Andrew

LISTEN. I UNDERSTAND THAT WHEN THE WORLD ends, society collapses, and we as a species want to make an attempt at civilization, round two, we’re going to need people who do the jobs that no one wants to do.

But why do I have to be one of those people?

I know this makes me sound like a piece of shit, and I’m only saying it because I’m having a bad day—seriously, catch me on a good day and I’ll talk your ear off about how amazing work is—but being a babysitter is not exactly my postapocalyptic dream job.

It’s not that I have delusions of grandeur. I don’t want to be a doctor or a scientist or the New American president. Honestly, I’d rather be a farmer. The agricultural people in the Keys are figuring out how to get a handle on sustainability and pest control. This time last year everyone was thinking about short-term survival. Now, though, we’re feeling the full-on collapse of the bird link in the food chain. There are still birds—we all look up and point them out when we see them—but they’re like us, few and far between. Maybe a couple million of them, at most, across the entire globe. And that means more insects and pests to destroy crops. And more rodents that might have otherwise been hunted by birds of prey. But the Key farmers are trying their best to deal and evolve with the times. It wouldn’t hurt if I learned how to grow crops. Embraced my destiny as a Plant Gay.

I stop daydreaming to count the kids on the playground, and damn near have a heart attack. I regroup and count again. But I still come to the same number. Twelve. My lucky number thirteen no longer lucky. Which means one of the kids has gotten away from me. Again.

And I know exactly which one.

My heart races, somehow to the beat of Daphne telling me that kids can drown in seconds. But back on the beach side of the playground I still don’t see him. Daphne’s voice in my head goes from lecturing me about drowning to giving advice on looking after them.

Kids are creatures of habit. They’re going to keep doing the same thing, even when you tell them not to.

Let’s see, when was the last time I yelled at the Kid for disappearing?

“Dammit.”

I sprint to the playground equipment, because Daphne has already been gone for fifteen minutes and could come back at any moment. I whistle hard.

“Taylor!” I shout at the top of the monkey bars. Thirteen-year-old, too-smart-for-her-own-good Taylor looks down on me—I mean, what else is new? “I need you to watch everyone for a second, okay?”

“Did you lose him again?”

“Okay, if we’re going to place blame, you should have seen him wander off from up there.”

“I’m not an adult.”

“No,” I mutter under my breath. “Just reincarnated Damien from The Omen.” I bet she has a 666 birthmark hidden under that braid.

“What?”

“Keep an eye, please? I’ll owe you an extra cookie tomorrow.” Shit, wait, did she just call me an adult? I’m only, like, three years older than her, what the hell?

Mustering the best impression of my own little sister I’ve ever seen, Taylor gives me a “sigh-fiiiiine,” then, Satan love her, counts the kids playing around her. I sprint in the opposite direction toward the water park.

But it’s not a water park anymore. The engineering folks still haven’t figured out water treatment given the limited amount of power we have, so the fountains and the flower-shaped sprinklers are still turned off.

That also means the pool is empty. But there’s no reason the Kid would need to go to the pool, so he isn’t there. He can’t be. Because I definitely won’t be able to live with myself if I have to look over the edge and see him lying at the bottom of a concrete pool.

He’s six. He knows better than that. I have to give him more credit.

But the closer to the pool I get, the more anxious I am.

Then relief—because there he is, on the sky-blue painted floor of the water park, under the nonfunctioning daisy sprinkler.

“Kid!” I call out with enough authority in my voice that I know my dad is looking down on me with a twinkle in his eye. Every time Andrew uses his big-boy voice, an angel gets their wings.

The Kid looks up from the stuffed hippo in his hands. I call him Kid because he’s never told anyone his name. He has no parents or family to tell us who he is, and when we ask him his name he won’t answer—even the name game doesn’t work on him, and the other orphans eat that shit up. Daphne was vehemently against calling him “Kid,” but even she’s broken down and uses it when talking to me. Not to his face, though.

It seems to be okay when I do it because whenever I shout it, he answers.

When he sees me, the Kid immediately looks guilty, and it breaks my damn heart. I hate yelling at these kids. I understand why we need to, but it’s not fair that I’m the one who has to do it. I mean, technically there’s four of us swapping off the responsibility, but I do like to hand it off to Daphne as much as possible. Probably because she yells at me enough.

I come to a stop next to him and crouch down. “Dude. You can’t run off without telling me.”

His attention returns to his hippo. “Bobo needed fresh water.” He makes a splashing sound.

Bobo’s a stuffed animal, Kid; the less water he gets, the better. Instead of saying this aloud, however, I nod. “Well, now that he’s had his fill, we need to get back to the others, okay? Ms. Daphne will yell at us if we’re late for lineup.”

