Isolation (Book 2): Going Out

by Jones, Nathan

  To his surprise and relief it was unlocked, maybe because the relief workers who'd evacuated the sick residents hadn't thought to lock it. That gave him a bit more confidence about entering the house, as if getting in easily provided a justification, so he finished turning the knob and cracked the door.

  Still no response.

  “Hello?” Nick called, easing the door open and poking his head inside. The interior looked fairly clean and well cared for, tastefully decorated and full of knickknacks and mementos of the family that lived here. However, at the moment it was also dark, smelled a bit musty from the recent rains, and showed no sign of recent habitation.

  He still didn't relax though, calling out again. “Hello? Is anyone home? I've been sent by the City of Stanberry to search for necessities to begin a stockpile there!” Still nothing. That didn't stop him from imagining some big angry homeowner crouched behind the couch ready to blow him away with a shotgun.

  He stepped inside gingerly. “If the house is unoccupied, I'm going to search it!”

  No muzzle flash heralded him getting a hole blown through his torso, so he continued deeper into the house, leaving the front door open behind him for light. Also to air the place out, hopefully.

  There didn't seem to be much of use in the living room. The furniture wouldn't do him any good, and neither would the toys, TV and gaming console, or other electronic devices. He quickly moved through it into the kitchen/dining area.

  This room looked more hopeful at just a glance, with food already in sight on the counters and table.

  Nick wasn't sure what possessed him to head right for the fridge, maybe some old reflex as the most obvious source of food. But he immediately regretted opening it the moment the door swung wide to reveal the dim nightmare interior, even before the nauseating stench assaulted his nostrils.

  It had been full of food and unpowered for probably weeks at this point. Black and green mold crept over everything, even the food containers, and he could almost see the puff of spores flying as the opened door stirred the air inside.

  He slammed it shut again, trying not to gag as he backed away and hoping he hadn't breathed in any mold. The stench now permeated the kitchen, promising to make further searching an unpleasant ordeal.

  Okay, fridges and freezers are out. Adding that to the moldy loaves of bread and hamburger buns sitting on one counter and in the cupboard above it, the rotten and desiccated fruit sitting in a bowl on the table and on a rack near the bread on the counter, and a few other perishable foods scattered across the kitchen that had also gone bad, and he wondered just how much of the food supply people kept on hand at any given time was actually still good enough to be worth scavenging.

  At least the other cupboards offered more hope. One was stuffed with assorted cereals and boxes of crackers and other kid snacks, as well as a few bags of potato and tortilla chips. The prize there, though, was a half-full box of that applesauce that came in those little pouches, and another almost full one of yogurt pouches. A treasure trove for Tallie, and Ricky too once Nick had let all this sit long enough to confirm it was safe.

  The cupboard next to it held assorted junk food and candy, most of it the kind meant to last for a long time. The kids would be super happy about this find, although he'd have to make sure they paced themselves eating it.

  The last cupboard held cooking ingredients and spices. He also found several cans of soup and tuna in there, as well as a box of instant coffee and another one of herb tea, a half-full honey bottle, and a few bags and boxes of various types of noodles stacked near jars of spaghetti and Alfredo sauce.

  The house didn't have a pantry, so this was it. Looking over his haul after he'd dragged it all out and arranged it on the table, Nick couldn't help but reflect with grim amusement that a large percentage of what he'd found could be considered pretty unhealthy. The sort of stuff he'd try to limit feeding his kids while he made sure they got a good assortment healthier food along with it, like fresh fruits and vegetables and good meats and dairy products.

  To be fair, a lot of the more desirable foodstuffs had been in the fridge and freezer and gone bad. Still, he would say this was a typical household, and he was going to find this same sort of unhealthy stuff in most of the other places he visited.

  He hoped Gen and the Norsons had lots of success with the gardens they were planning, along with their research for foraging edible plants and mushrooms out in the woods near where they lived, and the traps they planned to set for small game there. If he had to feed everyone at their house with just what he scavenged, their diets would be worryingly unhealthy and missing out on a lot of important vitamins and nutrients.

  Well, better than starving.

  Leaving the kitchen behind, he searched the downstairs bathroom and grabbed some stuff from the medicine cabinet. A search of a small closet stuffed to the ceiling with various junk held some promise of useful items, but he left it behind for now as lower priority.

  The downstairs cleared, he checked outside real quick to make sure the truck was undisturbed and Tallie was doing okay. She was still resting, so he headed back inside and started upstairs to search the remaining rooms.

  This was a lot more uncomfortable for him; the more public rooms you usually found downstairs like living areas, kitchens, and bathrooms were one thing, and they were where he was most likely to find useful things anyway. And he thought that rooms that were obviously intended for use as offices or man caves, while a bit more personal, wouldn't be too bad either, and also would probably have things worth taking.

  But going into bedrooms was where he really felt like he was breaking into a person's home. Violating the sanctity of their private spaces, disrupting their lives.

  Like Darby had said, most of the people who'd lived here were probably dead or relocated, maybe permanently. But how many would be longing to come home, only to find the place they'd been forced to leave behind rummaged through? No longer a welcome place but one of fear and anger and helplessness.

