covered with every kind of container they’d been able to grab. Olivia returned to the kitchen, looking to Sela and shrugging her shoulders. Still, she’d had time to fill Carol’s bathtub. They’d be okay, for a while, and when they had to they’d use creek water to flush the toilets.
Everything at her own house was already unplugged, and her perishables and generator were already here at Carol’s. They were as ready as they were going to get.
They all took a seat at the table, watching the little television, saying nothing. The minutes ticked by, moving closer and closer to three p.m. Then the hour hand on the battery-operated clock moved past three, and Olivia stirred restlessly. “Maybe—” she began.
The television went black.
That was it. No drama, no burst of static, just . . . gone.
Carol’s house was eerily quiet, all of the normal sounds missing. There was no refrigerator hum, no central air blowing, no television. All of them sat there, scarcely breathing, because surely something so momentous should have been more . . . well—momentous. The quiet ticking of the clock, something Sela had never before noticed, was the only background noise.
And so it began, not with thunderous noise, or drama, or a cataclysmic collapse, but with . . . silence.
“It looks like The Walking Dead,” Sela said under her breath as they joined people from all over Wears Valley in walking to the elementary school.
On the other side of her, Olivia giggled. Carol barely suppressed a snort of laughter. “Hush!” she whispered. Then she said, “Though a few people are kind of lurching around.”
They looked like either zombies or lemmings, and in the end it made no difference which, because they were all going to the same place like metal shavings pulled by a powerful magnet.
The day’s heat had begun to cool and the late-afternoon shadows were lengthening. Sela had brought a flashlight, in case the meeting ran until after dark. She hoped it wouldn’t, but realistically she expected people to have a lot to say, whether any of it was constructive or not. Everyone was worried, including herself. Maybe someone would have some good ideas on how they could weather this.
They worked their way inside to the cafeteria; she’d never seen it so crowded. She hadn’t been here in a few years, but the school hadn’t changed much. The smell was the same, the tables and chairs the same. Maybe the walls had been repainted, but that was it.
Instinctively she scanned the crowd, looking for Ben Jernigan even though instinct told her he wasn’t there. If he were anywhere around, there would be one of two possible reactions: he’d either be standing alone because most people would be wary of approaching him, or he’d be in the center of a bunch of men who were looking to him to be the natural leader. There was no in-between, he wouldn’t be chatting with a small group of people.
Even knowing he wasn’t there, until she had scanned the entire room, her blood was still thrumming through her veins at the mere possibility that she might be wrong.
Of course he wasn’t here; no surprise there, though she really wished he was. If anyone had the skills to help them get through this disaster, it was Jernigan. She couldn’t even be annoyed that he wouldn’t help, because, honestly, if she had the option of hiding away until the crisis passed she’d probably take it.
She didn’t have the option, so wishful thinking was a waste of time.
Every seat in the lunchroom had been taken, and many people stood along the walls and in the aisles. Almost immediately the low roar of constant chatter began to wear on her nerves. She hated crowds and the noise that came with them, hated the way it made her want to crouch down like a small animal trying to escape notice. She wished she thrived on people and experiences, instead of wanting to run.
A man noticed them and said, “Miss Carol, here,” and got up to let Carol have his seat, at the end of a long table. Sela and Olivia took up positions behind her. It wasn’t necessary that all three of them be here, but she and Carol had felt as if they had to be there, and Olivia was sticking close to them. Barb had stayed at Carol’s house, both to rest from the hard day’s work and because she said they could tell her everything she needed to know, which was true.