Post-Apocalypse Dead Letter Office Read Free Page A

ambivalent about going back to work after so many years, and for good reason. He has turned into quite the fisherman. No really. Keeps us pretty full up w/fish – more than we can eat, most days. Living near the locks and (recently converted) botanical garden has quite a few advantages. Not only are we able to get down to the garden early to work and earn our share of the produce, but if we get there around first light, we can usually snare or shoot a coney. Fish is great, but it’s nice to have a bit of red(ish) meat every now and then. Plus, I have figured out how to tan hides (Nick’s really laughing, now) and have made us some seriously comfy slippers, vests and even a blanket. Deanne still wears whitefolk (read: cotton) clothing and Red Wings to her workplace at the mayor’s, but Nick and I have almost completely switched over to all animal-based dress. Wool and leather, baby!

    It was pretty fortunate that I’d been doing this, as Nick actually had a brush with death a month or so ago. Which is part of the reason we’re writing you.

    Deanne had left first thing to ride over to the mayor’s. Nick and I slept in a bit that morning, shared a pot of coffee, a bowl of leftover potato and leek soup and a nice slice of salmon jerky and then rode down to the garden. I got to working and Nick strode off to fish. It couldn’t have been an hour or two later when I heard yelling coming from the pier. (Everything’s so wonderfully quiet these days, we can actually hear conversations coming from houseboats across the bay.) Well, after a minute finishing weeding the squash patch, I headed down to towards the noise. Of all the things I expected to see, Nick doing the sidestroke towards the shoreline towing what appeared to be a bag of laundry with him wasn’t one of them. The tide was rolling out, and Nick was struggling to make it back with whatever he had stupidly gone in the water for. Finally, it seemed, he got to the shallows and started dragging the thing along with all his might. That’s when I realized the thing was a pale wisp of a man.

    Nick hauled the guy up to the shoreline and then collapsed on top of him. I finally got up to them, and Nick rolled off and looked up to me. He coughed out a bit of water and said something like “Maybe more,” and pointed west. I looked up and gasped. Through the mist I could see a barge drifting south through the sound.

    One of my fellow community gardeners, Todd – nice guy – helped me wrap up Nick and the man overboard as best we could, then we hauled them back to the house. I stoked up the fire to a probably too-hot level, but it was all I could really think to do. Nick was cold to the touch, but the other guy simply felt like he was already dead. We tore the clothes off them both and threw them on the bed. Todd stripped down and jumped into the bed as I tossed blanket after blanket on top of all three of them. (The rabbit fur blanket went on first, as I thought it’d hold the heat in best.) I undressed quick as I could and then we both linked arms together and huddled around Nick and the sailor.

    The worst part was, the sailor was no longer breathing. Todd and I looked at each other – we both could just... tell. Nick seemed to be getting worse. We couldn’t both try to resuscitate the sailor and keep Nick from freezing to death at the same time. So, God help us Charles, we lowered the sailor out of the bed and huddled around Nick.

    It was a few hours later when Deanne came home. She let out a little yelp when she saw us all together in the bed, not to mention the body on the floor.

    In spite of himself – he’s not the brightest guy – Todd laughed and said, “Betcha wish she was in here with you instead of me, huh?” Nick turned his head just enough to catch Todd’s eye, then purred and smiled at him. At that point, I knew he’d recover just fine.

    We buried the sailor two days later at the botanical garden entrance. Nick was still weak at the time, but