There was a wall at the back with a large selection of backpacks and Dave looked them over. A lot were simple day packs, some were huge camping packs, but Dave found a simple fifty litre rectangular shaped backpack. It had a large zip opening on the top and only a few smaller zipped pouches on the side. It had padded shoulder straps that clicked together at the front. There were probably better back packs but Dave found himself attracted to the camo paint scheme. Dave wasn't someone who was particularly interested in the military, but somehow the forest camo scheme just made the pack look better in the same way a red paint job made a car look faster.
Dave took the pack down from the wall and opened it up. Inside the pack was a bunch of scrunched up newspapers to help the pack retain its form. Dave pulled out this padding and dropped his supplies, bag and all, straight into the backpack. He felt pushed for time and would worry about organising the backpack's contents latter. Dave picked up the backpack and placed one of the straps over his right shoulder. Now he needed more items, but the trick was deciding which ones would be genuinely helpful. And being a camping store there were certainly a lot of items that would be helpful. Dave frowned as he lack of familiarity with the camping world made itself felt.
So he began walking around the aisles in the camping store. He felt a little out of his depth and was certain that he was going to get all the wrong things. A small first aid kit caught his eye and he dropped that into his backpack. Then it was a seeming random list of items. A map of the state. A compass. A small foldable pair of binoculars. A torch with some batteries. A few knives of various shapes. A small, flat cooker and some fuel tablets. A few water purification kits. An emergency blanket. A waterproof jacket. A plastic poncho.
While passing a bookshelf Dave paused. He noticed a few books on topics that he knew nothing about. Bushcraft. First aid. Camping. How to build primitive shelters. Dave flipped through some of the books and from the pictures he could tell that there was a massive amount of seemingly basic knowledge that he knew nothing about.
Aware that he needed a crash course on anything related to survival, Dave grabbed the books that caught his attention and dropped them into the backpack. Dave felt that he hadn't gotten much, but already the backpack was getting full. Dave decided that he had gotten enough. He should just take what he had and learn from this mistakes. Dave now had a new routine: spend the morning walking, find a place to sleep the night, and spend the rest of the afternoon reading the books that he had grabbed. He thus had a parallel set of goals: one was to leave the city, the other was to study up on useful knowledge - he future required balancing both of these objectives.
Dave began to leave the store when he noticed the sleeping bag section. He picked up a compactly rolled sleeping bag and a rolled up sleeping mat and tied them to the sides of his backpack. The weather was warm at the moment so Dave could sleep on a couch without any bedding, but who knows what the weather would do. A freak cold spell could be dangerous. Having a means to have a warm night's sleep rather appealed to Dave.
Still being cautious, Dave made his way to the stairwell leading down to the street. It was empty. Dave made his way to the bottom of the stairs and paused to look around the street. It was still empty. Dave had been extremely lucky. Dave only had the backpack on his right shoulder. He reached behind himself and looped the left strap over the corresponding shoulder. After adjusting the straps a bit, Dave clicked the shoulder straps together on his front. Dave twisted from side to side, and flexed a little at the knees. He felt a little foolish in not having tried the backpack on fully before this point. However it was a great fit and he barely noticed the weight that he was carrying. Dave filed the experience away in his head. All the little mistakes provided valuable learning experiences.
One more look to see if the streets were clear and Dave began walking west again.
* * *
Dave felt himself getting tired. Beside a quick detour into a camping store, Dave had spent most of the morning walking and had made good progress. Most buildings that he could see from the highway were now single story, and when he looked down side streets Dave could see increasing amounts of single family residential housing.
Through his tiredness Dave wondered if he should stop walking and switch to using a vehicle. It would make travelling faster, but Dave was worried that the noise generated by a vehicle would attract the interest of creatures that Dave didn't want to deal with. Being on foot was slow but being fast had its dangers. That didn't stop Dave from being annoyed. As he looked up the highway in front of him, Dave could see that there were less cars on the roads than he had seen in the city. In the central city area the cars had often been bumper to bumper. But now the streets were empty enough that it would be possible to weave a car through the spaces.
It was another moment when Dave realised that he was being stupid. On the sidewalk nearby was a bike
