Chapter Two #2
“I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows.” Except maybe Ben Jernigan, who was more likely to have a better idea than anyone
else she knew. “He said months, possibly a year or longer.” No need to specify who “he” was.
Carol sucked in a deep breath as the huge ramifications began washing over her. “Then we need ammunition. And whiskey.”
“Ammunition?” Sela gaped at her aunt, but she wasn’t questioning Carol’s choices; she was horrified by the realization that
they’d very likely need ammunition . . . and whiskey. Society as they knew it was built on electricity. There wouldn’t be
any going to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner. They might have to do what their mountain ancestors had done
and hunt their food—except she didn’t know how to hunt and felt nothing but anxiety at the possibility of having to learn.
She did own a .22 rifle—she and Carol both did because she lived alone and Carol had Olivia to protect—but she’d shot it only
a couple of times and was a long way from being capable of hunting.
She felt dizzy and her ears rang a little; there was that adrenaline rush again as another realization hit her. Shit. Carol
and Olivia were her responsibility. They’d need her if things really did get bad. Carol was in her late sixties, and while
she was in general good health she wasn’t quite as active as she’d been just a few years ago. Olivia was fifteen. Enough said
there.
Sela looked around the store, taking mental inventory and looking at the supplies on the shelves, thought about what she had
stored in back. She tried to calculate what they’d need, and how much, but she couldn’t make herself grasp what a year without
power would mean, or decide what she should do.
Her immediate dilemma was that she could keep the store open and try to help her neighbors, or she could focus on her own
family. Her shelf space was limited and she carried only basics, plus snacks; she’d be cleared out in no time, leaving nothing
but the supplies she’d already set aside for their own survival.
Maybe she was a complete shit, but she decided with only a few seconds’ thought that her focus had to be her family. Family
first, family always.
She needed a plan of action. Almost any action was better than none.
She stuck her phone in the back pocket of her jeans as she walked out from behind the counter. “Olivia will be here soon,”
she said to Carol. Normally Olivia hung around the store for a while after the school bus dropped her off. She’d have a soft
drink, maybe a candy bar or some chips. Sometimes, if they were lucky, she’d tell them about her day. Most afternoons she
sat in the office near the back door and texted her friends before heading home. “I want the two of you to take what you can
carry and go home. When you’re there, start loading up the ice chests with ice, so the ice maker can keep working.”
“Ice?”
“We have a day, maybe a little more, to collect ice to keep what perishables we have fresh.” Some of it would melt, but the
more they added to the ice chests, the better it would keep.
“You have the generator—”
“We’ll need it more when winter gets here than we do now.” Her generator was a small portable one, but it was strong enough
to run the heat when the weather turned cold. What it wouldn’t do was run a whole house; as far as that went, it wouldn’t
run at all when they were out of fuel for it. No matter how she looked at it, she was afraid they didn’t have enough of anything.
For a few moments, Carol didn’t move as she stared into the middle distance, doing the same thing Sela had done before, trying
to come to terms with the awful possibilities.
Through the store windows they watched a car speeding down the highway, a blur headed out of town. It had been quiet before
that, just a handful of vehicles moving at normal speed. Was the speeder leaving because of the alert? Word was definitely
out, likely on television as well as through the national weather service, maybe by radio, if anyone listened to radio anymore.
Of course. The tourists that were the lifeblood of the Smoky Mountain towns would want to get home. In a rental cabin they’d
have no long-term provisions, no way to hunker down for more than a few days.
And if they’d left family at home, they’d want to be there. Family would come first for almost everyone, just as it did for
her.
An SUV with parents seated in the front seat and two young children in the back pulled into the lot, moving too fast. The
lurching vehicle pulled to one of the fuel pumps and stopped with a jerk. The man who’d been driving jumped out, swiped a
credit card, and pumped ten dollars in gas before taking off again.
“Shut down the pumps,” Carol said, rousing herself, but Sela had already done so.
She grabbed some plastic bags and went outside to the pumps, covering the nozzles, the usual signal that there was no gasoline
available. Her supply was small to start with, and if she wasn’t careful it wouldn’t last long. Once the power was down the
gas would have to be pumped out of the tanks by hand. It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done.