That gets his attention, so he takes my hand and we head back to the playground. When we arrive, Daphne still isn’t back—thank God—but Taylor is down from the monkey bars again, talking to another adult.

There’s three full seconds of anxiety before I recognize the tattoos covering every inch of flesh visible around a cutoff denim vest littered with pins and buttons, and I relax a bit.

“Rocky Horror,” I say when we reach the edge of the playground. “I’ve never been happier to see another human being in my life.” That’s extremely untrue, but I do love me some Rocky Horror.

He smiles wide and holds out a tattooed fist for me to bump. All the other kids have suddenly noticed Rocky Horror’s arrival and the bravest of them are coming forward to ogle him.

Yes, his name is Rocky Horror. No, not first name Rocky, last name Horror. His first and only name is Rocky Horror. Like the Kid, he won’t tell anyone what his legal name was before what he calls “Teotwawki”—the End of the World as We Know It—and honestly why should he? Rocky Horror’s a great fucking name.

After our fist bump, he leans in and we make a loud show of kissing each other’s cheeks. He puts on a Moira Rose lilt as he speaks. “Andrew, wonderful to see you as always.”

“Isn’t it?”

He goes back to his normal, gruff voice. “No. Where’s Daph?”

“She ran to the loo.” Bathrooms don’t really exist when there’s no running water, and calling them outhouses is boring, but it’s not like I can say “brick shithouse” in front of the kids. Loo is whimsical.

One of the kids steps forward. Uh-oh, No-Filter Frank. Wanna guess why we call him that?

“What are those?” NFF points at the pink scars on Rocky Horror’s bare, hairy, tattoo-covered chest. The scars being the only part of him—at least to my knowledge—not covered by tattoos.

He opens up the vest so the kids have a better view. “That? Just some scars from surgery. But they’re old, so it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Especially since they put titanium over his ribs,” I add with wide eyes.

He puffs up his chest and lowers his voice. “Now no one can hurt me!” He lets out the air in his lungs and adds, “Physically, I mean. Emotionally, on the other hand . . .”

Before NFF or one of the other kids can ask any more questions, Rocky Horror heads over to one of the benches. As soon as he’s out of the vicinity of the playground, the kids disperse—probably realizing Rocky Horror is not going to go down the slides or play tag with them like I do. I bend down so I’m eye level with the Kid and Bobo the hippo.

“I’m going to go talk to Rocky Horror. But I want you to stay on the playground, okay?”

The Kid nods and walks off. I keep an eye on him until he sits on one of the swings.

“What’s in the bag?” I ask Rocky Horror as I sit next to him, pointing to the backpack at his feet.

“Present for Daphne.”

“Oh, so she gets a present but you still haven’t handed over Jamie’s birthday gift yet?”

He turns and stares at me in silence and, yeah, I may have walked into what I know he’s about to say. “Oh? Are we still giving Jamie his gift?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He shrugs and picks at dirt under one of his fingernails. “What use is a radio when you’re not talking to your boyfriend?” Jamie’s birthday is Saturday and my plan, once I was kicked off the boat, was to have Rocky Horror put together a long-range radio that we could communicate with. But he hasn’t finished the radio yet, and we’re getting dangerously close to the boat leaving. Two things giving me anxiety.

“We talk plenty.” If the definition of plenty is “good morning,” “good night,” “hey,” “fine,” and “I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“I’m not going to pretend I know what happened between the two of you—”

“It’s simple, he—”

Rocky Horror waves his hands at me. “Pssh, uh-uh, no thanks. I said I wasn’t going to pretend, but I also don’t care. I know both of you well enough now to know that, whatever it was, the only reason this situation has gotten as far as it has is because—even if you are talking ‘plenty’—you’re not talking about what happened.”

Yeah, he’s got me there. So I shoot back with my own dig. “A single man of your age? Forgive me if I don’t take relationship advice from you.”

“Risky read considering I could have lost a loved one during the pandemmy, but . . . yeah, I was single, so maybe you’re right. But if you want some non-relationship advice, stop letting it distract you and live your life. Figure out the Jamie shit on your own time.”

“I’m not distracted.”

“According to teacher’s pet”—he nods in Taylor’s direction—“you can barely be trusted to watch the kids.”

“Gossipy little shit. The Kid’s different. He’s always sneaking off to find fresh water for Bobo.”

Rocky Horror—a man named Rocky Horror—has the sheer audacity to arch an eyebrow at the name Bobo. I double-check to make sure the Kid is still on the swing.

