with Babe running after. There
was the hide and seek. He’d been good at
obeying the command to stay, giving Debbie time to disappear in the tall
brush. Babe was there to see her off
every morning and met her each night as the school bus came to a halt at the
foot of her driveway. Sadly, she also experienced
the days when Babe grew old, tired and in pain.
She told me that her father had the dog put to sleep, but since she'd not been
there, she wasn't sure about the details of that.
When the family got another dog, she was older and although she missed
Babe a lot, she refused to allow herself to become emotionally involved with
the new pet.
“Sure, I’ll look after him for you,” she said. “You two have a good time.”
I hadn’t even come to the point.
She knew what I wanted, without my asking. She just had to be reminded of what it was
like. Slim would fill a little void, at
least for a week, anyway. I thanked her
profusely before heading for bed. Lise
and I were off early in the morning before the kids were up, but not
Debbie. True to form, as a former
farmer’s daughter, she was up before the birds and had prepared not only a
hearty breakfast, but also made some food for us to take on our trip. We thanked her, Lise gave her a hug, and soon we were humming along the
highway.
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