#ella bruce prepper

[thewaterwars]

Ella and Bruce

Ella had not anticipated this. Nuclear fallout she’d anticipated, a civil war had seemed almost inevitable, a zombie uprising she was prepared for. But now her eager preparations, her years of stockpiling, of spending weekends at the Army Supply Store, of cancelling plans and avoiding friends and here she was, still fucked, floating 100 feet or more above her carefully appointed bunker. Bruce stared back at her from the other side of the small boat, disdain painted in his eyes. He considered her, seemingly making judgment of her stupidity and blindness to this outcome. He flapped his tail and gently raised his paw, which he began to lazily clean. Ella sighed and began once again to consider how high above the bunker she might be. The rope tethering her boat to the shelter far below was about 150 feet long. She estimated about 50 feet of slack based on how the boat was drifting. But her head was foggy and she was far past dehydration. She dipped her hands into the saline mess that was the ocean that had washed over her house, scooping some of the cool water over her shoulders and down her back. She dripped a bit of it into her mouth but she knew better than to deplete the remaining fluid in her body than by ingesting in all this salt. She thought of Peter, how he’d warned her that when damnation came it would be a flood. How Jesus would come save them all and take them to heaven. Whether Peter was in heaven now she couldn’t say but he sure as fuck died when the flood came and smashed him and all the other believers in her nowhere-ass town to their watery deaths. Ella could feel the spray of the water on her skin as she remembered it sweeping towards her, ripping up the surrounding houses. Bruce was now loudly meowling, breaking her out of her memories. Ella fixed him with a stare, the fact that he was still alive was a big enough annoyance. She did not plan for the neighbor’s cat to jump in the boat that would float her to safety. But now she saw the source of Bruce’s concern. It was raining, matting his coat down with thick droplets. Ella’s brain buzzed with exhausted confusion, what was she supposed to do now? The best she could come up with was to remove her shoes, which she now shoved to the middle of the boat, watching fat droplets land and pool in the heels. She waited until there was enough to slurp out of what was by now a very smelly and unappetizing vessel. But it was the sweetest drink she’d ever tasted. Even Bruce, who was still perturbed by his inability to avoid the wet even after the flood, yowled and opened his maw to the sky and let some of the water drip in. How long would this sustain them for Ella wondered? She hoped that, at least for Bruce, not very much longer.