The Lost Country, Episode Three

by | Wayne Kyle Spitzer-2

The Lost Country: The Series

_____________________________________________________________

It was a gray day, a soggy day, a day to stay in if you had some place to be—which we did not—and to make sure you had enough gas, which we didn’t (I read a quarter tank on the Cuda’s instrument panel); not that it would matter if the Chevron station ahead of us checked out.

“Its sign is on. That’s promising,” said Linda.

She peered beyond the wipers at the station, which was nestled back amongst the trees—like a hunting blind. “If there’s power going to the pumps, that is. And if there’s anything left to pump.”

I geared down and pulled into the illuminated lot, up to one of the covered pump islands, the Mopar grumbling, the hood scoop’s “hemicuda” indicia glinting. “What I can’t figure is how there’s any power at all—this far out from the Flashback. What’s it been, a month?”

“Three weeks, 52 hours, and 49 seconds,” said Fred, from behind. “Give or take. That’s three, no, four episodes of Rick and Morty, just gone with the wind. And my bagel; I haven’t had a bagel at Paramo for 5 weeks. I miss San Francisco. What’s Seattle got? Starbucks. The Seahawks. Jeff goddamn Bezos.”

“Had,” said Penny.

“How about people?” asked Linda. “Other survivors, like the ones in Issaquah?”

“There won’t be any—you watch. She was delirious.”

I shut off the engine and exhaled. “I don’t know, Fred. I mean, she was cogent enough for that—your beer joke.” I scanned the lot for threats, Compies, mostly (it was clear there wasn’t anything larger), then focused on the food mart, which was covered in moss. “The one about putting beer in a glass; the wrong glass. Or something.”

“What do you get when you put root beer in a square glass.”

“Yeah. That one.”

“Beer,” he said.

I looked at him through the rearview mirror.

“Because the square root of a squared number is the number itself,” he explained. “So, when you put root beer in a square glass—that is, square root beer or take the square root of beer—you get beer.” He glanced at Linda and Penny. “Get it? For example, the square root of 2 to the second power is 2. So, when you poured the root beer into the square glass—you got beer.” He looked at me eagerly, expectantly. “You took the square root of beer; which left beer. That—that’s why it’s so funny.”

I glanced at Linda, who only shrugged and handed me my g*n belt.

“You keep ‘em coming, Fred. That’s what you’re good at.” I opened my door but paused. “I need you and Penny to check out that food mart. Say, a plastic bag each: canned goods, bottled water, medicine— anything we can use. And toilet paper.”

“And a package of lighters,” added Linda.

I popped the trunk and got out, leaned the seat forward for Fred. “Make sure you’re loaded. That means you too, Penny. And don’t shoot each other.”

“Or us,” said Linda.

And then we went to work: Penny and Fred heading for the food mart as Linda and I filled the tank and dug out the canisters of T. rex piss (using it as a repellant had been Fred’s dubious idea; plus we needed the cans) and the rain drizzled. As silence lay on the capitol like a shroud (Olympia, it was called, in Washington State) and Compies tittered somewhere in the brush. As we stretched and shook off the day’s haul from San Francisco and on through Oregon and hoped the dying girl in SoMa had been right: that there were people, other survivors, in Issaquah—at an abandoned drive-in theater—and that we weren’t wasting our time and precious resources going there. That we could still hold it together—somehow—this group who had been neighbors before the calamity and yet still perfect strangers—just little gold numbers on doors—but were now like family and still here, improbably, three weeks, 52 hours, and however many seconds later. In spite of the time-storm and the so-called Flashback. In spite of the f*****g Dinosaur Apocalypse; if you can believe such a thing ever happened.

Because I can’t.

––––––––