  Nick thought of how he'd felt when those two punks had broken into his apartment, and was sickened by what he was doing. Necessary as it was, and notwithstanding the “sanction” of the Stanberry city government, it was hard not to be disgusted by himself.

  Needless to say, he left the kids' bedrooms untouched. His own kids had all the clothes and other necessities they needed, and there would be nothing else useful in there. And he could hate himself a little less if he respected as many places in this family's home as he could.

  He did go in the master bedroom, though, and was thorough about searching every dresser, shelf, and nook and cranny. Including every part of the closet, under the bed, between the mattresses, and behind furniture.

  The sad fact of the matter was that when it came to Nick's own methods for hiding valuables inside his home, he generally only went to enough effort to put those things out of sight or in hard to reach places. Maybe that made him one of the rare few careless people who did it like that, but he didn't think so.

  He recalled hearing somewhere that the most common hiding places for things like guns, jewelry, cash savings, and precious metals and the like were spots like the back of a closet, tucked deep under a bed, between mattresses, or at the bottom of a dresser drawer beneath a bunch of clothes. In the hope that even such flimsy measures would be enough to deter thieves.

  As long as it wasn't out in the open that was enough for Nick, and he assumed also for most other people, to feel their prized items were safe.

  The same held true here. In fact, he was somewhat disgusted to find that on the side of the bed tucked up against the wall, where he guessed the man of the house slept, there was enough space to reach down beneath the bed to where a pistol case was waiting, presumably ready in case of intruders. The case was unlocked, held a semi-automatic pistol that he thought looked like a 9mm, and beneath the bed next to it were a couple 50-round boxes of bullets he could confirm were 9mm.

  Even more egregiously than the bullets
sitting right there in those boxes, in the gun case itself the foam slots for spare magazines were all occupied by ones loaded with bullets, ready for use. In an unlocked case.

  There'd been kids in this house! What sort of irresponsible son of a-

  Well, to be fair it was hard to wave the finger of scorn when Nick was in here looting the place.

  In any case, he thought it likely that someone who would hide a nearly loaded gun under his bed, instead of properly locked up and out of reach, probably wasn't going to do too great a job hiding anything else, either.

  That turned out to be true. With a bit more digging Nick found a mostly full bottle of gin on the top shelf of the closet behind a box, a coin collection with sleeves full of silver dollars and half dollars from the early 1900s in a shoebox under the bed near where the gun had been, and at the back of the dresser drawer with the underwear (the most uncomfortable spot to search), a small plastic container with several hundred dollars in cash and some important documents.

  Nick grabbed the alcohol, since it might be useful for medicinal purposes, and the gun of course since after what he'd been through he thought it might be nice to be able to defend himself. But he left the coin collection and the cash behind; with the economy in the toilet it was anyone's guess when money would be useful again. Assuming the government didn't decide to print entirely new currency as it worked to rebuild the economy.

  As for the silver, it might be useful for trade in the future, but somehow it felt like crossing a line. Just like the cash would've been if he'd thought it was worth taking. He was here for necessities, useful for survival, to help a lot of good people in a town that was just doing its best to get through this crisis.

  Taking wealth felt like personal enrichment at the expense of others. Even if those others might've passed away, it still wasn't his.

  With a last look around to make sure he hadn't missed any obvious hiding spots, he decided that even if he had he was done. With some relief he headed back downstairs and got to work dragging what he'd found out to the truck and loading it inside.

  It seemed like a pitifully small pile once it was in the back, hardly worth what he'd had to do to get it. But even so, just this was enough to feed someone for weeks, so it would make a difference. He hoped.

  As Nick opened the driver's side door to climb into the cab, he paused to look at the house one last time. He hadn't needed to break any windows to get inside, and he'd tried to leave everything as undisturbed as possible, but that didn't make it any better, did it?

  Even if he'd just recently arrived in Stanberry, he'd been living in Kansas City for most of his life. Wensbrook wasn't that far from there in the grand scheme of things, and anyway it was part of Missouri. That made all these people his neighbors, and him the sort of person who'd break into their house when they were gone dealing with a tragedy so he could steal their stuff.

  He knew the situation was far more nuanced than that, but that didn't change how he felt about things, did it? After all, how would he like it if people came and ransacked his apartment while he was gone?

  Actually, he should probably resign himself to that happening by the time they got back, assuming they had any reason to go back at all. So . . . maybe Wensbrook's survivors had come to the same conclusion and were equally resigned to it?

  Even so, from now on he decided he'd stick to businesses in his scavenging.

  Rationally he knew the owners of those would be just as devastated at finding their things taken, and even more importantly he was potentially leaving behind a whole bunch of items in these houses that Stanberry desperately needed. All because he was too squeamish to search every available place for them.

  But none of that changed his mind. Things would have to be a lot worse before he broke into any more houses. Besides, he'd have far more success searching a single undisturbed grocery or sporting goods store than breaking into a hundred houses. It was more efficient, and made him feel like less of a slime ball.

