Story Shadows on Crescent Lake

Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Chapter 1


Ran out of pages in my old diary so I’m using this point to start a new one. Might as well. I’m kinda feeling hinky anyway. Need some place to “put my thoughts in order” as Gigi would say as a way to encourage me to journal.

I didn’t get worried until I saw all the life vests were hung where they were supposed to be in the boathouse, but the canoe was off the rack and missing. Gigi is a decent swimmer; or used to be. She’s the one that taught me to swim, right here on the lake. Now she stays away from the water unless she is on her meds (the stuff we ran out of) or has been drinking one of her “feel better” teas, but even then, the rules are if you are around water, you wear a flotation device of some type. Didn’t turn out to be a bad idea a couple of times, especially after we got these nifty, ultra-slim inflatable devices that go around our waist. As Gigi would say, amazing what you can find at estate sales if you are willing to dig around and spend time on “treasure” hunts that sometimes just wind up bupkis and sometimes wind up golden.
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Some of the problem is that Gigi hasn’t had her meds for over a year now, and living by a lake can make safety rules pretty doggone important. When she isn’t on her meds (or teas or supplements) she sometimes has problems making good decisions. She was okay the first few months after she ran out, but slowly that has changed, and the last couple of weeks has been more challenging than normal. She’s walking around like a zombie most of the time. [Note: If you ever read this Gigi, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you always tell me my journal is supposed to be about honesty, memories, and self-discovery. I don’t mean to use that as a weapon or as a form of disrespect. I’m just trying to tell things like they are.]

When my worry bone started singing, I stepped out of the boathouse and looked up and down the shore of the lake on both sides as well as out across the lake towards Bear Island. I didn’t see anything. More importantly I didn’t see anyone. That’s … well, that’s weird. Now I need to figure out what to do but I need to take care of a few things first. Never run off into the unknown if possible. But if you must, go prepared. And wandering around in my pajama bottoms is not what I would call prepared.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Gigi?” I called with my voice still hoarse from oversleeping.

It’s been a while since Gigi woke up before me, but it did still happen. The way things usually run is I’ll get up and have some time to prep for the day so things aren’t chaotic. I can’t stand that, chaos I mean. It makes me feel wiggy so I do what I can to keep things under control. After my me-time I throw breakfast together and make Gigi some of her weird mud coffee which is really a vegan mushroom latte[1] kinda grossness but she loves the stuff and I’m happy it makes her feel better. Sometimes after Gigi gets up, she’ll grab her mug and just wander around the box gardens, looking through the protective fencing rather than opening them, while I get the rest of the day started going in the direction we need to go. Gigi used to do this, but over the last two years it has become my responsibility.

For a long time after I came to live with her, Gigi was ultra manic. Like she didn’t sleep a lot. As a kid I would try and keep up with her but there were days that I wanted to cry because she wanted to keep doing stuff when all I wanted was to go to bed and get away from the way my life was. We fixed some of that by figuring out the St. John’s Wort her parents made her take was doing the opposite of what she needed it to do. We fixed the “made” part by just not telling them she didn’t take it anymore no matter how many assumptions they made. But she stayed “driven”.

Move, move, move. Laziness was a sin. Sitting still for anything but church was a sin. Even at church there were things to be done. There were times you could sit, but you still had to be doing something … school, sewing, planning, reading, etc etc etc. She had this special purse she would take to church and we would sit in the very back corner and she would crochet a chain stitch rope to keep her hands moving. She wasn’t rude to the pastor or choir or whatever. I mean she paid attention and stuff. All she was doing was keeping her hands busy. Because if her hands weren’t moving some other part of her body would want to move and she couldn’t control it and her parents always warned her not to embarrass them.

Work, work, work. Stupid “projects” her parents ordered us to do in the beginning. Later on when they started assuming everything we did was to please them it changed to our own projects. Gardening, landscaping, going on educational field trips, U-pick farms, exercising, biking to the store instead of driving (which she hated because of the distractions between point A and point B). She has a Honda Side-by-Side that is street legal, but with no fuel we can’t drive it. We’d use it when I first came to live with her, but we hid it when her parents (my aunt and uncle) were around. She also had a three-wheeled EV camper[2] but that was really hidden (along with other stuff) because it was left over from when her husband was around and that is a different story that her parents completely didn’t approve of or maybe didn’t want to be responsible for depending on how you look at it … and maybe because they worried she’d just take off one day and “escape their boundaries” or control or something. Besides, we only used either one of them when what we were doing was too far away to bike to; going to stuff in Palatka or even further away like Ormond Beach or St. Augustine. We took the mini camper when we would have to be out overnight because Gigi absolutely would not – maybe could not – drive at night in the beginning. I’m not sure which it really was because even if I drove – and I’ve been driving a LOT longer than most people know – she said it made her really car sick because she couldn’t see anything except for headlights and it always looked like we were going to hit them head on and she would panic. Doesn’t really matter I suppose. Besides, if we couldn’t work outside, we were working inside; cleaning, organizing, renovating, sewing, repairing, dehydrating, freeze-drying, canning. And there was always a lot of that to do, and that’s what we would do at night when Gigi didn’t want to be outside.
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Talk, talk, talk. Most of it made sense most of the time. Then there were days Gigi didn’t have enough to do to burn off the frenetic energy she had, and it became difficult to untangle what she meant and to keep the realistic and unrealistic plans separate. Rainy days could be really bad. I learned to translate what she meant even on the worst days. But even when I was seven, I knew Gigi could be different. Gigi explained it in various ways, but she said it was a secret because other people wouldn’t understand and they would try and interfere and then who knew where I would wind up. I grew to understand that her parents could be the most important people to keep things from because if they got embarrassed they’d “take things in their own hands” and it wouldn’t turn out nice for us. Gigi never scared me the way my aunt and uncle sometimes did “laying down the law” but she still impressed on me how important “family business” was compared to just maybe regular “nobody’s business” kind of situations. And sometimes our family business meant keeping her parents out of our business.

Gigi. My cousin. My much older cousin. She’s older than my brother is, and he is ten years older than me and Gigi is 10 years older than him. That made her 27 years to my 7 when I moved in. Her parents were actually supposed to be my guardians, but it didn’t work out that way. Mostly on purpose. Mostly on their purpose. But see, my dad never knew how things really were, and my brother didn’t find out until a lot later. Gigi’s mother is my mother’s sister … older than her, had my mother lived, by fifteen years. The ages in my family over the last couple of generations are pretty spread out. That makes some things more complicated than they should have been, and sometimes they were complicated on purpose.

