After Sundown Read online

  The three of them entered the coolness of the house and, without asking, Carol got a couple of glasses from the cabinet, put some ice in them, and poured tea from a full pitcher she took from the refrigerator. The three of them took their seats around the table in the eat-in kitchen.

  Olivia fished her tablet out of her backpack and turned it on—then she turned a stricken expression on her older relatives. “Will this still work . . . you know, after?”

  They all looked at each other. Finally Sela lifted her shoulders. “It should. I think. Except for going online. You’ll be able to access anything that’s already on there, as long as you don’t have it plugged in when the CME hits. Make sure it’s charged before then.” She hoped she was right. The thing was, no one knew for sure, because a CME this powerful hadn’t hit since the dawn of the electronic age.

  Olivia paused, then turned off the tablet and returned it to her backpack and instead got a pad of paper and pen from the kitchen counter, where Carol kept a running grocery list. “This won’t run down my battery,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Despite the gravity of the situation, Sela and Carol both chuckled. A lot of people would be coming to the same conclusion very soon, if they hadn’t already done so.

  Olivia wrote a big “1” on the paper. “So, what should we do first?”

  “Shelter and food are the most important,” Sela said. “And we’ve got that covered, as best we can.” But there wasn’t enough food, not for the duration if it lasted a year or longer, and maybe not even enough to last until next summer when the gardens would be producing again. “I’ll get more food if I can, though. If we have enough, we’ll share with the neighbors.”

  “You should move in here with us,” Carol said firmly. “We’ll be sharing supplies anyway. That way there’ll be just one house to heat.”

  Carol’s proposal was pure common sense, but Sela’s stomach tightened at the thought of moving in with them. She liked being alone, liked the quiet. She’d never been a social butterfly, but since her divorce she seemed to need even more alone time. Adam’s betrayal and rejection had shredded both her courage and her self-confidence; building herself back took a lot of time and thinking, of just being. For a while after returning to Wears Valley to live, she’d barely been able to make herself leave the house; only the necessity of earning a living had spurred her on.

  She wasn’t adventurous. She didn’t like putting herself forward. She’d never had the yearning to do anything risky, and her refusal to do so had eventually led to Adam feeling nothing but disgust for her. She wouldn’t try strange foods, she wouldn’t go snow skiing even though Adam loved it, and she didn’t like for him to drive fast. She liked the idea of foreign travel, but when it came to actually planning a trip, she began thinking of everything that could go wrong and would eventually back out.

  She didn’t blame Adam for leaving her. She blamed herself for being such a nothing-burger. Right now she wanted to refuse Carol’s invitation/command, but the truth was that as much as she liked being alone, she wasn’t certain she could cope without electricity.

  There was the sound of a car turning in the driveway, and Carol craned to the side to look out the living room window. “It’s Barb.”

  Barb Finley was Carol’s best friend and had been for years, even before they had each been widowed. Barb was a few years older, and the two women looked as if they’d have nothing in common. Where Carol was lean, Barb was fluffy. Carol had that dashing pink streak in her hair, while Barb kept her white hair severely styled. Carol was style, Barb was comfort. But the two got along like a house on fire, and spent hours cooking together and gossiping and laughing. Sometimes Sela would take Olivia for a week and the two older women would take off for the Outer Banks. Olivia had gone with them once, and after their return had whispered to Sela that no matter what she never wanted to do that again, so Sela earned bonus points from both Carol and Olivia for stepping up and taking Olivia while the two friends went gallivanting off on their adventures.

  Carol went to the front door and opened it. “Come on in,” she called. “We’re making a list of what we need to do.” Then she returned to the kitchen to get down another glass for iced tea.

  Barb’s expression was tense as she came in the door. She was limping a little, and there was an elastic bandage around her left ankle. “What happened to your ankle?” Sela asked, getting up and moving to the other side of the table so Barb could take her chair, which was closest to her.

