13) There and hopefully back again.

The Coyotes got some more hot dogs to eat after I roasted a baking pan of chicken breasts to feed me over the next few days.

Yes, I cleaned the pan first, along with everything else in the sink. And the various dishes they had been drinking from.

I rinsed out the big mixing bowl I normally used for fruit and filled it up with water for the moment, after switching the fruit over to the aluminum pot. I didn’t use it to cook soup anymore since noodles were always bad for my blood sugar, and broths had too much salt.

After dinner, I headed down to the basement and inventoried my tools.

Once I had kept them out in the garage, so I could work outside in some privacy. Beryl seemed to understand that if I was out working in another building I didn't want to be bothered, but in the basement, she felt I was fair game to natter at.

But then the neighborhood had gone downhill, and I moved everything inside the house other than some gardening stuff. And left the garage door wide open so anyone could wander in and help themselves instead of breaking the garage windows again to get inside looking for things to steal.

No one ever bothered to steal hoses and sprinklers when they could see inside the open door that there wasn’t anything else in there. Or going around the back of the garage to the shed with the shovels and other garden tools.

Criminals are a lazy and stupid lot. At least the ones who go looking for something worth stealing in a neighborhood like this.

Seriously, if you live here and have to steal because you don’t have any money, go rob a richer neighborhood because no one else here has any money either. Dumb asses.

Come morning I was out on the back porch with my drill plugged into an extension cord, drilling holes into an old metal trash can lid.

The trash can it had gone to was long since rusted away, but I had kept the lid. There was room in the garage and no one had ever taken an interest in stealing it either.

Some nuts, bolts, and a few strips of metal with more holes drilled through them, and the lid was pretty firmly attached to the front of the shopping cart. The top of it was up high enough that I wasn't too worried about a Lasher coming over the front again.

Not that I was going to worry about them too much on my next grocery run. This was for inside the Dungeon.

I had done some research last night. And found out a few things.

"Inventory." I dropped a handful of loose parts away… somewhere.

No item slots, which I wasn’t sure I understood but some people were bitching about not having, but the magic storage did have a weight limit. About sixty pounds worth of weight, which turned out to be three kitchen chairs, an aluminum pot full of fruit, and other assorted items in my kitchen stuffed into it until I began to feel the weight of everything else I tried to add pulling down on me somehow.

Sixty pounds was a guestimate of roughly seven and a half pounds per point of Insight according to Dungeon Dan, a seventy eight year old former Marine in Los Vegas who had already hit two Dungeons with some other former servicemen.

He was giving out some really useful information, but I still wasn't going to like or subscribe to his channel. I don't do that. But I did put a link to his channel on my bookmark bar.

I couldn't take a hit from a Lasher, so I needed something between me and them, thus what I was calling my battle cart.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I’m not married to the name.

As long as it bought me a second to get a shot off, assuming someone gave me a gun, it would be worth all the effort.

I also added an old coat hook screwed into a block of wood inside the cart that would hold one of my ‘in case of blackout' kerosene lanterns for light if there wasn't any inside. While a few old coffee cans of ball bearing from the Lannis factory I had kept around in the back of my old hatchback to give me extra weight and would do the same for the cart.

You needed that weight to give you traction on slippery roads in winter, or for shoving a shopping cart into the face of an evil monkey in your Golden Years.

The putter was coming with me, as well as the orange blood stained chunk of concrete. You never know when you might need something to chuck at something’s head.

Aside from that, I had a tattered old imitation leather coat left over from when my uncle used to live here. It smelled kinda funny and some of the stitching was coming loose, but it might slow down a claw, more from hanging loose on me than from any toughness it might have once had.

Still, it was dark leather, so if I was going to die, I could at least go out looking like a badass. Even if it was a homeless looking one.

Below the coat, I had on the same hoodie and blue jeans as yesterday. And the orthopedic shoes, after all, it was a two and a half mile hike to the dungeon.

My old steel toed work boots were in the cart for once I got there. Being able to kick something in the head was more important than comfort after I got there.

I suppose I could have made a call, to city hall, or maybe the police, and tried to get a ride there. After all, they want people like me to go in there, but…

It just doesn't seem like anyone would be all that organized yet. Who in public service was going to take responsibility for carting my wrinkly old ass over there knowing I might die and they could get blamed?

No, two miles was a pretty long hike for me, but my Health was up four points. I thought I could handle it.

I added a few old pop bottles into the magic storage after filling them with water though.

For the first time in years, I had set an alarm, and gotten to bed before midnight.

I ended up waking up just a little bit before the alarm went off, and had gotten everything done on my ‘Get ready to go’ list before noon, but only because I had stayed away from the computer.

I did leave a handwritten letter in a sealed envelope propped up on my keyboard, with Beatrice Potter written on the front, her address, and a forever stamp on it.

Poor kid's mom had gone back to her maiden name and left her kid stuck with a name that sounded like she was going to grow up to write a children's book about bunnies or something.

If I don't come back, hopefully, someone will be decent enough to tuck the letter behind my mailbox.

Then it just needed a mailman who was still willing to work this route.

Well they do hire temps, so some poor son of a bitch will get assigned to it I’m sure.

Then I set off, with a coyote and two rapidly tiring out pups behind me. And a sad looking little green skinned girl giving me a little wave.

I sighed and waved back before turning to look at Wylina. “You can’t follow me inside. You got pups and need to either wait for me to get back, or head out of here. The Dungeons are all appearing wherever there are people. Head northwest where people are thin on the ground, if you get far enough you're free and clear."

I pointed to which way she had to go, but the stupid thing just kept following me. After a bit, I put the pups in the cart. With my badass coat folded up so they didn't have to lie on the rusting metal mesh.

Well, at least it had already smelled.

“Stop sniffing at my boots Chubby. People will talk.”