“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