  “Turned it this morning when I was cutting the grass.” She sank onto the chair and wrapped her hands around the glass of tea that Carol set in front of her, but didn’t drink. She took a deep breath and her eyes filled with tears. “Is this”—she gave a distracted wave that appeared to include the universe—“thing really going to happen? I don’t know what to do. If there’s no electricity my security system won’t work; anyone can break in with no warning, and I won’t be able to call for help, either. Our cars will run out of gas, there won’t be enough food, I don’t have a fireplace for heat and can’t cut firewood anyway—”

  “You’ll move in here,” Carol promptly said, breaking into Barb’s panicked litany though she darted a concerned look at Sela even as she said it. She gave Carol a small nod, telling her it was okay she’d asked Barb instead. Okay? Sela was downright relieved.

  Barb’s face crumpled with relief. “Really? Is there room?” She looked at Sela. “I thought you’d—”

  “No, I’m staying in my house,” Sela said firmly. “Carol and I are combining supplies and I’ll eat here, but I’m sleeping at home.”

  “Won’t you be safer here?” Bless her, despite her deep gratitude at being invited to stay with Carol, she was persistent in trying to take care of Sela, too.

  “I’ll be as safe as I’ve ever been, living alone,” Sela said practically. She had a small portable generator, but it made more sense to move it to Carol’s house since three people would be here, and she herself would mostly be here except for the nights. She would keep warm with her wood-burning fireplace for heat, backed up by her kerosene heater. She’d be stingy with the heater because she didn’t have an unlimited supply of kerosene . . . and that reminded her they should get down to business. In a pinch, she could share a room with Olivia or Carol, but that would be a last resort. She needed her own space.

  She tapped Olivia’s sheet of paper. “Number two: we need more wood. Oh crap! I forgot about getting gas and kerosene! I’ll fill a few five-gallon cans at the store, so we’ll have enough on hand to run the generator until we use everything in the fridge and freezer, but we have to buy kerosene.”

  Olivia dutifully wrote it down, and the three older women looked at each other with worry in their eyes. Everyone else would be thinking the same thing, and the window for acquiring those supplies was rapidly closing.

  “Dear God,” Sela said, getting to her feet. “I need to be working on that right now.”

  “I’ll help,” Carol said, also rising. “First things first. Barb, go back to your house and get what you want, bring it back here. Olivia, go with her to help. Bring all your food, Barb, batteries, flashlights, oil lamps—”

  “And ammunition and whiskey,” Sela added, with a quick smile at her aunt.

  “I don’t have any ammunition,” Barb said smartly, and smiled. “Get all the produce you can grab, and we’ll work all night canning it. I have lots of jars and lids. I meant to put up a lot of food this summer but always found something more fun to do. That’ll teach me.”

  All over the valley, Sela thought, people were probably coming to the same conclusion and hauling out their pressure cookers. She hoped they were, anyway. She’d never done any canning herself, but that was about to change.

  “Chop-chop,” Carol said, and they all headed out on their assigned errands.

  Carol had two fuel cans at her house and got them; Sela had one at hers, which she fetched, and five new ones in the store. She stopped there, darted in to get them, then sh
e and Carol evenly divided the cans and went their separate ways.

  She half expected someone to pull up to the door, looking to clean off her shelves. But the cars that were on the road didn’t even slow down. There weren’t enough supplies in her little store to tempt anyone. If there was, she wouldn’t be heading to town herself.

  Sela could barely pay attention to her driving. Her thoughts were doing the crazed rabbit thing again. What else would they need? Duct tape. She didn’t know why, but duct tape seemed important. Salt, lots of salt; sugar, flour, cornmeal, powdered eggs, powdered milk, any basic food stuff that wouldn’t need refrigeration. Anything canned—literally, anything.

  She imagined before this was over, people would be eating whatever they could get, even things they never would have touched before. She’d bought what seemed like a ton of stuff earlier in the day, but viewing it from the other side of the official warning, she knew they’d need more.

