“I’m well armed. I don’ wanna hurt you if’n I don’ haf to.”
Silence.
He pushed the door open to find a storeroom, crammed with children’s toys and stacks of bags and boxes. A window with closed blinds at the rear of the room was completely blocked, and Winston moved on to the last room to his right — the room Muffin was currently in. He could hear the dog rooting around.
“Hello?”
He paused and listened intently for signs of human activity, but all he heard was Muffin’s rumblings. He stepped into the doorway. This room had two windows — one each to the rear and to the right, and even though they too wore blinds, the bright noon sun shining through lit the room up.
Winston discovered the source of Muffin’s orange face. The room served as the Pentecostal’s food pantry. Though it wasn’t large by any means, three shelves held all types of food. Winston gazed at the bounty, his salivating mouth whetting his appetite. His eyes ran up and down the shelves — all types of canned soup, canned tuna and chicken, dozens of cans of sardines, raisins, rice mixes, canned chili and Sloppy Joe meat, a dozen cans of his beloved Franco-American (raviolis, spaghetti and Spaghetti O’s), canned beans, fruit, vegetables, sacks of beans and rice, pancake and corn muffin mixes, several cans of cat and dog food, several cases of bottled water, plus the source of Muffin’s orange face: an open case of boxed macaroni and cheese, its powdered cheese spread grossly across the floor. Muffin had torn several of the packages open and crunched on the dry noodles and lapped at the powdered cheese (not exactly Velveeta, though). Hundreds of cockroaches, both large and small (and more than a few giant ones), also munched on the nourishment.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
He raised a blind, thinking the bright sunshine would scare off the cockroaches, but only a few of the smaller ones scattered. He grabbed one can each of sardines, French-style green beans, and Franco-American, making sure no cockroaches tagged along, and he sprinted out the door. He set the cans down on the concrete landing, went back to the pantry, grabbed a can of dog food and two bottles of water, stopped at the office desk on his way back, and rolled the springy desk chair outside.
“Muffin. Come. Come on. Let’s have some real food.”
Only the sardines came with a pull-tab to open the can. He tugged on it to reveal the oily, silvery fish, tossed the top aside, put the can directly to his open mouth, and fed the fish into it with an index finger, still standing. He had to remind himself to chew. Muffin joined him outside and waited patiently, her tail wagging and tongue dripping with anticipation.
Winston looked down at Muffin. “I can’t tell you how delicious these things are,” and held the empty can to her snout. She lapped at the remaining juice and oil. He opened and drank a bottled water in one long gulp, and poured water into the sardine can for Muffin. He pondered how to open the cans of food without pull-tabs, and he remembered learning a trick to open cans without a can opener. He tested the theory first on the can of dog food. It was cheap, store-brand food, but it provided better nourishment for Muffin than dry pasta noodles. He sat on the landing and scraped the can’s top across the concrete, back and forth, and back and forth. After a minute of scraping, he turned the can over, pushed in on one side of the top, and it easily gave way.
“Well, look at that, Muffin. You hungry?”
Muffin barked once, ran in several circles, and cozied up to Winston. He plopped the dog food right onto the concrete landing in a pile that Muffin devoured as it smacked down. A couple of light taps and the contents of the entire can were out — and in Muffin’s hungry stomach. Winston did the same, sitting in the office chair with his beloved Franco and the green beans, and enjoying the cool Georgian day. It was brisk, though temperate for this late in the season, and storm clouds were developing to the south. Rain was imminent. He needed to get back to May with whatever provisions he could carry, but he had to wait for the cover of darkness to climb over the fence. He estimated that he was a three hour’s walk from Johnsonville, and wary that he’d be walking along unfamiliar routes. Would he run into PLA patrols, other hungry Americans eager to strip him of his provisions, or both?
He tossed the empty Franco can to Muffin. She licked it clean. After sitting for a while, and when his imagination considered the monstrosity inside the church that must have been a slaughter of its congregation, Winston explored the storage room for something he could use to carry provisions back home. As he rummaged through the garbage bags and cardboard boxes, he found a pair of jeans in his new size (he had lost twenty pounds so far), a couple of t-shirts (one emblazoned with George Michael’s face and Faith in script lettering; the other a faded Rage Against the Machine concert tee from their 30th anniversary world tour), a brand new bag of four boxer-briefs, and two t-shirts for May (one with the word LOVE stylized with the American flag; the other with I’m a Brad Paisley Girl). He searched for proper women’s undergarments, but came up empty. Truth be told, the George Michael tee was most likely a women’s shirt, but his song Faith had been looping inside of Winston’s head for days, so finding that shirt was kismet. Grossed out by the sheer number of cockroaches that emerged when he shuffled the bags and boxes around, he took the new clothes outside, disrobed down to his socks, and put the new garb on, choosing the Rage t-shirt. He tossed the sooty clothes aside, and appreciated that the bags and boxes of clothing must have been charitable contributions that hadn’t yet made it to charitable organizations for distribution.
Back inside, he restacked the bags and boxes neater than he had found them. Despite the quantity of items in the room, there didn’t seem to anything that he could use to cart provisions back to Johnsonville. He could empty a bag of clothing or even a box or two, but carrying them home wouldn’t be practical. As he shifted the children’s items around, a doll buried somewhere in the pile of filthy toys sprang to life, startling him when it said in a deep voice, “my name is Suzie. Do you want to play?”
“No, Suzie, I do not want to play,” he said as he uncovered a vintage red Radio Flyer wagon buried underneath the toys.
“I think we got a winner here, Muff,” Winston remarked excitedly.
He plucked the toys off the wagon, eager to get moving back home, and hauled it up and out of the clutter, but was disappointed to discover that the wagon was missing a wheel. Still, he set it down on the level concrete floor in the office to test its stability. He picked Muffin up and set her down into the wagon, and the wagon remained stable, so he grabbed the handle and pulled. Muffin briefly lost her stability, but Winston thought he could work with it. Then he had another thought. He ran outside and searched amongst the vehicles that surrounded the church. He peered inside their windows, slightly anxious, but he found no corpses or signs of struggle in any of the vehicles. He had a thought as he squeezed through the tight spaces between the vehicles and sought out only open or unlocked minivans, of which there were many, not wanting to make unnecessary noise should car alarms blare and hostiles be nearby. After searching several minivans, he found what he had been searching for — a folded pram-style stroller.