Dinner with Gertrude

There were not many people left in Johnstown after the asteroid hit in Montana, killing more than two thirds of the people almost immediately upon impact. The same was true in the rest of the state, along with America as a whole. We had been warned to some degree, but the warnings were sparse, and at times subliminal.

The truth of the matter was there was nothing anyone could do to prepare, because sounding the alarm would have only caused mass chaos and confusion, so the decision was made to let people go on with their lives just as they normally would have.

This was classified an extinction event, and there was no plan in place for first responders to save the day, as there would be no day to be saved, or any days after that.

Everything that we had come to love throughout our years growing up in Johnstown was now gone, as if it never existed to begin with. 9 out of every 10 structures had been burnt to the ground, animals exterminated, autos exploded, mass casualties on the streets and in the park.

There was no one to call for help in Johnstown, or from the next city over, or anyone in the whole of the United States.

It was the same everywhere.

The asteroid storm had hit early in the morning while Felix was lost in his last dream of the night, and when the first asteroid hit the dairy farm across the road and disintegrated it as if it had never existed, Felix jumped out of his skin while falling out of bed, and he immediately called out for his wife Leslie, then hopped to the window to look outside.

The sky was black, darker than night, as asteroids were hitting all over town to his left, ½ a mile away and all in between. He witnessed explosion after explosion, and in a matter of minutes, he saw his little town become a cauldron of death, destruction, and fear.

“LESLIEEEEE!…LESLIE!….BABY GIRL!…..WHERE ARE YOU!?”

Nothing.

He ran around the small cottage they had lived in for the last 23 years like a race car driver at Talladega, frantically calling for his wife, but she was nowhere in the cottage.

He scrambled to put his pants on and ran out the back door to the root cellar and yelled for her in there. Still nothing. His last hope was the empty barn, and he ran the 25 yards from the cellar to get to the barn and swung the doors open wide, only to find a couple empty horse stalls that had been occupied many years ago, but no Leslie.

She was not on the property.

The whole damn town was on fire now and he could hardly breathe from the smoke that had filled the sky. The asteroids had stopped falling from the heavens almost as quickly as they began, and Felix, overcome with smoke and emotion, fell to his side and passed out until later that day.

Upon awakening in the grass, the filtered sun was sporadically splashing his face with sunshine, and the sobering reality of what had happened now had fully sunk in.

By the position of the sun, he figured he must have been out for a good 4 to 5 hours.

He walked into the house, put on his socks and shoes, then grabbed a sweater he’d been wearing the previous day, and struggled getting it on over his head as he walked out the front door toward town.

Walking around giant holes left by the assault, he managed to make his way past the old gas station and into the heart of Johnstown, where nothing was left standing except the west half of the 2-story hardware store and the market.

This was not a town anymore, but instead a war zone. Dead bodies, mostly charred beyond recognition, were everywhere in his line of sight, and the stench of burning flesh was enough to make him turn around and go back home, but he had to find his wife, dead or alive.

At that time of the morning for her to have left the house, she had to have been on a milk or eggs run to make breakfast before Felix woke up, and she would have ridden her bike, so that was the first thing he had his eye out for.

Navigating through those left alive was a heartbreaking task, as so many were screaming their grief for all of Johnstown to hear. In a town of just over 740 in population, there might have been 40 or 50 people still alive, walking through the burning rubble, sometimes finding the loved one they had been searching for and falling down in their grief to be shared with no one.

When Felix got to the little corner store, her bike was nowhere to be found, and magically enough, the store was the only building to go unscathed from the fallout. He walked in the store to find the cashier sitting on the floor behind the cash register, legs crossed, and rocking back and forth, trying to wish what had happened away.

“Mary? Did Leslie come in here this morning” Felix whispered, as if to not disturb the dead.”

It took Mary a minute to respond, but finally she looked up at Felix and said, “No, there was only one person in here since I opened, and it wasn’t her”

Mary finished her sentence, then trailed off into deep space as Felix nodded and walked out the door.

He scoured the little one signal light town all afternoon and could find no trace of Leslie or her bike anywhere, so eventually he began his trek back to the cottage, hoping to find Leslie there waiting for him.

