my container Googling pipeline spills, leaks, explosions. The industry said things were fine, of course they did. But pretty much everyone else said things weren’t fine at all. I needed to warn Lily.
When Lily and I got together, she said I seemed experienced, a woman who knew what she wanted from life. But if it had been left up to me, we’d still be standing awkwardly in the hardware and salvage store. All I’d known how to do was bring home a utility sink and come back the next day. Lily did the rest. She made me understand that the only reason I’d built a cabin at the Land Trust was for her to live in it with me. Pretty soon she was packing me sandwiches and apples for my shifts at the clinic, patching the tire of my bike so she could ride it to work, catching my eye at interminable Land Trust meetings while Deirdre strummed her guitar. We slept outside together as often as we could. We held on to each other. We stayed side by side. Lily took my terror and confusion and translated it to love, or to going through life together, whichever came first. I needed to hear her voice. I needed to call home.
Needed to but didn’t.
If I called home, Lily would say, You’d better be able to rewind the tape. You’d better be able to replay the scene so that this time when you grip Perley’s thin arm, when you hoist him harshly, you don’t throw him out the door. Instead, you swing him into your arms. You hold him tight. You tell him why you did it. You tell him what it means. You tell him that you’re bringing him home.
She would say, Well? Do you still think we should be patient?
I didn’t call.
Instead, I spent the rest of February and March paralyzed in my container, my eye on the classified map. I watched that green line turn red, watched it creep farther south, watched it go under waterways, hide itself in the marshes and wetlands, plant itself next to the poor and vulnerable, cruise like a smart missile straight toward my family. I knew if I called Lily, I would have to say out loud how bad it was, and if I admitted to her how bad it was, then I would have to tell her what we were going to do about it, and when we were going to do it, and how the hell was I to know a thing like that?
* * *
Marie and Lawrence liked to talk about the zombie apocalypse. It passed the time at lunch, when I joined them near the pipeline pit or in the truck cab to eat bologna sandwiches. It passed the time around the campfire, where I sat smoking cigarettes, which I’d taken up to replace whittling. There was a lot to do to prepare for the zombie apocalypse, especially because, according to Marie and Lawrence, these particular zombies would know how to operate heavy machinery. Therefore, they said, it would be of primary importance to disable all equipment so that it would be useless to the zombies. There were many ways to do that, and Lawrence and Marie went over each one in detail.
“Gallon of water in the fuel tank or oil filter,” Lawrence said, adding a log to the fire, popping the top off a beer. “Done. That thing ain’t running.”
“Oh right,” Jay said. “The zombies are after you, and you have the presence of mind, let alone the time, to fill up a jug of water. Ain’t going to happen.”
“So just grab a couple handfuls of sand,” Marie said. She sat on a cinder block, her gloves off, fingers wide over the flames. “Send it straight into the crankcase, or better yet, the intake.”
“What about battery acid in the radiator?” Lawrence suggested.
“There you go again,” Jay said, swinging Mountain Dew. “Where are you getting the battery acid? You’ve got to use what you have on hand.”
“So you bring a turkey baster,” Marie said. “Use it to suck acid out of the battery, then down it goes into the fuel system.”
“That’s right,” Lawrence said. “You’ve got to have your zombie apocalypse kit ready. Turkey baster, crescent wrench, water jug, flashlight.”
“With a red lens,” Marie put in. “Remember, zombies can’t see red lights.”
“What else you got in this kit of yours?” asked Jay.
“What about sugar?” I asked into the smoke. I shook out a cigarette, passed the pack to