Sloane threw the cleaver next to the tied up... Thing.
Electricity was out so the basement was completely dark and the only thing that kept it alight were the candles that she brought here from her room.
Thankfully, water was still running and thanks to her quick thinking, she managed to stock up, filling several pots, tupperwares, containers, and bathtubs full of water.
Fantasizing about the world ending multiple times has its benefits.
Throughout the entire time Sloane prepared drinking water for herself, she kept the monster tied up in the basement with her box cutter embedded deeply into its head. It made sure that it wouldn't just stand up and begin attacking her again.
She had also damaged it more after tying it up, scared that it might regenerate and begin hunting her.
Sloane checked and none of the wounds she inflicted healed, the box cutter wasn't pushed out of its head like she feared, and the grinning humanoid was as still as she left it.
Sloane picked up her cleaver, it was from her grandad's, he used to own a butcher shop and this tool was what he passed down to his son/ her father after his death.
With it, Sloane chopped the creature into multiple pieces.
The flesh and even the bones of the humanoid strangely gave way to the bladed edge and she was able to cut them with ease.
Sloane started from the shoulder, then the legs, and finally, she lopped off the head.
Now finished, she stepped back and wiped sweat from her forehead. That had been more work than she thought.
Sloane felt the sides of her neck begin to exhaust heat as she leaned against a table while looking at the corpse.
It was then that she had a moment of self-directed introspection.
She had no idea what to do now that the excitement of having intruders to her home had passed.
Sloane stuffed the monster pieces into trash bags and threw them inside a metal box. Which she emptied of sewing kits, gardening tools, and various other things beforehand.
As she organized the tools, Sloane realized something-
Didn't she have a cub scout guide book somewhere in the attic? She bought it out of fascination in the past but it should be useful to her right now...
Sloane went upstairs and skimmed through the boxes in the attic for a second time, this time with the intent of finding books she thought would be useful rather than containers to fill with water.
After a bit of searching, she got what she wanted and organized them neatly on the floorboards.
Sloane sat cross-legged on the floor and looked over the five books she gathered, most of the ones in the attic were mainly stories, fables or other children's tale, these five were the only exception.
A book about gardening, one about DIY stuff, another was the cub scout book she was looking for, the one next to it is a book about a river's ecosystem, and the last one, to her surprise, was the Anarchial Recipe.
All of them except for the last one were normal, while A.R was a... tiny bit controversial.
Sloane had forgotten where she put this book around 2 years ago? She even thought she lost it somewhere.
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But it seems that she didn't actually forget, her mother just found it and decided to hide it in the attic. No one mentioned it to her, and she didn't mention it to anyone.
So her parents knew that she was slowly believing in anarchy back then, she just didn't know that they did...
Sloane palmed her face, why was she feeling second hand embarrassment for her past self?
She started quivering.
Sloane closed her eyes for a few minutes so that nothing would leak out.
Sloane gathered all five books and brought them down to her room, save for maybe the one about a river's ecosystem, all of them had uses to her currently.
Because of this, Sloane got overwhelmed and didn't know where to start so she went with what was most familiar to her. Ironically, it was one about anarchy.
Anarchial Recipe was, expectedly, a guide book about how to cause, what to do, and how to live in a society ran by anarchy.
In hindsight, Sloane now knew that an ideology like this is extremely stupid since a society without rules will probably be something similar to a medieval village or something similar.
Which is to say, it happened already in humanity's expansive history. And the results were not good.
Barbarism, Sloane remembered, is what people often referred to it as.
And back then, even the smallest amount of anarchy and chaos would result in ruined villages and burned cities, and that was when people lived in empires with only millions of people.
Most of the cities in the modern world had at least twenty times that.
The population was simply too large to leave without rules that dictated their every action. Laws are what prevented the common passerby to kill someone at random, not morals.
Because if morals really did make decisions, then people wouldn't cause suffering for "fun".
Humans can't do that. They would simply keep fighting...
... And that was what gave Sloane hope that there are still other people out there. Even if they didn't have the same dreams as her, they would still fight. Definitely.
Eventually, someone will find someone else to protect them and vice versa, and then they'd group up, and eventually, society would get back on track.
