American Apocalypse Wastelands Read Free Page A

four or five weeks. Maybe I could set a record for going the longest period of time without a bowel movement.
    When I came out, Medic Man was standing there with Night, waiting for me. I asked him if he had a T-shirt I could have. He found one and gave it to me. I cut the back out of it and gave it to Night to wear. I think she was as touched by my doing that as she would have been if I had brought her a bouquet of flowers. I was never going to understand women, let alone the human race.
    Medic Man wanted to take a look at us after that. Night was growing a lovely crop of blisters.
    â€œHow does it look?” Night asked Me.
    I almost said, “Horrible,” but managed to bite my tongue in time.
    Medic Man answered for me. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I don’t see any gray or charred flesh. I think you got lucky. Just second-degree burns.”

    She was silent for a minute and then asked quietly, “Will I scar?”
    â€œNo, I don’t think so. Maybe a few faint ones at the most,” he said.
    I could tell she was relieved. He hit me in the thigh with more antibiotics and gave me the pill version to wash down. Then he made us chicken soup from a can. He didn’t even water it down very much. He was being remarkably generous with expensive supplies, for no reason that I could tell. I did not like that. Plus, I just did not like him.
    We were sipping our soup out of coffee mugs when I asked him, “So, how do you know Carol?”
    He paused, smiled into his cup of soup before looking up, and then said, “Well, I was married to her for a couple years.”
    Night was watching me. Why was she watching me? She should be watching him.
    I replied, “Oh, that would probably do it.” A totally lame answer that really made no sense. So this was the never-spoken-of first husband. Yeah, I didn’t like him.
    There was a bit of an awkward pause. Medic Man picked up the slack by telling me how he wanted to use maggots on my wound later. “It’s an old remedy. They eat your dead flesh and leave the good flesh behind.” He sounded excited about the idea. I wondered how excited he would be if it was his own flesh getting gnawed on by worms. I was getting tired again and let it go. Night helped me back to my mat and lay down next to me. I was asleep in less than a minute.
    I woke up almost ten hours later when I heard Max’s voice. He wasn’t alone. Ninja had survived. That was it.
No one else. As soon as Ninja saw Night, he burst into tears. He just stood there, his head down, and sobbed. Night went up to him. She couldn’t hug him and he had to settle for an awkward arm pat.
    They were both crying. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I was supposed to do something, so I went over, slapped him on the shoulder, and told him I was sorry. Then I left the room, but not before I noticed Medic Man’s sneer.
    That’s when I remembered his name. It was Jake. “Jake the Snake”—that’s what I decided I would call him, at least in my head.
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    Four days later, I woke up and stumbled out into the main area of the basement rubbing my eyes. Everyone was gathered around Jake’s big flat-panel watching the Icelandic News Channel. Iceland was the cool country now, especially since it was almost impossible to emigrate there. It had become a combination of Switzerland and Israel. Its transformation from the first bankrupt nation to the only one with a growing economy had been amazing.
    At first it had seemed like the people there were doomed. Following the financial ruin, the cod banks had disappeared. Climate change was a double-edged sword for them. The people who didn’t flee for Scandinavia decided to make the best of what they had: unlimited geothermal power and the best-educated workforce left in the Western World. Greenhouses and what fish remained fed them.
    Server farms were their version of Swiss gold. They were totally secure from