  Town was chaos. The grocery store parking lots were full, with people driving up and down the aisles looking for parking spaces. She couldn’t find a break in traffic to make the left turn, so went up to the traffic light—for some reason people were still obeying the lights—and circled around to enter the parking lot. It was a useless effort; there was literally nowhere to park. She spotted some open space on the grass in front of Taco Bell and managed to squeeze in there before someone else grabbed the slot. So what if she was on the side of the road? So what if she got a ticket? She’d never had a ticket before, but this seemed like a good time to take the risk.

  Her heart beating hard with urgency, she ran across the scorching heat of the parking lot and threw herself into the blast freezer of the grocery store, headlong into what seemed like just short of a riot. The aisles were packed with people grabbing whatever they could, wheeling carts left and right with none of the usual grocery store method. Barb had said get all the produce she could, but the produce area was so crowded she couldn’t squeeze in. Skirting the edges, she took whatever she could reach. Bypassing the bread aisle, she then went to the canned goods and repeated the process, spurning nothing, getting what she could. Next was the baking goods aisle for staples like flour, sugar, powdered milk, and all the salt she could grab while other shoppers were doing the same thing. She was bumped, shoved, pushed, and once knocked into the shelving; she barely kept herself from going down.

  The self-checkout lanes were closed down, and she stood in line for forty minutes before she got to the counter. It helped that some people were being refused checkout because they wanted to use either credit cards or checks. Handmade “Cash Only” signs hung above every register. They left their full shopping carts where they were standing, and the people still in line raided the carts to fill their own needs.

  Thank heavens she’d hit the bank earlier and had cash on her, because normally she wouldn’t have had much more than twenty bucks or so. If she were forced to abandon her supplies . . . she didn’t know what she would do. She was already tense with stress and anxiety, fighting the sense of impending doom.

  After paying, she wheeled the cart across the parking lot, jerking it over the curb onto the grass, and reached her white Honda CR-V. After the chill of the grocery store the sunny heat felt good on her skin. She put the groceries in the back seat, because the cargo area was full of empty fuel cans, and by the time she’d finished the chill had gone and she was beginning to sweat.

  Heavy traffic snaked down the highway, as well as around and around the parking lot, and she had no idea how she was going to find a way to squeeze into a lane. She saw tense, almost predatory faces turned toward her as vehicles inched past; there was no way she could return the cart to the grocery store and leave her vehicle unattended; it would be broken into and her supplies stolen within half a minute. Her heart pounded from stress. If it was this bad now, what would it be like when there actually was no power, no food to buy?

  The highway was impossible, so she bumped over the curb into the Taco Bell parking lot, and managed to weave her way, through parking lots and side streets, to a gas station that sold kerosene. The gas pumps were clogged, but she didn’t need gas, thank God.

  She was able to park next to the Dumpster, close to the kerosene pump. A whipcord lean white-haired man wearing overalls and a stained John Deere cap was at the pump, an unreadable expression on his face as he watched the parking lot turmoil. Local farmer, she thought. The old-timers like him would likely be the ones who got this area through the approaching crisis, because they knew how to grow food and how to get by without all the modern conveniences.

  She noted the cost per gallon of the kerosene and did some quick math: she had four five-gallon fuel cans, for a total of twenty gallons. She pulled out the appropriate cash as she darted into the station and got in line to pay. Just as she had earlier, the station manager had stopped credit card payments. People were cussing, some under their breaths and some not, as they handed over their cash and complained that now they wouldn’t have the money to get something to eat on their way home. Mostly tourists, she thought, catching a variety of accents. They were rightfully in a panic to get home; some of them might live so far away they wouldn’t make it.

  She kept an eye on her vehicle, making sure no one approached it. The people here weren’t thinking about groceries, though, they were thinking about gasoline. Turning, she looked at the rows of shelving in the store: mostly empty.

