We took a break and I pulled out the tubs of stuff that I’d taken from Maxes from my inventory and all of us went through it. Seventeen tubs of miscellaneous stuff that I’d grabbed off the shelves of a convenience store in a panicky rush. Each one contained whatever I felt like grabbing from the shelves that I was closest too.

Condoms and sanitary napkins were in box one, well female stuff. I wasn’t an expert, but I figured that we’d need that stuff, so I grabbed an assortment. I just stuck with Trojans for condoms. I didn’t have time to read labels, I was a looting machine. I was an immediate hero with the females.

Toilet paper was in boxes two through five. All Charmin Ultra Soft (until they ran out). My hero status was confirmed and raised to a higher level.

Box six contained boxes of ibuprofen, Pepto Bismol, NyQuil, DayQuil, Sudafed, Bandaids, basically anything that a convenience store carried in its medical aisle.

Toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss, toothbrushes, and razors and shaving cream were in box seven.

Box eight contained boxes of cereal: Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Post Toasties, 2 boxes of Fruity Pebbles, Heat and Serve Oatmeal packages.

Box nine contained lunch meats: deli ham, roast beef, bologna, hot dogs, prosciutto, cheese slices, and cubes. All of which had basically been sitting out for a day before we rescued them from the rats. It also contained five loaves of wonder bread, slightly squished.

Box ten contained beer, mainly Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life. They were the closest when I was grabbing.

Box 11 contained chips: Doritos, Tostitos, Funyuns, Bugles, Lay’s Potato chips, Barbecue Lays potato chips, and Miss Vickie’s Sea Salt And Vinegar Chips. I may have a slight preference for Miss Vickie. Oh, and pork rinds.

Box 12 contained packages of Donuts, Twinkies, Ho Hos and for some reason, a really big jar of Cheese Puffs. I couldn't help but think of that Woody Harrelson movie, Zombie Land when I saw the twinkies. 'I got you covered buddy,' I thought to Woody. 'Hope you made it.' Janet started doing her best Vanna White impression before opening the boxes and the two little girls echoed her.

Box 13 contained avocados, apples, oranges, lemons, bananas, and limes. Basically, all the fruit that the convenience store carried.

Box 14 contained coffee, coffee filters, and artificial sweeteners and creamers. Looking at them now, I wasn’t sure why I’d grabbed the coffee filters since we didn’t have a coffee pot, but Consuelo seemed cautiously excited about them, so they might be repurposed as alchemical filters. Max had started looking into premium blends and unground so we had a bunch of wicker, cloth-lined baskets with metal scoops in them of various coffee beans. I even scored a small basket of unroasted coffee beans. Maybe useful for starting a coffee plantation. Heck, we had mountains now, why not grow our own. Assuming we survived. I’d also grabbed a couple of those big cans of Folgers.

Box 15 contained motor oil, different weights, but it all seemed to be Valvoline. The box also contained windshield washer fluid and radiator fluid as well as a case of Dinty Moore stew.

Box 16 contained pop and water. 20 oz bottles of Coke, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Pepsi and Sprite along with a case of Dasani water.

Box 17 was the box that Roxie had been discovered in. Originally it contained Fruity Pebbles, cheese blocks, milk, granola, meat, gum, beer, toilet paper. Now it contained all of that less the Fruity Pebbles and half the cheese that it used to contain. But I’m not bitter.

There were no spices, rice or potatoes in the boxes. Not really a surprise, convenience stores aren’t really known for their spice racks or stocking a produce aisle. I remembered stocking boxes of Uncle Ben’s Rice in the store, but evidently, I didn’t get to them. There were, however, 10 bottles of Hasty-Bake Rub N Spice Seasoning from an endcap promotion tied to this line of really, really good Oklahoma based charcoal cookers. Max, the owner, was thinking about becoming a dealer. I was really, really down when I saw them. My favorite barbecue place was gone. Burn Co. I’ll miss your ribs. Rest in peace.

“Huh,” I said, looking at our haul, “it ain’t right!”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Yeah,” said Janet, holding up a Dr Pepper, “since when does Dr Pepper come in glass 20 oz bottles. And, look at this bottle, the logo is painted on or something. It looks like the results of Janet’s essence merge spell.”