“These kids cramp my style,” he says. “I don’t know how you do it.”

I pull at the denim vest. “This is style?” He swats my hand and I shrug. “It makes the days go by more quickly.”

Though I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not yet. Being on the boat was boring and the days did tend to drag. But at least I got to hang out with Jamie and Cara all day. Sure, Trevor was a dick sometimes.

That’s all. End of sentence.

And of course, the admiral hated me from the moment he joined the boat crew. His scowl grew scowlier with every joke. Honestly, I feel like he would have done better in Fort Caroline, the authoritarian settlement that hunted Jamie and me down the coast of Florida and almost succeeded in killing him. What’s not for the admiral to love there? Structure, patriarchal rules, white supremacy. It’s just like the navy!

“Obviously I know the answer, but speaking of things going fast . . .” He gives me a side-eye.

“No.” I cut him off.

He groans and shakes his head. “I really wish I could be your age again.”

“Right, because fifty years ago was so great to our kind.”

“Excuse me, I am forty, you skinny bitch. And I mean right now. Because now we’re all more or less on a level playing field.” He elbows me. “And you’re both wasting the precious time you have left.”

“Here we go.”

“No. For all we know, one of you could get appendicitis and die tomorrow. And you’re not even talking to each other about what you want. Or why you’re mad at each other—which clearly isn’t because of the sex stuff.”

This is all because I made the mistake of going to Rocky Horror for sex advice a little over a month ago when I found out he was a counselor in the before times. As one of the few queer men in our neck of the Keys, Rocky Horror was the clear answer.

Unfortunately, his advice was, and apparently still is, absolutely batshit: “Talk about it!”

Talkabout it? How am I supposed to talk about sex with Jamie when we’re only talking “plenty”? Maybe that’s our issue. We couldn’t have makeup sex after our fight, so we just fell into this awkward lull we’re in now.

Still, even before the fight I didn’t know how to talk about sex without making it weird. Who’s doing what part, and do we still use condoms even though I’m a virgin and I think Jamie’s a virgin, too? I mean, we’ve done other things and haven’t used them, but are we supposed to use them for sex-sex even if we’re monogamous and virgins and don’t have the ability to become pregnant—and, side note, where does one find lube in the apocalypse?

At first we were waiting because Jamie was still healing from being shot by a bunch of authoritarian lunatics from Georgia. But then it became more about making sure the time was right and that we were both comfortable and safe—like, apocalyptically safe, because see above re: condoms. But then the longer it went on the more difficult it felt to bring it up. Then came the other worries.

What if he doesn’t like it?

Or what if he doesn’t even really like all the other stuff we’ve done but he’s just horny and then doing this makes him realize he doesn’t like any of it and by definition also doesn’t like . . . me?

Before you get on me for the biphobia in that worry, I already know! Rocky Horror told me when I brought it up to him. But I can’t help it. It’s called being insecure, which I very much am but also very much want to work through.

“You look like you’re going to throw up,” Rocky Horror says, patting my shoulder.

“Must be the appendicitis.”

He sighs. “There’s no rush. Really, Andrew. You both love each other, and it will happen when it happens. But before it does you do need to talk to each other about it. So you should do it—talk, I mean. And soon. I’m not only talking about the sex stuff. You can lie to yourself, and me, all you want. But you and Jamie both know you’re being dummies and you need to talk your shit out.” It sounds like there’s a warning in his voice, and his gaze moves over my shoulder. “And if you need help on that front . . .” He pats my knee and stands, grabbing the backpack between his feet.

I turn to see Daphne De Silva—bestselling romance novelist—returning to the playground.

Rocky Horror takes Daphne’s hand and kisses it. Then he reaches into the pack and takes out a plastic device with a long cord hanging from it, handing it over to her. While she’s distracted, I lock onto the Kid—no longer on the swing but sitting in the sand with Bobo—and count the twelve other kids.

A white woman in her midsixties, Daphne keeps her hip-length gray hair pulled up into a big messy bun and only wears sundresses, even if it’s raining. Which, come to think of it, may happen soon. I rub at the scars on my leg, the bone aching slightly.

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing at the rectangular plastic box in her hands. Daphne counts the kids and sits down next to me.

“A cassette player!” She holds it up and I see a speaker and little window to put the cassette in. “The library still has a bunch of old books on tape. I figured we could play some of them for the kids so you don’t have to stay so late coming up with stories for bedtime.”

“Oh, yeah, great idea.”

With my excuse to “stay late at work” now in jeopardy, maybe Rocky Horror is right. Maybe it is time to talk to Jamie.