I wasn’t thinking of all those complications while I was looking for Gigi. It isn’t those complications that created my current complications. Gigi is missing. In fact, I haven’t seen any of the people I should have seen. There were no boats on the lake and these days there are always at least a few, as people try to add to the sparse protein we can all throw together. When I say “we” I mean the people that chose not to evacuate, or those that couldn’t evacuate for some reason. Those of us left are considered triaged and we can’t get across the border even if we want to. The biggest reason is the bioterrorism that has been going on around the country for the last couple of years, but there’s also the chemical terrorism, third world diseases that have made a comeback, and lots of other things that’ve come about due to the war.

Well, I suppose if you want to be literal about it, we can cross the border – it’s not like there is a physical wall that stretches all up and down the State Line between Florida and Georgia and the other states, but there are consequences. We can’t do much because we can’t get the right kind of ID and papers that would permit us to work, buy food, get a place to live, drive, or anything else for that matter. We’d wind up being transient and that would wind up putting us in some kind of camp depending on what the government deemed us to be homeless from or if they considered us social degenerates or whatever they’re calling it now. Unless they deemed us to have some kind of use or skill or something. Work camps and work farms are real things. So are re-education camps for minors until they consider you adoptable… whether you want to be adopted or not, or whether you have family to take you in that would. Thems the rules these days and I don’t want anything to do with any of that stuff.

Technically I can cross; my US Passport is still good (despite the fact I’m a minor), and my brother Mack – Mack Jr. - is active-duty military and has my name on some list. But if I cross, I’m not going to be able to come back. And since Gigi can’t cross, I won’t. As in every time I’m reminded by the Red Cross people I tell them the same thing. I’m not going into some refugee camp where I wouldn’t have an adult to speak for me when I’m doing just fine with my adult guardian right where we are at. Sometimes I don’t even admit to being a minor but I have to be careful about that because I could be hijacked for the draft. Used to be that only males of my species could be drafted but not anymore. They still try and keep us separate from one another, but females show up on the battlefield nearly as often as males do, just in supporting positions … unless they are fertile then you aren’t allowed in the military at all. Since I’ve never been tested – kinda slipped through the cracks – kinda sorta on purpose – who knows where I might wind up.

The Red Cross people nod sadly when my “situation” comes up, but really, they have too many people to take care of as it is so their sad is pretty much nothing but performative. I mean maybe they have good intentions, but they’ve got others that are easier to manage and who want to be managed and saved. I’m polite, but mostly because it gets me a way to get a letter to Mack. At least I assume my letters are getting to him. Since I don’t get any letters back, I’m starting to think those Red Cross people are just telling the rest of us stories about our letters going to who and where we say they should.

But now my adult is missing, and my complication level has skyrocketed. So not good. Now that the rain has stopped it is time to get back to looking.



[1] 5-Minute Mushroom Latte (2 Ways!)
[2]
View: https://youtu.be/OQSGjjMElj8?si=l26oBEe8ekJjiwi1
 
Chapter 2

Had to come in to get out of the damp and the bugs. I couldn’t see worth a flip either (sorry for the near swearing Gigi, you know I only do it here in my journal where no one else will hear it, and you don’t have to remind me that is hypocritical, I’m just playing it safe).

I have a wind-up flashlight that still works. Stuff like that took the place of the Barbies in my stocking when Aunt and Uncle found out what Dad and my brother Mack were buying me for Christmas. Boy did they pitch a royal fit at first; one, the immoral example that the Barbies set, and two, the waste of money that would just go to someone else at least as immoral as the Barbie they bought. I still have a small chest of that stuff that Gigi helped me to hide from “inspections” and that’s the first time I realized that Gigi might sometimes be hard (but never harsh) and she might sometimes be strange, but she was still on my side even though it meant going against her parents.

Geez, enough already. Stay focused Rain. Yep, that’s my name thanks to my mother thinking it was creative and sweet since I was born during a hurricane. Rain Marjorie Storm. Dad insisted on putting “Marjorie” in there to balance the “sweet” out, and because it was Mom’s name and her mom’s name and her grandmother’s middle name, and her great grandmother’s name too, and they weren’t the only ones in the family. Before that the name was spelled Margery and before that the name was spelled Margaery. We’ve had Marjorie’s, Margery’s, and Margaery’s, and Margarets going back to before cavemen learned to cover their butts… or so claimed Gigi during one of her super manic phases when she decided to try and cram all the family history down my throat. I still have a “family tree” she and I did for one of my school projects that goes way back to the Dark Ages for several of the lines… that also seem to have so many Marjories to Margarets that it is a wonder anyone knew which one that was being spoken to. We did it back when Gigi’s parents still tried to have a say in everything even though they were rarely around to enforce what they said.

We even did it for my father’s side of the family even though my aunt and uncle turned their noses up. Storm showed up way back when, like in the 7th century, in Northern Europe and came down through what today is known as Germany and the Netherlands and places like that. Technically it is “Middle Dutch” for all that means anything anymore. About the only thing that has really stuck out to me is that it often was associated back then with people that worked on the sea or had some kind of violent or hot-tempered personality. Well, my dad’s family were fishermen for a lot of generations, back before they immigrated from Sweden (we think) in the very early 1800s. Kinda hard to tell because they stayed out on ships most of the time going all over the world. They’d come back to the States and have a kid or two before hopping the next boat and doing it all over again. A lot of them got lost as sea too. The Martindale side, my mom’s side, was more “aristocratic” if you listen to my aunt. And if she is talking you better be listening … or else. Mom was her baby sister and she never did think Dad was good enough for her and when she got sick, even though it wasn’t Dad’s fault but her own family genetics, she blamed him hard when Dad was already blaming himself.

Oh good grief, there I go again. Stay on topic Rain. Don’t pull a Gigi and let the rabbit lure you down trails and distract you.

It’s cooler than I expected after the hot weather lasting longer than it normally does. Things were wet and hot from the bad hurricane season. Now they’re damp and cool, soon to be cold if our homemade weather station[1] has things right. The old Galileo weather doohickey is saying the same thing so it’s like a preponderance of evidence or something like that.

