Chapter 8
Barb woke to the sound of someone gagging outside her window. For a moment, she thought it was an animal caught somewhere it shouldn’t be, one of the goats trying to chew through something foul. Then she heard the sharp drag of breath, the helpless cry at the edges of it, and she knew.
She sat up fast and pulled her boots on without tying them.
The floor felt colder than usual. The house felt stripped of its usual morning hum, the silence thick enough to press against her ears.
She stepped onto the porch and saw Cathy bent over the patch of grass near the steps, one hand braced against her knee, her whole body quaking.
Barb walked toward her slowly. “Cathy.”
Cathy retched again, her breath stuttering. When she finally straightened, her face was pale and streaked with tears. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then tried to inhale, but the breath broke halfway through. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Cathy whispered.
“You’re grieving, and you’re in shock,” Barb said. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I thought maybe the power would be back when we woke up. I thought maybe this was just some weird outage.”
“It’s not coming back. Not today, not this week… Maybe not ever. Hank is gone. The grid is gone. No one is coming to fix anything right now.”
Cathy blinked at her, eyes wide, as though Barb had struck her.
Then something in her expression loosened.
The frantic question she had repeated half a dozen times the day before didn’t come again.
She looked down at the ground like she was finally standing in the same world Barb had stepped into.
“What do we do now?” Cathy asked, her voice hoarse.
“We start working,” Barb said. “Right now.”
Cathy nodded, small and frightened. Barb turned toward the house.
The air felt colder inside, the rooms heavy with an early light that revealed every imperfection.
She shut the door behind them and moved fast, not to clean but to strip the house down to what mattered.
She yanked extension cords from outlets, and they fell across the floor in loose coils.
She gathered them all into a pile on the table.
“These are supplies now. Cordage and ties… whatever we need them for later.”
Cathy stood near the doorway, uncertain.
“Don’t just stand there,” Barb said. “I need you moving. Grab every candle and put them here on the counter.”
Cathy obeyed immediately. Her hands shook, but she moved. Barb opened the pantry. The stale smell of flour and sealed cans drifted out. She pulled the perishables to the front and lined them up. Anything that would spoil within a day or two went on the counter.
“We eat this first,” she said. “Nothing gets thrown away.”
Cathy brought the last candle and set it down. “Can I do anything else?”
“Yes, go check the fireplace. Make sure the ash box is empty. If it’s not, dump it. Get a new load of wood from the stack and fill the bin.”
“I’ll try.”
“You’ll do it,” Barb corrected. “One task at a time.”
She turned back to the pantry. She pulled old jars from the back, checked seals, and tapped lids lightly.
Her mind ran through timelines. The number of animals they had.
How long would the feed last before they had to ration?
She heard every breath Cathy took in the next room, every small cry that slipped out despite her effort to hold it in. Each sound made Barb move faster.
She grabbed two buckets from the mudroom and stepped outside. The air carried a faint crispness that had nothing to do with the weather. Something about the world felt stripped bare, and its constant hum had disappeared.
She walked to the hand pump, the one she had insisted on installing even when Cathy thought she was overreacting.
Barb wrapped her hand around the handle and pulled.
It dipped with a satisfying weight. A moment later, water spilled from the spout in a clear, steady stream.
She cupped her hand beneath it and tasted it.
Clean, cold, and perfect. “Thank God,” she whispered.
Water meant time and survival. It meant that the one essential variable wasn’t an immediate threat.
She filled both buckets halfway, then set them aside and walked along the fence line.
Every gate needed to be checked. Every weak point needed to be noted.
She moved quickly, scanning, testing, and tugging on hinges and posts.
Cathy came out onto the porch. “I got the wood inside. What now?”
“We need the animals secured. Bring in the ducks. Close the quail hut. Check the goat pen. Tighten the barn latch.”
Cathy swallowed. “Okay.”
“Not okay. Do it now.”
Cathy took a breath and nodded. She headed toward the ducks, calling to them softly. Her voice cracked halfway through, but she didn’t stop. Barb watched her for a moment, then turned toward the barn.
The interior smelled of hay and warm animal bodies.
The goats bleated the moment she stepped inside, unsettled by the strange quiet and the sudden change in routine.
Barb checked the boards of the pen. One plank had loosened during the previous week’s storm.
She pressed it back into place with a grunt and secured it with a length of rope.
“Not great, but it’ll hold,” she whispered to herself.
Cathy appeared in the doorway. “The quail are shut in. The ducks…took some convincing.”
“That’s normal. What about the gates?”
“I checked them. I think I checked them. I’m not entirely sure.”
Barb walked to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
They walked the perimeter together. Barb pointed out each latch, guiding Cathy’s hands to test them properly. Cathy’s movements were stiff, mechanical.
“You’re doing fine,” Barb said. “Just keep moving.”
“I don’t feel fine,” Cathy said.
“I know you don’t. You don’t have to.”
They reached the last gate.
Cathy touched it lightly, then turned toward the house with a hollow look. “Barb…his boots are still by the door.”
Barb’s breath tightened. “Leave them where they are. You don’t need to deal with any of that today.”
Cathy nodded and kept walking. By midday, the house no longer felt like a renovation in progress.
It felt like a staging ground. Everything loose or useless had been pushed aside.
Extension cords were bundled. Tools were laid out.
Perishables were sorted. The emergency candles were lined neatly on the counter.
The entire space hummed with purpose, not electricity.
Barb stood in the middle of the kitchen and let herself take one slow breath.
Cathy returned from the barn, her face flushed. “Is there more? I need more to do.”
Barb studied her. The desperation in Cathy’s expression wasn’t frantic; it was directionless. A drowning woman reaching for the next piece of driftwood.
“Go check the windows,” Barb said. “Push on each one. Tell me if any of them wiggle or don’t latch.”
Cathy nodded and went. Barb walked onto the porch and scanned the tree line. The air felt wrong. The world without engines or electricity had an eerie openness. Every bird call carried farther. Every movement along the road looked clearer. There were no barriers, nothing to hide behind.
She stepped down to the yard and looked toward the road.
Sunlight stretched long and thin across the curve.
Peaceful on the surface, dangerous in its quiet.
The town wasn’t far, and the road wasn’t hidden.
People would start spreading outward once desperation sank in.
She didn’t know if that would take hours or days, but it would happen.
The land wasn’t a home anymore; it was a position. She slowly walked back to the porch. Her boots scraped against the wood. The smell of drying hay drifted up from the pasture. She leaned her hands on the railing and closed her eyes for a moment.
Cathy stepped outside a few minutes later. “I checked the windows. Two of them don’t latch right.”
“We’ll fix them,” Barb said.
“Barb…what are we going to do?” Cathy’s voice sounded smaller than it had yesterday, stripped of anything except exhaustion.
Barb turned toward her. “We’re going to survive. That’s all we need to think about today.”
Cathy’s chin trembled. “I’m scared.”
“I know,” Barb said. “That’s why you’re with me.”
“It feels like everything is ending.”
“It is ending, but that doesn’t mean we will.”
“Please don’t let anything happen to us.”
“I won’t,” Barb whispered.
Barb kept her eyes on the tree line, her jaw set.
She didn’t need to say the decision out loud.
It settled in her the way truth always did.
The land was no longer just theirs; it was their fortress, and she would hold it.
She would hold her sister and everything else up until the world stopped falling.
The quiet valley waited, unknowingly changed forever, while Barb stood watch at its edge, already planning the next move.