Her family was the focus, she reminded herself; they were most important in any crisis, but she did care about her friends
and neighbors. She wouldn’t hang them out to dry. About half the generators in the valley were fueled by gasoline. Some were
propane-powered, but not hers, and not her closest neighbors’. Before the power went out she’d need to go online and research
how to access the gasoline in the tanks.
Jernigan would know how.
She dismissed that stray thought. Not only was he not approachable, but she needed to know for herself; she needed to stand
on her own two feet. She’d learned that the hard way, after her ex-husband walked out. A lesson learned hard was a lesson
learned well, and now she stayed safe because taking chances with other people was a good way to get her life stomped on.
Fifteen minutes later the school bus stopped in front of the store, and a line of cars stacked up behind the bus. One driver
seemed to think about passing, pulling into the other lane by a couple of feet, but then thought better of it. The bus doors
swung open and Olivia danced down the steps. Fifteen, tall and lanky with wavy light brown hair like her father’s, rest his
soul, she was beautiful in a way only the very young can be. She was the light of Carol’s life, and an important part of Sela’s.
Olivia blew inside, her eyes wide. “Did you hear? All the teachers were going b.s. crazy. Well, some of them.” Her phone signaled
an incoming text, and she looked down. “What did they call it? A mass . . . something.” She smiled at her phone as she read
the text and then sent a quick and nimble-fingered response.
“Coronal mass ejection,” Sela said.
“Solar storm, Mr. Hendricks said,” Olivia said as she walked to the cooler to grab a Dr Pepper. Then she turned around and
went down the center aisle. “Hey! Where are all the chips?”
“Put away,” Sela said, watching the road. Traffic had definitely picked up. Most cars kept to a reasonable speed, but a few
were moving way too fast in their rush to get out of Dodge—or in this case, the mountains. Making a quick decision, she took
her keys off the hook and went to the door, locking it and flipping the Open sign to Closed. Why would she hang around here
and let Carol prepare on her own? That didn’t make sense. She had her own ice chests to fill, her own ice maker to put to
work.
“Why are you closing up early?” Olivia asked. “Are you sick?”
“We have less than twenty-four hours to get ready for the CME.”
Now Olivia looked confused. “Get ready how?”
Carol said briskly, “We might be without power for months. We’ll need food, a way to cook it, and maybe even a way to stay
warm if everything’s not up and running by the time the weather turns.”
Olivia didn’t move for a few seconds, her eyes big and round as she pondered the impossible. Then she asked, “Are you serious?
Months? Will my cell phone work?”
“Doubt it. Maybe it’ll be bad,” Carol said, “and maybe it won’t. We won’t know until about this time tomorrow. But we’re going
to be ready for whatever happens. The chips are already at the house, by the way, but don’t get your hopes up. We’re not opening
a single bag until we’ve eaten all the fresh and frozen food. I have a cabbage I need to use before it goes bad, and the last
of the tomatoes. We can’t waste anything, not now.”
“Unless they’re wrong,” Olivia said hopefully as she joined her grandmother. “I mean, this could be a false alarm, right?
The mass whatever . . .”
“CME,” Sela said as she joined the other women. “Just call it a CME.”
“Yeah, that,” Olivia said. “They could be wrong.”
“Maybe,” Sela said as she ushered her aunt and the teenager to the rear door, grabbing the bags she and Carol had prepped
earlier in the afternoon on her way out. “But I don’t think so.”
Olivia, who had slung a couple of bags over her arms, was still looking at her phone. She was glued to the damn thing most
of the time anyway, but surely she could understand that they were facing an enormous crisis and pay attention—
“We should unplug everything before the CME hits,” Olivia said, reading from her phone. “That’s what some guy at NASA is saying.
It’ll keep them from getting destroyed by a power surge, or something.”
Olivia had been researching on her phone. Sela breathed a sigh of relief, and reminded herself not to let her anxiety get
the best of her. She needed to be on her game, and Carol and Olivia were both stepping up to the challenge, too.
They’d be okay. They had to be.