Yesterday had started off like a normal day. Well, other than that terrifying video from India and rumors that mutant spiders were devouring people in Delhi, followed by the grounding of all air travel in the United States, it had started off like a normal day. Gordo made pancakes and then he and Amy took Claymore for a long walk. Then, while Amy watched two episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gordo worked out on the treadmill, showered, and scrolled through the Internet looking for information. There wasn’t much, however. He spent most of his time wallowing in rumors. After lunch, Shotgun and Fred invited them over to play Catan. A normal day. And then: a coup d’état.
It was a peaceful coup d’état, but it was a coup d’état nonetheless: Gordo and Shotgun were no longer in charge. After Amy beat all three men at Catan, which was a standard occurrence, Gordo and Shotgun went down to the workshop to take a look at Shotgun’s new band saw. When they came back up, the plans had changed: Fred and Amy had decided the two couples were going to ride out the next couple of weeks together, and that was that. One minute the plan was that, come the apocalypse—zombie, nuclear, environmental, or otherwise—the couples would retreat to their respective homes for survival, and the next minute it had been decided survival was not something that should be done alone.
“Look,” Fred said, his arm around Amy’s waist, “if you both are going to insist on going into lockdown mode, it’s going to be a lot nicer if we do it together. Face it. This idea is much more fabulous.”
Neither Gordo nor Shotgun objected, because they both realized the immediate truth: it was much more fabulous.
Gordo had to hand it to Fred. Shotgun was an engineer and about the straightest gay man Gordo had ever met, and almost as if in response, his husband, Fred, seemed to go as far as he could in the other direction. It was as if the only way Fred knew how to be gay was loudly and stereotypically. Which, frankly, was a lot of fun. And Fred and Amy fed off each other’s energy. Fred was entertaining even by himself, but with Amy, the two of them were like a superhero social-hour comedy team. While Gordo and Shotgun could spend hours in the garage gapping spark plugs and checking bearings, Fred and Amy could spend the same time in the kitchen, whipping up appetizers and cocktails. Gordo loved his wife, but fair was fair: Fred and Amy together made things better than good. They made them, well, okay, fabulous. It was going to take a little emotional energy to get used to, because Gordo had always thought the end of the world as we know it to be a rather gloomy proposition—ashes and fire and corpses and all that Cormac McCarthy stuff—but with Amy and Fred running the show, it was a really well-thought-out music playlist and artichoke dip in an underground shelter that looked more like an incredibly hip loft without windows than the sort of sad bomb-shelter bunkers that were the standard fare for survivalists.
“So much of this is just waiting around,” Amy said. She stepped over and gave Gordo a kiss. “I’d rather wait around with company than by ourselves. There’s only so much time I can spend watching television while you clean your guns and double-check the radiation seals on the shelter. I’m sorry, but it makes sense and you know it.”