How It All Goes Down
Section 181
- The Man puts the pistol next to his sleeping son and leaves to investigate the house and barn.
Section 182
- He walks through a ruined orchard to the barn.
Section 183
- He climbs up to the hay loft and chews some seeds.
Section 184
- The Man walks to the house. There's a kid's bike in the yard.
- In the kitchen, he climbs onto the countertops and feels for anything in the cabinets. He finds a packet of grape drink. (Apparently, Kool-Aid didn't pay Mr. McCarthy enough for a product placement here.)
Section 185
- The Man looks through all the rooms but doesn't find much: a spoon, a screwdriver, a rusty box cutter. Using his Jason Bourne skills, The Man opens the box cutter and finds four new blades inside. Score. Still no food, though.
Section 186
- On the way back to the barn, The Man smells cows but realizes cows must be extinct.
- He steps on something in the orchard. An apple. The Man eats the apple ("seeds and all") and collects more from the high grass (186.1).
Section 187
- The Man goes back to the mudroom off the kitchen. Then he remembers something. Wasn't there a drainpipe and a trellis? He goes to investigate. The drainpipe runs down into a concrete tank beside the porch. It's got fresh water in it. Lucky again.
Section 188
- The Man goes back to the mudroom for the mason jars. He cleans them, fills two jars with water, then sets out for the woods with his pockets full of apples.
Section 189
- The Man hurries back to the woods. The Boy is still asleep.
Section 190
- They eat apples and sip water all afternoon.
- The Man mixes the grape drink into The Boy's water. To The Boy, it's got to taste like sweet nectar.
- The Man sleeps a little. Then they go collect the rest of the apples and more water.
- They head out to the road.