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The numbers of the survivors had been whittled down, more in the early days.  Those that were left had both smarts and skills, and a certain kind of ruthlessness that propelled them to keep going no matter how bad the going got.  The other members of their party, then, weren't to be counted out.<br/>
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"I wish you had, too,"</i>LuAnn absently agreed.<br/><br/>There was nothing more to be gained from the pharmacy.  Someone had cleaned it out pretty effectively, and hopefully those someones were Musaad and Larry.  She nodded her head sharply at Zack's suggestion that they head for the kitchen.<i> "Bound to be easier to get out from there than from here. " </i><br/><br/>The both of them retained their sense of humor, faintly dry and irreverent.  There were generally two scores of thinking on that as well.  For some, humor had dried up, and they responded to revelry with chill, even disbelieving looks.  Perhaps humor was another thing that pulled them together, so that they ended up working together whenever there was reason to pair off into smaller groups.<br/><br/><i>"Yeah,  hospital food.  I can't wait." </i>Of course, these days, hospital food was nothing to sneeze at.  Canned food kept well, and industrial sized cans would be a great find for the encampment, though one they'd have to flag for later.  No way was she going to try to travel heavy given the new threat outside.<br/><br/><i>"A cast iron skillet would come in handy right about now, that's for sure."</i>Not, of course, that she expected to find such a useful thing in a place like this.  Instead, there'd be pots of aluminum, coated with non-stick, and totally useless over a campfire ... or for anything other than a container that wouldn't leak.  She checked her gear, and then fell in behind, letting Zack spell her on point.  There were no surprises on the trip down.  It seemed that even the Walkers preferred to avoid this place, but whether there was some living association with it or just that it had been an early evac she didn't know and didn't really care.  What had been mattered only in context of what she could use now.<br/><br/><i>"Dish towels, pot holders, paper towels, napkins ..." </i>There ought to be plenty of that shit in a kitchen this size.  There were also metal serving carts on big wheels,  that had been used to load up the resident trays in appropriately sized compartments.  LuAnn shouldered her bow and put her blade away, and grabbed the handles of the nearest one and shoved it down toward the doors.   It wouldn't stop anything long, but it should slow 'em down, and the construction of them was such that it'd be pretty easy to get tangled up in at just the wrong moment, if luck held.  A second cart joined the first, and she utilized some plastic  wrap to fasten them together while Zack searched, working quickly and more or less quietly, though the rattle of opening cabinets and drawers echoed loudly in the cavernous industrial kitchen, a relic of a world that was gone and unlikely to come again.<br/><br/><i>"I should have been on MythBusters,"</i>she congratulated herself with a little curve of her lips, and headed back to see what Zack had found, and to aid in the search.<i> "The zombie episode.  Wonder how they'd have done with the real thing?"</i><br/><br/>There were napkins aplenty, the folding kind that went into industrial napkin holders, bar towels, both cotton blends and microfiber.  Along with the oil, there was another bit of a windfall in the supply of plastic sippy-type cups with lids.<i>  "Molotov Cocktail, anyone?  These might work, especially if the lids stay on if they're thrown, and break when they hit.   Or would that just put out the blaze?"</i><br/><br/>That sort of shit was a bit out of her knowledge base, but she certainly had enough practical experience to construct a makeshift torch out of a long-handled pot fork with an end tightly wrapped in strips of microfiber.   That shit burned liked crazy.  Walkers didn't seem to worry about fire, but they did catch fire, and depending on the kind of clothes they'd been wearing, she'd seen them go up like a macabre bonfire.<br/><br/>There were some canned goods as well.  One cabinet was almost full of Ensure in various flavors, along with some small cans of juice.  LuAnn made a face at the former, and grabbed a couple of cans of apple juice and pulled the aluminum tab, sniffed, and then chugged it down.  They'd been burning a lot of calories ... with a lot more to go, probably, before they were out of this mess.<i> "Apple juice or ... chocolate Ensure?   Hey, strawberry, too.  Pick your poison."</i><br/><br/>She'd never tried Ensure, but in her mind, she figured they must taste like those Nutri-Shake crap things that her mom used to drink when she was on one of her diets.  To LuAnn, they'd tasted sort of like somebody mixed a cup of Benefiber with a couple spoons of cheap cocoa powder ... and she wasn't quite hungry enough for that to sound appetizing just yet.