Wanderer (Book 1): Wanderer

their possessions in their cars like the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs.
Mother Nature had started to reclaim some of the earth back and I had to watch my footing as I made my way towards the store.
Lying in the middle of the street propped up against the windshields of two cars is the street sign. Someone had torn it down and placed it on the cars as what I can only assume is some sort of warning. Spray painted in red over “Fern River Road – 2 Miles” is “Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.” The letters had started to run like some children’s haunted house attraction sign. It had an ominous feel to it, and it didn’t sit well in my stomach. I was reminded of the night my father never called.
At first I thought I might bring my bow, but with the exception of a small rabbit, I didn’t see any animals so it didn’t matter. Perhaps they somehow knew to stay away from here.
I would say it took us about ninety minutes to get to the top of the hill where the shopping center is, which wasn’t bad considering what we had to walk through.
Even with her wound Mandy has no trouble bounding from car roof to car roof. It was harder for me to traverse the river of cars as I didn’t have as good of balance.
When we reached the top and rounded the corner into the shopping center my heart sunk at the sight of the hardware store, it’s completely ransacked. The windows are all busted out and the shelves are bone dry, arranged like someone had moved them to make sure nothing was hiding underneath them.
It was actually rather eerie standing in the parking lot of the shopping center. Except for a slight breeze it was completely quiet up there. It was always quiet up there, now it was just disheartening.
The grocery store, the corner stone of the shopping center, was now just skeletal remains of its former super market glory. The roof had caved in some months back, I heard it happen, but I didn’t know what it was until now.
The pizza restaurant next to that sat mostly untouched, mocking me. Man, I miss pizza.
I didn’t think I would find anything in the hardware store. Its empty store front didn’t leave me with a good feeling. I came all this way, so I have to check.
The shelves were barren and the floor was littered with useless tools, dirt, and a layer of leaves, among other things. Mandy followed her nose through the store, I had to follow my eyes. I kept my eye out for any sort of glue bottle or sticky substance that I might be able to fashion into what I needed, because I didn’t think I would be lucky enough to stumble on a new hot tub.
After about twenty minutes of searching I stood in the middle of the store defeated. I hadn’t found anything. No bottles of glue or sealant. No sticks of gum that I could chew and stick to the hole. Nothing.
It was eerily quiet in the store, too quiet, as they say. I didn’t hear Mandy anymore.
I frantically searched around the store, calling her name, pushing shelves out my way hoping she wasn’t underneath one. I really wish she wouldn’t wander. I didn’t want to save her from the wolves only to lose her in some damn god forsaken hardware store.
I found her in the employee lounge staring at the unisex bathroom door. She was aware of something that I was not. I stood there a moment with her, in the silence. Only, there wasn’t silence. She could hear better than I could, but I heard it. Shuffling.
I didn’t stick around long enough to find out what it was, but someone, or something, was pacing back and forth, back and forth, very slowly in the bathroom.
I had to drag Mandy out by her collar. But before we left the lounge I spotted something on one of the lunch tables. Someone had left their Styrofoam containers from their Chinese food or whatever, I couldn’t really tell anymore, on the table.
I had remembered back in eighth grade a science experiment we did in class. We had learned how to make our own homemade glue. We weren’t supposed to try it at home, it was just meant to demonstrate how the properties of elements chemically change. And for some reason it stuck with me. The teacher, Mr. Knox, had put a Styrofoam cup into a bucket and poured some gasoline in it. We all had to leave the classroom because of the fumes, Mr. Knox wasn’t the brightest bulb.
Outside he showed us how the gasoline slowly melted the Styrofoam into a dark green sticky substance. Mr. Knox demonstrated how it worked by throwing the glob onto the classroom wall and sticking the bucket to it. And it worked. Once the glob dried, which was fairly quickly, it held the bucket it place. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. Mr. Knox was fired a few years later for threatening a student, but for some reason his experiment stayed with me. And now it was going to save our lives.
Outside the sun was starting to set behind that thick plume of black smoke from the scavenger’s vehicle. It was a couple miles away and moving this way. It had snuck up on us while we were in the hardware store. We needed to get back quick, they would be here soon.
I steered clear of the main road on the way back, hugging the trees that lined the golf course. It took longer, but the trees offer good refuge from any prying eyes they might have sent ahead.
We made it back and I made my little concoction using a small can of gasoline my father had in the garage. Just in time too, there was only about eight inches of