Chapter 4

The next morning, I woke up cold and noticed her gone. She was down at the water filling her pot and had already stoked the fire. She came back and put the pot on to heat. She leaned over and kissed me.

"I have an announcement," I said, pausing. She looked at me. I smiled. "Jennifer, would you be my mate? I want us to be together always"

She hugged my neck and kissed me saying, "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes." I pulled her down to me and we kissed some more holding each tightly against the other. She came up for air and said, "However, we are out of food."

I grinned and said, "I guess that means that you don't think we can live on love."

"We could try but I think we'll need more to keep our strength up for our exercises." She grinned.

It was fast but I had never cared for anyone like I did her before. I told her. She went solemn and said, "I was afraid we were moving fast but you are the right one for me and I hope I am for you."

"Oh, yes. You are very right for me."

We kissed once more and settled in for morning tea. I had found that coffee was unknown. We went down to the water and washed, air dried, and dressed. This time, she put on her shirt and shoes.

"Where to, my man?" she asked.

"North to the shopping area," I replied. "We'll see what we can find for my list along with anything else we can use."

"Don't be surprised that you may find it picked over."

"Yes, I thought of that. But nothing ventured, nothing gained."

We packed and left the water. I took one last look back wanting to remember it clearly. Jennifer stood next to me slipping her arm around my waist. I put mine around her and we pulled close. "Nice place," she said.

"Yes, a very nice place."

We walked easterly following old roads hand in hand. After a bit, the roadway curved to the left and north. To our right, we saw what was probably a shopping area. We walked over to it and I started trying to figure out what type of store was where. I found a Wal-Mart! I could tell because I found an old piece of a sign. I called Jennifer over and said this was an old store of a type which I knew. These stores carried a wide variety of food, clothing and other gear. I found what I decided was the front. On a whim, I went left and found what was probably food cases. That was good since it indicated that the store was laid out in a familiar way. We scouted around in the store finding a number of cans of food that appeared to be undamaged. One find that I liked was a couple of large cans of coffee. This would be a new taste for Jennifer. We made a stack of the cans we had retrieved.

I then went toward the center of the store where housewares were usually located. I found the remains of electric vacuum cleaners which weren't much help. However, I did find some cooking pots which were in acceptable shape and a number of plastic spoons and forks which we gathered. We created another stack.

There were two other areas which I wanted to check out so we went toward the right and rear of the store. I was looking for sporting goods. I didn't have a lot of hope but figured it was worth a try. We found the sporting goods area. I looked for a pack or even a duffel bag without luck. I also searched for guns or fishing tackle without success. Well, we had had luck so far. I went over to hardware looking for hand tools and knives. This area had been picked over also but not cleaned out. I found a screwdriver set, two pairs of pliers, and a hammer with a fiberglass handle. I looked for an ax without success. After searching the area for an hour or more, I did find a hunting knife without a sheath and another pocket knife. The only thing left was luggage and shoes. I figured the back for both. We carried the tools with us. Shoes did not work. The leather was long gone and there weren't any sneakers or similar shoes that were artificial that could be used. Luggage was another similar story. People had cleaned out most all useful items. Under a collapsed shelving set, I found a couple of fanny packs that were useable that had been missed. We didn't find anything bigger.

I was disappointed but not disheartened. I had built up hope with the food and housewares. The plunder we found told me that there were still things to be found that were worthwhile but not to expect a lot. Clothes were a lost cause.

We gathered our finds and carried them to the next big area a block or two away. We searched again and found nothing. I couldn't even figure out what kind of store it might have been. We kept walking. After a number of hours, I saw a small pool to our left and we walked over to it. It looked like it had been a swimming pool that survived by being in a low spot of ground that naturally received run-off water. It was not as pretty as our pond but it was water and looked clean. At Jennifer's behest, we approached it carefully. We found it deserted. She had hoped for game to kill and eat. We stopped.

This was the first water we had seen all day. It was also late afternoon. In the last thirty minutes, Jennifer had started to favor her hurt leg so I had been looking for a place to stop. On one side of the pool, were the remains of a house. It looked like it fell in from age and neglect.

Since we had found nothing to eat, I decided to check our cans. There were two that I thought contained coffee. We had ten others that could have anything in them. I picked one at random and, using the hunting knife and hammer, put a hole in it. We had corn! Even better, it smelled okay. I told Jennifer we would have it for supper and started on another smaller can. This was tomatoes which also smelled good. I noticed that both cans had a white plastic lining which probably accounted for their well-preserved state. I opened both further and emptied them into one of our new cooking pots. We built a fire and put the pot on to heat our supper.

After supper, we sat together holding each other and talked. I explained about my parents and siblings. She told me of hers. She told me more of the customs of the Sandy's which I figured would be useful. One nice thing was we could go back to her people and be accepted. Once she had formed a union, all was okay. She told me that she cared little about returning but absolutely wanted to be with me. It was dark and we undressed and went to bed. We snuggled together and kissed. We came together spoon-style and slowly made love. Tomorrow would be another day and it was.

We woke and dressed. We continued north stopping at any good sized ruin. I still hoped that I would find useful information that would help us. I wanted to reach L.A. hoping that some part of my family might have survived. Jennifer's leg was totally healed and we were in good shape from walking. We found what I think was Interstate 5 and used it as a trace as we headed north. As we went, we continued to look for places having goods or for food.

Jennifer could hunt and, after requesting that I no go with her, went hunting off to the right of our travel direction. She told me to wait half an hour and then walk forward slowly. I didn't know why but did as she requested. I walked for an hour after waiting until I hear her call. I went toward the sound and found her butchering a deer that she had shot. She looked up at me and grinned, "Thanks for flushing the deer, Sal."

"I didn't know I was flushing game. I was just walking along like you told me."

"I didn't want to hurt your feelings or have you try to be noisy or quiet. You make just enough noise to flush game ahead of you and that's where I was waiting."

I was a bit chagrined until that evening when we had deer steaks over the fire. They tasted very good. Then the hard part started, we stayed up all night drying the rest of the meat. I didn't say anything about freezing meat to preserve it. We worked side by side butchering the meat, stringing it up for drying, and feeding the fire. We lazed around the next day as both of us were tired from our work.