It started with a three-day blackout. They got the grid online again, but never back to the way it was. From then on, there were rolling blackouts, at least a couple hours each day. There was talk of crumbling infrastructure, but that was only half the problem. When the no-nukes started rioting, the authorities shut down all the reactors as a precaution. The no-coals had blown up some of the power plants. If the no-nukes followed no-coal tactics, there might be melt-downs and radiation leakages. The no-winds pulled down most of the wind-mills. That left a handful of hydro-electric generators—hardly enough to meet the ever-rising demand for power.
It was hard to know what was going on. With the rolling blackouts, news became sporadic, and the internet was unreliable. Cellular services worked intermittently, but with limited TV and internet, people got bored and joined the no-cell riots. Roving gangs pulled down the cell towers and others claimed them for scrap metal. When the no-oils blew up the pipelines, supply chains unraveled and ordinary consumers couldn’t get even basic supplies. People could line up for hours at a grocery store and come away with only a box of Cheerios and a rotten head of lettuce. Manufacturing ground to a halt and soon the roads were littered with abandoned cars because their owners couldn’t source replacement parts after the cars broke down. Increasingly, Western cities looked like bombed-out towns from World War Two or the aftermath of Shock and Awe.
Jared wasn’t worried about the state of the world. Some people used words like post-apocalyptic. Jared thought that was absurd. In his view, the world was engulfed in a forest fire. He’d read that certain pine cones couldn’t open and spread their seeds except in the heat of a forest fire. Jared thought of himself as a seed, and he’d take root in the conflagration that was sweeping the globe.
Jared would never describe himself as clairvoyant, but he could see the fire coming from a hundred miles away. He had a sense that something like this would happen and he prepared himself for it. That meant setting up a panic room and stocking it with supplies. There were shelves and shelves of canned goods, barrels of water, batteries, flashlights, a generator, solar panels, a ham radio, medical supplies, books, pens, firearms and ammo, and most important of all … a hundred rolls of toilet paper. Jared was determined to hunker down with his wife, Cecile, and the twins, Todd and Jeff, and wait for the crisis to burn itself out.
At first, Jared assumed it would be a short-term problem. The army would come in and calm the riots. Then the engineers would get all the power plants back online and things would return to normal. On that assumption, Jared instituted the eight-sheet rule: after going to the bathroom, they were allowed to use a total of eight sheets of toilet paper to wipe themselves. They could use those eight sheets in any combination they pleased. Jared himself preferred to wipe with three, three and two, reasoning that, by the third wipe, two sheets was all he needed. Cecile went with four and four. She was of the view that a four-sheet wipe was ideal for comfort and it minimized the possibility of contact between fingers and human waste. Todd usually went with two, two, two and two. That way, if he didn’t have everything clean by the third wipe, he still had two sheets in reserve. Jeff took a more flexible approach, preferring to adopt a wiping pattern based on the circumstances. On this basis, the family went through two rolls in the first week.
In the second week, while Jared was scrounging for food, he overheard his neighbour, Floyd Crenshaw, complaining about how he and his wife, Margery, were running out of toilet paper. If they didn’t score some TP real soon, he didn’t know what they’d do. He was damned if he’d wipe with his bare hand, like some kind of savage. He’d probably have to gather up leaves from the park or napkins from the abandoned Starbucks. When Jared heard this, he realized that he could earn some decent money selling his surplus TP. The next day, he loaded a backpack with rolls of cottony-soft two-ply TP and went into the streets to see what price he could get for them. As he suspected, people were desperate. They’d run out and it was disgusting. Some paid as much as twenty dollars a roll.
At home, Jared didn’t get the response he’d expected. When he laid five hundred dollars on the counter, Cecile screamed that he was selling their future. While Jared was out hawking their wiping comfort to complete strangers, his own son, their dear Todd, had developed a case of diarrhea and went through an entire roll all on his own. With two rolls last week, two rolls this week, Todd’s case of the runs, and Jared’s business venture, they were down to seventy rolls.
