Prompt 7: all fall down

Prompt 7: Write about a chore you must perform during an apocalypse.

My father wasn't dead when we abandoned the house, but my brother and I thought of him as such. Dad wanted to be buried with Mother, so Toby and I took him to the basement, dug him a grave beside Mother's, and laid our father beside it. We told Dad that when he was ready, he'd have enough strength to flip himself into the hole, and he believed us, and we believed ourselves, because what else can you do?

Before we left, Toby and I protected him in a canvas tarpaulin and tied off his feet so the rats wouldn't get to him, or the cat, if the rats died of plague too. We gave him a long rubber tube to breathe through and the rest of grandfather's dandelion wine. We locked the cellar door against looters or . . . whatever. And we left.

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