“Don’t apologize. It is what it is. When you’re young, sometimes you make decisions with your heart, not your head, figuring love will conquer all. He’s always treated me well and taken care of my needs, so I can’t complain. I’ve had a lot of time to work things out and have gotten all my crying done and over with. We were probably headed for divorce anyway, but now I guess we won’t need to worry about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if he hasn’t survived, then he’s gone. If he has survived, it will be years, maybe decades, until society’s rebuilt to where it was. In the meantime, you can throw away your driver’s license or marriage certificate and be anyone you want to be. Anyone in a difficult situation can just walk away.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about the human part of all this,” Kyle said as he played with his utensils. “I’ve just always thought about the technical aspect of the attack. Once we get all of the stuff fixed or replaced, I figured everyone would step back into the roles they were in before.”
“I don’t know, Kyle, maybe it won’t be as bad I think. I hope that’s the case. You seem like the technical type. How long do you think that side of things will take?”
“I think we’re going to have to relive the last hundred and fifty years. We’ve got the blueprint and a lot of the physical assets, so it might only take us ten or fifteen years to do it, but we’ll have to take the steps from a barter, to an industrial, to an information society again. We’ve lost at least a year of crops, let alone the equipment to manage it, harvest it, haul it, process it and everything else that our food goes through. Then there are the factories that’ll need workers, drivers who’ll need trucks, and stores that’ll need cash registers and cashiers to run them. Plus there are the banks and money. How do you figure out what to do about all the missed payments and mortgages and abandoned properties? I just assumed that when things came back on-line, that people, at least the ones who survived, would be where they should be, doing the jobs and filling the roles they had before this mess.”
“I agree with the technical side of things, Kyle, but go back to what I was saying. Don’t you think it will be simple for people to just disappear? Say you stayed here in Wyoming, for example. You’ve got no I.D., no family here, and no one who knows you. You could pick a new name, get a job, find an empty house, and you’d have a new life. If only a couple of people do it, it might not work. But what if two or three percent of the population do it. That’s ten million people, on top of all the people who have died. Our government can’t find the people who overstay their Visas or sneak over the border, even with all their systems working. How’s a crippled government going to even care about getting everyone straightened out, let alone do something about it?”
Kyle let out a low whistle. “I hadn’t thought much past getting home. We’ve been so conditioned to think that the government is always going to be there to fix things that we just expect everything to work out. But now that the government can’t take care of us, we’re almost too helpless to do anything for ourselves.” The wheels of Kyle’s mind spun as a whole new dimension to the disaster opened up to him. “So what are your plans? Are you just going to ride it out here?”
“What else can I do? My parents passed away a few years ago, which, thinking back on it, is probably a blessing, because anyone in a care facility has probably died a long, slow death of neglect. My sister and I don’t get along so well, my sons are far away, and my husband’s not likely to hurry back. I have a few neighbors, and we keep tabs on each other, but no one is set up to take care of me. Besides, I’m pretty tough. As long as the creek doesn’t dry up and the deer aren’t hunted to extinction, I’ll be alright, plus I’ve got Max to keep me company for a few more years. In a lot of ways, I’m actually in a perfect situation — no threats, no dependants, lots of resources, and just myself to worry about.”
They continued their conversation as they cleaned up from breakfast. Kyle washed the dishes while Rose put them away. The ease of their conversation picked up from the previous night and veered from one topic to another. Rose giggled and laughed at all of Kyle’s jokes, touched his arm and back frequently to make a point, and leaned into him with her chest when she reached to put things away in the cabinets around the sink. Kyle enjoyed the attention. It had been a long, long time since someone had flirted with him, and seemed like years since he’d looked at a woman with any sense of appreciation for their femininity. He tried to think about Jennifer and avoid certain subjects, but it was difficult because Rose was nice, and he enjoyed her company.
After breakfast, Kyle found a Louis L’Amour book and immersed himself in the story. When lunch was done, Rose took a nap while Kyle filled up her water containers from the nearby creek. With the water jugs filled, Kyle walked up to the freeway to take a look at the conditions and to work his legs, which were still stiff from his latest brush with death. The afternoon was sunny and warm, and the snow was melting quickly, but there were still several inches of heavy snow on the road — snow that could easily have been cleared by snowplows but would now have to clear the old-fashioned way.
When he returned to the house, Rose was up and getting ready for dinner.
“What’s for dinner?” Kyle asked.
“Deer and corn. Are you sick of venison yet?”
“No, it’s fine. We hunt every fall.”
“I hadn’t eaten venison for awhile, but circumstances dictate otherwise now. Too bad you didn’t show up a little later in the year. A neighbor has some cows, and he’s going to share the meat but wants to wait until it’s cooler so it will keep longer. You could have had some good angus if you’d timed it better.”
“Those are the breaks, I guess. Next time I get hypothermic on your property I’ll shoot for the end of November.”
“That works,” Rose replied cheerfully. “How’d the road look?’
“Still lots of snow. A couple more days like today and I should be good to go though. It looks like it’s melting off quicker on the asphalt.”
“Well don’t take off too quick. You don’t want to get in another situation where you get stuck in the snow. Might not find someone as nice as me to take you in.”
“That’s the truth. If I was going to almost die in a snowstorm, I picked a good place to do it.”
“Like I said, you have Max to thank for that, otherwise you’d still be sitting out in my front yard.”
‘You’re right,” said Kyle as he knelt down by the dog, patting him on the head. “I owe you one, buddy.”
Dinner passed with conversation about who might have attacked the country. Kyle thought Russia was the likely power behind it, but speculated they’d done it through some terrorist group in order to be able to claim innocence. Rose’s theory was that Pakistan was involved. Anthony, her marine son, had mentioned in some of his emails his concerns about Pakistan and its objection to lingering U.S. involvement in the region. Rose figured Pakistan had done it to force the military out of their part of the world and to get back at the U.S. for its threats to their autonomy.
After dinner, they talked some more and played checkers until the sun went down, with Rose winning four games to one and claiming, as her prize, a hug from the loser. Kyle conceded and good-naturedly opened his arms to her. Rose wrapped her arms around him, pressing herself tightly against him and resting her head on his shoulder. With her soft, warm body against his, Kyle felt sensations stir that had lain dormant for months and was briefly lost in the comfort of the moment as he held her.
“Thanks for everything, Rose,” he whispered in her ear, the scent of her perfume filling his senses. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you for what you’ve done.”