I had to come back to the house because I didn’t have enough layers on for being outside. I also needed fresh drinking water and while we aren’t the only ones in the neighborhood with an artesian well, ours is the only one I know about that flows strong enough year ‘round that we don’t have to draw it up with a bucket and filter it before we can use it. Our artesian well is on a regular spigot and works just fine that way even without a pump, but we keep that to ourselves and keep the spigot hidden by the small concrete block well-house that holds the old sprinkler system controls and pump machinery that used the artesian well instead of city water. We only pull water when it is dark to keep people from damaging things … or damaging us to get at the water. We live on a freshwater lake but that doesn’t mean the lake water is drinkable without a lot of treatment. It has a lot of tannins in it too; that means no one has white clothes anymore since it stains everything even if you boil your wash-water a lot. And most people don’t seem to bother washing much at all if the BO that wafts around everyone is telling the truth.

Honest to Pete (no sacrilege meant), my brain is running all over the place. I know why I’m all discombobulated and writing like this – although not writing but more like dictating since I’m talking into my tablet. I’ve looked all day. Not just for Gigi but for any of the people that I know should be around. Gigi and I stick to ourselves, but we still interact enough that we know who is a local and who is a stranger, who has been here a while and who is just passing through trying to find the next place to exist for a while. Even before the churches closed down, we didn’t intentionally socialize a whole lot, not even with the immediate neighbors. Most of the old-timers knew Gigi’s parents because the house that used to be next door is where they used to live before they started going up to Tennessee for most of their time. Then there is the house that is where my grandparents used to live; and the empty lot that is “still in the family” though technically it is inside a Trust for Gigi. My aunt and uncle though act (or acted I should say) like they own it and it is just temporarily in Gigi’s name for “tax purposes” and I never said more than that ‘cause apparently I was not old enough to have an opinion on things.

Gigi always did what she could to protect me. I trust her. She’s just got her own set of problems that her parents helped to cause though she’s never come right out and said it that way. Biggest part of that in my opinion is her getting married young to some guy they picked out for her who turned out to be a nightmare. But that’s another story; a sad one that has left marks.

Gigi has a problem being around people in anything other than really organized settings. She wasn’t always that way. She got beat up by her supposedly perfect husband when she was 21 and has never been the same. I only know because one of the neighbors said something one time like they expected me to know. I’ve figured out that Gigi got a brain injury but at the same time she had some psychological effects. But if I ever do record it, I want everyone to know I am on Gigi’s side. Totally and completely. Just like she’s been on my side even when I didn’t understand it.

Until recently Gigi would try most of the time, try to do the people thing. Sometimes she could even be pretty doggone good at it like if we were running one of Mr. Thad’s flea market booths or helping in his antique store or something. On the other hand, sometimes we’d go to home school events and activities like that, but we didn’t always stay for the entire time even if it meant leaving right when I was starting to have fun. Church activities were another thing that was hit or miss. She got us excused from that stuff by saying, “It just isn’t the same since you and Mom aren’t in charge.” And you can guess who she was saying that to even if maybe you wouldn’t understand why she would say it.

The questions people asked sometimes made Gigi a little paranoid too. At least until Mack (my brother) signed some legal papers switching the guardianship thingie to Gigi. It was right after he got drafted and found out what the real situation was with who was taking care of me, but before they closed all the borders. Boy did that make my aunt and uncle PO’d when they found out. They threatened legal action because they’d been using my Mom’s estate to do things for themselves while leaving it in my name (“the estate of Marjorie Dana Martindale Storm”). Like they bought the house where …

Whoa. Stop. One thing at a time Rain. And definitely less of the spinning in circles. Things are weird enough as it is.

Here, I’ll just spit it straight out. I suspect our small town might have been hit by some slavers. Sigh. Yeah, I know that sounds like a real drama llama thing to say. And maybe if we lived on the coast, it might be true though Agenda Noise News – what Gigi calls all the sounds that come out of our wind-up radio (ANN that really stands for America News Network) – has slowly been turning it into real information for the last couple of months. They – whoever “they” are – claim they are getting their reports from drones patrolling the area. Yeah, I mean we see drones every once and a while, but the consensus of the locals is that they belong to reclamation teams looking for secure job sites, or the Red Cross looking for people to fill the work camp rosters. They also say they are like roaches, if you’ve seen one then there is a whole bunch more out there. Whatever. No one really knows. And to be honest no one really cares, it’s just something to pass the time gossiping about.

Or maybe I am being a drama llama and best case some do-gooder brigade really has come and scooped up people to take them to resettlement areas or refugee camps or wherever they take people they’ve “rescued for their own good” whether those people want to be rescued or not. From rumors we’ve heard, that usually happens right before the government, or some reclamation contractor, rolls through and hoovers up any supplies that might be left in an area, including building parts to put people to work with rebuilding areas that have been bombed by the enemy/terrorists or destroyed by the big riots/professional protestors. The federal government has made threats like that before. Some people welcome the threat and others not so much because as they said, “Never believe anyone that says we’re from the government and they’re there to help.”

I just don’t know why I didn’t hear whatever happened. Surely taking that many people – three or four dozen at least - would make enough racket I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to sleep through it. And why didn’t Gigi call to me? Or tell me where she was going? Leave a message for me? Where’s the canoe? Did someone beside Gigi use it or take it? My head hurts from all the questions. In fact, my head has been hurting since yesterday. I thought maybe I was PMSing. It’s one of the reasons that Gigi gave me a Midol. I went right to sleep with some tea, and it might have been why I overslept. It’s definitely been one of those months.

Let’s see, there was no one on US17 and I biked pretty far in both directions. I made it to Pamona Park going north and I knew I wouldn’t get any further, at least on 17 because of the bombing that took place two years ago. No one lives up that way, it was only a place to move through, because there was been something in the bombs that killed off all the vegetation and animals… and people that were there. And if you are smart you don’t venture into Pomona Park because anyone that does gets sick not long afterwards and go from sick to dead within about a week.

I turned around and headed south and made it as far as far as Seville before I had to turn around and get back here to the house because of all the reasons I’ve already mentioned. I didn’t go as far as Pierson, but I might give it a try tomorrow if I can get all my chores finished early and Gigi hasn’t shown up by then. Maybe she got stuck out on Bear Island but I’m pretty sure that is wishful thinking since she’d know how to give me a signal to come fetch her with like a flag or something ‘cause she knows I would have checked things out with my binoculars. Something really bizarre is going on.

