“I’m King Shit, the shit mashah! Nobody be messin’ with ma shit, now, ya hear!”
May burst out into a fit of laughter as he stopped, looked intently at something imagined, and pointed his pitchfork in that direction. “Hey, you kids! Get yo’ hands off a ma shit! I’m a mash it up, now, ya hear?!”
They cackled for a minute or so until a strange, terrifying, rumbling sound filled the silence and quelled their laughter. They sobered instantly and stepped out of the barn. The rumbling was surely coming their way, but it was difficult to pinpoint its exact location.
Suddenly, an enormous helicopter painted in a desert camouflage and with a large red star on its tail appeared from just over the tree line from across Robin Lake and flew directly over them. The helicopter, a Russian-made Mil Mi-24 gunship, flew so low to the ground that Winston made eye contact with a North Korean soldier hanging out of the bird. Winston gestured his own bird and thought that the helicopter might turn around as it banked hard and turned toward their little downtown and Calef’s. A moment later the helicopter was out of sight. The fury of its oversized guns rang throughout Johnsonville as it fired a few dozen rounds. Winston hoped they were just warning shots.
“What do they want?” May asked, nervous and trembling.
“Jes’ scoutin’ ahead, I suppose. Let’s get them supplies inside. Everythin’ll be okay, May.”
“Uh huh.”
May discounted his words as they headed inside the house. She didn’t want to alarm Winston by telling him how she really felt about the gravity of their situation — she knew that no matter what they did or how well they prepared for whatever was about to happen to Johnsonville, it wouldn’t be enough. She always had a bit of a negative attitude — a pessimist to most, a pragmatist to herself — towards the world and its insufferable suffering. And Winston, well he had always been the idealist — the optimist — a romantic who always looked on the bright side as if the obstacles life handed to him were merely challenges to troubleshoot. Winston was May’s yang to her yin.
And so May stacked the canned goods into a wooden crate while Winston took two dining room chairs outside to the barn. He was startled when the very same helicopter again flew slowly over the house. He hadn’t heard its raucous engine this time, but as he looked up, the North Korean soldier trained a rifle on him and squeezed off a round. The bullet nearly sheared Winston’s head clean off, but instead took a large chunk of the barn’s siding, revealing the white paint underneath. He scurried into the safety of the barn as the helicopter whizzed away.
Winston set the chairs inside the apartment and a few moments later, May slipped through the door with fresh linens and several blankets. She was shaking, although she didn’t mention that she had witnessed the near-fatal encounter.
“I’ll make us a nice bed,” she said, “and will you bring that memory foam mattress downstairs? It’s too heavy for me.”
“Yes, Mother, I will.”
“Those chairs are too big. Bring ‘em back inside.”
“I know.”
For the next several hours, they filled the apartment — all sixty square feet of it — with food, water, and as many comforts as May could think of. While Winston neatly stacked their rations against the far wall, she created a bed with stacks of blankets, pillows, and sheets on top of the foam mattress. As he set up the water purification rig in the corner that faced the woods and driveway, she hung a calendar and several of her favorite pictures around the apartment, which was made considerably smaller with the “bathroom” taking up a good portion of the square footage. He sorted and stacked their supply of plastic bowls, hand cleaners and sanitizers, paper towels and toilet paper, while May organized a neat row of plastic bins, which held assorted items such as playing cards, batteries, flashlights, candles and matches, medicines, salves, a small first aid kit, magazines and a stack of books she had been wanting to read, and clothes and underwear. Winston lovingly gave her a quick squeeze on the butt as he placed a large flashlight near the door. May giggled and said, “cut that out,” and he winked at her. Lastly, and for some reason he wasn’t sure of — perhaps he was afraid the old aluminum ladder would be melted down and made into enemy bullets, or perhaps he was just being a sentimental old fool like May had said — he struck two big nails into the studs high above his head and hung the ten-foot memorial on them. The ladder completed the apartment.
As he put the items away, he systematically calculated all of the calories contained within each of the foodstuffs they had managed to scrape up. The number was approximately 126,000. Winston furrowed his brow as he tapped on a calculator and consulted the calendar. He held a can of Franco-American in his hand.
“Hmm,” he murmured.
“What is it?” May asked, “wish all you could eat was that stuff?”
Winston smiled and shook his head in mock disgust.
“Saturday, October twenty-second,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we have forty-five days a food if we ration it out fourteen hundred calories a day. October twenty-second is when we run out a food.”
“Can we eat less? To make it last longer?”
“We could, and pro’bly will, but we have ta be careful. I wouldn’t go much lower than that.”
“Let’s hope the bastards are long gone by then,” May snapped, “let’s hope we have to bring all of this stuff back inside.”
“I don’t see why we would be spending any more than a week out here. I think it’s good we’re bein’ cautious, though.”
He put away the can and calculator and lay down in the bed. It was comfortable and he nodded his approval. He pat the spot next to him.
“You wanna give it a whirl, May?” he asked coyly.
“We’re gonna be spending enough time in that bed. Plus, we have a perfectly good bed upstairs.”
Winston bounded out of the bed. It was going to happen.
There was enough gasoline left in the generator to run the house for one more night. Winston fired it up and it rumbled loudly, spitting and coughing through its last half-gallon of juice. It was just sufficient to heat the hot water tank to near scalding — just the way Winston liked it — and after a dinner of boxed macaroni and cheese, tuna, and canned peas (all mixed together, it would be their final hot meal for a while), May and Winston shared an intimate shower. They caressed and washed each other’s naked bodies — the same bodies they had grown to know intimately — and while they had each grown old and their bodies had lost the power of such youthful seduction, they reveled in each other’s compassionate adoration and tenderness. Perhaps they did imagine their youthful figures, unblemished skin, and backs that didn’t ache at the end of the day. But, truth be told, their love endured because they trusted each other unequivocally, while learning to forgive each other’s idiosyncrasies and flaws. So what if Winston insisted on painting the barn barn red and not colonial white? So what? Their shower ended when they emptied the hot water tank, and they made love that night on the bare mattress in the master bedroom; it was slow and tender, sentimental and passionate, comforting and reassuring. Perfect.
Winston and May spent the remainder of the evening sitting at Medusa’s stump, silently reminiscing of their life together, and gazing at the reflection of the stars in Robin Lake as the black sky’s muted abyss lightened with flashes of gunfire off in the distance. The PLA was advancing quickly.
Amadeus curled up at May’s feet, like he did most evenings. Winston read the fret in May’s eyes as she gazed down upon her cat. While Amadeus spent the majority of his life outside, he was still very much an indoor cat, preferring to remain inside on cold or rainy nights, but eager to escape when the weather was pleasant enough to hunt for skinks, green anoles, chipmunks, or other critters.