The Things In The Museum
Raymond Daley
Copyright 27/4/15 by Raymond Daley
We rediscovered ourselves, as we walked those hallowed halls.
EARLY MAN EXHIBIT, FIRST FLOOR
"I'm sick of sleeping on the floor Phil."
"Those furs look like they'd be comfy? What say we snag 'em, Tasha?"
"But it's a Museum, Phil. There's a barrier, we can't just step over that!"
I just gave her one of those looks. "That's old world thinking there, Tasha. Concepts like that died out with electricity. Now we have to take everything we can use. And we can use those furs. And that spear. And that flint axe."
Even then, despite her tiredness from three nights sleeping on a cold floor, I could see her trying not to roll her eyes at me. "But if we take these, where does it end Phil? Next we'll be stealing tomahawks from the Native American Exhibit!"
Those were made of metal. And I bet they were sharp, better at cutting wood than these flint ones. I tried to hide the smile on my face. Too late.
"We'll go there tomorrow, Phil. I'm tired now. Let's just crash here for tonight?"
Tasha always slept easily, no matter where she found herself. I left her snuggling into the pile of furs and crept further down the corridor. I found some full vending machines there.
The flint axe soon made light work of the glass on the front so at least we'd have food for the next few days. I felt a bit guilty leaving the glass on the floor so I kicked it all under the machines. At least no-one would get cut now.
*
As always, I woke to Tasha sitting next to me, fully awake. "Morning sleepy head. I let you have a lie in. Where did you find all these goodies?" She'd already eaten three candy bars and a couple of packs of potato chips.
"Vending machine down the corridor." I smiled, still half asleep.
"How much money did this cost?" typical Tasha, the innocent.
"Nothing," I said, "I raided the coin fountain. It's not like the museum are ever going to collect that money now, are they?" I noted she didn't ask me how the machine was still working without any power. Questions like that generally don't tend to occur to Tasha.
"We moving on again today, Phil?" she asked me.
"Yeah, I think we exhausted this room, as far as potential resources go. Your idea about tomahawks wasn't a bad one either, even if it was a joke. It's only the next hall along, so we should be able to carry everything we need with us."
I ended up putting all the food into one of the skins and tying it up like a make-shift sack. Carrying it all was a lot heavier than the dozen or so trips I'd made back and forth from the vending machines last night. I made sure we were going away from that.
I know how Tasha feels about blatant destruction. I'm comfortable having her believe the lie that I used stolen money to get our bounty. She's sure to work it out on her own eventually though. Tasha may have an extremely slow train of thought but she'll reach that conclusion in the end.
My estimate on that? About three days, to a week.
*
NATIVE AMERICAN EXHIBIT, FIRST FLOOR
We've been pretty comfortable in here for the last week or so. We found more furs and made ourselves some comfortable nests to sleep in. We slept inside one of the teepees too. I figured that as it was a smaller space, our body heat would warm it up over time. It got pretty cosy in there after a few hours.
I snagged several hand axes, some knives for me and Tasha and we were able to have a fire too. The people who'd made the exhibit had thought to include an air duct over the fire-pit. Even without electricity running the fan, the ducting still pulled away most of the smoke. There's always the window if it gets too smoky.
The water pouches I found were pretty nice, I gathered up a whole load of the water from one of the fountains and we boiled it then filled as many of the skins as we could. More than enough drinking water to keep us two going.
While junk food is a fun snack, it's hardly enough to sustain a grown adult over an entire day. After two days Tasha looked at me and said "Is there anything else to eat? I'm tired of chips."
I checked the map in the corridor and hunted out a concession stand, he'd been selling burgers and hot dogs. The fridge had been off for a while but with the heavy door still shut, most of the meat hadn't thawed.
I took just enough for two days, figuring it wasn't going to go bad that quickly, even if it did thaw. I made certain that the door was closed just as tightly when I left it too. The guy still had some whole onions, mushrooms and cheese too. Another cart close by had been selling baked potatoes. Some of the raw ones were still edible too, so I snagged those.
We threw the whole lot into some water and cooked us up a sort of stew. It tasted great and really filled us up too.
Even delicious stew gets old after a few days. I made a few trips back to the concession stand and took the hotplate off the burger stand so we were able to make burgers and hot dogs. for a few days, we even cooked French fries on it too. I bet it's the first time anyone ever ate burger and fries in a teepee!