“Yep,” I said, “the Event’s war on plastic continues. I mean look at the rest of the packaging.” The Motor Oil had changed back to the old tin style packaging, the kind that you punctured with a spout, the milk was also in glass bottles, the cheese had been converted from cubes to little wheels of cheese like those mini Babybel cheese wheels that came dipped in red wax, the gum was wrapped in paper, the potato chips came in white paper sacks, so did the cereal, everything was different, yet similar. I looked at the condoms and they appeared to be little sealed paper envelopes. I didn’t want to open them in front of everybody, but I could see that there was something different about them too.

“So, the big question here,” said Janet. “Is it safe to eat? Or, more importantly, drink?” she said as she clutched one of her Dr. Peppers.

“I haven’t tried any food yet,” I said. “I’m still on the potion of Sustenance. But if I had to guess, I’d say go for it. It’s probably good. I might think about the lunch meats though, that sat out for most of a day in Maxes.”

“Didn’t you say, nothing living could exist in our inventories?” Tanya asked Janet.

“That’s what my imu said,” she replied.

“In that case, since it wasn’t that hot in Maxes, they are probably fine. My little brother wouldn’t ever put anything away. He’d raid the bologna and leave the package out on the counter. So I got used to eating stuff that had been left on the kitchen counter for a day, sometimes two.”

“Wow,” I said. “You know what that means, don’t you? Instant water purification.”

“Well,” Tanya said. “It won’t help against chemicals in the water, but it’ll kill all of the bugs.”

“You know that bread, flour, rice, oatmeal all come with a certain amount of bugs in it. Bug eggs, usually. It was even allowed for by the FDA. If you put it in your inventory, poof! No bugs!” said Big Mike.

“No living bugs,” I said to a chorus of ‘oohs!’ from the girls around me.

“This is quite an assortment of stuff,” Big Mike said, looking over the spread out boxes.

“I know,” I said apologetically. “If I had more time, I might have done a better job of picking stuff, but I had 10 minutes, so this is what I got.”

“What do we want to do with it?” I asked. “With my new superpowered memory I can tell you everything that's in each box, so do you just want to pack it back up and wait for a time that we’ll need it? Or what?”

“I don’t know,” said Big Mike. “It sounds like the Smith’s won’t need either food or a potion until this evening. How about you guys.”

“I’m starting to get a little hungry,” said Janet. “How about you all?” she asked.

“I’m ok for now, but starting to feel it too,” said Tanya.

“Are we going to take another potion or are we going to start on food again?” asked Tanya.

“I think we ought to go back to eating again. Although we have an alchemist now, she can’t create sustenance potions yet. So, once they run out, we’re out. I’d much rather extend the time we have before they’re gone by using up our food. What do you say?” I asked.

“That means, cooking, cleaning, disposing of scraps, all that normal stuff again,” said Tanya. “Are we ok with that? It’ll cut into practice time. I got five new spells and my Force Bolt spell is up to level six also.”

“You know, I haven’t pooped in two days!” said Janet. “I guess that’s the potion.”

We rolled on the ground laughing. Especially the little girls.

“Hey,” she said. “Everybody poops… sometimes” she sang doing her best Michael Stipe impression.

It felt great to be laughing again.

“That’s a good point, not the pooping point, but Tanya’s. I hadn’t thought about it,” I said. “That kind of reframes the question doesn’t it. So, will we need the potions in the future more than we’ll need the spells that we could have been leveling now? Hmm.”

“Hey, Monsoon,” said Big Mike. “Just so we’re clear, these potions are yours. We can eat the squirrels, although, come to think of it, the squirrels are yours too. We’re good with whatever decision you make.” And Consuelo nodded her agreement.

“No,” I said. “Stop that. That’s old-Earth think. What we’ve” and here I made a circular gesture to include all of them, “what we’ve got to do is first survive and then, maybe we can worry about things like who owns what, who owes what. If I let you go hungry today, let your kids go hungry, what're the chances that you’ll have my back when some giant thing comes crashing down on it when I’m not looking? First, we survive, then we rebuild. And everybody’s got a say in this decision.”

Of course, that’s when Baila said, “Roxie thinks pooping in the woods is scary. She and I think we should keep drinking potions.”

“OK,” I said, trying not to laugh. “That’s two votes for potions, me and Baila.”

After that, it was pretty much unanimous. Everyone wanted to stay on the potions. So we packed up the boxes and I threw them back into my inventory. The three of us non-Smith’s decided to hold off on drinking our potions until later. That way everyone would be on the same schedule.