not, as they handed over their cash and complained that now they wouldn’t have the money to get something to eat on their way home. Mostly tourists, she thought, catching a variety of accents. They were rightfully in a panic to get home; some of them might live so far away they wouldn’t make it.
She kept an eye on her vehicle, making sure no one approached it. The people here weren’t thinking about groceries, though, they were thinking about gasoline. Turning, she looked at the rows of shelving in the store: mostly empty.
The sense of unreality was so strong she wondered if there were camera crews hidden somewhere, secretly recording everything, because she felt as if she were in the middle of a disaster movie. No buildings were falling sideways, nothing was exploding, no one was screaming or fighting each other, but the tension and barely restrained panic were pushing at everyone. Tension crawled along her veins and she tried to think what she would do if someone did start fighting here in this crowded store. How would she get out? Should she get behind some shelving, or duck down to the floor and try to crawl out? Would she get trampled?
But nothing happened. Despite the tension, the line to pay inched forward. When she reached the clerk, a middle-aged woman whose own face mirrored the stress Sela felt, she handed over the money and said, “Kerosene. I have four five-gallon cans.”
The woman nodded, and rang up the sale. Behind Sela, someone said, “I’ll give you fifty bucks for those cans.”
Sela didn’t dare look back. She darted out the door and over to her vehicle, where she dragged out the fuel cans, lined them up, and filled them while keeping a weather eye out for anyone approaching her from behind. She’d never fought for anything or with anyone in her life, but she’d fight for these cans of kerosene.
Finally—finally!—she wrestled the heavy cans back into her SUV and slammed the hatch. With her peripheral vision she saw a man heading her way and she quickly used her remote to lock the vehicle, securing everything until she could get to the driver’s door. Hearing the beep of the horn that signaled the lock engaging, the man halted, and turned away. Breathing fast, Sela unlocked the door, slid in, and quickly locked the vehicle again. She started the motor and the air-conditioning blew in her face, evaporating the sweat.
Slowly she reached out and turned off the air-conditioning. Mileage mattered, now more than ever.
The highways were clogged; she could see police and deputy cars crawling from motel to motel, blasting on their bullhorns that all non-locals should check out and get to their homes while they still could. At least the off-season had begun with Labor Day; the Rod Run had provided another spurt of tourists, but the crush had dropped drastically after that—at least until October brought the tree colors and tourists returned. There wouldn’t be an October crush this year, she thought. But even during the off-season there were always tourists, and the weekends were crowded. She shuddered to think what the traffic would have been like if this had happened during one of the busy times.
The only way she could get home was to wind her away around secondary streets and roads until she hit Goose Gap. Even the secondary roads were crowded, though mostly with locals who knew how to avoid the traffic on the main drag. Eventually she had to hit the highway, though, and she sat for several minutes before there was a gap big enough for her to shoot into.
Fifteen minutes later she pulled into Carol’s driveway and sat there shuddering in relief. Carol was already back, as well as Barb and Olivia. Olivia came outside and down the steps, coming to help her carry in supplies, and when she looked at that innocent, pretty young face, Sela thought again that, come hell or high water, she would protect her family—no matter what it cost her.
Carol had done better at gathering produce than Sela had. “I stopped at a couple of roadside stands,” she said. “I knew town would be a madhouse.”
That was an understatement. Sela didn’t tell her aunt that she’d actually been frightened. Nothing had happened, and the man who had been approaching her SUV might have wanted to ask her where she got the fuel cans . . . though he had turned around when she locked the doors.