Chapter One #3
“The news hasn’t hit yet,” he continued. His voice was deep, a little rough, as if he didn’t talk much and needed to clear
his throat. “But it will, maybe in a few hours, maybe tomorrow, depending on how on the ball those responsible for the alert
are.” Small muscles in his neck and jaw clenched a little. “They’re pretty much never on the ball, so—” He shrugged.
She still had no idea what he was talking about. “What news? What kind of alert?” she asked.
“There’s a solar storm headed our way. A CME.”
“A what?”
“Coronal mass ejection.” The words were clipped. “A big one. If it’s as bad as predicted, the power grid will go down.”
“We’ll have a power outage.” They lived in the mountains. Power outages were a fact of life, though their local utility was
a good one.
A hint of impatience flared across his expression. He looked as if he already regretted stopping to talk. “A power outage
that will likely last for months, if not a year or longer.”
She almost recoiled. And there it was, the big flaw, and one she hadn’t expected. Drink too much, financially irresponsible,
smoke too much weed—those were things she saw every day that kept her from accepting what few invitations came her way. This
was way out there. He was a survivalist / conspiracy theorist. No fine ass or muscled, tattooed arms or even pretty eyes could
make up for that fault.
“Get all the cash you can,” he continued, his reluctance so obvious it was as if he was having to push the words out. “Stock
up on staples, canned goods, batteries.” Then he’d evidently had enough because he ended with an impatient, “Just Google it.”
The back door opened and behind them Aunt Carol called out a friendly “Hello.” Jernigan’s gaze flashed to her and evidently
that was his cue to leave, two people being one too many, because he pushed through the front door and headed for his truck.
Well, that had been weird.
Carol glanced through the front window as Jernigan stowed his groceries in the truck cab then began pumping his allotment
of gas. “Man, I just missed the hottie. I shouldn’t have taken so much time with my hair.” She flicked her fingertips at her
short bleached blond locks that were highlighted with a streak of cotton candy pink, and batted her blue eyes. And then she
laughed. Carol had a fantastic laugh, rollicking and infectious; she put everything she had into it.
Sela cleared her throat. “He just told me we’re about to get hit with a solar storm that might knock the power out for months.”
It sounded just as ridiculous coming out of her mouth as it had coming out of his. And she didn’t refer to him as “the hottie”
even though she agreed with the description, because that would only spur Aunt Carol to start prodding her to ask him out,
as if she’d ever asked out a man in her life.
Carol made a snorting sound as she retrieved a broom from the utility closet. She helped out at the store on occasion, usually
early in the day before Olivia, the fifteen-year-old granddaughter she’d raised from the age of five, got out of school. As
she began to sweep, she sighed. “Damn it. Why are all the good-looking men nuts? I should have known he was one of those when
he bought that old place on Cove Mountain. Who wants to live in such an isolated place alone? Why? And then he trucked up
all those solar panels, and I hear he has a ham radio.” She glanced up at Sela. “Don’t judge me. I’m not a horrible gossip,
but people talk. And I listen.”
Sela wasn’t sure when having a ham radio had become a sign of being a nut; she knew at least one other person in the valley
who owned one. The thing was, Jernigan had never seemed like a nut to her—the opposite, in fact. He struck her as a man who
had dealt with some hard realities.
She leaned on the front counter while she tried to square her instincts with her doubts. What if—? “What if he’s right?” It
was an alarming idea, one she hesitated to voice. Immediately she had to fight down a sense of panic, because she couldn’t
even imagine what life would be like without electricity for months.
Carol stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom. She wasn’t much wider than that broom, truth be told. She rolled her eyes
and made a face. “I still have my Y2K windup radio. You were a kid when the calendar went from 1999 to 2000, so you might
not have paid any attention to all the hysteria, but seriously, there were people who thought the same thing would happen
when computers tried and failed to make the switch. Banks would collapse. Power plants would go offline. Chaos! Pfft.” She
started sweeping again. “Nothing happened. I’d stocked up on enough toilet paper I didn’t have to buy any for a year. And
I have a nifty windup radio for emergencies, not that I’ve ever needed it.”
Maybe Carol was right, and nothing would happen.
Then again . . . what if it did? She’d be silly if she acted on the warning of a man she barely knew and nothing happened,
but if she didn’t act and his warning was right on target, then she was stupid.
She’d rather be silly than stupid. Silly was embarrassing at worst, while stupid could be deadly. That wasn’t a chance she
was willing to take.
She grabbed a shopping basket and started filling it with a few essentials. She wouldn’t clean off the shelves, wouldn’t lock
the front door and close for the day, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a few things set back, things that she’d need anyway, even
if they weren’t used right away.
While Sela was grabbing some tuna and canned chicken, Carol decided to sweep down the canned meat aisle. After watching her
for a few seconds, Carol made another scoffing sound. “If you’re preparing for doomsday, don’t forget to pick up some mayo.”
“I won’t. I’m just getting what we’ll use anyway. If nothing happens, then no big deal. I can put everything back on the shelves.”
She walked up and down the aisles, her mind buzzing. She liked to be organized and controlled, but abruptly she felt neither.
Everything around her was the same, but she felt lost. She didn’t know what to do, couldn’t get her mind around the scope
of what he’d said could happen, so she concentrated on what he’d actually said. She had some cash, but not enough to get them
through a long-term disaster. What good would cash do anyway? But he’d said get cash, so she’d get cash. If the solar storm
happened and the grid went down, the way Jernigan said it might, she wouldn’t be able to access her bank. The credit and debit
card charges she had in her cash register would be worthless.
“Just for today,” she said in a voice just loud enough for Carol to hear, “we’ll take cash only. Tell everyone the credit
card reader is out of order.” She hadn’t taken checks for years, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
“What about the gas pumps?”
She thought about it for a minute. Tourists would be headed for home, if Jernigan was right and an alert went out. At least,
she assumed so. She would, if she was away on vacation; she’d burn the highway up getting home. The tourists would need gas.
Everyone would need gas. “We’ll leave them, for now.” She didn’t want people who didn’t have enough cash to fill their tanks
to end up stranded in her parking lot, or down the road. It was a decent compromise, at least for now. That would change if
there really was a warning.