Read The Survivors (Book 1): Summer for Free Online

drop to the floor, and stood back to admire my handiwork.  Not perfect, but it was a start.  There was still the matter of the bed, though.  The last person who had slept in that bed was Benny, and that was years ago.  I hated to think what kind of foulness lingered in those stale, old sheets.  They’d have to go.
    With a determined stride, I crossed to the bedroom and set about stripping off all of the bedding.  Sheets, duvet, and pillows alike, I flung them into a pile on the floor.  When I reached the mattress, I was relieved to discover that it was still in excellent condition, with no signs of fungus or pests aside from a tiny bit of mildew on the underside.  A wee bit of mould wasn’t enough to deter me from sleeping in it though, not after I’d spent the last couple of years living in the back of an old shipping container.
    It gave me the shivers just thinking about sleeping in a real bed again.
    I gathered up the old linens and dumped them in a pile in the living room so that I could deal with them another day.  As filthy as they were, a survivor threw nothing away if there was any chance it could be saved.  Waste not, want not.  After the end of the world, you became the ultimate recycler.
    From the linen cupboard, I fetched the spare set of bedding.  Despite the years, the sheets were relatively clean and mould-free.  I unfolded them and flapped them out the window, giving them a damn good shake to get rid of any excess dust.
    There would be time to wash all the bedding out another day, but not tonight.  I was working against the clock, with not much time before the sun set.  Knowing that the power was still on did relieve the tension of impending darkness, but I preferred not to rely too heavily on something that could abandon me at any moment.  It was not terribly surprising that we suffered a lot of blackouts in this day and age.
    When the new bedding finally passed my critical inspection, I returned to the bedroom.  There, I flicked the bottom sheet over the mattress and quickly mitred and knotted the corners the way my mother had taught me when I was a little girl.  A pang of longing and loneliness twisted my heart when I thought of her, but I fought it off.  If I gave in to despair, I might as well have killed myself right then and gotten it over with.  Mum wouldn't have wanted that.  
    Besides, I still had to deal with the kitchen, and I wasn’t looking forward to that at all.
    ***
    By the time I finished sanitising the kitchen, I decided it was appropriate to coin a whole new word to describe the state it was originally in.  'Epigross' seemed appropriate, or perhaps ‘grodetacular’ was better.
    I wonder if Oxford is still taking submissions?
    The kitchen held all kinds of smells in unexpected places, and none of them were good.  Most of them came from the fridge, which I was sad to discover had burned out years ago.  Given enough time I could probably have fixed it but there was no real need to do so.  What would I refrigerate?  Everything I ate came in cans or packets, or was fresh out of the ground.  I settled for scraping out the contents and giving the fridge a quick wash, then I left it alone.
    The pantry was in no better state, and everything that was in there soon went into a rubbish sack as well.  Sadly, my good friend Benny was not the kind of fellow that kept a stash of canned food in case of emergency.  Rather selfish of him, if you ask me.  I did come away with a couple of tins of baked beans and minted peas.  Not an amazing haul, but decent enough.  Combined with what I'd brought with me, it would be enough to keep me going another couple of days – long enough to explore this pretty little town and map out the available resources.
    What was important was that it meant I wouldn’t have to eat cat food or bugs for dinner tonight.  Been there, done that.  Not fun.
    When the pantry was clean, I put my tins back in and lined them up in an obsessively neat