Chapter 8: God Questions

After Izzy had her evil way with me, we got up. I think she was more used to me and comfortable having fun with me.

I made a big pan of cheesy scrambled eggs while Peyton and Meilani sliced the bread I had made last night. They made toast with it. The bread was OK, just OK.

It was a so-so white bread because that’s the only type of flour that was already here. I’d found a three pack of Fleischmann’s Rapid Yeast. It was a rather basic recipe of flour, water, yeast and salt.

With butter and jelly on the toast it got better. The girls were drinking Cool-Aid. There had been no fresh milk for days. We were out of bacon. I had not seen any sausage. Damn healthy eaters!

I made a long grocery shopping list. I added Parmalat brand milk. Its not in the coolers, I can usually find it in baking supplies. It is a shelf-stable milk that tastes normal and it lasts for several years unopened. It lasts longer open than regular milk. It would have to do for now. I usually took some Parmalat when I went down to the Caribbean.

I made sure I had some granola style cereals added to the list. I also wanted them to stop at a health food store to get some other grains like oats, rye and barley. I could add a some of those to the bread. Failing that, look for whole grain bread mixes.

I’m not crazy about what grocery stores think of as bread. Many off the shelf ready loaves can sit on the counter for months. Those breads still appear to be completely fresh.

My grandmother would turn over in her grave at what they put in that crap.

We had a long talk about them taking up the slack here by doing most of the cooking and shopping. By now there would be little of use in the fresh vegetable and fruit areas. Meat might srart getting iffy too. I told them to check freezer areas for additional frozen meats. Houses around us probably had loads of frozen meats in their freezers.

I sat down with Everly and Izzy. We talked about Everly checking the school message board and replying to questions.

I said, “I was serious about that message. They need to move closer eventually, or they will starve. We will pick them up. That’s all they need to know. The line I wrote that I am one and they are many says it all. None of them are that special. If they want to eat, they must move or learn to drive. When the vehicles come to a stop, what happens to them, then?”

After showing Meilani how to feed and water the bunnies, I headed to the Country Club. It has a golf course. I had seen a few golf carts out in the field and a few groupings of clothing out on the course. I knew golf carts could be used later to make short range vehicles.

Once I had taken my truck to the golf course, I started at hole #1 and visited each hole. I was looking for wallets and checking addresses against ‘Maps.’

That way I was able to correlated who lived at the country club itself.

I had brought sandwich size baggies. I bagged every wallet with the corresponding Wainwright Country Club key-sets I found.

I had found three new sets before I even got to the 10th hole. That was enough for the day. I visited the closest house and checked it out. After two hours, I had checked three new places for people to move into. That’s five besides the Caldwell place, the Hsiu place and mine.

There were cars at all three houses. Two were even Tesla’s. One Tesla house did not have a charger. I had a backup car at least. I assumed any Tesla charger worked for any Tesla vehicle.

I brought the sandwich baggies with keys and fobs home to Everly. I left to look for more farms with animals. I knew chickens were a good start, but we needed more than chickens and a couple rabbits.

I entered a gas station convenience place and snagged a soda and a bunch of junk food. I got a jerky, a couple beef sticks and a short can of potato chips. I was just filling my pie hole.

I headed for the feed store. In the office I went through paperwork looking for feed bills that listed bags of pig feed. I only found two. I drove out and checked the addresses and the pigs were all long dead. I went back to the feed store and checked again. It seemed there were few people willing to put up with the smell of pigs.

I did locate the farm that bought goat feed. I went to that farm. There are many miniature size goats there. They all looked to be in good shape. There are three males, and eleven females. There are seven more that were at different stages of adolescence. The males were in their own pen and the females and adolescents were in a larger pen.

The goats were well set up. The pens had automatic watering valves that filled water tubs. The pens had a lot of bushes and underbrush in them. I could tell exactly why they were doing well, the were eating the bushes in their pens. As I watched, they were nibbling the leaves.

There were several sheds. One has milking equipment. The others were for shelter. Also in the yard were toys that were built for the goats to climb and play on. They liked to play king of the mountain.

Having goats is good, but my knowledge about goats is literally nonexistent. One of the sheds has goat feed. I put some out by guesstimating how much to give them.

Finding nothing written down, I went into the house. It was unlocked. I found out the husband had the goat hobby. He sold the milk to people he knew as “animal feed.”

Selling raw milk for human consumption is a big no-no. He kept records on his milk customers. His wife had milked the goats twice a day. One of the sheds is the milking shed.

I went out and looked in the milk shed. It has two milking stands for nanny’s to stand on. Next to the stands was a double milking machine. There’s spray bottles at hand. The lady here put the milk in huge stainless steel bottles. I know because she has a laminated instruction sheet on the wall. I read the instructions three times to get a sense of it.

The spray bottles are an antiseptic used to wipe the goat’s teats. The milk container holds only one gallon. You pour each goats milk into the The big stainless steel bottles. After finished milking, the bottles are taken into the house and boiled. It is against state and federal the law to sell raw milk to humans. Evidently they sold it both ways.

I went back inside the house and continued searching for information. I found several books and magazines about goats. I grabbed them all.

It was mid afternoon. Everly and Izzy had been busy.

In the office Everly told me, “I have probably fielded two hundred massages today. Some were about how flexible you are about them having to move. Most were questions about what you said.”