As he walked, he noticed the only buildings left standing on the main road were his little cottage, and Gertrude Wilson’s old farmhouse, sitting almost squarely between his cottage and town, so he moseyed up the walk to her door to check in on her, then knocked on the door.

Felix and Leslie did not know her well, as she kept to herself and didn’t leave her house much, but he always admired her frontier spirit from afar. She was old, but she was a stout woman that took care of her husband until he died the year prior, then just carried on by herself, needing no one’s pity or charity, seeming to deal with life on life’s terms.

She answered almost immediately, wide eyed, with the look of terror on her face, which was understandable considering what the town had just been through.

“Felix? Do you need something?” she stuttered.

“No Gertrude. Just checking in on you. We seem to be two of the lucky ones. You didn’t happen to see Leslie ride by on her bike this morning, did you?” he asked hopefully.

“No sir, I didn’t. Not at all. I was out behind the house tending to a lamb I am getting ready to butcher…then the storm hit” she answered. “Gotta go Felix” and with that, she shut the door, not giving him a chance to even ask if she were ok.

Odd.

When he got home, things were exactly as he left. Leslie wasn’t there, and she would not be coming home.

Two weeks after the asteroid storm, Felix was beside himself, but starting to come to terms that his wife probably took a direct hit by an asteroid and was buried deep in the ground with her bike in one of the numerous gigantic holes in the main road, never making it to the little market.

The town was essentially dead, with no rescue on the way.

They would have come by now if they were coming at all.

Felix tried to drive the 35 miles to Billings, but only made it as far as the viaduct bridge at the edge of town. It had taken a direct hit and was impassable, as was the other side of town.

There were only 2 ways in and out of town, both on the main road, so anyone between the two was trapped with no way in and no way out.

The little market that was spared had already been picked clean by those that survived, so now it was a waiting game, waiting to starve to death.

Then his thoughts drifted to Gertrude.

Felix had not had a decent meal for a week and half, and he had already cleaned out his frig and pantry, except for a jar of bread and butter pickles.

Maybe he could walk over to her place and beg a meal in exchange for some work.

“Hello Felix. How are you holding up?” she asked.

“Not too good Mrs. Wilson. I’m starving to death over there. I was hoping you might have some work for me in exchange for feeding me?” Felix answered, humbled of course.

She looked him square in the eye for a good minute while he felt increasingly embarrassed by his turn of fate.

“Remember that lamb I told you about? I butchered it and I’m cooking it now. Going to have it with some rosemary potatoes. If you chop up a couple nights worth of wood for me and bring it in the house next to the fireplace, I’ll feed you. Deal?” offered Gertrude Wilson.

“Deal” he answered, and he immediately walked to the side of the house, picked up the axe, and began chopping the logs into smaller pieces, stacking them neatly in a pile.

Because it was getting dark, he didn’t notice the front wheel of the bicycle poking around from the back corner of the house.

After placing the wood next to the fireplace in the dining room, Gertrude pointed to the dining room table and offered Felix a seat at one of the two place settings.

The aroma coming from the kitchen was heaven, and his mouth began to water, almost out of control, and when she brought out the plates of food, it was everything he could do not to embarrass himself by eating before she even sat down.

“Dig in” she said.

His first mouthful was like eating for the first time. Each bite of lamb was more delicious than the bite before. Either his palate was blinded by hunger, or this woman really knew how to cook.

And then he saw it. It was Leslie’s heart shaped locket, hanging off the mantle of the fireplace. But it couldn’t be hers.

He got up from his seat as Gertrude eyeballed him, walked over to the locket and opened it, and his stomach did a backflip. It was a picture of Felix, the same picture that was in the locket when he gave it to her 15 years ago for their anniversary.

“She wasn’t going to make it,” said Gertrude.

Felix barely made it back to his chair at the dining room table, legs wobbling and hands trembling. He stared at Gertrude in horror as he sat across from her, watching her cut off a succulent piece of Leslie’s thigh, placing the fork in her mouth, then masticating her neighbor like the sacrificial lamb that she was.

“Like I said, she wasn’t going to make it. Eat!” she said between bites.

No more words were spoken between the two that night, and they both enjoyed their leg of lamb with perfectly prepared rosemary potatoes.

Hunger is a funny thing, and sometimes makes you look the other way.