Any small amounts of extra fresh meats, fruits, or vegetables that they found for themselves with went straight into the dehydrator box for preservation. Daniel found it easiest to dry everything thoroughly. The resultant dried food could be reconstituted days, weeks, or sometimes even months later.
Slowing the truck to a snail’s pace Daniel watched a substantial band of scavengers at work. He had never witnessed an operation of this size before. Not only was the group the largest he had ever seen in this area, at least four families strong, but they looked to be very well organized as well. They were currently working together to systematically strip apart a house. The choicer contents of which had already been emptied out by Daniel long ago.
It took a painstaking amount of work to crack apart a home for the piping and wiring hidden within its walls and ceilings. Numerous piles of salvage dotted the overgrown front yard of the stick-framed house. The rubble was being dumped out of the way, tossed into a waterless swimming pool. Gutters were heaped into one pile, while copper tubing and wires were being stacked in others. Several mounds of lumber and other indiscernible items were strewn about, but this was not at all done in a random fashion.
The haggard men, women and children, some no older than Rebecca’s four years, stopped working to give the passing truck hard stares. A man, who was pulling the last of the shingles from the roof shouted something meant to be derisive before throwing a chunk of brick pulled from the tumbled chimney at the gawking man. The projectile sailed through the rare blue sky, all eyes following its path. It twisted and spun majestically before landing just short of the road, catching in the deep grass. Even though the man had missed what he had been aiming for, given the distance to the moving target, it had the desired effect. Daniel sped back up.
‘I guess that’s what people have been reduced to,’ Daniel thought, not realizing that his mind had jumped tracks on him.
These days in this corner of the darkened world everything meant to be perishable had already perished, either by means of consumption or contamination. Common items became rare and rare items became non-existent. Adding to this problem was every new person that moved into the area, who only stretched out thinner what little resources did remain.
The Department of Continuance, which was shortened to D.o.C. and pronounced as ‘dock’, had helped prolong the fate surrounding Detroit. Brought into existence by a series of Presidential Orders, the D.o.C. was responsible for dealing with the combination of problems that plagued America at the time; namely the falling ash and serial riots. Even so, since their establishment of the compulsory ‘dark’ days, where power was cut to all but a few key parts of New Warren during daylight hours, everyone around knew that even the Department of Continuance, once thought to be all-powerful was now running low on supplies.
Due to the lack of options left available to him without the use of the generator and electric hotplates the only thing that really changed for Daniel was his having to get more creative about how he cooked meals. At first a propane camping grill did most of the toil, but now that almost all of their extra propane bottles had all been used up, and the price to refill a single thirty pound tank was nearing twenty stipends he had all but abandoned it. Instead Daniel saved what little propane the family still owned for use in the retro-fitted water heater.
A decade ago National Guard mobilizations secured all of the propane filling stations and stored massive inventories around their individual states. When the D.o.C. finally started refining new diesel and gasoline again, the by-product of which was more propane they helped replenish what had been used thus far. After a short lapse, roughly a year to two years in most places where the people went without assistance from the still developing D.o.C., the reformed government began supplying goods again. The city of New Warren was one of the first on the list to begin receive supplies, as the nuclear disaster to the south was given priority to be dealt with. Convoys started delivering the propane, different grades of fuel, and foodstuffs, all of which had to be first flown into Selfridge Air National Guard base. Those trucks were now becoming increasingly infrequent and when they did show up the prices