There’s no one where they are supposed to be. I mean no one. None of the church people are at any of the churches. None of the park people are wandering around in any of the parks. No one is fishing; not in boats or off docks or piers or the concrete bulkheads that edge different places on the lake shores. The Stone Soup Café doesn’t look like anyone has been there in a couple of days and the church people usually set one up once or twice a week though Gigi always said that we needed to stay away because it was a good place to get sick since people didn’t always wash the way they should. Man is Gigi a bear about washing and cleaning. Now I am too, but it’s habit and from having to listen about all the gross germs and stuff Gigi was always going on about.

I didn’t see anyone out picking up tree limbs or dried palm fronds to burn, and it has been cold enough that I wore a hoodie all day and even had to knock off looking sooner than I meant to because of how cold the wind was. If I was cold today, I know some of the other people that should have been around are.

I haven’t smelled any smoke … from open cooking pits, from wood fireplaces (those that have them), or from the trash pit that the town dug when trash service failed and something “had to be done”. This house has a free-standing, natural-gas fireplace that looks like it came out of the 1970s. Well, it is according to paperwork and permits that we found when we were renovating things. We now have it set up to house a solar heater that was originally meant to heat a greenhouse or animal coop. It works pretty well except when it is cloudy. And yeah, it’s been cloudy today so it is extra clothes and extra covers to stay warm.

I’ve closed all the security shutter panels but I’m going to sleep out here in the family room where the fireplace is. Gigi will know to go to the back to knock to wake me up and let her in. She won’t use the front door area. We never use it these days. We’ve got it secured eleventy dozen different ways and have since this house was bought. And it wasn’t to keep strangers out, it was to keep “personally motivated” family on the other side of the boundary line.

The heater was at least warm enough that all I had to do to appease my stomach was set a mug of soup near it to heat it up. I foraged some stuff to make a green broth. That’s about all I felt up to eating anyway. My stomach is in knots. Please don’t let anything have happened to Gigi. Please.


[1] Amazon.com : diy weather station kit
 

Chapter 3​

I biked to Pierson. It is a good thing I did. Stupid thing to say but that’s how it comes out I guess. I hate people. If I didn’t before, I definitely do now. Gigi said it was self-destructive to let those kinds of feelings control my actions. I get that. But that was then and this is now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I think I’m done crying. At least for a little bit. I think I have my anger under control too. Sort of. Mostly I’m done puking. But I’m still shaking. I hate when my emotions get out of control. It is one of the reasons that Daddy sent me to live with family. Some family. But that’s another story. Let me finish this one and … and I think I know what I’m going to do. It’s time I suppose. It’ll give me something to do at night.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I got up day before yesterday morning early. The sun hadn’t come up yet which was no biggie because that’s when I normally get up. Sunrise was at 6 am but all that means these days is it is time to start outdoor work. I never let that stop me though. In my own way I can be as “manic” as Gigi, just for different reasons. I’m used to operating in the dark. That’s like some kind of metaphor or something but I’m too tired for philosophy right now.

It didn’t take me any time at all to hop on my bike and get going because I had prepped everything the night before, even some extra water and food just in case foraging didn’t work out or my water filter got clogged up. I made sure that nothing needed harvesting right then, and the stuff that did I gathered up quickly and put it inside in the cold box before locking everything down and getting my bike to the end of the drive. What I found told me I must have missed a lot, but I needed to find Gigi. I did what she expected me to, but I needed to get going.

No point in heading north. I’d already gone to Pamona Park and it just wasn’t worth trying to go that way again. So, south in the half-light that comes before dawn. My goal was first Seville, which was where I turned around before. That was about nine miles which made it about 44 minutes. Then to go beyond the Perez Nursery – giant tree farm that operated on both sides of 17, hundreds of acres so giant wasn’t an exaggeration. It was only a couple more miles, but I’d need to slow down to be on the lookout for whatever was going on.

Then Flowing Well Tree Farm which is on the other side of the railroad tracks that run beside 17, and which is kinda surrounded by one of the Lake George conservation areas. I’d be heading into Pierson by that point – seven more miles and another thirty minutes - but that’s where I knew I would need to be extra special sauce kind of careful because even though we are in an evacuation zone (really a triage zone these days), Pierson is still up and running almost like it is the way things used to be except people wear guns like Pancho Villa, there are no cars only alternative means of travel like horses and solar golf carts, and the only law enforcement is whatever resistance the town can throw together if they need it.

Pierson is also where the Red Cross and the military kinda pop up on a semi regular basis so that this part of Florida is still considered part of the continental US, at least geographically. Current maps show the entire state of Florida is still part of the USA and I suppose we are. But the reality is that we have some “bites” taken out of us that create no-go zones and that means that the “Free State of Florida” is now the “Used To Be Free State of Florida.
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Gossip has it that Jacksonville is a burned over husk because of attacks on NAS JAX, Mayport, Blount Island, NAWCTSD, the submarines at Kings Bay, and all the other military stuff up there, or at least what used to be up there. Gossip also has it that the destruction goes all the way up to Fort Stewart and Hunter in Savannah, GA. I can’t say for sure, but it sounds reasonable given what was happening two-ish years ago. But for now, I need to focus on the last two days.

I headed south like I planned. Things felt even emptier than the day before, but I kept going. Gigi wouldn’t give up on me, and I wasn’t going to give up on her.

After Seville I slowed down. I’d been averaging about 15 mph on the bike, but after Seville I dropped it to about 10 mph. That was fast for hiking but slow for biking and while I itched to go faster, it is a good thing I didn’t. I was half-way to Pierson when I started … well … smelling something. At first I thought maybe it was roadkill, but the smell was too big and kept getting worse, not better or less like it should have.

I don’t know what it was that made me stop all of a sudden, get off the bike, and then hide it behind the old concession stand at the Little League fields. Something just felt wiggy. Gigi taught me that I should listen to that still, inner voice. She said it was either my instincts or God guiding me, both of them should be given attention.

I was careful because this was usually the first “check point” or “guard station” or whatever you want to call it for people heading into and out of Pierson. I peeked into the concession stand which wasn’t hard since the door was mostly off its hinges. Besides reeking, it was a mess inside. Things knocked over, maps and rosters halfway ripped off the walls, and dried puke and foam mixed with brown which I later figured out was blood.

