SODIUM:2 Apocalypse by Stephen Arseneault Page B

having some helpers. Survival after all, did not come without a great deal of planning and manual labor. The girls had not bathed since the invasion started and coupled with the dog they had me riding the whole way back with the windows down, my coconut rag was again put to good use.
    Most of the daily shortcuts we had previously taken for granted during life were no longer available. I for one was dreading the day which would soon be upon us where I no longer had my stash of toilet paper. I wasn’t sure if I would soon be using a handful of leaves or scooching my butt along on the ground. The girls had somehow managed during their time alone so I guessed that I would have to one day man-up and figure it out too.
    I had an air mattress and some spare bed linens in the bunker and after giving the girls a quick tour of my fortress and the immediate area, they each had a shower. I then gave each a pair of shorts with a draw string and a tee-shirt to sleep in. As the girls showered inside I took Heinz down to the canal and gave him a good scrubbing as he would be staying indoors with us.
    I fired up the washer-dryer so that in the morning they would have their first clean set of clothes to wear in more than a month. Once they were situated on the air mattress Heinz assumed his position on a nice cool spot on the concrete floor beside them, the three quickly drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 8

    The girls slept until almost noon the next day. It was their first night in a month where they had both security and comfort, it showed. After our morning meal we spent hours just talking about our lives before the attack. When they started to discuss their parents they became very sad and were each soon sobbing. I would guess that this was really the first chance they had to really think about what had happened. I attempted to comfort them, but with no experience in such things I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was helping or not.
    An hour into our discussion Janie developed a bad case of the hiccups. I then offered up my tried and true cure. She was to sit motionless, take a deep breath and then breathe slowly for 30 seconds while focusing her mind on nothing. The focus on nothing and sitting still seemed to steer the brain away from telling the body to hiccup. The cure had never failed me before and it proved itself once again that day.
    As the discussion continued Rachel talked about how for the first two days, neither of them moved from under their sleeping bags in the tree house. They had a backpack with some snack food in it that they had shared. Part of their reasoning for not moving was that they could not hear. They had been so close to the concussions that it was a miracle they were able to recover their hearing at all.
    It was then that Janie Lynn revealed that she still could not hear from her left ear. She had kept that little secret from her sister all that time and never complained. I had no medical training and didn’t know the first thing about one’s hearing. I was lucky to get past getting the wax out of my own ears and I sometimes did a poor job of that.
    I felt so bad for these two sweet little girls and what they had been through. It was different for me, having been an adult and not having anyone close to lose. Sure, I had lamented Renee’s almost certain death, but I had not been close to Renee for almost 15 years, these girls had lost their parents while just a few hundred feet away. One couldn't help but feel guilty for being a survivor.
    I wondered why I was selected to live while so many others weren’t. My life’s history certainly didn’t qualify me for any humanitarian awards. As I pondered further I began to get the feeling that maybe, for me, this was a second chance at being a caring person, a normal person. I soon began feeling a real need to watch after the two girls.
    It was at that moment that I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to care for and watch out for them for as long as I