The Zom Diary Read Free

seeds for oil as well, but this is a rare commodity which I save for cooking, mostly. 
         Lye is the next big ingredient in soap.  I scavenge some, but I also make my own lye by using the ash left over from cooking and from my fireplace when the weather allows.  The lye collects at the bottom of ash piles if you run water through it the right way.  It’s awful nasty stuff.  Looks like crack cocaine and stings the shit out of your hands.
         Lastly, and perhaps the easiest ingredients to come by are essential oils.  Lavender grows around an old herb garden as does thyme.  Cook some of this with the deer fat as it renders, add water with lye in it, and…ta-da!  Soap.
        I take a moment to look at myself in the small mirror next to the entrance and smile.  My beard is grey with salt dust from the past couple days and my eyes look tired, but still, it is me.
         I unlock the trapdoor to the cellar and climb down into the dark.  In the coolest corner I have a crock of deer fat, almost two gallons worth, and it doesn’t smell too nasty.  I grab a kettle and some of my homemade lye and go back out front.  I start a fire under the old cast iron kettle in my fire pit about fifteen feet from the barn and pull over an old rusty garden chair.  I set down the lye and walk halfway around the house to pick some lavender. 
         As I sit smelling the unique perfume of boiling deer fat and lavender, I think back to my first days after the end, my first visitors, and the importance of soap.
         I ignored the news in those days.  Most of what I heard came from Bill over coffee in the mornings as he set me tasks mending this fence or pruning that row of trees.  He didn’t believe most of it himself, not owning a TV, but relying mainly on the radio and e-mails from friends.  Then one day the power went out.  It would come back randomly; sometimes popping fuses, but for the most part, it was gone. 
         Bill had me get water for him in big buckets and carry it to the house for him.  His mother, a sweet old lady I rarely saw, had taken ill after the last visit to the podiatrist.  She claimed some fellow with gangrenous feet had bitten her, or sneezed on her, or whatever.  Anyhow, I still remember that last morning I saw Bill alive.  I had shown up earlier than usual, but Bill was there waiting for me.  Man must have gotten up at four every morning.  He was smoking a cigarette and looking glassy eyed.
         “Mom says she’s feeling better.  Might be up helping around the house soon.”
         “That’s good.”  I said bending over to upright a blue bucket.
         “Awful stories from town.  I don’t know that the power will be up anytime soon.  Those crazies are tearing the whole damn world apart.”  He paused, took a deep and horrible rattling breath.  “I can’t get to the bank this week either.”
         “Don’t worry about that now, Bill.”  I smiled to myself.  Room and board came with the gig and most of my small paycheck stayed at the bank or the liquor store.  “Let’s get things settled up at your house first.”
         I can remember carrying bucket after bucket of water to the house; a seemingly endless tide of cooking and bath water.  Bill told me little snippets of news as I would take breaks.  The states were closing their borders, all of them, not just the ones that border with Mexico.  International flights were being turned back knowing full well they would crash long before making it back to safety.  There were puzzled doctors and puzzled families and, of course, politicians who had all the answers.
         At some point the government enacted some doomsday plan, once it was clear that many of the people walking around were of the non-breathing variety.  Some said that the government was euthanizing entire hospitals, setting up huge burn sites for corpses, and disbanding the National Guard, sending troops home to try