  And if Darby and Darrel and the rest didn't like it, they could come loot these houses themselves.

  On that note, he did feel a bit better as he retrieved one of the notices they'd given him from the satchel he'd tucked behind his seat in the cab, then returned to slap it on the front door. At least the people who lived here would know who to complain to if they came home and found the place ransacked. Then it would become the City of Stanberry's problem.

  It was a flimsy justification, but it helped.

  Chapter Eleven

  Success

  Done with scavenging his first house, Nick unlocked the cab and climbed back behind the wheel.

  As he prepared to start the truck, he noticed Tallie was awake and had shifted around in her nest so that she could look outside. “How you doing, sweetie girl?” he asked, leaning over to briefly hug her and kiss the top of her head.

  She yawned. “Thirsty. And I need to go potty.”

  Not surprising, given their hasty start that morning. It also meant he wasn't done with the house after all.

  Nick gave his daughter a good long drink of water, then carried her into the house and sat her on the downstairs toilet, which she seemed happy about after days of being held awkwardly over a hole in a thicket behind the Norsons' house to literally answer the call of nature. He didn't want to waste their limited water flushing the toilet, so he cleaned her up and carried her back outside to get her back in her nest.

  With Tallie squared away for now, he got the big moving truck started and put it into gear. He was glad he hadn't pulled into the driveway, which he'd considered so he'd have less distance to carry the scavenged goods. If he had he would've needed to back out, which wasn't a comfortable prospect, or back in, which was even less comfortable. This was only the second time he'd really driven one of these, the first being when he and Ellie moved into their house in Kansas City.

  The one that was now ashes, although he preferred not to think of that.

  Either way, the more he could get by with driving forward in this ungainly beast, the better. Although at least the streets were empty, lessening his chance of accidentally bumping into someone while trying to turn on these narrow roads.

  Nick made his way to the center of town, pulling into the lot of a hardware/sporting goods store. There was plenty of room to maneuver here, so he drove right up to the glass front doors and parked with the back lined up with them.

  He'd almost certainly be scavenging enough useful stuff from this place to make it worth the effort of doing some very awkward maneuvering until he got the truck as close as possible. He'd probably also put the ramp down so he could wheel the hand truck directly up into the interior.

  “I think we're going to be here a lot longer,” he told Tallie. “Maybe even for the rest of the day. But don't worry, I'll check on you every time I bring a load of stuff. And I'll leave the store's doors open so you can shout if you need anything.”

  Tallie pouted. “Can I come in with you?”

  Nick hesitated. “Maybe once I've thoroughly searched it and made sure it's safe. You might be more comfortable in the cab, though.”

  “I don't care, it's boring in here.”

  Not for the first time, he wished it would've been safe to leave Tallie with someone while he was out doing this. Mostly because of the potential of running into danger while scavenging, but also because then he could focus fully on the task without distractions.

  Still, it was nice to not be alone while searching a creepy abandoned town, even if his only companion was his five-year-old daughter. And Tallie had been an absolute angel through everything since getting sick, dealing with the discomfort, boredom, and less than ideal circumstances with far less complaining than he'd expected. It wasn't too much extra work to bring her along.

  Giving his daughter a quick goodbye hug, he locked up the cab and hopped down to approach the store's glass doors. They were locked, of course, and a quick circuit of the building showed that there wasn't a single open door or window t
o be found.

  Unsurprising; there were warning signs for Zolos contamination here, too, which was to be expected for a public space in a town ravaged by the virus. But he had a feeling at least one employee had had the time to lock up before evacuating the town.

  Which just left one option.

  Nick made his way back to the front doors and stared through the glass into the dark, gloomy interior of the store, working himself up to breaking the glass to get inside.

  He needed to focus more on the bright side of things, stop looking at this in such a pessimistic way. After all, if you looked past the tragic circumstances that led to this town being abandoned, how many people would consider a chance to wander around taking anything they wanted an early Christmas? Especially since he was scavenging these items from those who no longer had any need for them, on behalf of a town full of people for whom it could soon be a matter of life and death.

  That's probably what grave robbers tell themselves, too.

  No, none of that. He had a responsibility to explore this town and see what was available, so he might as well try to enjoy the opportunity if he could. It might be fun to see what he could find in there.

  Grabbing a brick that had probably been used as a doorstop, he took a few steps back and hurled it through the left-hand door.

  While Nick regretted the destruction, he had to admit that some juvenile part of him thought it was cool to watch the big single pane shatter into a thousand pieces and scatter across the entry mat. Tallie certainly seemed to get a kick out of it, giving a weak but enthusiastic cheer through the partly open passenger window.

  He hoped he wasn't teaching her any bad lessons here. That was probably something they should have a talk about on the way home.

  After kicking out some shards around the frame so he wouldn't cut himself coming and going, he spent long enough fiddling with the doors to confirm that even though he had access to the interior side, he still needed a key to open them.

  Well, maybe he could find a set of keys inside somewhere. Shrugging, he pulled out the flashlight he'd brought and flicked it on, heading into the store.