Sam pointed to a pipe sticking above the top of the tank with a gooseneck on the end. “That’s a vent line—all tanks have them. When the sun shines on the tank the fuel expands, and vapor is driven out. At night it cools, shrinks, and pulls moist air in. Then the moisture condenses, and water eventually collects in the bottom of the tank. Even when fuel is drained to be used, air is drawn into the tank to replace the volume of liquid removed. With underground tanks it’s much the same, but additionally pinholes can leak ground water into them.”
“Humm. Makes sense. Let’s check out the rooms in the barn, then the sheds before we go through the house.”
In a tack room Sam found three saddles, blankets, and sets of bridles and tossed them and the saddle racks they were on in the truck bed. He was planning ahead to when fuel supplies were exhausted, and they’d need to use horses for transportation and work. When that happened, they would have additional work building barns and corrals.
JR scattered cracked corn to draw a small flock of free ranging chickens in close enough to catch them. She captured six hens and two roosters and tied their legs together with twine to transport them home. Sam giggled when he heard her cursing as the hens pecked her hands and arms and the roosters raked her with their spurs. Several bags of chicken feed joined them in the truck bed. She was exhausted from the intense exercise of grabbing chickens that didn’t want to be caught. She’d had to put Smokey in the truck because he was no help at all and had fun chasing the chickens away.
Inside the house JR scoured the kitchen for necessary items. She gathered spices, cookbooks, miscellaneous cooking tools, and canned and boxed foods. She lusted over the useless stainless steel electrical appliances setting on the countertop. Hand towels and wash cloths were placed on the kitchen table to claim. Sam found several military style rifles and a supply of ammo for them in a small closet that had been converted to a gun cabinet. Most of those would be saved with his existing stash of extra firearms to be traded in the future. He realized he would need to be careful of who they were sold to. Criminals could use the guns to return and rob or kill them.
They stopped at four more farms and ranches and had the truck bed stacked full when they arrived at the camper shortly before dark. The cabin was crowded when they hauled their newly claimed booty there the next morning. JR put pans of feed and water out before releasing the chickens so they wouldn’t wander away too far.
Early one cool morning when thick fog hung in the air, they drove to Kalispell. At a trailer outlet where the dual gates stood wide open, Sam took a sixteen foot dual axel, open utility trailer. JR noticed the office door had been kicked in and the interior trashed. They left there and drove to a building supply outlet. Several times they passed pickups with two or more men in them. Occasionally there were one or several females with the men. Most were grim and only a few waved in a friendly manner. The only zombies they encountered had been shot and left to rot where they fell.
Before reaching the home improvement warehouse, he said he wanted to take the sniper rifles in with them instead of leaving them in the back window of the pickup where passersby could see them and be tempted to steal.
In the warehouse behind the retail section, they claimed a 10’x12’ precut wooden shed kit, and a precut 8’x10’ wooden shed kit to convert to a chicken house. Five sheets of plywood were loaded for the solid floor under the shed. Sam found a forklift with the key in it to load the packaged buildings. The battery wasn’t fully charged but it had enough juice left to load their materials. Soon the batteries would be dead and any items they wanted would have to be loaded by hand.
To the load he added ten sheets of one inch thick insulation board on top of the shed packages to insulate the chicken house. Inside the main store, they loaded a shopping cart with four cases of expanding foam caulk for inside joints and six cases of acrylic caulk made specifically for cabin joints on the cabin’s exterior. In the feed section they claimed six, fifty pound bags of chicken feed to winter the chickens. Smokey was taken care of when JR loaded ten bags of premium dog food. They located the aisle with premade plastic nesting boxes for the hens and took a dozen of those and three plastic watering containers. Walking by a rack of do it yourself project books, Sam spotted several that interested him. Books on mixing and pouring concrete, building meat smokers, and making and installing cedar roof shingles went in their carts.
They were ready to move into the cabin, so a stop at a bedding store gave them a premium mattress & box springs for the fancy brass trimmed antique standard sized iron bed. Their confiscated loot was stacked high and bungeed tightly after they felt the trailer was fully loaded.
At two pharmacies JR gathered five gallon buckets of over the counter and prescription medicines and birth control pills. She grinned and blushed as she passed on Viagra; She silently thought. “Sam doesn’t need any help with that; he’s like the Energizer Battery Bunny.” The stores had been thoroughly ransacked; most of the prescription pain relievers and all the beer and liquors were long gone.
At home they moved the feed inside the enclosed trailer. It would remain there until the shed was assembled. But the bedding was hauled to the cabin that evening and would be left
