Heartland Junk (Part II): Sanctuary Read Online Free PDF

over everything like a funeral shroud, the supermarket was, well, exciting. Rows and rows of food and packaged items as sparkly as the day they'd been stocked on the shelves. No employees, no customers, no looters. All of it laid out just for us to grab. Rivet wheeled a shopping cart up, grinning.
                  "Cool, isn't it? Once you get past that "wanting to vomit" thing, I mean."
                  "Hell yeah," I said. " Hell yeah. "
                  "You got that crazy look, Rayman. What's spinning through that blocky head of yours?"
                  "We'll need two carts."
                  I'd worked out a mental shopping list, and I hoped to God I wouldn't forget anything important. Rivet, true to his word, followed me dutifully as I scoured the aisles. He may not have much going for him, but he was a man of his word.
                  I went down the baking aisle first, and by the time we reached the other side, my shopping cart was already filled to the brim with sugar. I paused at the end to scoop all the baker's yeast over top the blue-and-white bags in the cart. Paper packets and glass jars tumbled and slid into the cracks, and I turned to Rivet and said, "Maybe three carts."
                  "Baking a cake?" Rivet asked.
                  "Best cake you've ever had." He already knew what I was doing, so I don't know why he kept up the charade.
                  I took my loaded cart to the front and came back with a fresh one, then led Rivet down the spice aisle. Plastic and glass bottles of poppy seeds were the first to clatter onto the cart's mesh bottom, followed by nutmeg and saffron. Opposite the spice rack, in the same aisle, was a long line of bagged rice. On the top shelf, though, the store stocked their specialty grains for the health nuts. Millet, quinoa, hulled barley, flax and chia seeds.
                  "Millet, barley, and quinoa," I told Rivet, and began pulling bags into my cart. He followed suit.
                  "You think Jennie's fine back there?" Rivet asked. "What the fuck is going on with those two?"
                  "Jennie can take care of herself," I assured him, finishing up with the barley and starting on the boxes of quinoa. Rivet picked one up and read the label. "Quin-owa," he pronounced. "I don't remember this. Were you experimenting behind my back?"
                  "Keen-wa," I corrected. "And maybe just a little, after you took the job at the recycling plant."
                  "Bastard," Rivet said good-naturedly. "Here we go." He turned and, using the shelves like a ladder, climbed to the top, eight feet off the ground. Rice and bags of dry beans spilled out onto the tile floor under his feet. "Gimme a target," he said, reaching on the top shelf and stepping behind all the grains. I wheeled my shopping cart into the center of the aisle, and Rivet bent at the waist and scooped forward with both hands, sending an avalanche of packages raining all around the cart. Only about half of them went in.
                  "Yeah, that's efficient," I called, then jumped back as another round of quinoa and millet flooded the aisle.
                  "Good show, old boy," Rivet drawled, suddenly British. He began dancing along the shelf, kicking away bags of grain and flour that floated through the air like snow. "Siiiiinging in the rain," he crooned. Whack. A bag of flour soared over two aisles, leaving a plume of white behind it. "Just siiinging in the raiiin!" Thwock. A bag of rice split down the center and the hard white grains skittered like shotgun pellets against the tile floor.
                  "Will you get the fuck down and help me?" I shouted, laughing. What a dipshit. He'd already pranced his way down the length of the aisle, and as he pirouetted and came back toward me, the entire row of shelves