Jared insisted that seventy rolls was a lot of toilet paper. True enough in normal times. But Cecile heard that the military had completely disbanded and there was no hope of restoring law and order before the end of summer. That was twenty weeks, at least forty rolls, not including further cases of diarrhea. And what then? With twenty-five or thirty rolls left, what then?
That was when Jared instituted the six-sheet rule. Without the flexibility that eight sheets gave them, everyone in the family followed the two, two and two wiping pattern. The situation could have become demoralizing, but Jared exhorted his wife and sons with his passionate words. Toilet paper was the hallmark of civilization. Even now, with barbarians banging at the door, they’d push them back and hold high their rolls of toilet paper. They’d make a stand for civilization.
Mid-way through the summer, while Jared was out on one of his foraging expeditions, he noted that people had begun to walk funny. It was a tight-assed shuffle, like you see in zombie movies, only nobody was foaming at the mouth or dropping puss-oozing eyeballs. It was clear to Jared that they were chafing thanks to all the coarse materials they were using to wipe themselves.
While he was salvaging copper wire from an abandoned car, he heard a familiar voice from behind:
— Hey, Jared, you got any of that toilet paper left?
— Oh hi, Floyd.
— Cuz Margery’s so sore now, she can’t hardly sit no more. And me. Well, I’m not much better.
Jared saw how difficult it was for Floyd to walk towards him.
— So whadya think? Can you spare me a coupla rolls? I’d pay. Haven’t got much, but I think I could make it worth your while.
— Gee, Floyd. I dunno. I got Cecile to think of. And Todd. Well, he’s got a real sensitive stomach. Every morning it’s like a brown river.
— Then you still have some rolls, doncha?
— Oh, now, Floyd. Not really.
— But you got some?
— Only a few more.
— That’s good enough for me.
Floyd waved his hands and called to all the people in the intersection.
— Hey everybody, he screamed, Jared here’s still got toilet paper.
People clamoured to grab him and hold him down. Jared was nimble enough to deke through the closing circle of sore-assed stiffs. Still, they knew where he lived and followed him. At home, Jared scooted Cecile and the boys into the panic room and they waited for the angry mob to arrive. In the short term, they’d be safe; the panic room was impregnable. But if the mob laid in a good siege, Jared might run out of food and water before he ran out of toilet paper, and then he’d have to surrender.
When the mob arrived, leering faces pressed flat against the small window in the door. Jared answered by waving rolls of toilet paper under their noses and dancing a jig. Later, he mooned them to show how smooth his skin had remained through the crisis. When the mob was especially unruly, Jared sacrificed a roll, tossing it like a grenade into their midst and watching how they tore one another apart just to lay hands on a few sheets of the precious stuff. Even at that, he lost another roll to Todd’s dysentery.
That evening, as the family sat around the narrow table eating cold tins of beans and diced peaches, and as the angry hoard banged fists against the door, Jeff asked if this wasn’t the end.
— The end? Whadya mean “The end”?
— You know.
His voice was tender and it shook.
— We’ll run out of stuff and they’ll come in and kill us.
— Oh, no, honey.
Cecile put an arm around her son as the tears began to stream down his cheeks.
— Son, Jared said, we don’t have a thing to worry about.
He stood and walked to the far corner of the panic room, and he reached to the highest shelf and shoved his hand to the very back behind all the supplies, and he drew out a thick black book.
— It’s all been prophesied. Right here in the Book of Revelation. Listen to this. ‘And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”‘ That bit about the throne? That’s talking about us. ‘But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination…’ Or how about this? ‘Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.’ So, you see? The unclean ones can’t get in here.
— But what if we run out of toilet paper?
— Run out? Don’t be silly.
Jared tossed the black book and it landed with a loud thunk on the table.
— Lookit all that paper. It’ll last us for months.
It was true. The Bible would be their salvation.