Eventually, things will go back to normal. She just needed to survive until then.
Everything is going back to normal. Definitely.
Right now, everything was dictated lawlessly, which meant the strong ruled and the weak followed. People died, and the outside was extremely unsafe.
Groups wanting to put order back into humanity have definitely formed- most likely from churches. According to the book, religious communes would form again, - but it'll take a while before they can influence things.
"Might makes right" includes the monsters. And with them around, humans would not be at the top of the food chain anymore. It'll be hard for things to go back to the way they were after this.
The memory of the ground shaking beneath her feet, of a rhythmic earthquake stirring the earth in a constant manner as though something large roamed outside her house was still vivid in her mind.
Whatever that was, it was definitely something that she needed to avoid no matter what.
Sloane checked her book.
Avoid dangerous things and survive for... 2 weeks. That was the least amount of time society needs to get back on track. And that was without monsters.
Luckily, Sloane had enough food and water to last her for longer than that so she didn't need to worry about starvation or dehydration for a while.
Sloane closed her book and stood up.
Besides stocking up on consumables, A.R also recommended her to start growing things. She should also dry meat and pickle vegetables for preservation.
Sloane brought Anarchial Recipe to the kitchen and with its pages guiding her, she began opening the cupboards, pantry, and the fridge for anything the book described.
Protein bars, eggtrays, flour, pancake mix, butter, cheese- thankfully, all the long lasting foodstuff the book told her to have during the start of society's collapse could be found in her kitchen.
She could make bread- should have made bread, but electricity was now gone and the oven was dead.
Thankfully, the stove was still functional so she could cook food until the gas ran out. This is assuming that she didn't pickle or turn them into jerky for preservation.
Besides those, she needed a farm or a crop box for various vegetables, the most important of which are celery, carrots, and potatoes.
Those can be planted and they'll grow easily, all she needed was water, which with the heavy rain outside, was obtainable even without her stockpile.
She should probably begin collecting them though.
Sloane grabbed the extra containers she left in the living room and placed them beneath the dripping ceiling of the garage. It would be great if she could put them directly under the water spouts but the outside was too dangerous for that to be an option.
So Sloane settled on the dripping ceiling for now.
She quickly left the garage, deciding that she'll organize the tools inside after she makes pickled veggies, salted the leftover meat to make jerky, and made crop plots for the vegetables to grow in.
Sloane began working on the first one, she grabbed several jars, poured salt water in them, and soaked all the cucumbers she had left inside before sealing it tightly.
She then did the same for the cabbages and other greens.
Sloane counted the jars as she stacked them in the basement, in total, she had 13 jars worth of pickles, which was pretty good.
Next was the jerky and after making a makeshift drying rack in the living room using hangers, nails, and string from fishing kits, she began drying around 40 pounds of meat.
Which when paired with her pickles, it should give her around a month's worth of food. Assuming she eats the bare minimum.
That was a lot. But it could be better. Growing food kind of better.
And for that, she first needed to risk her life.
Sloane got a trowel and a bucket from the basement, then she threw on her padded clothes.
She left the house with a spear on one hand and a bucket containing a trowel on the other.
The backyard was fenced over so she should be safe to go there...
Sloane stepped out the door and looked around, she found nothing but grass. The fence had been damaged, but whatever did it was now gone so she was free to dig up the dirt.
She left once her bucket was full, which she brought back to the kitchen, from there, she made crop plots with the help of the gardening guide book.
Sloane packed small tupperwares and lunch boxes with dirt for her lettuce and celery, which only needed the hard stem at the center to grow according to both Anarchial Recipe and the gardening guide book.
For the carrots and potatoes, Sloane got relatively big containers for them to grow in. She had to take multiple trips out in the backyard just to fill them so she did that last.
Sloane put the crop plots in the living room, where they had enough space for themselves and ample sunlight from the windows.
And that was her food sorted.
Sloane went back to the kitchen and cleared the dining table. Now then, she should start working on her weapons.
She made her way to the garage and began collecting the tools.
Her wounds were still aching away at her, but she didn't have time to waste, she could deal with what was happening to her body after she has weapons to defend it with.