Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse

Usually Emma makes the weekly feed run. She isn’t working during the week, she has time on her hands, and it is an excuse for her to spend time with one or two siblings. She drives to the farm, leaves her silver Camry, grabs her sister Libby, or Dixie, or brothers Seth, Noah, and Judah, and they hit the road on a mission in the farm truck, which is technically the 12 passenger van, all but one bench seat removed. Drive 48 miles, pick up a literal ton of feed and hay, return home, by way of a favorite coffee bar on the way out, lunch and perhaps a quick stop at a grocery store, and coffee again on the way back. It’s a trip that takes three hours, perhaps four, depending on whether her siblings persuade her to stop at the used book store as well.

But sometimes Emma can’t make it. Her car is misbehaving, she has errands of her own to run, or she and husband Shaye are out of town. So then it falls to me. When I go, I usually bring Noah, perhaps one or two of the others. These days it’s often Noah as he is going through a rough patch; that transition from farm kid to adult can be tough without a culturally imposed demarcation, such as leaving for college, or moving out of the house. So we drive, and talk, and sometimes listen to audio books. His favorites are Deep Creek by Pam Houston and Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull. Sometimes we listen to the music of his choice. Note to parents–listening to music with your kids is a great way to gain insight into their thoughts, and what influences them. Noah being a country kid, neck deep in rodeo and such, the songs are often love ballads to girls in tight jeans. Or tractors. Or family. Or family land. Sometimes they extoll the glories of the United States military and “God Bless the USA,” which I don’t necessarily take exception to, after all, I have close family members who’ve served in the military, our farm itself being named after one of them. My love for the United States is a bit nuanced, though, having grown up overseas and learning about our nation’s complex history of involvement in other lands, with or without the sanction of the peoples of those lands.  Still, I am blessed that he does listen, or at least does a good impression of listening when I cut him off mid stanza to say “OK, hold it, can we turn this off for a sec?” and launch into a discussion which (I hope) draws his attention to the fact that not all flag-waving is straightforward and worthy of a parade.

Sometimes, though, it is Tim who rides shotgun. 

It doesn’t happen often that Tim and I go on a feed run together these days. I’m not going that much anyway, and when he is depressed, he prefers to remain at home. Between these two factors, it’s rare. When he does go, though, I usually drive. We talk, yes, but these hours in the car are often spent with me driving while he reads to me. This is a tradition going back to when we were both attending the University of Houston and had commutes to class of over an hour each way, and he would read, or when he drove, we’d listen to books together. Those were the days when we were working our way through Brene Brown’s books. Now they may be nonfiction books we find intriguing, such as on behavioral economics, or about depression. Lately, it’s been Joan Didion, which has been fun. Two weeks ago, though, he brought along a deck of cards with questions for couples to ask each other. We’ve done this before with racy cards, but this time they were simpler, more conversation starters. 

The one that stood out was likely intended to be more lighthearted. “What is the first thing I would do in a zombie apocalypse?” His answer was something along the line of “I don’t believe in zombies, but I guess I’d freeze?” I immediately thought back to reading I am Legend in a class on genre and form and the endless routines undertaken by the protagonist in order to keep the zombies at bay. I remembered Mat Johnson saying in the class that post-apocalyptic writing was usually a means of working through the societal fears at the time of writing. Thinking of routines designed to try to control the impossible superimposed on a pervasive sense of fear combined to prompt my response, that I live the zombie apocalypse every day on the farm. 

Even before a mystery metabolic disorder wiped out twenty of our milking goats over the course of a month late in 2011, much of our farm routines are an attempt to control nature and shape the lives of our animals. The exact time of milking, the percentages of protein vs fats vs carbohydrates in the grain mixtures we feed our animals, the aligning of date of breeding with vaccinations, the medicine cabinet full of remedies we will usually need to throw away because they’ve passed their expiration dates unopened. All of this is a bulwark thrown up to protect us against that time when the footsteps pounding across the grass and through the front door are carrying the alarm that Lottie/Windy/Dawn is acting odd or is down and can’t get up, or “Got stuck in a fence and maybe has a hurt leg?” It never fails, of course, that the specific emergency is precisely the one thing for which I am unprepared, and even now, after raising goats for a few weeks shy of nineteen years, they never fail to surprise me, and teach me something new, something I’d not yet known that I needed to be afraid of.

Sitting here today, though, looking over my desk and through the window at the trees across the road, I know what this particular season of fear looks like. This lesson we learned twelve years and eight days ago when billowing black smoke rose over the trees to our east, followed within a few hours by a sheriff with a bullhorn announcing that the time to get out, to leave, to seek safety was now, now. I blogged during that time, of what it was like, running back and forth from pasture to the livestock trailer, of standing in the living room, freezing, as Tim said he’d do in response to zombies, unsure what to grab, what to bring, what we needed to be safe, to be prepared. It was our teenage daughters who thought to grab the diaper bag, the family pictures, the quilt sewn by my grandmother. I did make mental notes throughout the week we were evacuated, of the things I wish I’d thought to bring, and that I prayed would still be there when the fire was contained, was out. When we returned to a farm layered with charred bark, and dusted pink by the fire retardant dropped by the planes which had flown overhead, thankfully it was to a house and dairy which still stood, though less than half a mile away houses were lost. We hung the quilt back on the wall, we cleaned out the raised garden beds of the bark which had fallen on the tomatoes and peppers, and wondered if these beds were still safe to use, after being sprayed pink. 

Now we drive down country roads leading to the farm and note the trees. When we faced the drought of 2011, we didn’t know the difference between a tree that is stressed by drought, leaves dropped in order to conserve what it can, and a tree that is drought-killed: a tree killed by drought often has branches still full of leaves, just leaves which are brittle and brown. Back then we also didn’t know that trees stressed by drought can die years later, long after rains have returned, sometimes five years later. We lost well over a hundred trees on our acreage during that drought and the following years. Although this year hasn’t been as dry as it was in 2011, the driest year on record for the state of Texas, it has nonetheless been brutal. This month is set to be the hottest August in the past 150 years, and it shows. Although we have nowhere near the dead trees we saw in 2011, the days carry with them the brittleness of watchful waiting. The sky is scanned, hopefully for rainclouds, and for smoke. Electronic signs along the highways warn of fire conditions, and restaurants post on their signage “Pray for Rain” just above “Tuesdays Kids Eat Free!” Recently on the social network Nextdoor, someone in our area posted that they witnessed a driver toss a burning cigarette from their car window. Readers demanded that the perpetrator be arrested. 

We have discussed whether we need to make preparations in case we face another wildfire in our area. We have a much larger livestock trailer now, which is a comfort as with the last fire we were forced to leave some animals behind. Of course we also have larger animals now, and adding cows to the mix might change up the dynamics somewhat. There are less people on the farm to worry about, but more years of living on the farm to imbue every corner, tree, and fencepost with memory. I will, at least, put together a bag with the important documents I left behind last time. I will probably have a tote bag ready with needed medications, for people and animals. Or maybe I won’t. As I type this I now feel as if I am possibly being overly concerned. Perhaps it was the mention of zombies. Perhaps it’s just anxiety, driven by the clear blue cloudless sky over the brown parched grass and cracked soil. But at least, we agreed, we should make sure the trailer tires are full of air and the van is full of gas at all times. Like the baby books tell you to do when you approach your due date. Because who wants to be caught off guard?