before locking the cap, he checked for sights and sounds that would warn of having been followed. There were already too many people who knew where they lived and he aimed to not add to that number.
Confident that no one was around Daniel walked into the garage. Three bikes stood just inside ascending in order from Rebecca’s ‘princess-themed’ bike, past Corinne’s seldom used ‘cruiser’ model, up to the long-standing bike of Daniel. In a lonely childhood Daniel had outfitted the mountain bike with plastic crates. They were twice the size of normal milk crates and they sat atop front and back book racks. Two large saddle bags hanging from the rear framework completed the workhorse of a bike.
The three bikes sat opposite a tidy workbench in the two-car garage. Where a cramped pathway led to the inside door through ten feet of boxes, bags, and bins all filled with the spoils attained by years of scavenging. He stashed away the strong smelling weed in the wall mounted cabinet, right beside a dozen colorful glass pipes that he had found over the years. Walking back to the garage door Daniel pulled the safety release and slid the bar lock into the track when the door banged closed.
Greeting him just inside the door was the scent of dehydrating meat, which had a simple marinade of wild dill and parsley brushed on with sunflower oil. The dehydrator box was custom built to fit ten cookie cooling racks inside of it. The racks themselves were brought home decades before by his father from someplace called a home-goods store. The box that Daniel built ended up being quite tall and narrow. It had a line of holes drilled in along the bottom and a solar-powered fan attached on top. The holes and fan once used to keep a pet carrier cool, kept a steady supply of warm, dry air circulating up and out.
The whole contraption sat against the passive window of the south-facing sliding door that led out into the backyard. To help use the sun’s long-wave radiation to its fullest the outside of the box had been painted black and several pieces of reflective insulation had been framed out around it, creating a semi-sealed air space. The dehydrator worked quite well even on the days where dust filled the sky, diffusing the amount of available light and energy.
Daniel paused seeing if any other smells could be discerned. His nose was searching for the kind of odors that always accompanied food being cooked. Nothing of the sort could be found wafting through the house.
Daniel thought, ‘Maybe, just maybe, she will make me a real meal someday.’ Chuckling to himself, he amended the thought, ‘Hell, even stale ramen noodles would be great.’
He really could not blame Corinne for her lack of culinary knowledge. She had been raised inside the communal areas of the Church and then later the Warehouse. This meant with her mother on the Council, there were plenty of others around to do the manual labor, so she never had to cook for herself, let alone anyone else.
"Hey, Babe," Daniel called out, directing it straight at the living room couch.
The plush, brown leather couch, which had originally been found still wrapped in plastic in the break room of an old cell phone store, was hidden from view by the J-shaped, dark-grey kitchen countertop. When Corinne moved into the house twelve years ago she constantly complained about the former, abused countertop. Daniel discovered that the dilapidated home-improvement store still held wide Formica rolls that had survived the fires and lootings. He was sure that in the entire span of the last 6 years he had been the first husband within three counties to redo a kitchen counter for their wife.
Of course once this task was complete Daniel then had to search empty residences and businesses for suitable furniture. This included the couch and everything else the house lacked or did not meet up with Corinne’s standards. All of the numerous bins that had once littered the house were emptied and their contents put into suitable hiding spots. New gun-metal grey paint coated the walls and dozens of paintings and architectural designs adorned them. Matching bedroom sets were a must, as well as large rugs and runners to cover most of the varnish-lacking hardwood floors. Despite Daniel’s best efforts the green-blue carpet in the living room, cut to size from an office building’s meeting room, rippled in the middle from not having been stretched properly. Corinne