Remember when I mentioned that the I-80 flea market had actual fleas at it? Although completely true, it was meant a funny observation at the time. It became a lot less funny when the itching started. Said itching didn’t register at first because I’ve been itchy anyway on account of the air being poison and filled with dirt. Probably poison dirt. But eventually I realized that there was another layer of itching going on.
I have to say that so far this is a pretty shitty apocalypse. I don’t care for it one bit. It’s too hot for one. The air quality as I just mentioned is horrendous. Don’t even get me started on the food. Don’t! And now I’m lousy? I asked Martialla what we do about it and she shrugged and said “I guess we have fleas now” like that was an acceptable answer.
When we woke up this morning, we saw that next to the road where we had parked there was a stream – a stream that didn’t look like it was mostly tar and used canola oil like most of the water we’ve seen so far. Martialla started rigging up some contraption to boil water on J-Lo’s engine and fill up our empties while I dove in to drown the little bastards crawling all over me. I ask you this, how can the water be so god damn cold when it’s ninety-eight degrees with seven hundred percent humidity?
Martialla looked down at me in the water “Are you going to help me?”
I shook my head “N-no.”
“You’re going to freeze to death in there.”
I did my best to keep my teeth from chattering “Sh-sh-shut up Martialla e-e-very . . . every . . . one knows a-a-about . . . y-y-your . . .”
“Jesus, get out of there before you get hypothermia. That’s not even going to work, you can’t drown fleas.”
“C-c-can . . . too.”
She cocked and eyebrow “Didn’t you grow up on a farm? Why don’t you know anything about anything?” I tried to stammer a response but failed. “Even if drowning them did work, which I assure you it will not, you’re going to get them back from me anyway because there’s no way I’m getting in there.”
That was a good point. That’s why I got out, not because I was starting to lose feeling in my extremities. Not because Martialla was right, because she’s a filthy person who would reinfest me so there was no point in going through with my idea that would have totally worked. She’s a beast that one. I laid my clothes on the top of the car to dry and laid myself on top of the clothes to get some rays. I heard the frown in Martialla’s voice.
“Can’t you put on some other clothes?”
“What other clothes? We have no other clothes. Someone spent all our trade chits on weapons and food and water. Besides, what do you care? You’ve seen me naked plenty of times.”
“I have not! Why would I have ever seen you naked?!”
“You’ve been in dressing rooms with me a bunch of times.”
“I never hung around while you were dressing!”
I raised up in a perfect sphinx pose to look at her “Have you really never seen me naked?” I laid myself back down “That’s a shame because it’s really something. You know I was supposed to be in that episode of Seinfeld that Teri Hatcher ended up doing. You know the one ‘they’re real and they’re spectacular’.”
Martialla snorted “Yeah right.”
I sat back up “I was! What, you don’t think I have the goods?” I jabbed my finger at her “My jugs are huge and everyone knows it!”
Martialla sighed “How many days a week were you going to therapy before the world ended? Because it wasn’t enough.”
I laid myself back down again “You’re just jealous. You know while I was in the water I felt something bump into me. It made me think, did you ever hear that urban legend about the fish in ‘South America’ that swims up a dude’s urine stream and into his bladder for some reason? I realized that it’s even more stupid than I thought because if a fish wanted to get into human bladders it would be way easier to swim into a woman’s snizz that it would be to swim upstream through a river of urine. That’s how screwed up the world is, even when they’re making up stories about animals invading our bodies, they have to make everything about penises.”
I could hear the eye roll in Martialla’s voice “Fascinating, you should really write a book about gender theory.”
“Maybe I will.” I felt something bounce off my head and looked up to see that Martialla had thrown one of her empty water bottles at me. “Hey, what the hell?!”
Martialla pointed down the road “Get your clothes on right now, damn it!”
I looked and saw the mob heading our way. At least they didn’t sneak up on us this time.
And everybody knows it.