April 31

Today is April 31.

Because dates don’t matter and today can be anything I want it to be.

I hunkered down in my office, a white board set atop my drafting desk. I sketched out the perimeter of the garden I was going to build. There would be an orchard section, a bee hive, a vegetable garden, a vertical potato garden. I would also be raising chickens in an attached coop. If I was lucky, I’d be able to snag a goat or two as well.

I looked at my laptop. I don’t think it’s ever been closed this long. Dust had begun to settle on its top, and with it every timetable, project, expense report, management meeting, HR discussion. My court hearing.

I’d wanted to try my hand at homesteading for years, but the job took up too much time and energy. I was “salary/non-exempt,” meaning they could work me as many hours as they wanted and they didn’t have to pay overtime. I was pushing 70 hours per week, sacrificing holidays and weekends. I’d missed my anniversary three years in a row.

It made me bitter. Conniving. I decided I would take my petty revenge the old fashioned way: embezzling. We were a multi-billion dollar company. Part of my job placed me between accounting and receivables. By chance, they also placed part of my job above accounting, to approve expense reports. There was a serious oversight problem.

It wasn’t difficult to come up with phony companies with phony logos and charge the company for various services. Water purification; soil testing; compliance. Really, any vague buzz-wordy bill would get immediately approved from the pile of similar merchant invoices. I made $200 here, $1,300 dollars there. I got cocky. $10,000 for community outreach; $71,000 for legal fees. They kept getting approved. By me.

I pulled a green marker across the whiteboard, closing up the space. 13,000 square feet. And I’d already bought all the supplies to build it. They’re just sitting in a shed, waiting to be used. I would have several barrels to collect rainwater, each equipped with a natural purification system. I would source lumber from the woods around my property, rotating from year to year to allow the trees to grow back.

I would loot the hardware stores as much as possible before this, of course. I’d find an abandoned 18-wheeler out there somewhere and fill it up with everything I needed. I’d have to build a few more sheds, I thought.

Six months ago, there was a company audit. I thought I’d covered my tracks well, but apparently not well enough. I started getting called into virtual meetings with lawyers and auditors. I had to hire my own lawyer–an expensive one, which only convinced the company more that I was embezzling.

The IRS got involved, paid me a visit. They asked about my shed, its contents, my house, the land. They went through my past taxes, scratching their heads, wondering where all my new assets came from.

Things moved quickly. The company would be pressing charges, suing me for $6.2 million. I’d actually taken $7.1 million, but I wouldn’t be telling them that.

I was scheduled for a hearing over Zoom, where the charges would be formally presented. This wasn’t normal, of course, but nothing was normal since three months ago.

I walked through the house, heading to the shed. Aimee was making French toast in the kitchen. She’d learned how to make bread, and most of the eggs in the supermarket were still good, so it was safe. Once we had goats and chickens, we could make French toast whenever we wanted.

I felt as if I were walking on clouds. I was happy, care-free. I was finally working on something I cared about and I got to see my wife. I put my hands on her waist from behind before caressing her pregnant belly. I kissed the back of her neck and she pressed her head against mine.

“You doing okay?” I asked.

“I’m okay,” she answered.

Her parents were among the first to die. The pandemic came out of nowhere. It was fast, vicious. The immunocompromised didn’t have a chance. The elderly, the very young, the sick–they all died within the first two weeks. Then the virus moved on to those in close proximity: the doctors and nurses, caregivers, teachers, parents.

The last report I’d heard, before the internet and television went out, was that upwards of 90% of people had died. 90%. It was a sobering figure, and I was racked by guilt for being happy about it.

“It’ll be ready in just a few minutes,” Aimee told me as I let her go.

“I’m going to start marking outside.”

“Already?”

“Why wait?”

"We have all the time in the world," she reminded me. Aimee's experience with all of this had been worse than mine. She was a dental assistant before the epidemic. She worked while she stressed about the upcoming charges against me. She didn't make enough money to maintain the mortgage, and she'd just found out she was pregnant. What should have been happy news became a nightmare.

She quit her job to be closer to me in my last days of freedom. She did her best to balance her grief and her anger with me while trying not to bawl every minute of every day. When her parents died she couldn't even bury them because of the quarantine, and she was a mess. I became her caregiver while we waited it all out.

But now that everyone was dead, things were looking up.

I went out the back door. I’d need to build a playground at some point. Maybe a swing set. Aimee was six months pregnant, and I didn’t know any surviving doctors. We’d have to do it ourselves, and we’d been spending every night reading from medical manuals on correct birthing procedures. We’d looted IVs, drugs, even a medical bed with stirrups.

I’d been dreading this day for months. It was the day I would become unemployable; the day the IRS and the state would bring charges against me. I would be going to prison. I’d probably never see Aimee again.

But the IRS agent in charge of my case died. And my CEO died. And the manager, the accountants, the witnesses; even the secretary died. My case became unimportant as they buried their dead.

May 1st would never come.

Today is April 31.