Chapter 8
Awoman in her sixties sat behind the wheel of a compact car, windows up.
Her hands rested in her lap, and her eyes stayed fixed on the people preparing to leave.
She hadn’t moved since Rachel first noticed her.
The woman seemed to have chosen the car as her shelter, no matter what anyone else decided.
The shouting started from the east. Rachel turned and saw a man walking toward the highway from a service station in the distance.
He carried an empty red gas can in one hand, and each step looked slow and beaten down.
People noticed him before he reached the road.
Conversations stopped, and heads turned toward him.
By the time he reached the first group of vehicles, twenty or thirty people had gathered around him.
No one had called them over. They came because the empty gas can told them the answer before he did.
The plastic handle knocked softly against his leg with each step.
“Station’s dark,” he said. “Pumps are dead. Every car between here and there is just like yours. There’s a truck stop another half mile past it, and it’s the same story. Nothing’s running. Nothing’s got power. I walked the whole stretch and didn’t see one engine turn over.”
“Did you see any police?” a woman near the front of the group asked.
“A couple of cruisers were sitting empty at the intersection. Their lights were off, and I couldn’t find any officers.”
“Did you try a phone?” someone called from the back.
“I tried three phones: mine and two I found on the counter inside. Nothing worked. The screens didn’t even light up,” the man said.
The crowd took that in without speaking.
Rachel watched their faces lose the last thin thread of expectation for an easy answer.
The man who had seemed certain help would come had gone quiet.
The woman with the two children had stopped arguing about bathrooms and held the smaller child against her leg, one hand resting on the child’s head.
Rachel walked back to the SUV. Sophie stood with her backpack over one shoulder and the grocery bag at her feet.
She’d been watching the man with the gas can.
Rachel could see she understood what the empty station meant.
“They’re not coming, are they?” Sophie asked.
It was the first time Sophie had asked without sarcasm or deflection. Rachel looked at the highway, at the families packing or refusing to pack, and at the empty gas can sitting on the asphalt. The answer was already there.
“No. I don’t think they are,” Rachel said.
Rachel walked east along the shoulder, staying close enough to keep the SUV in sight. Sophie had agreed to wait beside it without being asked. Rachel suspected that had more to do with Sophie’s own judgment than any trust in hers.
The highway had become a slow exchange of information.
Travelers passed in both directions. Some headed toward the nearest town, while others returned with whatever they’d learned.
Rachel stopped a family of four walking west. The parents looked exhausted, and the children dragged their feet, already worn down by the miles behind them.
“How far have you come?” Rachel asked.
“Six miles, maybe more. We started at the junction back there,” the father said.
“Did you see anything working? Police, hospitals, anything with power?”
“Nothing worked. Every traffic light we passed was dead. The stores are dark. There’s a fire station about two miles east of here, and people were sitting outside it waiting. Nobody inside had answers. They got the bay doors open by hand, but the trucks are dead like everything else.”
“We passed a grocery store with the doors propped open. People were taking things, but it wasn’t like you’d think. Nobody was there to stop them, so they walked in and took what they needed. There wasn’t any fighting. Not yet, anyway,” his wife said.
Rachel thanked them and moved on. A man in his fifties carrying a duffel bag told her the same thing from the opposite direction. He said the outage reached well into the next county, though he had no proof beyond the twelve miles he’d walked without seeing a single working vehicle.
“What about phones?” Rachel asked.
“Dead. All of them. I tried a landline at a gas station, too. There wasn’t a dial tone. The attendant didn’t know whether the problem was the phone or the whole system,” he said.
Rachel took in each detail without letting it show.
The stories varied, but the pattern stayed the same.
No electricity meant no traffic signals, no fuel pumps, no refrigeration, and no reliable phones.
She had no way of knowing how long water, sanitation, and medical systems could keep going.
She’d understood the danger since the previous evening, but hearing strangers confirm it made it settle deeper.
She turned back toward the SUV. Sophie still stood beside the rear quarter panel with her arms folded.
She had watched Rachel’s conversations without moving closer.
Her eyes kept shifting from the shoulder to the parked cars and back again, tracking the highway the way she’d tracked the facility parking lot.
Rachel realized Sophie had been reading the danger longer than she had.
Two men Rachel didn’t recognize stood near the county SUV’s rear doors.
They hadn’t tried the handles, but one man had his hand on the tailgate seam. The other stood a few feet back and scanned the highway, checking who was watching. Sophie had noticed them, too. She kept several feet between herself and the SUV, her stance stiff and ready.