Ghosts and Old Memories (A Pandemic Story) - Part 2

WOW! What a response to the first part of this story! Thank you to everyone who read, commented, and upvoted on the first part. If you missed it, you can find it here: https://steemit.com/story/@mwoodall/ghosts-and-old-memories-a-pandemic-story-part-1

I'm using these stories as an opportunity to improve my writing skills and help to build the world of my novel. You will meet many of the characters that are part of my novel's world, though none of them are main characters. These short stories are exercises designed to help me bring more life and vibrancy to secondary characters. Please let me know what you think, and I will answer every comment (as long as you give me something more than "Good Story".

The next morning, Eric woke to absolute silence, just as he had ever since the first weeks of the pandemic. After a breakfast of bacon and eggs in a cast iron skillet over his camp stove. His first order of business was to finish moving his belongings out of the truck and into the building. After finding a place for his relatively meager belongings, which wasn't all that hard given the size of the building, he set out to discover his new home.

He checked all the offices on the upper floors, moving everything he thought he could use into locations that were easily accessible. He found a surprising amount of alcohol, most of it in the 5th floor executive offices, but an excessive amount in many office drawers. Anything that he could use for warmth, he moved into his new room on the first floor. He'd considered moving upstairs to use the laws of physics to help stay warm, but decided against it. At least on the first floor he could hear when someone was in the building and could get out in a hurry if he needed to.

On the first floor, he struck gold at the back of the building. Walking through a pair of doors marked "Lunch Room", he found an atrium space with large windows that let him see a large expanse of the space behind the building. He made a mental note to check how easy it was to see inside the next time he went out.

More important than the glass-walled room, he discovered a storage room filled to the brim with canned and dried goods. There was enough food in here to last him for three or four months. And with the frozen food he'd brought with him, he would eat well for the forseeable future.

Being an office, there was a large supply of pens and paper, and he spent the rest of the day taking stock of his food and supplies. He had brought some frozen garlic and shrimp with him, and after skipping lunch, he feasted on garlic shrimp with some pasta he'd found in the pantry. He knew that he needed to get out and check the other buildings over the next few days, but tonight he just wanted to make this place feel a little more like home.

After supper, he pulled out his knife and began to carefully open one of the boxes he'd brought with him. He laughed out loud as he realized he had marked the box "Fragile"...as if anyone other than himself would have touched the box. It's not like there were any moving companies anymore. But, it was worth checking the nearby warehouses to see if there was furniture in any of them.

As he opened the flaps of the box, he carefully lifted each frame from the box and looked at the pictures contained within them. The smiling faces of his wife and daughter looked back at him. The emptiness in his heart was a palpable ache. It had taken him weeks to come to terms with their loss, but he eventually had decided that he needed to make the best of the time he had left. Despite the anguish of losing them, he knew that they would have wanted him to find a way to go on.

After carefully arranging them on the office desk, he settled in for another night. As he lay down, he pondered his next course of action. As he saw it, he had two options. The first was that he could bunker down, keep a low profile, and hope that nobody would find him. This was the safer option, but it didn't feel like the right thing for him to do.

Instead, he decided that he would make this as pleasant a place as possible. He would start with making it obvious that there was someone living here. He'd noticed some snow removal equipment sitting on the edge of one of the parking lots. Tomorrow, clearing the parking lots would be his first priority.

The next morning, after breakfast, he went out and found the tractor buried under the snow. Seeing the depth of the snowfall, he didn't have much hope that it would start but he had to try something.

Much to his surprise, the motor turned over on the first try. After a few more tries, the engine sputtered to life with the smell of cold diesel fuel. After twenty minutes of trying, he'd finally figured out how to run the tractor and started to dig out the rest of the snow removal equipment. A few hours later, he'd cleared most of the parking lot and decided to try his luck with the large snow plow to speed things along. The tractor was helpful for deep snow, but it didn't move a lot of snow.

He checked the fuel gauge and saw that it was perilously close to the "E". He had seen a large steel tank near where the tractor had been parked and made his way back over to it. Pulling the nozzle from its holder, he filled the tank on the tractor and then drove over to the large truck parked nearby.

As he pulled the tractor around the corner, he froze in the seat. There, in the distance at the entrance to the business park was another vehicle.

To Be Continued...
Image Sources:
https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1348125
http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Cold-Digger-Backhoe-Snowplow-Tractor-Loader-Snow-87981