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

she was going to see what the sign meant. On Saturday or shortly thereafter.

None of that made the anxiety go away, or the nightmares lessen. Olanzapine took some of the edge off, but she knew the only cure was discovering the truth. She set her mind toward that goal as she finished harvesting the Holy Green’s crops on Thursday and put them into the dehydrators. Tomorrow she’d scrub the machines out. Tonight she’d plan her trip, and what else she needed to do beforehand. Time for another list – no, two lists:

To do before leaving town:

Check / secure ALL houses except 41 Admiral

Dog Day – drop off extra food?

Organize & lock up store

Lock up Holy Green, gas storage

Wash dishes, other items as needed

 

To pack for trip:

Full tank of gas in Ram

3 extra 5g cans / jugs gasoline

Food for 7 days

Clothing for 4 days

Tampons (just in case)

Meds for 14 days

Pistol & ammo

Mizuno

Flashlight

Map

Journal

Ledger of houses / notes on Marin

She wasn’t sure why she’d bother with the ledger and notes, except maybe to show whoever she met in Santa Cruz that she’d gotten things organized. She’d keep it to herself if she sensed even a whiff of hostility or greed – she wasn’t going to give everything away to some warlord or gang. On second thought … she crossed out the last line. She’d leave those up here – if the person or persons running things down there proved trustworthy, she could always come back up and get them. Safety first.

That gave her another idea. If she found herself facing a well-armed and malicious militia, she’d need something with more stopping power than the Colt. Maybe she should go back to George Willard’s cabinet and take out that AK-47 or a sniper rifle or …

… do something else really stupid. Carrying something like that which couldn’t be concealed was asking for a fight, and she’d be shafted against any group of soldiers (real or self-imagined) that numbered more than two. If there was a concerted attack against her, her best bet was to run, her second-best to beg for mercy. Shoot her way out? Please. That only worked in movies when the protagonist was an ex-Special Forces op with millions in plot armor. A petite grocery store manager in real life? No. She’d keep the Colt for wild animals, and hope that nobody she encountered qualified as one.

If there was anyone to encounter. She didn’t know there would be. Despite the evidence that someone had put that sign up on 580 on September 24, she wouldn’t be totally confident in it until she actually met a live human being. Two months and more without doing so had left her a little raw and less hopeful than she was at the start of this mess. She’d have to see, hear and touch to believe. In God we trust, all others need to show proof – that’s what she told people at the store trying to buy cigarettes or alcohol without ID. It held here too.

Friday morning, she stayed in bed late to make up for all the times she’d woken up in the middle of the night. Bad dreams – dreams involving guns firing and her ducking into underbrush while heavy footfalls thundered behind her and mountain lions with too much courage and too many teeth and dog packs that numbered in the thousands. Eventually she got all the sleep she was going to get and her subconscious got bored with torturing her. She got up, staggered to the backyard in her PJs –

– “Crud on the half-shell with a side order of hush puppies.” She’d needed to get up to the farm early to turn off the generator before it ran out of gas! But she’d gotten too distracted by her nightmares and her tiredness. Crud, crud, triple caramel macchiato crud. She didn’t even bother dressing, just yanked on shoes, jumped in the Hyundai and went.

As it turned out, her concern was legit – the generator had run dry. At least the last veggies – slices of pumpkin and squash – were done to a turn, and she packed them up. But would the generator be usable again? She hadn’t been doing regular maintenance, just filling it up and running it, so who knew what could’ve gone wrong while she was valiantly attempting to be unconscious? And she didn’t even have any gasoline with her, or the siphoning stuff.

Load the bags of dried veg into the back seat. Drive to the beach parking lot. Fetch five gallons and the tools to get more. Drive back up the hill. Mentally kick herself the whole trip. Pour the gas into the machine. Pull the rope and hope to heck …

… whew. After half a minute of sputtering, it started up and ran like pure beauty itself. Good, she hadn’t destroyed it. She did make a note on some scrap paper to check the oil and whatnot when she came back, if she came back. If she didn’t it would have to  do its own oil change, but she wouldn’t be worrying about it – she’d most likely be dead out in the boondocks with bullet holes in inconvenient places or her skull bashed in.

With that cheery thought, she went home to begin her day somewhat less frantically than she just had. She checked the gazebo, but the cats had apparently left for a new home in the previous week – the last cans of food she’d put out for them Monday were dry and untouched. She hoped they were safe wherever they’d gone.

After dressing, breakfast, journaling, and siphoning enough to fill both her vehicles and every available container, she went to the Dog House early. Leaving the windows open had certainly helped, though there were few pieces of furniture there that didn’t need