“We’ve had to detain a fair number of people here since the cannibal attacks started,” says Obi. “You’re the only ones who managed to make it out. There could be a place for the two of you here. A place with meals and friends, a life with meaning and purpose. Right now, we’re fractured. They have us eating each other, for God’s sake. We can’t make a stand if we’re bashing each other over the head and killing each other for cans of dog food.”
He leans toward us in earnest. “This camp is just the start, and we need everyone to pitch in if we’re going to have a chance in hell of taking back our world from the angels. We could use people like you. People with the skills and determination to be humanity’s greatest heroes.”
Boden snorts. “They can’t be that good. They stumbled in a big semi-circle around the compound like a couple of dildos. How skilled can they be?”
What dildos have to do with it, I have no idea. But he did have a point in that we did get caught by an idiot.
~
It turns out I don’t really get latrine duty. Only Raffe gets that honor. I end up with laundry duty. I’m not sure that’s much better. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. You know the world has ended when manual labor in America is cheaper and easier than using machines. Men can seriously grime up jeans and other heavy clothes when they’re out in the forest. Not to mention unmentionables.
I have more than a few “eww” moments during the day. But I do learn a few things from the other laundry women.
After a long stretch of wary silence, the women begin to talk. A couple of them have only been at the camp for a few days. They seem surprised and still mistrustful of finding themselves unharmed and unmolested. There’s a wariness about them in the way they keep their voices low and their eyes scanning their surroundings that keeps me from relaxing even when they begin to gossip.
While working our butts off—or more accurately, our arms and backs—I learn that Obi is an absolute favorite among the women. And that Boden and his buddies should be avoided. Obi is in charge of the camp, but not of the entire resistance movement. There’s apparently talk, at least among the women, that Obi would be a great worldwide leader of the freedom fighters.
I love the idea of a leader destined to lead us out of our dark times. Love the romance of being part of something good, and right, led by a group of people fated to be heroes.
Only, it isn’t my fight. My fight is getting my sister back safe and sound. My fight is keeping my mother out of trouble and shepherding her to a safe place. My fight is feeding and sheltering what remains of my family. Until those fights are permanently won, I don’t have the luxury of looking beyond them to the grander picture of wars with gods and romantic heroes.
My fight at the moment is struggling to get stains out of sheets that are taller and wider than me by yards. Nothing takes the romance and grandeur out of life than scrubbing stains out of sheets.
One of the women worries over her husband, who she says is “playing soldier” even though he’s barely moved out of his computer programmer’s chair in twenty years. She also frets over her golden retriever, which is in the kennel with the rest of the dogs.
It turns out that most of the guard dogs are actually just pets of the people in the camp. They’re trying to train them into the mean, vicious guard dogs that chased Raffe, but in reality, they haven’t had enough time to train most of them. Besides, they’ve spent their whole lives being pampered and played with, and it’s apparently not easy to turn them into vicious killers when they’d rather lick you to death or chase squirrels.
Dolores assures me that her dog, Checkers, is of the lick-you-to-death variety, and that most of the dogs are in doggie paradise out here in the forest. I nod in more understanding than she realizes. This is the reason the guards are dog-free. It’s hard to patrol when your K9 partner keeps running off to chase after rodents and barks all night long. Thank goodness for small favors.
I casually try to turn the conversation toward what might be gnawing on the refugees on the road. All I get are wary glances and frightened expressions. One woman crosses herself. Talk about a conversation killer.
I pick up a grimy pair of pants to dunk in the dingy water, and we go back to working in silence.
Although Raffe and I are prisoners here, no one is really guarding us. That is to say, no one is assigned to guard us. Everyone knows we’re the newbies, and as such, everyone keeps an eye on us. To avoid notice to his head injury healing too fast, we managed to put two adhesive bandages at his hairline first thing this morning. We were prepared to say that head injuries bleed a lot so the injury itself was smaller than it looked last night, but no one asked.
Raffe digs a ditch by the porta-potties along with other men. He’s one of the few still wearing his shirt. There’s a dry band around his chest outlining his bandages but no one seems to notice. I note the filth on his shirt with a professional eye and hope that someone else ends up having to wash it for him.
The sun glints off something shiny on the privacy wall the men are building around the latrine. I’m pondering the perfect regularity of the rectangular boxes they’re using to build the wall when I recognize them. Desktop computers. The men are stacking desktop computers and cementing them into a privacy wall.
“Yup,” says Dolores as she sees what I’m looking at. “My husband always did call his electronic gadgets ‘bricks’ when they got phased out.”
They got phased out all right. Computers were the height of our technological prowess, and now, we’re using them as latrine walls, thanks to the angels.
I go back to scrubbing a pair of pants on my washboard.
Lunch takes several lifetimes to come. I’m about to get Raffe for lunch when a honey-haired woman saunters over to him on her long legs. Everything about her walk, her voice and the tilt of her head invites a man to get a little closer. I change direction and head for the mess hall, pretending not to notice them walking to lunch together.
I grab a bowl of venison stew and a heel of bread and scarf them down as fast as I can. Some people grumble around me about having to eat the same old stuff each time, but I’ve had enough dried noodles and cat food to truly appreciate the taste of fresh meat and canned vegetables.