24

I scanned through the warehouse hoping I could get everything I wanted from the warehouse without having to go into the store. I didn't see anything concerning in the small warehouse, and moved back outside. Grabbing two loose cattle panels, and bowing them over in the trailer to force the trailer to be bigger, and covered. I wanted to tarp it, and put a new tire in place of the crappy one, but didn't know if there were any tires around that would work. Then a smile spread across my face. 

I didn't need to look for tires themselves. I just needed to find a smaller car, and there was at least one in my parking lot back home. I tied the panels down, and went to go get the tires. The boys weren't willing to wait in the van while I was running around so I grabbed my bow, and they just came with me. I made sure they both had their daggers tight in their grip pointed away from them. 

I took the lead with my bow pointed away from me, and a tire iron tucked in my belt. I broke one of the windows, and had my ears assaulted by the car alarm. I popped the door open, and used the button to pop the trunk. I pulled out the spare tire first. I wasn't going to be taking any chances. 

I may only need one tire, but I was taking two. I popped the cover off the hub, and started taking the bolts off. Once I had the tire I handed them off to the boys, and we rolled them back over to the mini van so I could put them on the trailer. We used the mini van's crank to lift the trailer up, but in all honesty I probably could have gotten away with just lifting the damn thing manually. I tossed the good tire in the mini van just behind the drivers side seat, and bolted the small car tires in place. 

They were a good fit, but that didn't mean they would hold up for long once we got on the road. Then we started loading up all of the rabbit food they had in the warehouse which was only six bags. A disappointing haul at best. Then I noticed that they had a large stock of corn. Scratch corn, and whole corn. 

I loaded that all up next. Corn wasn't the best feed for animals because of how fattening it was, but it would be highly valuable as the resources we currently had were exhausted. Poor tasting farm animal corn was still corn. It was a good source of fat, and that made it a good source of energy. I didn't know if anyone had thought that far ahead or if I was just getting ahead of myself. 

I pulled out of the feedlot once we had all the rabbit feed, and bags of corn loaded onto the trailer. I lifted the back gate up, and locked it into place as well as tying it down with some loose twin before using that same twin to tie down the rabbit cage on the roof. This mini van had a headache rack for roof loading so I just used that to attach the cage to the car. It might not be necessary now, but if I continued breeding rabbits I would need the cage for the grow outs. With several months worth of food loaded up in the crappy little stolen trailer. 

Continuing to breed the rabbits was starting to look like a real possibility. I drove up the incline, and out of the lot with a little well timed engine revving. Then we were off. I looked to the boys in the passenger seat, and back seat next to one of the rabbits. The little one had voluntarily sat in the back, and the older was up front with me. 

He'd stabbed his dagger all the way up to the hilt into the seat next to him, and he wasn't buckled in. I didn't mind since I was dragging this sketchy trailer, and wasn't planning to go fast. The younger boy had done the same with his own dagger, and was trying to convince the rabbit next to him to let him pet her. None of my rabbits were very social so he'd probably be trying all day, but that didn't matter to me at all. 

"Don't stick your fingers in the wire," I warned, "I don't want to have to fix broken fingers if something happens."

The younger boy hadn't seen me look up at the mirror to warn him, and I almost laughed when I looked into the mirror at his wide eyed expression. I kept on driving as if all was right in the world as I circled through the round about, and breezed through the stop sign to get to five thirty. From here it was just a very long winding stretch to Darington. It would probably take me an hour, and a half to drive the long stretch at the slow speed of thirty I was going, but I was worried about that old crappy trailer coming apart. I had absolutely no intention of going further south to Seattle. 

Those big buildings with their wide windows wouldn't offer much defense. Darington was the best option within driving distance right now. Large expanses of open fields stretched out before us within thirty minutes of our drive, and those fields were ringed by years of old growth forest. The saw mill as well as all these trees would come in handy real quick when they started building it up. There was almost as much open space as there was thick forest in Darington, and most of it wasn't covered in cement so when spring came around gardening would be a real possibility. 

The closer you got to Seattle the more ground was covered in thick pavement. I'd always hated all that concrete. It wasn't the mute greys or blacks that bothered me. It was the sheer amount of it. It always kind of felt as if I'd driven into one of those really depressing paintings.