Something in me froze, and not just physically. I’m not stupid or “challenged” like a lot of people credit me being. I mean I have my issues, but they don’t stop me even if they occasionally hinder me. Matter of fact Gigi told me to ignore all of that because people just didn’t understand. I wasn’t emotionally traumatized either even though by rights I guess maybe I should have been. I just, I don’t know. Sometimes my emotions freeze and all that energy gets funneled into brain power. It’s like I slow down and speed up at the same time. I’ve given up explaining it to people. You either get it or you don’t. It is kinda like having mental tunnel vision without the tunnel. The pediatricians used to say I had some kind of processing disorder, but it has never been a disorder to me. I get hyper focused, but I’ve learned to stay situationally aware at the same time.

While my brain was taking in and filing everything that I was seeing, all my other senses were still active and on full alert. That’s why, despite the fact my brain was processing the evidence before me like an AI investigative bot, I still heard some noise and commanded my body to drop silently and hide while turning my eyes in the direction the disruption was coming from.

Four males. Two of them with rebreather masks on and two of them in full field hazmat get ups. I knew what the hazmat suits were because they’ve come through on 17 a few times taking air and water samples. That’s about the only notice we get when there’s been some kind of bio or chemical terrorism close enough the wind or water could bring it our way.

“Yeez, Evanston,” one of the guys in a rebreather said. “How many more loads are we going to have to move until they give in and realize there’s too many to process. We need to get out of here. Let a civilian Clean Team handle this… this…” Based on his tone of voice and body language I could tell the guy was just this side of freaking out and ready to run. I could see even from where I was at that the mask over his face was fogged up because he wasn’t breathing through it right.

“Stop bitching Latimer,” the big guy in a hazmat suit shushed. “Sarge said silently, not whining. You get caught busting the rules again and you're going to do a tour on the prison ships.” Evanston made it sound like he almost hoped the guy would be stupid enough to warrant the reassignment.

I knew the voice though his face was all covered. I’ve gotten good at moving around without anyone seeing me. It gets to be habit on a normal basis, and when I’m doing it intentionally, I’m even better. But I’m not so stupid to realize that there weren’t people even better than me, especially when it was the person that first taught me the tricks.

Evanston slowly fell back to the rear and hand signaled for the other three to keep moving. He walked over to the side of the road, overgrown by more than a few seasons with no mowing, and whispered, “Rain, I hope like hell that’s you. But if it is … aw hell.”

“Yeah Quill, it’s me. Have you seen Gigi? She’s missing.”

He gave a deep sigh and said again, “Aw hell.”
 

Chapter 4​


“Evanston!”

“Relax Sarge, it’s my personal canteen.”

The Sarge sighed and looked like he wanted to say something else but instead asked, “She done crying?”

Quill answered, “Probably not, but she’ll hold on so the medics can get their samples. Wontcha Rain?”

“Stop treating me like I’m still seven years old. I’m fifteen,” I said sounding even younger than seven. I had been crying off and on for over an hour while things were explained to me.

“I ain’t treatin’ you like a baby. I’m tryin’ to treat you decent, and not like a bomb about to go off. You’re traumatized.”

I sniffed and looked at the guy – Quill Evanston – who I’d known as long as I’d been living with Gigi. “You promise they’ll let me take her and bury her in the town cemetery? That’s where Mom is buried, our grandparents, and Dad has a memorial next to Mom even though they used his body for that memorial in DC. And … and maybe Mack since I haven’t heard from him … in a long time.”

“You haven’t?” Quill asked, obviously confused.

“Uh uh.”

He took a breath, looked at some of the men in the room and said, “Let me see if I can ask. Things are … complicated.”

I responded, “Tell me something I don’t know. And how about starting with why is everyone acting like I’m a head case and contagious at the same time. I’m sorry I’m… emotional. But that’s natural under the circumstances. I’m not sick.”

“Because … you might be Rain. Just let the medics do their thing.”

The man called Sarge said, “Stay with her Evanston. Explain things enough we can get this cleaned up. We’ll be changing locations as soon as we get confirmation.” Then he walked out like he was mad at the world and looking for a way to expend the energy that caused.

With a look Quill told me to stay sat and handed me a rag so I could wash my face and get the snot off my upper lip. He stood up when some other guys in hazmat suits walked in and started dumping out what looked like a mini surgery and looking to use it on me.

“Samples,” I told them. “Not pounds of flesh.”

One of them looked up upon hearing my snotted-up voice and I realized he was a she. Cautiously she asked, “Symptoms?”

I looked at Quill, but he was being grilled by some guy with more stripes on the outside of his hazmat suit than Quill had.

I turned back to the “she” and said, “Do they make you draw those stripes on those suits to make you a bigger target?”

Her lips twitched but it nearly took a magnifying glass to see it. “This will be faster if we stay focused.”

“Focused? Fine. I was looking for my guardian that also happens to be my cousin that has been raising me for 8 years. I found out … I found out I don’t have to look for her ever again. So yeah, I cried buckets and I wound up with snot face. Other than that I’m just hunky dory.”

One of the other suits muttered, “Sounds more like you are either rabid or extremely pissed off at someone.”

I shrugged and stayed focused on the female of the bunch. “That’s not a symptom, that’s my eternal state of being. The someone changes depending on circumstances.”

“Yeah. I can see how that might be. Do you bite?”

“Not on a regular basis.”

The smile actually got big enough that someone that only needed reading glasses could see it. “Weight, blood pressure, fluid samples, and most of those just swabs. Can you handle that without biting? Need to know up front. Don’t want the Major thinking he’ll have to play whack a mole with your head.” She tossed her head in the direction of the guy Quill was being talked at by.

I looked at the guy in question. He looked a little older than Quill which meant he might have been mid-20’s. I looked at the woman and said, “The movies used to call them field promotions.”

“I would suggest keeping that to yourself,” she said with quiet and cautious humor.

“Yeah, well here’s something I’ll give you for free. My dad was Mack Storm Sr., one of the first casualties of the war. My brother is – maybe was since I haven’t heard from him in two years – Dr. Mack Storm, Jr. He was an LT and a medic somewhere out yonder after getting drafted straight out of college the same month our dad got KIA’d. So yeah, I’ve got attitude to spare so you might as well tack that to the top of them forms you’re gonna fill out.”

Her face went blank then serious. “Can you verify this information?”

I turned my head and yelled, “Hey Quill, can you verify my identity for this lady? I’ve got my ID and all that but they’re probably a dime-a-dozen on the black market.”

