American Revenant (Book 2): Settlers and Sorrow by John L. Davis IV Page A

some secrets.  After an hour long search, they
found two loose wall panels that hid several small boxes of bottles filled with
pills.  These they took back to Jan, who was pleased with the find, citing that
they would always have need of prescription strength painkillers, which is what
most of the pills were.  She stressed to them that they watch out for
antibiotics of any kind.
                Two
houses had locked metal gun cabinets, for which they were unable to find keys. 
The cabinets were left until they could bring back tools with which to pry them
open.
                The
men found far more dead and decaying bodies than they did reanimated ones.  Of
all the buildings they had searched since the horse farm, everything from
houses to sheds to barns, they only encountered six of the living dead, none of
which had posed a great threat to the men.
                One
of the best finds, especially for Sam, was in a garage on Sherman Trail.  After
clearing a small, neat house, they stopped to take a break, sitting down at the
kitchen table.
                Opening
a bottle of water, Jimmy looked at the two men with him for a moment, and then
asked, “Do you guys think we’ve had it too easy?”
                “What
do you mean, “Too easy”? Mike asked in return.
                “Well,
I guess I mean has it been too easy.  Everything that’s happened so far, that
is.  Everything around us has gone nuts.  If it’s not face-eating zombies, then
it’s psycho bastards killing people.  Yet we escaped Hannibal, got to the
island like we planned, then right away we move up to the camp.  We meet a nice
old man who’s willing to share his food and help us.  We find tools and working
equipment that seriously make life up here so much easier.  I don’t know, I
just seems like…”
                “Like
you’re waiting for Lucifer’s Hammer to fall?” Sam asked.
                “Exactly,”
Jimmy said, “and that was a great book, by the way.”
                “Seemed
fitting.  I’ve been feeling the same way.  Everything I’ve ever read says that
an EMP will send us back to the 1800’s.  Maybe it depends on the type of EMP or
severity of it.  Maybe if it was a solar type it would be worse.  It’s hard to
say.  But we have some great advantages and I’m not going to look too hard at
them.”
                “Sam’s
right, Jimmy, I wouldn’t analyze it so much.”
                Jimmy
chuckled, “That’s the same thing Tam said to me.”
                “I
get what you’re saying, I really do.  I still can’t believe we’re in this
shit.  I keep thinking that I’m going to wake up in front of the T.V. with some
old Romero flick on.  We’ve been damn lucky to this point, and I think we take
it and keep going.  Really if you look at it, it isn’t luck.  We’re just
finding and using things others have left behind.”
                “I
know, Mike, and you guys are probably right.  We can’t trust lives to luck
though.”
                Jimmy
stood up, pacing around the small kitchen.  These thoughts and more had been
weighing on him lately.  He found it difficult to simply set them aside, even
if his friends were right.
                When
he stopped pacing he found himself standing in front of a small closet or
pantry door.  Opening it he stood there for a moment, staring inside, and began
to laugh. 
                Sam
and Mike looked at him, wondering if he had just went over the edge when Jimmy
bent over, picked something up and turned around.
                He
held a box labeled Bat Creek Brewery, and inside the box were twelve 22 ounce
dark brown bottles.
                “Holy
shit!” Mike said.
                From
Sam, “Nice!”
                The
local nano-brewery was located about