  The sense of unreality was so strong she wondered if there were camera crews hidden somewhere, secretly recording everything, because she felt as if she were in the middle of a disaster movie. No buildings were falling sideways, nothing was exploding, no one was screaming or fighting each other, but the tension and barely restrained panic were pushing at everyone. Tension crawled along her veins and she tried to think what she would do if someone did start fighting here in this crowded store. How would she get out? Should she get behind some shelving, or duck down to the floor and try to crawl out? Would she get trampled?

  But nothing happened. Despite the tension, the line to pay inched forward. When she reached the clerk, a middle-aged woman whose own face mirrored the stress Sela felt, she handed over the money and said, “Kerosene. I have four five-gallon cans.”

  The woman nodded, and rang up the sale. Behind Sela, someone said, “I’ll give you fifty bucks for those cans.”

  Sela didn’t dare look back. She darted out the door and over to her vehicle, where she dragged out the fuel cans, lined them up, and filled them while keeping a weather eye out for anyone approaching her from behind. She’d never fought for anything or with anyone in her life, but she’d fight for these cans of kerosene.

  Finally—finally!—she wrestled the heavy cans back into her SUV and slammed the hatch. With her peripheral vision she saw a man heading her way and she quickly used her remote to lock the vehicle, securing everything until she could get to the driver’s door. Hearing the beep of the horn that signaled the lock engaging, the man halted, and turned away. Breathing fast, Sela unlocked the door, slid in, and quickly locked the vehicle again. She started the motor and the air-conditioning blew in her face, evaporating the sweat.

  Slowly she reached out and turned off the air-conditioning. Mileage mattered, now more than ever.

  The highways were clogged; she could see police and deputy cars crawling from motel to motel, blasting on their bullhorns that all non-locals should check out and get to their homes while they still could. At least the off-season had begun with Labor Day; the Rod Run had provided another spurt of tourists, but the crush had dropped drastically after that—at least until October brought the tree colors and tourists returned. There wouldn’t be an October crush this year, she thought. But even during the off-season there were always tourists, and the weekends were crowded. She shuddered to think what the traffic would have been like if this had happened during one of the busy times.

  The only way she could get home was to wind her away around secondary streets and roads until she hit Goose Gap
. Even the secondary roads were crowded, though mostly with locals who knew how to avoid the traffic on the main drag. Eventually she had to hit the highway, though, and she sat for several minutes before there was a gap big enough for her to shoot into.

  Fifteen minutes later she pulled into Carol’s driveway and sat there shuddering in relief. Carol was already back, as well as Barb and Olivia. Olivia came outside and down the steps, coming to help her carry in supplies, and when she looked at that innocent, pretty young face, Sela thought again that, come hell or high water, she would protect her family—no matter what it cost her.

  Carol had done better at gathering produce than Sela had. “I stopped at a couple of roadside stands,” she said. “I knew town would be a madhouse.”

  That was an understatement. Sela didn’t tell her aunt that she’d actually been frightened. Nothing had happened, and the man who had been approaching her SUV might have wanted to ask her where she got the fuel cans . . . though he had turned around when she locked the doors.

  Carol and Barb were already shucking corn, and a pressure cooker filled with jars of tomatoes was doing its thing. Olivia got some sterilized jars out of the dishwasher, put another load of jars in, and started the machine. Sela got a glass of iced tea, guzzled it, then poured another glass before she sat down at the table to join the others in food prep. Everything they could do, even if they had to stay up all night, would help see them through the crisis.

  Olivia helped, too, though she kept looking things up on her phone and detailing what dedicated preppers did. Some of the tips were good, some impossible at this late date. She also made a plate of sandwiches and put it on the table, so they could eat while they worked.

  Yet another pressure cooker full was cooling down, and the sun had dipped behind the mountains to finally give them some relief from the heat, when Olivia looked out the window and said, “Gran, there’s some people out there.”

  “What people?” Carol and Sela both went to the windows to look out, and saw a knot of people out front, with some others straggling in from their houses up and down the road. Barb shoved out of her chair and peered over Olivia’s shoulder.