Quill looked over at me and gave a pained expression. “Just hand her your ID already and stop being such a smartass. You’re going to make me rethink treating you like a baby. Life sucks Rain, you’re just making it harder on yourself, and Gigi wouldn’t approve of the way you’re acting.”

It was the last rather than the first that kept rougher words behind my teeth. I knew that Quill was trying to help me not fall apart but I guess I was starting to put the toes of my boots too close to the line for reasons he would have considered important.

I sighed and put both my hands in sight and then slowly reached one into my hoodie then under my shirt. I pulled out something Gigi had made for us that she called our ID Pouch. It was like a leather snap-close wallet on a chain big enough to hold our passports, national IDs, and other picture IDs. Unfortunately for me the so-called Major had taken an interest.

“Nice dog chain.”

Politely I said, “It gets the job done.”

“If you and Evanston here are lying about your identity or relationship you are going to be in serious trouble young lady, as will he.”

“Quill doesn’t lie. He’s kinda pathological about that and it’s why they put him in the CBRN.

He can’t be bought and it doesn’t matter who tries. It’s also why he got put out here in the boonies. Some guy from Tallahassee tried to get his daughter through the gate when Quill was on duty. He’s got great morals, but it still sucks to be him when those he has to work for …”

“Rain!”

I looked at Quill who was starting to lose his patience despite trying to handle me with kid gloves, and just rolled my eyes. “Gigi explained it after she heard it from her former sister-in-law who happens to be your current cousin, before they got into a farm program and moved south to help expand the citrus program around Bok Tower. Or so the story goes.”

“All a ya’ll girls talk too dang much. And you don’t need to follow that example. It ain’t right. Now be nice to Lt. Delano. She’s just tryin’ to help. It’ll give the White Coats a baseline – a real one and not some stupid guesstimate – and it might help, you know, not to have this happen again. At least not to this extent.”

I’ll admit my bottom lip quivered and it was a struggle not to cry. I’ll also admit that most of the people in the tent felt bad even if they didn’t want to show it. That’s where their angry faces came from. They didn’t want to see what happened and the consequences. It is a lot different than seeing all this happen in a training video or in a medical setting. That’s why medical personnel had to take rotations out in the field. It keeps them “connected” or so I’d heard from the Red Cross people.

I didn’t have to make a fuss because the males let Lt. Delano do the hands-on collection process. I guess they’d gotten what they wanted and the questions had just started to duplicate themselves when I heard something I was pretty sure was bad news. I slid off the folding stool I’d been told to sit in and at the same time I kicked out and knocked as many people in the tent down as I could. That Major was about to punch me when rat-a-tat-tat came through the flimsy tent material and hit two of the people that were trying to get up too soon.

“Drone!”
 

Chapter 5​


Battle drones used to be a problem when the war first broke out. They made Gigi OCD and that’s why we changed some of the ways we did things and why we missed the mass evacuations. However, the last 18 months the drones have been mostly cobbled together messes used by what one local had called Domestic Craptastics. They gave the neighborhood something to practice their aim on and their use had petered off for the last six months. But I still remember the sound of the ones that came early on.

I stayed low to the ground and belly crawled over to Lt. Delano. Even though I’d moved fast, it hadn’t been fast enough for some, and she was putting some kind of powder and a heavy-duty pad on the wound of this one guy that wasn’t looking too good.

She spared me a glance, but I could tell in her eyes that she was uncomfortable. She opened her mouth to say what I don’t know, but I put my finger to my lips and got everyone else’s attention at the same time. It took a sec but even the Field Promotion Major figured out that I meant no noise because the drones might be using sound to locate targets. Then out of my hoodie pocket I pulled what looked like a toy but was actually something that Gigi and I cobbled together. It was a really strong laser pointer and it tended to make the drones do stupid flying stunts that sent them into the ground, trees, water, or anything else that created a sudden and catastrophic stoppage and breakage.

As I was crawling out of the tent a hand grabbed my wrist. It was Quill. Such a guy thing to do but his Major distracted him long enough for me to get out and start looking for the battle mosquito. It was daylight so whoever was running them wouldn’t see where the laser was coming from. Need I say that there are a lot of drones at the bottom of Crescent Lake? I used my practiced skill and did the same thing for the ones that looked like they had the most ammo attached.

Sure enough, after a few of the enemy toys got KIA’d by running into things, including each other, they backed off but all that did was bring the foot soldiers out of where they were hiding. But they hadn’t figured on just how hacked off the soldiers on our side were. They thought they were just dealing with National Guard types. Nope. Regular Army with a Squad of Marines thrown in for good measure, and they were more than a little PO’d and needed to work off some of their mad. The enemy was given no quarter and were on the run pretty quickly, but suddenly the soldiers stopped and I watched a plane come in and shoot most of the rest of the enemy up and then I saw bombs being dropped further south and some nasty, greasy looking smoke quickly going skyward.

That isn’t what had the bigger portion of my attention however. I’d finally found what was making the stink. I was looking at the retention area that was being used as a cremation site. That was the smell and I was nearly gagging on it but looking for Gigi’s … Gigi’s body so I could get out of there. That’s where Quill found me.

“Rain …”

“No. I’m not going with you.”

He made a face that combined both anger and regret. “Uh … that’s the thing. Base isn’t allowing any civilians to evac out. They think … er … maybe …”

I looked at him. He was caught between really mad and really sorry and something that was causing him to be seriously gut sick. I nodded. “I’m fine with it.”

“You are just a kid,” he snapped. “Dammit, dammit, dammit all. They can’t even make space for one …” He would have yanked at his hair if he had had any. This was Quill stuck between rough, telling me I could do what I needed to because I had to, and his protection gene dialed up to maximum.

Refusing to give in I responded, “And you aren’t much older so skip it. Just because you hit 20 doesn’t make you Methuselah. We both know all they would do is throw me in some work camp and from what I’ve heard those places are so bad that as soon as someone turns 18 they’re begging to get out and be useful to society or something like that, even if it is just as cannon fodder.”

Impatiently he asked, “Where’d you hear …?”

“Gossip, so I’m probably not getting all the story right but there’s been enough stories on the radio about riots in the camps that I’m probably more right than not.”

He sighed deeply. “Er … you … you know … are you all right? You’re acting weird.”

“I’ll lose it again when there isn’t anyone around to label me. Right now … right now I know what Gigi would expect. What Dad and Mom would expect too. And I guess Mack as well.”

