[raketenjagdpanzer]

Dan trudged along the cracked, weed-grown asphalt of 17-92 towards Orlando. Sunlight beat down, but a broad boonie hat kept the worst of it off of Dan's face and neck. Slung on his back was a mesh bag filled with oranges, so large and heavy that it almost dragged the ground. Dan stumbled and cursed; it was another seven miles to the market in downtown Orlando. Seven miles of carrying nearly fifty pounds of oranges, tangerines and grapefruit that in all reality, nobody but the fuel guy or booze merchants would buy, and they paid for shit: citrus, in Florida, was essentially a weed even after the storms and freezes.

Still, it was all Dan had left to trade. Looters had stripped all the houses from Altamonte to Sanford - unless you were in the market for high end electronics that had long ago ceased to function. There was plenty of that to be had! Computers, VCRs, laserdisk and DVD players, TVs... Scavengers wouldn't touch the stuff unless they had to move it to get to more valuable things.

Dan stumbled again, twisting his knee. The weight of the sack bore him down and he ground his palms on the hot asphalt. He sat up and examined his calloused hands. They were pocked with small abrasions, but no cuts. These days, a deep enough cut could be a death sentence. Hydrocortisone, peroxide, even "clean" alcohol was as scarce as hens' teeth unless you were admitted into a hospital, and that was a grueling wait outside in the heat and humidity. Unless you were seriously bleeding, pregnant, or otherwise in dire need of medical attention odds are you'd end up sitting out there while a charge nurse took your name, your condition and told you to come back "later". So tending to one's injuries was a must.

Dan regarded a skull, sitting in the weeds in the middle lane. Join me for a spell? the jawless apparition seemed to ask. Near the skull lay a cell phone: a fancy one, by the logo. Dan picked it up and turned it over and over. The sun had permanently bleached the plastic case, and burned the LCD screen black. The denaturing process had left the plastic brittle and the once-upon-a-time expensive status symbol crumbled in Dan's hands, exposing the greenish circuit board within. Gossamer-thin tracings of wire were etched into the surface, a chip of blue plastic sat underneath a wire retainer clip.

SIM card Dan mused. And...and...he held the board closer to his face, shielding it in the shade of his broad-brimmed hat. A glint of yellow: that unmistakable, precious yellow. Less than the husk of a grain of rice, but there nonetheless. That was something traders did buy. A few ounces of gold could get you firearms, antibiotics, fuel...Dan took his multi-tool out of his pocket and worked all the flakes of gold off that he could. The slivers of alloy were so thin they threatened to blow away, but he carefully slid them into the plastic baggie that held his ration card.

Dan began to think. If he could find one, why not more? He looked carefully around the street. No, no more abandoned phones...but a phone was only one piece of electronics. Dan looked up a side-street and jogged towards the subdivision entrance a few yards down the road. Abandoned houses with smashed windows and caved in doors lined the road. In a heap on one lawn lay PC cases, just visible through the elephant grass almost entirely blocking the road. He ran back and shouldered the bag of fruit and started back towards the distant towers of downtown Orlando.

I'll have to get me a pan, he thought. Big flat one, a wok. The Viets in Little Saigon are always selling them. A pan, then build a fire underneath it, melt the stuff loose off the boards, the base metals'll separate on their own...

Dan's life was about to become much, much better.