Other than that, all I really had to do was dust and shovel ashes out of the wood stove. Laundry, on the other hand, was a different story altogether. Without the benefit of a washer and dryer, it was an extremely time consuming, labor-intensive task. This is especially true during the winter months when it is too cold outside to dry laundry on the clothesline. During that time, we have to wash clothes a few items at a time and hang them up over the stove to dry. Now that the weather was finally warming up, we would be able to do laundry in larger quantities, and do it outdoors. That would save us a lot of time. After I finished cleaning the cabin, and hanging our clothes and linens out to dry, I took a few minutes to look over our weapons.

 

Gabe had quite a number of firearms before the Outbreak, which we had supplemented with my own collection and a few other scavenged items. We had a wide variety of weapons to choose from, but mostly we just stuck to the ones that we could fit suppressors to. Less noise equals fewer encounters with the undead. Even though there was enough ammunition on the shelves in our underground shelter to outfit a small army, we were always on the lookout for more. We could only carry a few thousand rounds with us on our journey west, but it was still nice to know the location of a large stockpile, just in case. We had also cached a few boxes of ammo in the mountains around the cabin along the paths that we traveled the most frequently. We might never need it, but it was good to know it was out there if we did.

 

 I took a little time during the day to inspect my rifle. As I feared, the barrel was nearing the end of its service life. The rest of the rifle was still in good shape, so I stripped it for parts and left the barrel in a scrap metal bin. It didn’t bother me too much to get rid of it; I had two more just like it on the gun rack. I grabbed one of them and took it down to the firing range Gabe and I set up in a clearing at the base of the mountain. Breaking it in cost me a couple dozen rounds between sighting it in and zeroing my optics. When I got back, Gabe was sitting on the front porch running the blade of his big stag-handled Bowie knife over a whetstone. Judging by his posture, and by the fact that he was honing a knife already sharp enough to shave with, I surmised that my large friend was getting impatient to go and visit with our new neighbors.

 

“You about ready to head out?” I asked, stopping to talk to him on the porch.

 

He nodded. “Ready whenever you are.”

 

“Okay. Let me grab a couple of things and then we can get going.”

 

Anytime I plan to go more than a mile away from home, I always run through a quick checklist to make sure I have the bare minimum of equipment needed to survive. First, I checked my web gear. Both of the one-quart canteens were full. My multi-tool, LED flashlight, and the suppressors for my pistol and rifle were all in their pouches. Next, I checked my weapons.