Tales of the Derry Plague , Anselmo, Ray [fun to read txt] 📗

1. Check the pyre – relight if necessary.

That, she’d already planned on, but it was helpful to get her started. What else? Hmmm …

2. Analyze needs for future – food, clothing, shelter, transportation, MEDICINE, personal defense.

3. Find books on roughing it/survival (or print off internet?).

4. Find other needed things – stockpile.

4a. Pull from SBN&N first.

4b. Then house to house?

Oh, she’d almost forgot!

5. Wash clothes esp. fire suit while you have use of washer/dryer.

That fire suit smelled like you’d expect it to after three days of sweat and week-old corpses. She almost hesitated to open the coat closet.

6. Find way to secure bldgs for future use/scavenging.

She’d left all the doors open to keep track of which ones she’d searched, but the search – for people, anyway – was over. The last thing they needed was weather or animal damage. All the stuff might be useful someday.

7. Make list of poss. places to go if new location needed or to find others.

If a forest fire wiped out the place or a Richter 9 earthquake struck or Mad Max’s buddies rolled through or she just couldn’t stand seeing all the old familiar places empty and lifeless, she needed a Plan B. Maybe Plans C through Z as well. Saying the future was uncertain was like saying the Grand Canyon was but a scratch.

She looked the list over and decided it was a good start. She went back through it and marked stars by 1. and 5. – those were things she could theoretically get done today. After some thought, she put one by 4a. as well. She wasn’t likely to finish raiding the store today, but it would at least be good to start it. Besides, she wanted another bottle of charcoal lighter if she needed to restart the pyre.

She snapped her fingers and added two more lines:

8. Read LaSheba’s journal, esp. last week’s entries.

8a. Start journaling?

Who knew what she might learn from her friend’s diary? Or her own?

Now more motivated and more organized, she got to work. First, she Googled how to wash a fire suit – oh, how she’d miss the internet! Then she threw it in the washing machine except for the boots, set it on cold and turned the appliance on. The stink was so bad she wouldn’t chance putting her other clothes in with it. She took the boots out back, sprayed the outsides with the garden hose, then let them air-dry and generally air out.

With the washer going, she walked up to SBN&N to pick up her car and the lighter fluid. While she was there she wrote a few more notes. The meat and other items in the refrigerated section had been sitting too long to be safe – it would all have to go in the dumpster behind the place. The frozen food was likely still good, but it would have a day at most once the power went. She’d have to pick through the produce, see what could be salvaged and preserved. The canned and dry goods could wait for later.

Food preservation – that was something to ponder. Could she teach herself canning? Did anyone own a dehydrator – maybe the Zen farm? No, a dehydrator would need electricity – she’d have to consider open-air racks and ways to keep the flies off.

For now she drove home with the charcoal lighter and some fruit that hadn’t spoiled. By the time she got back, the washer had stopped, so she moved the fire suit (now acceptably odor-free) to the dryer and put the rest of her unwashed clothes in the washer. She’d do her bedsheets next. Going to the little prefab shed in the backyard, she found a sturdy metal rake for later use.

With nothing better to do until the fire suit was dry, she began writing down ideas for item 2: Analyze needs for future. Food would be easy as long as the canned and packaged goods held out, but she needed to learn how to build a fire soon if she wanted to cook them. Fresh water might be an issue – she’d probably have to set up rain barrels or figure out how to desalinate and filter ocean water. Probably the former.

Clothing, she had plenty of; shelter, too much of. Transportation … as long as she stayed here, she could use her car until it broke down, provided she could siphon gas from other vehicles. Worst case scenario, punch holes in gas tanks just like she did with the delivery truck. Personal defense? Well, a few people in Sayler Beach had guns, but she’d never used one and finding more ammo for them could be an issue. Maybe a big knife or an aluminum softball bat would better suit her.

Medicine … trouble. Medicine was created in big complex laboratories and manufactured in big complex factories in faraway places. They might as well be in the rings of Saturn for all it mattered. More to the immediate point, her pharmacy of choice was fourteen miles away in San Rafael …

… no. She could break into any pharmacy and get what she needed – it wasn’t like there were security guards to stop her as far as she knew. So … a quick Google search revealed over a dozen pharmacies in Marin County, the closest six miles away in Mill Valley. Walking distance in good weather. What she should really do is plan a trip to hit up all the drugstores and gather what she needed. It might use up much of her gas tank, but she’d only have to do it once. Then she’d have supplies for however long it took for the meds to expire. After that ...

… don’t think about after that. There lay monsters.

9. Raid pharmacies (see list).

She wrote down the addresses of all the drugstores in Marin County (almost