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

Scrub dehydrators, siphon gas – those were next on the list, and could be done at the same place. There were a few cars parked up at the Zen farm. She swung by the store for more jugs, the siphoning tubes and some cleaning supplies (there were more there than at home), them down to the farm. With the windows rolled down and the air filled with the smell of summer grasses slowly browning, the air was a tonic, and she hummed tunelessly, just enjoying the moment.

Thankfully the dehydrators were made to be easy to clean, but she’d used them a lot and hadn’t done much in between loads besides a basic wiping down. A lot of former food was solidly baked on now, and the tools at hand would not get them back to their previous condition without more elbow grease than she’d planned on. “My own darn fault,” she muttered to herself. “These will have to soak.” Which meant filling a large tub with water for the shelves. She could use a bathtub at the farm, but she’d have to get the water into it.

And the non-removable interiors of the dehydrators … elbow grease was the only solution.

No running water meant a well or a water tower to pull from, or hauling the water well uphill from the ocean. She’d only brought a gallon of drinking water with her, and now shook her head at her short-sightedness. “Well, no point chastising yourself over it, Kel. Figure it out. Take the time you need. You probably won’t need the machines until … October? If you try harvesting the farm’s crops? Or you decide to go berry picking or …”

She let it go and started thinking through processes. She could do some scrubbing of the shelves and interiors, using the big sink in the room, get some of the crud off. Leaving the interiors damp might loosen some of the rest for tomorrow. As for the shelves … what if she took them down to the ocean where she’d bathed Tuesday, strung a loop of twine through them, tied it to a post or a rock and left them in the water overnight? The waves might knock them around a little, but they shouldn’t break.

She sighed. Any problem would yield if you gave it enough thought. She piled the shelves by the sink, used scrub pads, dish soap and a bowl of water to work over the dehydrators’ insides and found she got most of the drips, crusts and splatters off without straining. Then she went over them again, removed half the rest and let them air-dry. The shelves were actually tougher – all those gaps – but she soon got them clean enough she could probably use them right then if pressed to. She wouldn’t – she’d toss them in the car and try her ocean plan first.

By the time that was finished it was past 4:30, and she debated whether to skip the siphoning for today. At eight minutes a gallon, filling two five-gallon containers meant she wouldn’t get home until after six, and sunset was before eight. But … she was up there already, with all the equipment, and the only other things on her list could be done sitting at home by candlelight. Why not?

She picked out a late-model Honda Civic – a car that small wouldn’t have more than ten gallons in it unless its former owner had just filled it up – and got to work. The afternoon was hot and she took lots of water breaks, but before 6:00 the tank was as empty as a reality show star’s head and she had nine gallons of internal combustion juice. “Not a bad day’s work,” she told herself as she loaded it into the trunk and headed to the store to stow it away.

Back home, she was getting the twine to secure the dehydrator shelves in the Pacific when she glanced at the pill bottles on her side table. She hadn’t thought about her prescriptions in a few days other than to take the odd pill. How was her supply? Better check. She had about a dozen olanzapine and twenty lamotrigine, but … uh-oh. Down to two lithium, one for tonight and one for tomorrow. She needed to resupply and fast.

A second’s fear quickly yielded to knowledge. She had a list of all the pharmacies in Marin County, didn’t she? Sure enough, right in the same drawer as all those now-worthless fast-food coupons – and the nearest one, the Walgreen’s in Tamalpais Valley Junction, was only six miles away, a more or less straight shot on the Shoreline Highway!

She checked the watch again: 6:17. An hour and a half of daylight, easily. She could drive down to the water with the dehydrator shelves, tie them up properly – she knew just the place – head up to the highway and take the fifteen-minute … no, ten-minute trip to the drugstore since there wasn’t any traffic, and as long as she could break into the place, she’d be home comfortably before the sun was down.

“Hot diggity!” she chirped as she cut off a few lengths of twine and returned to her car.

By 6:40 the shelves were soaking in the Pacific, secured to both a protruding rock with one length of cord and to a sapling with another. Provided no aquatic creature bit through both lines or major quake struck, she could retrieve them in the morning and scrub them clean. To the highway she returned for the final major task of the day.

Or she tried. Later, she realized she hadn’t been more than a mile and a half from town in the eighteen days since she got sick, and thus didn’t know what condition the rest of the world was in. More pertinently, she didn’t know what condition the rest of State Highway 1 was in. Now she found out.