Chapter 10

I heard waves breaking below. For a little while I lay and listened, thinking of the power of the oceans and how they work together to make so many other things work.

I was going to have to force myself through this day. I had little get-up-and-go left in me. Hopefully I would gather some energy and finish the propane tasks.

I thought I had enough propane for about 16 - 17 years, with a comfortable margin for mathematical error. If I could do as well at the other three places and find more in the Orlando area, I could store enough to last 40 – 50 years without traveling far to find more.

Breakfast was courtesy of a health food place along the road. There were lots of packaged thing, and I stocked up on the ones that tasted good. At each stop, I restocked bottled water, gasoline in the truck and whatever caught my eye.

My goal was to be fully stocked in vital supplies. As long as I stayed true to that, I could handle sickness, minor injuries, and anything that might put me out of commission for days or weeks.

I spent the next few days moving trucks of propane into place and creating an inventory and a formula to figure out how long the supply would last. When I was finished, I thought I had enough for fifty years or so.

The lot where I parked the propane trucks looked like the marshalling yard for a huge convention. I spaced everything for safety; they took up the front and both sides, with empty trucks parked in the rear ready to go when needed.

The plaza had been under construction with only a grocery store and hair salon open when everyone disappeared. The rest of the spaces were empty. I forced entry into every store. At the least, I could stock boxes of canned goods and other supplies in the units.

During those four days of driving back and forth with gas tanks, I looked for others survivors. Others must have been in similar places to a bank vault at the time of the disaster. Finding them was my challenge.

Without electricity I couldn't use the Internet, television or radio broadcasting centers. The phones were all dead and with no one maintaining the cell phone systems, they had all died, I figured.

I chose strategic locations to look for survivors. It would be a lot like looking for needles in a haystack, but at least it was something. I couldn't live alone for the next fifty years, thinking others were out there somewhere.