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

work, so shut up and get to it. She started the generator – it used a simple pull cord, like Dad’s old lawn mower – and the dehydrators hummed back to life. One down. She went through the farm buildings, turning off or unplugging every other item that required electricity, so she could save it for the dehydrators.

In the process she rediscovered the farm’s storage rooms, which she’d passed through during her search for bodies but hadn’t recalled until now. There were literal tons of fruits and vegetables there, waiting to be shipped. The once-fresh stuff was in bad condition and would have to be chucked, but they’d dried a lot of their produce too. It was all there, and all hers. “Scoreboard!” she cried.

For the next hour, she threw out all the spoiled fruit and veg and hauled the dehydrated food to her car. She’d need to make three trips to get it all back to the Matchicks’, but it would be worth it in the long run. “Thank You, God,” she said several times as she ferried all the food home. It seemed like she should thank someone.

As she hauled the last loads into the den, she realized she needed to ponder the storage issue a little. An old-fashioned root cellar was what she was lacking. The Matchicks’ house – well, her house now, in the absence of any Matchicks – didn’t even have a basement. She had to find somewhere with a stable climate to put all her victuals, or she’d lose it as fast as she gathered it.

Kelly sat down on the couch in the den. She needed to take a breather, and her brain was buzzing, trying to keep track of everything. Did she need an olanzapine? She didn’t think so, but she did need to downshift a gear and organize herself a little.

After a minute’s rest, she went to the kitchen, picked up the pad and pen and started scribbling again:

Today’s work:

Frozen food at store – prep or toss

Fridge/freezer at home – prep or toss

Siphon gas for car/generator

Find watch that runs w/o battery

Find BBQ grill & charcoal (build fire pit tomorrow?)

Find candles

Find basement for root cellar

 

It was a dauntingly long list, especially since it was already about noon. That gave her roughly seven and a half hours of daylight. But it wouldn’t be a tragedy if she didn’t finish it all today, just an inconvenience. She’d try, but she shouldn’t beat herself up if she didn’t go seven-for-seven.

Since she was home – and sitting in the kitchen, no less – the logical first item was to deal with the fridge. Thankfully she’d been whittling away at its contents for a week, so there wasn’t much left inside it, but she bagged up the remaining meat and vegetables to slice up for the next dehydrator run. Everything else went in the garbage. She almost poured the expired milk down the sink before remembering she couldn’t just wash it down the pipes, then tossed it in the trash too. Tomorrow she’d take all the trash to the store dumpster so it didn’t stink up the place.

Another one down, six to go – what next? Well, the generator only had a couple of hours left, so she should probably siphon some gas. But to do that, she needed to find some rubber tubing. Where would … oh, duh – they had some at work for emergency repairs on the produce sprinklers and the like. So, change of plans – haul the trash to the dumpster now, go through the frozen food at the store, steal gas from the cars in the store parking lot (sorry, Ganj, sorry, Bilbo, sorry Mrs. Li), then book it to the farm.

Throwing away stuff was quick, siphoning gas more time-consuming. But after an hour’s puffing using the two-tube method (so she didn’t have to worry about swallowing any), she managed to fill one five-gallon jug and half of another before completely draining Bilbo’s old Plymouth Breeze. Enough to give the generator one more night’s run with a little to spare.

Time was of the essence, so she headed straight to the farm. When she got there, the generator was almost to fumes, so she shut it down and checked the food. It was all done to a turn, dry as bones, so she packed it up and refilled the generator’s tank with a funnel she’d found next to the manual. All going according to plan. She could deal with what remained of the frozen and refrigerated food, get it on the dehydrators before sundown and check it in the morning, hopefully before the generator ran dry. Good times.

Returning to the store, she realized there wasn’t that much food left to prep – one dehydrator run would more than deal with it. Thirty minutes was enough to do all the slicing and dicing, but she didn’t want to start the drying too early – the generator would use up its gas tank in the middle of the night if she did. So she covered the food in the back of the store and started working on the rest of today’s to-do list: scavenging.

Watch, grill, candles, root cellar … watch, grill, candles, root cellar … she tried to come up with a mnemonic, but W-G-C-R didn’t lend itself to anything memorable. Thankfully it didn’t need to, since she found two of the four quickly. There were candles for sale at the store, so she hauled them all home and found more, ones the Matchicks kept for romantic evenings. That was a start – she could search other houses for more if she ran low. And Saul had an old-school Weber grill in the shed where she’d found the rake, complete with an unopened bag of briquettes.

But Saul and Toni, being techies, didn’t wear watches. Like a lot of people, their phones were their