The Great Wreck Read Online Free Page B

her shoulders and turning her towards me, “Go inside and get as much
water as you can while I fill up, OK? Just water. Then get back in here as fast
as you can.” Georgie nodded as I handed her one of my credit cards and bolted
from the truck. I took the other card out, the one I only used for emergencies
and topped the old girl off, then filled the four spare cans in the back. It
came to nearly two hundred dollars, normally an astronomical sum, but I had a
feeling I wouldn’t have to pay it back. As I topped off the last can, Georgie
came out pushing a small cart nearly overflowing with cases of water.
                “The man asked me if we expected a
drought,” she said as she threw the cases in the cases, “I told him a flood was
coming and he looked at me like I was crazy.”
                We jumped in the car and looked
around: still no sign of the infected, then pulled out on to the quiet rode and
headed up to our farm.
                We pulled of the highway at the next
exit onto the frontage road, then down a few miles and turned left onto Matisse
Road. Matisse ran for just under a mile then turned into a dirt road that
would   take us up to our ranch. Georgie
got out as we pulled up to the gate and opened it to let us in. I drove through
the gate and watched her in the rear view mirror lock the gate shut then jog
back to the truck. It won’t hold them if they get this far, I thought, they’d
get over or push through it if enough of them came up this way. I could tell
Georgie was thinking the same thing as we made our way up to the main house
nearly a mile from the fence.
                We got out and loaded our supplies
into the house without a word. Inside I began pulling out tools from cabinets
and said to Georgie, “Go get all the guns and ammo. Bring them up and lay them
out on the kitchen table. If anything happens, you scream, OK?” Georgie nodded
and disappeared down into the basement where we kept our stock of firearms.
Then I went out the back of the house to the old barn there.
                When the ranch was doing good
business, we had bred and sold horses, Georgie, her mother Arli, and me. But
the market crashed and Ali died a few years back leaving Georgie and me with a mound
of debt and a hole that just couldn’t be filled. We sold off all the horses,
most of our gear, and all of the surrounding land except the main ranch house
to keep up with the endless medical bills that had piled up and eaten
everything we had just as the cancer had ate my wife and Georgia’s mother.
                I rolled open the old barn doors. It
smelled of hot hay and old animals in the heavy heat. To the left was piles of
lumber I kept for fixing the few fences that I hadn’t replaced with wire,
grabbed a small cart, and began loading it up with two by fours. I then grabbed
the nail gun, tossed a few boxes of nails on top of the wood, grabbed my hand
drill and more boxes of screws, then headed for the house. Inside I called out
to Georgie who promptly answered from the kitchen. We’d do this for the next
few hours just to make sure nothing was going on, that everything was all
right. Or at least as right as they could be with what was going on in the
city.
                I boarded up every window of the
single level ranch house starting on the outside. I shot nails and drilled
screws until my hands, arms, and shoulders shook from exhaustion and still I
kept pounding. When I had finished the outside, I moved inside and did the same
thing leaving just enough space on each window to peek out but not enough space
for those things to get a finger hold on. Then I closed up the doors sealing
Georgie and I in. It was well after midnight when I was done. Georgie had
fallen asleep in front of the television a few houses earlier. I plopped my
trembling body down next to her and watched the destruction unrolling on the
television before I too fell asleep on