Cameras… Trade Buy And Sell… Vids Movies And Stills… Film For All.
Carrie heard a hooting from behind her and slowed right down when she saw in the mirror that Kyle was flashing his lights at her. She stopped and leaned out of the window into the cold drizzle that had been falling steadily most of the day.
“What is it?”
“Cameras,” he shouted. “Been wanting to try and get one for a couple of weeks. This could be my chance.” He paused to say something to Jim in the cab with him. “Captain here says it’s all right, Second Navigator Princip.”
She laughed at his mock formality. “Can’t disobey both my superiors, Navigator Lynch,” she yelled back, revving the engine and turning off up a driveway in the direction of the arrow.
Kyle kicked up gravel as he accelerated after her up the hill toward a distant single-story building with a flat, dark green roof.
When they got there, they got out of the vehicles.
“What a bastard mess.” Kyle stood with hands on hips, staring at what once proclaimed itself to have been the Best Camera Emporium In Northern California.
Most of the windows were broken, and the door was missing. Heather had accompanied her father on a cursory recon, while the others waited by the vehicles. She had come scampering back to report that the kitchen had been burned out and it looked as if everything inside had been smashed.
“Everything?” Kyle asked, unable to conceal his disappointment and seething anger.
“Broke the cameras and vids, Kyle.”
“But they wouldn’t have been much use. Not once society had broken down. Where’s Jim gone?”
“Having a look around the back. There’s loads of outbuildings and barns. Saw a dead horse.”
“Me see horse.” Sly started eagerly forward, but the girl grabbed his hand to stop him.
“No. Not very nice. All maggots and stinky. Stay here with me. Come under the porch to get out of the rain, Sly.”
Carrie and Kyle watched as they walked together and stood on the front veranda. The young woman shuddered and hunched her shoulders.
“What is it? Cold and wet?”
Carrie sniffed and sighed. “Old one about someone walking over my grave. Just find this sort of thing real sad. I understand looting for food. Not mindless damage by a bunch of shit-for-brains. Don’t get that.”
Jim reappeared around the corner of the camera store, holstering his Ruger. “I heard that, Carrie. Probably starving and terrified young shit-for-brains. Didn’t find anything to keep their bellies from rubbing on their backbones. So they took it out on everything else they found.”
“Anything interesting around?” asked Kyle.
“Guess it was a farm ten or twenty years ago.”
“No food?”
Jim shook his head. “No, Kyle. But I saw foot tracks in the mud, and there’s some stinking bedding in one of the small barns. Some bones there.”
“Animal or human?” Carrie asked, prepared for anything.
“Oh, animal. Birds, I think, mostly. Reckon some scavenger was living here.”
“Think it was him did the damage?” asked Kyle.
“Or her,” said Carrie.
With evening closing in and the weather getting worse, they agreed that they might as well hole up there for the night. Sly had been enchanted by a flurry of snow just as the light was finally fading away and had run clumsily around the backyard trying to catch the tumbling flakes in his cupped hands.
Jim had found two oil lamps in the largest barn, both nearly filled with kerosene, and they put one in the living room behind the shop. There was a sofa there and one unbroken armchair, enough for them to sit down in reasonable comfort. Carrie hunted around and found a pile of charred wood, already hewn into neat logs. She brought some in and piled them in the hearth where she soon had a fine blaze going.
Kyle took the second brass lamp, lit it and walked slowly around the devastated store, boots crunching through glass and plastic.
It broke his heart to see what had been done.
The first impression was that the place could easily have lived up to its proud boast. The shop was L-shaped, with a door around the corner that opened at the side of the nearest barn. Kyle guessed that the overall size of the store was somewhere about fifteen hundred square feet.