Daphne Lamb: The Girl's Guide to the Apocalypse

He was thoughtful for a moment.

“Promise me something,” he said sternly.

I stared at him, inwardly refusing to move my head in agreement to whatever it was he was about to say.

“Don’t go down there,” he said. “At least not by yourself.”

He turned around and left.

Bruce entered, still holding the can of soup. “This is disgusting,” he said. “I would kill for some beef with broccoli at that place we used to go to. You know the one? By your house?”

I shook my head and smiled, thinking about what it’d be like to be in a house full of different people. I tried to imagine my parents huddled by the fire, singing songs and grateful for the clam chowder that was in front of them.

I waited the entire day, long into the night, before I left the house again. I bundled up as best as I could and made sure everyone was fast asleep before quietly shutting the door behind me. I said a quick prayer under my breath and tried to follow Priscilla’s vague directions.

I tripped several times and felt an eerie chill, but pressed on until I could see lights—fire lights down below followed by human voices that sounded actually happy. When I was able to get a clear view, I saw everything just as Priscilla described it—a few RVs on the sand. There were people going in and out, and I smelled a hot meal cooking over flames. My stomach rolled over and begged me for it, but I stood still, taking in as much as I could.

A blond-haired man came out of the middle RV, holding a guitar and stood at attention in the center of the campsite.

“Hey, everyone!” he shouted. “Who’s up for singing a few songs before we say goodnight?”

The others clapped and cheered in agreement. He had a nice voice, but there was something familiar about it. I knew I had heard his voice somewhere before.

“It’ll be a few more minutes until dinner’s done,” he said. “Who’s got a request?”

A man raised his hand. “I know we did it last night, but it was so much fun to sing that song about how we’re all fireworks,” he said.

There were a few groans. Someone else raised their hand.

“Let’s sing that song about being stronger,” a young college age woman said. “You know the one. Stronger as a people, or dreaming something. That one.”

There was some scattered applause, and the leader tuned his guitar. Within a few minutes, he had hit a few opening chords and people started to sing. I hummed along, wondering the last time I had sang aloud in a group.

I crawled closer to the action and tried to sit myself down comfortably where I could hear everything. The smell of food was more powerful than ever and my stomach growled incessantly. I had only eaten two pieces of stolen bread, mostly because Debra made fun of Robert and Bruce for it and I wasn’t in the mood. But now I wished I had.

There was a rock poking me in the backside, so I shifted around, only to accidently sit on a branch and break it. That stopped the music and caused everyone to freeze.

“No one panic!” the leader whispered.

I froze too. These people seemed nice and were happily adapting to a simpler time, but here I had disturbed it, setting off whatever anger they’d unleashed at Priscilla. I turned around and made a move to crawl back up the hill when I heard someone shout. My pants were now slipping and I had to pull them up.

“There!” they said. “Someone’s spying on us on the hill!”

Just then, someone shined a light on my backside, perfectly framing my ass crack, which was now exposed from the slipping waist of my jeans. I tried in vain to climb up, but a mild sand slide made my feet slip. I turned around to see the entire tribe staring my way.

I grimaced. “Sorry!” I said. I straightened, turned around and put my hands up in the air. “I don’t mean you any harm,” I said. “I heard your music and just wanted to see what it was.”

Everyone was still staring. I shook, but tried to take long, deep breaths to make myself seem calmer.

The leader took a few steps forward and raised an eyebrow. His face, silver hair and rugged features were extremely familiar, and I knew that I knew him. I had never met him, but I knew I had seen him somewhere, like on television.

He held his guitar protectively in front of him like a shield. I kept my hands up.

“Where do you come from?” he asked.

With one hand I gestured up. “Over the hill,” I said. “There’s a house that a few of us are staying in for the moment.”

“Are you the ones who stole our food?” one of the women shouted.

“Why aren’t you at one of the quarantines?” he asked.

His voice was deep and smooth like a radio announcer’s.

“Our bus was attacked,” I said. “We don’t know where it is.”

“You can understand why we don’t trust you,” he said. “Right?”

I nodded. I stared at him when it suddenly dawned on me where I had seen him.

“You’re Darren Warren, aren’t you?” I asked.

A large grin came over his face. He nodded and seemed a bit more relaxed, put his hands in the air. “Guilty as charged,” he said with a hearty laugh.

“I thought so,” I said. “You seemed really familiar.”

He clasped my hand in both of his. “So good to meet a fan.”

For those who don’t know, Darren Warren was the city’s predominant theater critic. He was a thin man of smallish stature, older with a hard-set chin ready to judge at any moment’s notice. Normally, I wouldn’t follow theater criticisms, but Bruce did and frequently had shown me reviews with pictures of Darren’s glowering face. He had only been to one of Bruce’s plays, and while the review wasn’t positive or negative, he just felt very nonchalant about Bruce’s performance. He also had spelled Bruce’s name wrong, which was the biggest source of sorrow for him.

“The fact he didn’t even bother to know my name,” he’d wept over coffee, the paper in front of him. It was the morning after a performance, and he’d been so excited to see the review. He’d given no sign of letting it go, which meant I was never going to hear the end of it, which I didn’t for almost three weeks. And now there was Darren in front of me and I felt growing excitement over what could possibly happen when Bruce found out.

He beamed. “Which one of my reviews did you like best?” he asked.

“That one,” I said carefully. “The one you did about the guy. It was very serious. And moving.”

“Ah. Geography of a Horse Dreamer .” He closed his eyes and nodded. “Sam Shepherd at his most honest. That was a good one.”

He gathered his robe tightly around him. It seemed as though he might have been naked under it. I prayed to God that wasn’t the case.

He clapped his hands. “Thank you,” he said. “That means a lot to me now that an era of the theatrical arts has passed. Who knows what new inspiration will rise? What’s your name?

“Darren!” someone shouted. He looked over his shoulder, where three of his wide-eyed followers in bathrobes earnestly stared at him.

“Don’t you think we should have a group discussion?” asked the man in the middle.

“About what?”

“Some of us want to perform a Breaking Bad episode, but some people want to watch something else. Lighter fare, if you will.”

The three looked anxious as the man in the middle rubbed his palms together.

“I see.” He pursed his lips and looked at me. “Do you mind if we excuse ourselves for the moment?” he asked.

“Please,” I said. “I’m the one who crashed your party.”

He smiled and pointed at me as he backed away. “That’s good. You don’t have any acting experience, do you?”

I blushed. It was involuntary. “Bet you were pretty convinced that I was terrified a moment ago.”