If I Were the Last Man Alive
Copyright© 2014 by Number 7
Chapter 8
How amazing the way the world changed in just a few days. I was adjusting to the quiet, so I no longer listened for sounds.
My priority for the day was finding a source for propane and bringing as many bottles to the house as I could find. A quick check of the Yellow Pages gave me five listings for propane dealers in the county, and several weren't that far away.
Two dealers that looked by their ads to be very large were in the Daytona area. It made sense to get the faraway propane first, so I took a car to town and exchanged it for a flat bed I found along the street. It had a Tommy-Lift to help handle the heavy work its front winch system surely wouldn't hurt, either.
I had the phone book with me and set off for Daytona.
Arthea and I had given each other a Garmin GPS, as an anniversary gift one year. I figured the satellites were still up there, so I fired it up, put in the addresses and found the best route to both shops. It was a long drive — about 130 miles, and the trip was lonely, quiet and uneventful.
At the first place, I struck gold. The bottled propane came in 5 to 2500 gallon tanks. They also had exactly the right equipment and trucks to move it; four trucks were loaded for deliveries. I took all four trucks and parked them near the house but a safe distance, in case of fire. If I got as lucky at the other four locations, I might be able to stock up enough to last for years.
The last trip home was at dusk. I thought I needed a big meal after such a hard day. The truck was loaded with all the portable-sized bottles. They were for the gas grill I would be picking up at Home Depot tomorrow. Cooking would become a lot easier, as long as I could find cookable foods. Either way, I could heat water, do a little baking from those "just add water," boxes from the grocery store. I simply had to teach myself how it was done. After all, I was learning lots of other things, why not cooking and baking?
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