Carefully he responded, “Gigi wasn’t always with it the way she needed to be, especially this last year from what I saw. She’d run out of her meds hadn’t she? And drop the killer eyes. I get it wasn’t her fault. I get she …”. He petered off before continuing. “Bruce was a …”. He sighed. “No one in the family knew about what Bruce was, what he was doing. No one blames Gigi for what Bruce did to her and what it meant. I’m sure not criticizing. But this is different. And I can’t do anything because Major Pain in the Ass is watching.”

“I don’t expect you …”

“Shut up.” He looked at me and then stepped close and said in a quiet rush, “We’re being pulled out. You’ve got maybe 24 hours and then a reclamation team will hit this place hard. Maybe not even 24 hours so do what you can with it. And yeah, I know what Gigi thought of salvaging. She nearly ripped me a new one that time I asked how you two were making it without looking like skeletons. I’m not asking for that intel. If I don’t know then I can’t say, if I get questioned. Just remember, this is different. You’re going to have to … do things different than you would if Gigi was still around.”

And just like that I wanted to cry so bad again I nearly couldn’t see. But I could hear and the guy Quill had called Major PITA was coming over and ordering all civilians to vacate the area. And since there was only one civilian – me – he sounded pretty stupid in my opinion. Quill gave me a hard look but also pulled one over by giving me a local hand signal of some place I needed to check when everyone was gone.

I nodded to him and turned to go to where the bike was but then stopped and said, “Please let me bury Gigi with the family.”

The Major looked annoyed, but he didn’t know that I knew how to read body language and micro expressions. It is one of the classes Gigi and I took online together before the world fell apart and it has come in handy … like a lot. It was harder to do with the hazmat suit in the way, but his face was still readable. The Major was scared and more than a little creeped out. But knowing what he was wasn’t the same thing as knowing why he was. I looked at Quill and while he wasn’t as bad off as Major PITA he was still something.

Quill looked at the Major who gave a small nod. Quill turned his head and I could see his nose flair a bit which told me he resented having to ask the Major’s permission for something. Quickly he said in a hushed whisper, “Mack is alive. He’s stateside serving in one of the big VA hospitals after he was injured in the line of duty but don’t freak out, he’s doing better than okay. I can’t say which hospital but if you write a quick letter I’ll see if I can get it to him. Just understand no matter that he might want to do something for you, he can’t. And he’s been getting your letters … but he ain’t happy you haven’t been getting his … or the money he’s been sending to get you and Gigi across the state line.”

“What money?”

“No time to explain it but … your aunt and uncle were supposed to be paying a lawyer to get both of you legal passage. I can’t say no more than that. You just gotta take my word on it.”

Needing to know I asked, “Is he okay and stuff?”

“Yeah. As far as I can tell. He’s gonna see what he can do but Rain, a lot of people don’t really know how things are down here; not really. You’re too young and letters out get redacted by the postal inspectors but … look, this is killing me, but you’re going to have to do for yourself for the foreseeable future. Do you understand what I mean?”

I nodded but also said, “Them reclamation people better leave me alone.”

“They’re not the ones I’m worried about ‘cause they’re already complaining about having to come this far inland. But they’re under contract.”

“This isn’t that far inland. It isn’t even forty miles from here to Ormond Beach.”

“Might as well be given how tight they are with fuel these days. And reclamation companies don’t get any breaks on that even if they are government contractors. Matter of fact this will bump them into a higher price tier. You heard of that?”

“Yeah. Like the old days when the more city water you used, the more expensive it got.”

He gave me a look like he hadn’t expected me to understand everything that I did. I got that a lot and didn’t hold it against him. Living with Gigi and her issues forced me to grow up faster in ways other kids my age never had. Then again, living with Gigi and her issues also gave me a lot that other kids my age never had. Like the kinds of survival skills I know I’m going to need even more than I did before.

Quill got mad again when his radio started squawking. “This is crap. You’re a minor. Even with the new legal age laws you are too young for all this.”

“Quill? Don’t. I’m holding it together. You start being you and trying to be nice without turning me into a prisoner of some type and I’m gonna lose it again. Just let me write the letter to Mack.”

Quill handed me one of the Postal Cards they allowed these days. It wouldn’t hold much but I’d do what I could. I used the nicknames we grew up with just to mess with the AI postal inspectors because it suited my mood and because I knew Mack would understand.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thunder. I was told you were getting my letters. Glad of it. Q says you know about Gigi and told me there was stuff I couldn’t know on your end which is fine. Just want you to be okay. I’ll be okay. I know how to get along. Gigi taught me. Yes, I’m sad but we’ve both been sad before. I know what I have to do to manage that. I’ll be good. You be careful. Maybe someday we get to see each other. Have a life Thunder. I’m going to try to have one too. PS, I’m burying Gigi in the family plot. You decide what to do about the rest. I don’t care about them anymore. Rain.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I know the card sounds cold or childish … or maybe childishly cold; but it was either keep it simple or have the postal inspectors make things useless while they expend all that black out ink they use.

The last thing I did was pull Gigi’s body (it was in a black bag) out of the stack it was in and drag it off to the side. There was an ID card on it so I guess they read her ID papers. Or maybe Quill identified her. No one stopped me. No one was really looking at me … and it was on purpose. Plus, everything in the mobile unit was getting packed and put on the road in the direction of Barberville where they would either get flown out (their upper muckety mucks if I understood the grousing I heard) or they were going to grab SR40 then hit CR11 and take that through the boonies and wind up in Flagler Beach. Where anyone was going from there, they either didn’t know or didn’t say.
 

Chapter 6​


Not much more to say about the military and hazmat teams except that Quill must have made one more try for me because he was sent out ahead of the others with a trailer load of equipment and boy did he look PO’d. He gave me the same hand signal and a hard glare until I nodded. I hope he hasn’t gotten himself in trouble. Major PITA didn’t even let Lt. Delano say anything to me. What he did do made me mad enough that I almost put a hole in his precious hazmat suit which would have caused him to be put on a triage list if rumor is true. But I didn’t. Not worth the headache and consequences. The Major got lucky. I have a moral compass, I just haven’t decided whether I’m going to use it after this.

What Major PITA did do was have a unit of the hazmat people … not active-duty military … run me off with guns and some of them kinda liked it. I could tell they were power tripping because the bullets were at my feet running me in different directions. Sometimes left. Sometimes right. But always away.

