The Zom Diary Read Free Page B

trays that had been lying around.  Three trays, maybe 13x9 inches, an inch and a half thick with soap. After it sets for a few hours, I will score the surfaces of the big blocks into the smaller bar-sized chucks.  Good  soap takes six weeks to cure.  The lye needs to mellow out and finish the saponification of all that fat.
          I leave the trays in my workspace, laid out on a big butcher block table that serves as a general hub of tinkering and food experimentation.  I step back in the cellar and grab a bottle of pear hooch. 
         One of the most useful things I’ve found in the barn has been an old hand operated press for making cider and oils.  I’m not a genius, but figuring out how to make hard cider isn’t too taxing.  Just let it sit.  As best I can, I keep a ready supply of this handy, for scavenged booze is often scarce. 
         I walk back out front and regard my surroundings.  Behind me looms the barn and relative safety.  Before me lays a small pasture.  It is about an acre in size and borders the beginning of the orchard.  Past the pump, an old wire electric fence runs next to the dirt road that begins as a continuation of the driveway and leads to the orchard.  Random out buildings, the animal enclosures, and the pit that was Bill’s house lays beyond this.  I have a fire pit set up at a safe distance off to the right and spend as much daylight as I can relaxing there.
         I take the hooch and sit in the old rusty garden chair next to the dying fire.  I take a long sour pull on the stuff and resign myself to boredom.  Life isn’t too hard here.  There is water, too much fruit for one man to eat, and some dried meat to add variety.  Preserving as much fruit as I can, both as cider and dried fruit, takes most of my effort.
         I grew some pot the first couple years I was alone, and by now, it pretty much takes care of reseeding itself.  I harvest some and keep it in mason jars for the off season.  Booze and the occasional joint serve to ease my boredom and loneliness, but I try not to get too careless, lest the dead sneak up on me.  I walk around the property twice a day checking fences and booby traps.  Most of these consist of monofilament wire attached to bells or anything that will make noise.  I haven’t seen too many people alive or dead in the past year thank God.  So I’m not really worried; just being cautious.
        I learned the sense of caution slowly during the first year or so after the end of normal human existence, and after the fire.  That first day was hard.  Cleaning myself up and retiring back to my shack.  (I hadn’t moved to the barn yet.) I remember being kind of freaked out.  I’d left my clothes in a pile next to the pump while doing the best I could to clean off the awful oily mess that covered me.  I remember the icy cold of the water, as I shook dumbly, and scraped water off of my body with the edge of my hand.  Orange tinted rivers ran down my calves and through my toes to mingle with the short and very coarse grass.
         I walked back to the shack naked except for my boots and boxers which I had deemed salvageable.  I entered the one big room of the shack.  The structure was rectangular with a door on the skinny end that faced the orchard.  There wasn’t much to the place, which is why I had originally enjoyed it so much.  One corner held a sink and half-fridge and a small electric range.  That served as my kitchen.  Opposite from it was my bathroom; a closet-sized room with a stand-up shower and toilet; no sink.  The rest of the space held my single bed, a coffee table and a few short bookshelves.  There was no ceiling, just the angle of the roof, supported by wooden frame, from which I had occasionally hung various plants and herbs to dry.
         That first morning, I burst through the door and grabbed fresh underwear and socks, a long sleeved t-shirt.  Heavy canvass overalls rounded out my