Ashes of the Unspeakable by Franklin Horton

Author:Franklin Horton [Horton, Franklin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-10-09T04:00:00+00:00

*

Although the building was primarily an informational center, there were a few offices and a storeroom in the building. They started at one end of the building and worked their way through. It was clear that the building had been locked since the very early stages of the disaster. There was no disarray, no indications of chaos or that anyone had closed up in a rush. Everything was in its place. It looked like people had closed down one evening with the full intention of re-opening the next day.

The offices yielded nothing of value or interest. They looked to be the kind of offices that different people used, depending on the day of the week. There were no personal photos, no half-empty cups of old coffee, and no food in the drawers. The storeroom was a different story. There were two backpacks hanging on hooks with Search & Rescue patches on the back. On a shelf beside them were a dozen handheld radios sitting in charging cradles.

Jim picked one up and turned a knob. “Dead.”

Gary held out his hand. “Let me see one of those.”

Jim tossed him one.

Gary opened the battery compartment. “We pull out this battery pack and it will operate off two AA batteries,” he said. “Let’s take one of these for each of us. Maybe one more as a spare.”

“I didn’t know you could switch out the batteries,” Jim said.

“I told you several times over the years that you should learn more about radios, didn’t I?”

Jim nodded, rolling his eyes at Randi as he did. There was a shelf of flashlights with spare batteries. There were some headlamps in the stack and Jim took one.

“Switch this out with the one you have, Randi. It’s better.”

He got some spare batteries and shoved them into the backpacks. He didn’t bother exploring the backpacks yet. He would do that when they returned to the break room. There were some spare blankets and sleeping bags on another shelf, but they ignored those. There was a case of eight-ounce bottles of drinking water. Randi picked one up and carried it to the break room to refill their water bottles, probably envisioning a morning cup of coffee.

Jim unfolded the lid of a cardboard box. “Jackpot.” The box was full of freeze-dried Mountain House meals.

“Ziti and Spinach in Alfredo Sauce,” Gary remarked. “These must have been for search and rescue missions.”

Nearly everything remaining in the room was clothing of some type. They found some raingear to replace what Randi had lost when they were attacked at the corral. There was a box labeled ‘Lost and Found’ that had some spare socks, a couple of shirts, and a cap with North Face written across the front. Jim tossed the box to Randi, who had just returned to the room, and she started going through it.

“You can have one of these packs for carrying your gear once we go through them,” Jim said. “They’re decent packs and will hold a lot.”

“So you’re going to go through my pack and steal all the good stuff first?”

Jim looked at her, unsure if she was joking or not.

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