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

Nice. Neat. Next?

She drove the Ram to the store, loaded it up with gallon bottles of water, a case of condensed milk, her siphoning tools and the store’s last two empty five-gallon jugs, and began decanting internal combustion juice from Rose Li’s minivan. As she did, she thought about moving the gas and siphoning stuff home … no, she didn’t want such flammable items in her home. Honestly, she didn’t want them in the store either, with all those canned and dry foods and other things she’d almost certainly need later. But where else …?

That was a conundrum, especially since most of the buildings in Sayler Beach were wooden to better blend in with the subtropical rain forest surrounding it. The volunteer fire building looked like it could go up with one dropped cigarette butt. Most of the structures at Holy Green and the horse ranch were wooden too. At least SBN&N was mostly concrete. She’d have to think about that some more, but for now the store was probably the best place for the gas.

The store had a can of spray paint – gray, half-used – for the few times they’d needed to cover up graffiti. When she finished draining the eight gallons from the minivan, she sprayed a quick X over the gas cap hatch, then did the same for the other cars in the store lot she’d emptied. The gas she’d just glommed went into the Ram’s tank – now about two-thirds full – the re-emptied jugs back into the store, and the spray can into the cup holder in the cab. Four items down now, almost noon, not bad.

The fire department yielded a few metal jerricans and a big foam extinguisher, which was heavy as lead but could very much come in handy. Wally’s garage/yard yielded two more jerricans and a couple of small one-gallon plastic gas “cans,” the kind you kept in your trunk for when you ran out of fuel on the road. She piled them all into the bed of the truck. The Spinnaker Inn had a couple of jugs like at the store – she took them and made a mental note to give the place an extensive search, because who knew what she’d find?

At the horse ranch, though, she hit the mother lode. Not only did they have lots of gallon and five-gallon containers for food and water and the like, they had actual rain barrels! Dozens were situated around the houses and stables, probably so they could cut back on their utility bills, and there were other wooden and metal barrels full of feed and tools and … well, it was a load off her mind, that was for sure.

A couple of the horses were nosing around her, maybe looking for a handout. She found a pallet jack, used it to move a barrel of oats about fifty feet outside the barn it was in, opened the barrel and tipped it over. The animals went to it and she left it there, hoping it wouldn’t make them sick or anything. She really didn’t know much about caring for horses, but she hoped for the best as she filled the rest of the truck bed with empty containers for future gasoline thefts.

She brought all the empties back to SBN&N and stored them in the back with the full ones, then made lunch out of canned tuna, canned green beans, an energy bar and a bottle of orange juice. She debated whether to spend the afternoon searching houses, then looked at the to-do list and saw she’d already taken care of six of the ten items. Nah, let that one wait for tomorrow – there was time. And given the number of dirty dishes she had at home, maybe she should move that and her bath up to the afternoon …

The more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed. Once she finished eating, she headed home with her new loot, put it away, then loaded the dishes into bins, the bins into her Hyundai (she didn’t need the truck for this task) and drove the Hyundai to the beach. She stripped down in her car and, naked as a jay, hauled a bin to the war and got to work cleaning them and herself. The big flat rock served as an effective dish drainer with plenty of room for all the pots, pans and particulars.

It still felt odd – no, forbidden – to be walking around without a stitch on, but she did her best to set her fears aside. When she did, she found, she could enjoy the taboo-ness of it, the feeling of getting away with something harmlessly naughty. In her new world, where she was by all appearances the only citizen, it was no worse than siphoning gas from another vehicle or taking medications from a Walgreen’s or eating the green beans off the store shelves. Laws about those things were to manage societies – but the only society here was her.

And within limits, the sun and sea on her skin felt so good!

Soon enough, though, the dishes were done and Kelly packed them up and went home. Dinner was sausages, noodles with garlic and Parmesan and olive oil, dehydrated broccoli, and chocolate chips for dessert. The sun went down, the noises of the darkness started up, and she took her capsule and bedded down for the night. Another full day, another fine day.

Next?

16

CATS

Wednesday, day 24, dawned just as Kelly was waking up. Although nothing urgent presented itself aside from a full bladder (easily resolved), she found she was eager to get to her schedule. Days of rest and success, plus already knowing a lot of what she’d be doing, gave her a sense of security in the chaos of an unknown new world. Life might be lonely, but it was still livable.