Chapter 8

Ginny fell right in with Sarah and Karen on the DVD collection detail. Sarah worked at it a few minutes and then decided it would be easier to just take them all and sort them out later. She sent me to clear a path for buggies between where we were and the truck and then all three of them went to gather some buggies.

As I went through the small warehouse portion near the back of the building I noticed a huge stack of plastic totes. They were for carrying small items and had fold-over lids to make them easy to stack and to keep items from being lost out the top. When Sarah came back with the first buggy load of DVDs I showed her the totes and she decided to use them to store and carry what they were gleaning from the destroyed Wal-Mart. While she was packing her buggy load into totes I went in search of some nylon hay-rope.

I was looking for the ubiquitous quarter-inch rope that normally came in hanks of one-hundred feet. It was excellent for tying things, especially since when using it with a hay-knot it could be easily tightened around anything it was holding. By the time I found and gathered up several hanks of the rope the girls had already loaded six of the totes with DVDs and other small items they'd decided on. I moved the loaded totes onto the flat bed of the truck and then waited.

The bed portion of the truck was eight feet wide and twelve feet long. I was big enough to carry plenty in one trip, but still small enough to leave the truck easy to maneuver. I was especially happy to have noticed the totes. There were literally hundreds of them in the big storage section and it would make sorting and storing the things we took easy.

Now that the preparations were made I headed back out into the store to do some shopping of my own. The girls and I spent four hours gathering up things we thought might come in handy sooner or later and the totes made it all easy to load and tie down. The lids of one tote had little ridges on them and when they were closed up the ridges on the top of one tote held the bottom of one placed on top of it in place.

I was able to stack the totes neatly onto the flat bed. They were stable enough to be stacked five high, and five would ride side by side across the bed. The bed was long enough to set five rows of totes on it and we left with one hundred and twenty-five filled totes. I was easily able to tie them in place with the nylon hay-rope and I had a good tight load when we left.

The girls already had the next load in mind before we left with this one. Wal-Mart carried a cheap line of office stuff now. I didn't think the chairs they had would last long, but they would last a while and we were going to need some of them. The desks they had looked even shittier and I hoped we could find some more useable models elsewhere. Besides, I wanted some which were already assembled, because the Wal-Mart models came in so many pieces to allow them to be packed into smaller boxes.

WE weren't able to pack as many totes into the pickup bed of my original truck, but it allowed us to stack in other things which didn't fit into the totes. The girls piled it high with food they'd collected and we were set up with enough lunch meat for months. They also took most of the cut meat from the butcher department and I could see that bacon was going to be a mainstay of our meals for quite a while. I was also happy to see they gathered up plenty of flour, cornmeal, and milk. I already knew they could make biscuits and cornbread.

They hauled off a lot of things from the bread aisle too, but I worried it might not stay good long enough for us to eat it all. No matter, we would have it as long as it lasted. Of course when it was gone we'd be through with bakery bread. We'd just have to make do.

We went back to James and Gertie's house first and the girls gave Gertie her choice of anything she wanted, but she didn't take much. She was more anxious for the television than anything, and while James and I set it up Gertie went through the DVDs we had gathered up and selected several to watch. Of course there were multiple copies of every one so it was find for her to take one of each. We got it going with a movie and then left to head home and really unload.

Back at the brick barn I pulled the flat bed on inside and then the pickup. I left the rear of the pickup close to the doorway through to the other side for easy unloading. We packed everything from the pickup into the actual house portion and then the girls started going though it. They were worried when there wasn't even nearly enough room for all the things that needed refrigeration in the refrigerator.

"Just put any extra in totes and I'll stack them outside for the time being. I'll cover them with snow and it should keep them cold enough while the totes will probably keep most of the critters out of the food.