She looked at me and asked, “I would like to know how do you know that you are the only one in this Region?”

I replied, “I am not completely 100% sure, but I’m pretty sure.”

Izzy walked in and sat quietly.

I said, “Let me give you some background. When I woke up after whatever happened occurred. There were no ships anywhere on the ocean. They were all gone. Just gone! There was no wind, no birds to be seen, and no sign of a fish anywhere. I was well out to sea in my sailboat. I was nowhere near where I should have been. It’s like I had been moved. My radar could detect nothing. My fathometer could not find the ocean bottom.”

I said, “I was over a hundred miles from where I was supposed to be. I needed to restock the boat, so I found the closest port. It was Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks. I started the boat and headed there.”

I said, “I met Isobel & Peyton at Oregon Inlet. Everyone else - there - was dead. They were orange-ish mummy looking things that were just beginning to crumble. We found out later they would soon turn into dust, bones, hair, teeth, all of them! They had all just turned to mummies.”

I said, “We sailed down here for a week. We saw no ships or boats anywhere. I wanted to stop in Charleston. I tried, but it was like I was being forced to come here.

When we got here, all I saw was the same death everywhere. When I saw you girls, I knew why I was pushed to come here.”

I said, “Don’t repeat this to anyone, but I got a text from someone calling themselves God. In it, they said I was the only man South of Canada and North of Mexico. Do I have proof of this, no. But I feel in my gut that it is true? Yes.”

I said, “In it, this ‘God’ also said I was to Go forth and multiply. It said the text will disappear from my phone, that I also could figure out what I needed to do.”

I said, “Following that, my text faded away. I felt like a had a 250 pound anvil in my gut. I just knew the text was absolutely true. That’s how I know.”

She said, “I don’t know...”

Izzy shook her head yes. I think she didn’t want to interrupt, but was invested in what I was saying.

I said, “You are the only one’s I’ve told this too. The text went away immediately. Have you ever had a text just fade away like that? I watched it fade away girls.”

Everly said, “No.”

Izzy shook her head no.

I said, “Me either. I have no proof of what the the text said. It was either from this ‘God,’ or someone with serious god-like powers.”

“We know everyone has died. That’s some real serious power. There are too many unexplainable anomalies. It’s either a moot point or true or maybe a little of both. I have no idea. Does it really matter? We have to do the nest we can do.”

“Please keep the god thing between us. The feeling in my gut is what really convinced me.”

I said, “Think about all the strangeness, the anomalies. There are several. All adults died as well as all males except a very few men. All young children have died. This was a specifically targeted mass wipe-out of humanity.”

“The only remaining people here were young girls. That’s totally weird. You are all girls on the cusp of children rearing age, and then there’s me!”

I said, “The ‘Go forth and multiply’ thing refers specifically to ME. I am a rough, tough former Marine with some minor farming experience. We will need that experience in the coming years to feed everyone.”

I said, “We have electricity and water in this place. Savannah was likely picked because of the Small Modular Reactors here. These are things that need no supervision.”

“I think we are all here because the reactors will help us retain some semblance of a modern lifestyle. There are more anomalies, yes. But you can get the picture. We will probably see more anomalies later.

I said, “As far as telling anyone else, please don’t. Just tell them that Isobel, Peyton and I, all three of us know there is nothing out on the ocean. Nothing! We saw the same death in Oregon Inlet as we saw here.”

She and Izzy both looked at me with long, strange looks.

Everly said, “I feel it. I know what you feel is true somehow. You know, that’s not the important thing. What we do is what’s important. I will message them about the ocean and Oregon Inlet. I will reiterate your 10 day limit. Its on them now. No more bullshit or useless discussion on the message board. Its time some of them move here or they can expect to go hungry.”

I said, “There are a couple more anomalies. The Internet is still up, all of it. Thats almost magic by itself. The cellphone networks are still up. There is something out there helping us here.”

“The Internet and cellphone things are both huge technological aberrations. They should have crashed days ago. I can still pull up Amazon for crying out loud.”

Everly asked, “Can I tell people about the anomalies? The ‘God’ thing is a bit crazy and would cause problems. Mentioning a few weird things would start them thinking and talking about things. I would hope anyway.”

Everly said, “Right now, all they are doing is swapping speculations. They are mostly bullshitting each other. Let me give them some tangible information so they can try to get a better handle on things.”

I said, “Jezus! Everyone fucking died, hows that for a big anomaly?”

Everly said, “What is logical to you, is scary to most of the girls. I think they just don’t want to meet the only man here, who is also much older. They don’t want to have sex with him, or anyone else either. They don’t want to be pregnant or to have babies. We need to ease them into this. Izzy told me this is an end of the world event, we are the only way humanity restarts.”

Izzy strongly nodded her head yes.

I said, “Izzy and I had those conversations as we sailed here. OK, tell them about the strange anomalies, but please, no references about god. I am not convinced of the whole Adam and Eve story and I think that stuff will just confuse everyone. What we have here, is stark reality.”

I said, ‘It is do or die time. -Literally! We need to contend with life as it is today, not how it was weeks ago or how could have been.”

Everly said, “Oh ya, just an update, two persons have moved in. So, we have started. Saundra Valerio and her sister Adriana Valerio are here. They moved in upstairs. Saundra and Adriana are 18.”

I said, “Alright, I’ll meet them later. I have an hour or two of reading I need to do, first.