I mean really? Was that necessary? He certainly didn’t endear himself to the soldiers. They didn’t help me or run interference but the looks they gave Major PITA were pretty vicious and I wouldn’t want to be him if he ever needs their help. They refused to use their drones to run me off further and told him to … er … something anatomically impossible.

When I got to my bike, I rode away quickly, back in the direction of Flowing Well Tree Farm. They wouldn’t have been able to see me take a sharp left up and over the old railroad tracks and through the overgrown dirt strip road back to the nursery area. I skidded to a stop and hid anyway and started a plan. Or I tried to after I got my emotions under control again. I’ve been shot at before. Kinda the mess Gigi and I had to take and deal with from being stuck on the wrong side of the Evac Line and being females with no male connections to act as protectors or what passed for that. But geez, you expect bad characters to do the shooting and meanness, you shouldn’t have to think about it coming from the side you are supposed to be supporting and rooting for. Every time I think about that part it makes me feel bitter … and mean, and not supportive anymore.

Quill had told me I had 24 hours. I wasn’t sure when the clock started but being run off did give me time to think and figure out how I was going to get Gigi’s remains back home.

Look, I know I sound weird. I’m still figuring all this out. And it feels like something inside me is broken, or maybe even has died. Same way I felt when Mom died, then Dad. But I had people then. My people. Now I don’t. I know Mack cares. Apparently he’s been caring in ways I didn’t know about and while that helps, he’s not here and yeah like I said, I’m bitter. Not at Mack. Not at Quill. Just bitter in general and I never wanted to be that way, and I know Gigi never wanted me to be that way either.

But frankly I’m not in the mood to pretty it up for anyone that might eventually read this. So yeah, to continue the story, I needed a plan to take Gigi’s mortal remains and inter them in the family plot.

I know the basic how-to’s[1] of manually digging a grave. I was even forced to learn how to get a body into the grave and how to cover it and all the rest. You don’t want to have to deal with a body that’s been buried and then dug up – or at least a grave that’s been dug into. I had to, twice. Neither time my fault, but I was still stuck having to help deal with the aftermath. Being one of the youngest and most able-bodied of the people that hadn’t evacuated I kinda got used for manual labor and scut work … a lot. That included digging graves for both people and pets. So yeah, it didn’t take me long to have a plan once I got back home. I even knew where a big slab of quartz was that I could use as a headstone. It is a leftover piece from the house renovation. It is going to take me some time to figure out how to put the information on a metal plate and then attach it so it won’t fall off. There’s probably something in the Ace Hardware store if there isn’t something in the tool closet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was either do something or start crying all over again. Part of me kept thinking that Gigi wouldn’t approve but over the last year she’d stopped ordering me not to salvage. I just had to make sure that I could tell her honestly that I hadn’t stolen it from anyone, that it had been abandoned, or that there would be no way to simply walk away and expect whatever it was to be in good condition for the original owner to return for. The longer the war rolled on, the less likely that someone was going to “return” with any expectation of things being the way they left them.

Those of us left in town have … had … an unspoken rule that we didn’t destroy property, we didn’t hoard supplies or anything else, but if someone needed it then there would be no condemnation. Found found food – not that there was much still found - was usually taken to which ever church was having a supper for everyone. Most people had some type of edible landscaping or they knew (or learned) how to forage things that wouldn’t kill them. Gigi called what the Church People did a Stone Soup Supper. We rarely joined in. That’s a different story I’ll tell later.

What I mean is that to keep myself from going crazy I got nosey and started looking around and into closed containers and cabinets. The people that had taken over the nursery weren’t nearly as good as the original owners had been about the trees and stuff. They kept up appearances but just barely, and mostly from chickens. The chickens were all dead from the same thing that had killed all the people. I did manage to discover a bunch of jars of different kinds of pickled eggs and home-canned chicken meat. I marked that as Found Food and knew I’d need a container to get it home in without the jars clacking together and breaking.

There was a weird metal storage shed thingie that looked like a train car without wheels. I was cautious when I opened it and nearly screamed when these two people fell out of it like they’d been leaning against the door. Yeah, they were dead and it didn’t look like it had been pleasant. The smell … well I’m about ready to go puke again just remembering the smell and I knew that I’d have to be careful about transporting Gigi’s remains or lifetime nightmares on top of the ones I already have were in my future. The only thing that made the odor bearable was that I quickly figured out what the metal storage shed thing was for … curing tobacco. The two smells merged together to create something truly nasty. I got away from there as fast as I could. No way was I going to try and stuff the bodies back in the tobacco shed. They were already decomposing because of the warmth inside the storage shed thingie.

After I got out of wafting distance, I went to investigate another shed that was hidden on purpose from the looks of it. Naturally I sued more caution but I still managed to force myself to do it. That’s when I found another talent the people had. Back in one of the sheds I found an electric UTV. It had the name and logo of the nursery professionally stenciled on it so I made the educated guess that it was there when the new people had taken over. There was also a solar charging station set up and the UTV was fully charged. I’d seen stuff like that in Pierson after the evacuation but not up close. People are … were … super protective of any gear they might have. Especially if it involved transportation.

Solar powered golf carts were about as common as horses and mules, but the UTV was next level. It was an old Polaris Ranger that had been made street legal. The book for it was even still in the plastic glove compartment. Gigi would have loved the thing and for a minute my anger threatened to spill over again but all I really did was cry. The book said it has a range of 45-80 miles from fully charged and a towing capacity of 2500 lbs or 1250 lbs in the bed which lowered the miles range if you ran heavy. The charging station had a portable version, and I knew that I was going to salvage the rest of that set up. And I was going to use it to give Gigi one last ride.

As soon as that decision was made, I knew I needed to see if the military and hazmat teams had finished vacating. I biked back into town, using the overgrown space between 17 and the ditches just in time to see the flunkies throw a lit phosphorous flare into the dry retention pond. The same retention area where they’d thrown the first and second round of bodies to cremate them the best they could. And I knew that I really should have torn the hazmat suit of Major PITA. All I could do was sit in the bushes and cry until I nearly choked on my own snot while those liars drove away. They had obviously thrown some kind of accelerant on the last pile they were doing and that meant there was no way I was taking Gigi back to bury her body in the family plot.


[1] How To Dig A Grave By Hand - Carolina Memorial Sanctuary
 
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