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.I could hear it in his voice.I was so happy to see him too.This was the longest I’d spoken to anyone in months.Longest I’d been around someone without gunfire in months.To be honest I was waiting for his head to blow up.Seems to be a catchy condition around me.“Well, what’ve you got?” I asked him.That stumped him.I could see him thinking long and hard about it and eventually his response was this:“Shoot, I don’t have hardly nothing.”I cried on the inside.I really was hoping this guy had something I could get off of him.I finally asked him this, “Is that a Colt.45 you got there?”“Ayup.” And he looked at it pretty lovingly.“Well, I’ve got one myself here, but I’m just about on E with the ammo for it.If you’ve got spare, I’d be pretty happy with that.” Man I was reaching.Really hoped that guy had some ammunition for me.“Well hell, I have some spare for this thing.I don’t think I’ll be needing a lot of bullets in the near future if I starve to death will I?” This guy was filled with valid points.He was a font of common sense for chrissakes.“Well, I think I got a box of 50 I can trade ya.What’ll you pony up for that?”I could’ve thrown him to the ground and made sweet love to him on the spot.Is that technically necrophilia? I mean, at what point are you so old having sex with you is like fucking a dead body? There has to be a standard somewhere.I restrained myself and tried to hide my enthusiasm.My my my my my pokerface.Muh muh muh muh.(Mr.Journal if you get the reference, please forgive me.)I chewed my lip some and figured on a counter offer.Here’s what I came back at him with, “Alright Gilbert how does this sound? In the interest of opening up a new friendship, and to show you my appreciation and to do right by you, I will give you 2 cans each of corn, green beans, beets, baked beans, plus a can of peaches, and a can of asparagus.Plus, because I’m a nice guy, I’ll toss you a quarter rack of venison ribs?” Seemed generous to me.His reply confused me, “What do you do for a living?”Uh what? Like, what the fuck kind of question is that after the world ends? I told him this, “I don’t really have a job at the moment.I guess you could call me an exterminator at the moment.But before all this bullshit happened I worked at the school as a dorm supervisor.Before that I was Army.Infantry.”Get this, he says this back, “I knew it.You got soldier on your face.How’s this for an offer, you bring all that back here, plus another quarter rack of ribs, and a few extra cans of stuff, and I’ll cook us a dinner?”I don’t know why, but I didn’t even think about it.I think my well thought out response was, “Alright, be right back.” We waved, I got in the truck, and headed back to the campus to gather up his food.Guess what I put it in?A banana box.The banana box.I still have it though, I didn’t let him keep it.It took me the better part of an hour to get everything packed up.I grabbed all I offered to him plus the extra stuff.I grabbed a can of cranberry relish too, mostly because I was craving something tart.I love tart things.Like sour patch kids, shit I would chop them up and snort them if I didn’t think it’d melt my fucking brain.Anyway, I think I got back to the cul de sac around 1:30 or so.I parked in his driveway and headed over to the porch.I left the shotgun in the truck.I had dropped the Savage off in Hall E when I got the food.No sense dragging it around if I didn’t need it.When I got to the steps, he came out and undid his barricade.It was pretty ingenious actually.He had these metal L brackets set up to hold the 2x4’s and some nifty wooden shims to hold the boards from falling out or getting dislodged.Took him maybe 20 seconds to undo, and half that to get set back up.Over his windows he had sheets of heavy duty plexiglass.I’d seen it on a lot of farm windows up here and had totally forgotten about it.Clever old dude.The sheets were screwed in securely, and even if undead got on the porch, it’d take a dozen of 'em to smash the plexiglass.He let me in and immediately I knew we were gonna get along.His house was new, obviously, but it had a sweet old people’s house feel.His walls were covered with old pictures.Lots of them were of him in uniform, old Army pictures.It looked like early Vietnam War era.That put him at about 70.I could see from a few pictures that he’d gotten to the rank of Captain, which I thought was pretty damn cool.I’m sure he was filled with neat Army stories.His house was remarkably warm.Just off the kitchen was the dining room very open concept with vaulted ceilings.The back of the house must’ve had a huge sloped roof because there were four huge skylights in the angled ceiling.Squat in the center of the two rooms was a giant woodstove, obviously taken from an older house.He pointed at me and said it’d come from his first home, just outside the city.I won’t type everything he said, or we did.It’d take me ten pages at least.I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version.His name was Gilbert Donohue.He was ex Army, apparently was one of the first Green Berets, and was a widower.Well, he was a widower before the end.His wife had died unexpectedly of lymphoma about 12 years ago and he’d used some of the money from her life insurance to move out here.This was supposed to be their dream home.He left the army and went to work running his wife’s family restaurant with her.They worked together over the years, and eventually grew the place into a small chain of something like 10 restaurants.They served Italian food.I’d heard of the places, but never eaten at them.He was really proud of what he and his wife had achieved.That’s why he offered to cook.He’d cooked in almost all of the restaurants at one point or another.I tell you what.The food was good, and he had shit to work with.They never had kids.I got the impression that one of them was unable.It seemed like something he was sad about too, so I didn’t press the issue.He was at his house, this house when the world shit the bed.He was doing what retired military men do; obsess over details that aren’t important.Mow the lawn, trim the hedges, rake the nonexistent leaves etc.He used to listen to NPR constantly like me, and he heard the news, and immediately went into lockdown mode.I guess he had the house already rigged up like this.Something about having his house broken into right before his wife died.Who said paranoia is always a bad thing?He said the majority of the neighborhood emptied that day, or the day after.Some folks came back, packed up, and took off.He thought only one family tried to stay, and he was pretty sure they starved to death.He claims he offered them food, but the mother in the family was so scared of contamination they spurned him.Those were the bodies in his yard.Apparently every time he went out to cut down a small tree for wood they’d try a jailbreak from inside their house to get at him.The other day they’d succeeded in finally busting a window and falling out [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]