Chapter 9
Barb woke while the sky was still pale, a thin blue sheen stretching across the pasture.
The house was quiet except for Cathy’s uneven breathing on the sofa.
She had cried herself into a restless sleep sometime after midnight.
The exhaustion had finally taken her down, but Barb knew it wouldn’t hold for long.
Grief didn’t sleep through the night. It simply waited.
Barb moved carefully, not wanting to wake her. She pulled her boots on and stepped onto the porch. The morning air felt cool, sharp, almost metallic in the absence of the electric hum the valley used to carry. The world seemed to stretch wider without it, as if sound traveled farther now.
She walked to the pump and pulled the handle.
Water flowed in a steady ribbon. She cupped her hand beneath it, cold enough to sting, clean enough to ease a knot of tension in her stomach.
As long as they had it, they could build a plan instead of scrambling in blind fear. She turned toward the gravel road.
It was close enough for trouble to walk straight to them, far enough that they had a few hours of buffer before people thought to roam in their direction. A small window, but still a window. She went back inside.
Cathy sat up abruptly on the sofa, startled awake, her eyes swollen and unfocused. “Barb?” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Barb said. “You needed rest.”
“What do we do today?”
Barb sat on the edge of the coffee table, close enough that Cathy didn’t have to lift her head far. “I need to go toward town.”
Cathy blinked hard. “Why?”
“We need information. I don’t know how fast panic is spreading. I don’t know if the roads are safe or how many people are leaving town. I don’t know if there were fires last night or if the entire valley is still quiet. I have to see it with my own eyes.”
“I want to come.”
“You can’t,” Barb said. “It’s too much chaos. You’re not ready for that. I need you to be safe. I need you steady. I need you here.”
Cathy’s voice shook. “So, I just stay and wait?”
“You stay and work. There is a difference. Keep the animals penned. Stay inside unless something forces you out. Don’t open the door for anyone. Not neighbors or strangers…not anyone.”
“What if someone is in trouble?”
“They probably will be,” Barb said. “That doesn’t mean we can save them. Not today.”
Cathy swallowed and nodded. “All right.”
“I’ll be back before dark. I promise.”
She stood and grabbed her walking stick from the corner, the one she had carved the previous fall. She slid her knife into the leather sheath at her belt. Nothing valuable or flashy. She needed to look like someone who had nothing worth taking.
Cathy stood, too, her voice barely a whisper. “Please be careful.”
“I will.”
Barb stepped outside. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
She listened once more to the stillness, letting it settle over her like a second skin.
Then she walked. The morning sun rose slowly behind the tree line, catching the tops of the grass and turning them pale gold.
Birds called from the woods, their voices sharper than usual, as if their warnings carried farther now that the electrical noise was gone.
A quarter mile down the road, she found the first abandoned vehicle.
A sedan sat at an angle in the ditch, one wheel raised slightly off the ground.
The doors were shut. The windows were intact.
No one was inside, but she paused beside it.
The air around the car felt heavier, as though the machine held a piece of the old world in its silent shell.
She rested her hand on the hood. Just a few thousand pounds of metal and useless circuitry.
She kept walking. The next vehicle sat sideways along the shoulder, a truck with its front end buried in tall weeds.
A bag of groceries spilled across the ground near the open passenger door.
A carton of eggs cracked open and dried in the sun.
The driver was gone. Barb crouched to examine the tracks in the dirt.
Footprints leading toward town. Several sets.
Farther along, she heard raised voices before she saw the group.
A small cluster of adults stood around a pickup with its hood open.
A man leaned over the engine block, swearing under his breath as he tugged at useless wires.
Another argued with a woman who kept insisting someone needed to walk to the fire station.
“There has to be a generator,” the woman said. “They always have one.”
“Not for this,” someone else snapped. “Nothing works. You saw last night, nothing moved.”
“We can’t just stand here.”
“What do you want us to do?” the man shouted. “Carry the truck on our backs?”
Barb stayed off the road and moved through the grassy shoulder until she had passed them. No one noticed her. They were too busy confronting the shape of a world that no longer obeyed its own rules. A little farther on, she reached the old Parson farm. The wooden gate hung closed.
The house sat quietly with the curtains drawn.
The fields were untouched; the goats were gone from the pen.
She knocked once on the fence rail out of habit, even though she didn’t expect an answer.
There were no voices or movement inside.
No sign of life except the faint smell of hay drifting from the barn.
“They left for town,” she murmured. “Or they’re already part of a crowd somewhere.”
The door was locked, and the windows intact. That told her everything she needed to know. They had left in a hurry but not in panic. She scanned the property anyway. The sheds, pond, and side windows. The line of sight from the kitchen toward her own land.
She filed it away. Every neighbor mattered.
Every resource and threat. She walked another half mile toward the intersection overlooking the town.
Smoke drifted above the rooftops. Not a large fire, but something uncontrolled.
A kitchen, a transformer, and a garage—someone tried to run with a dead generator.
Barb crouched behind a cluster of wildflowers and watched. The streets below moved with small clusters of people. A few tried to flag others down. Some yelled toward the sky. One group stood in a loose circle near the old courthouse steps, listening to a man who gestured wildly while he spoke.
She couldn’t make out the words, but she recognized the posture. Someone was trying to become a leader by default. She stayed only long enough to understand the rhythm of the town. No police presence, emergency lines forming, or triage points. Just fear building without structure.
“This is the beginning of the real danger,” she whispered.
She turned and started the long walk back.
Every step home tested her patience. She wanted to run.
She wanted Cathy in her sight again. She wanted the porch, the animals, the pump, and the safety of everything she had built, but running would attract the wrong attention.
Running looked like fear, and fear would make her a target.
She walked with measured steps, breathing evenly, listening for footsteps behind her, but none came.
When the road curved and the farmland opened, she felt her shoulders loosen.
The distance gave them a cushion. The silence gave them time.
When her property came into view, Cathy stood on the porch, gripping the railing with both hands.
Relief flooded her face the moment she saw Barb.
“You’re back,” she said.
“I told you I would be.” Barb stepped onto the porch. “Did anything happen?”
“No one came. It was just quiet, too quiet. I kept thinking I’d hear Hank’s truck.”
“I know.”
Cathy’s breath trembled. “What did you see?”
“Enough,” Barb said. “Town is in full panic. No coordination or response. People are already moving on foot. Some are arguing in the streets. Some are trying to break into buildings. It’s only going to get worse.”
“Will they come out here?”
“Eventually. Once they realize food won’t be back on shelves. Once they start looking for farms. We’re two miles away from several thousand desperate people. They won’t think clearly. They’ll think about what they need.”
Cathy stepped back toward the doorway. “So, what do we do?”
“We build our own structure. We rely on ourselves. We use every hour we have.”
“Are we in danger right now?”
“Not yet, but we will be if we don’t keep ahead of it.”
She moved to the edge of the porch and scanned the tree line. The gravel road and faint slope toward town. Every path someone could approach from. She mapped each one, marking where they could see people first and where they needed cover.
Cathy watched her. “Barb…are we really alone out here now?”
“We are, but we’re not helpless.”
She tightened her grip on the railing. Her mind felt sharp, focused, almost cold in its clarity.
The town wouldn’t provide order. Neighbors wouldn’t come up with solutions.
No one was coming to save them. Whatever they needed to survive, they would build themselves on the hundred acres.
Barb took a slow breath. The silence of the valley pressed around her like a physical thing. It didn’t feel peaceful.
Cathy stepped beside her. “What’s our next move?”
Barb stared down the empty road, the answer already forming. “We start treating this place like what it has become,” she said. “It’s not just home anymore. It’s our fortress now.”