get hurt, people would get in fights—they were human, after all, and that’s what humans did.
One of Olivia’s friends called out to her and she said, “Here, Gran,” and handed off the radio to Carol before darting over to join her small group. The kids wanted to hear the broadcast, but they also wanted to socialize.
At one minute till nine, Carol turned on the radio. They were all going by their wristwatches now, those who had them, but they really had no way of knowing how accurate their watches were. Carol had set hers to the radio on the second day, but allowed for error by turning on the radio early.
They listened to the static, standing around and talking quietly among themselves, waiting for the broadcast to start. A minute ticked by, then another. An alarmed murmur ran through the crowd. They began looking around and at each other. Sela met Mike Kilgore’s eyes, and saw awareness in his.
There was only static.
Carol looked at the dial, adjusted the knob a little in case it had been bumped and knocked out of place, at one point or another.
Static.
People crowded around, hoping against hope. Carol scanned up and down the dial, trying to find another station they could receive, however weak the signal. Nothing.
The alarmed murmur got louder. Barb made a sound of distress, then pressed her hand to her mouth. Sela saw a girl in Olivia’s group start crying, and Olivia try to comfort her though she, too, looked as if she was about to start tearing up.
Sela tried not to be too disappointed but she felt as if they’d turned a corner, and not a good one. It was inevitable that the radio station would go dark, but he’d said just yesterday that they had enough for another two or three days. Had he simply miscalculated the amount of fuel? Had the station been attacked?
Had he given up, and simply not gone to the station? They had no way of knowing.
“Well, that’s that.” Decisively Carol turned off the radio with a quick and final flick of a switch. “I never thought I’d actually miss hearing so much bad news. Damn, I need another cup of that weak-ass instant coffee.”
Mike had moved closer, and Sela said to him, “We need to take a look at our security situation.”
Carol and Barb both looked at her, and the people around them fell silent to listen. “Why?” Barb asked.
“People are leaving Knoxville,” Sela replied. “Most of them will stick to the interstate going south, but some of them might come this way, and they’ll be desperate.” Desperate or mean, the end result didn’t matter. Whoever came to the valley would be looking for food, for shelter, for weapons and supplies and anything that could be sold or traded. “We have enough to get by for a while, enough for us and our neighbors. But if we’re overrun what we have won’t last a week, assuming we’re left with anything at all, or aren’t killed outright.”
“She’s right,” Mike said. “We should have already thought about this and got something set up.”
“Who would come here?” Barb asked, alarmed. She wasn’t the only one; some younger people were looking around in confusion, as if expecting to see hordes of people pouring down the highway toward them, while the people who had been in the military were nodding their heads.
“Could be anyone,” Mike said. “Look how many tourists drove through this area every day. And people in the cities already know they can’t stay there, so if they have any sense they won’t head for another city, they’ll look for small communities—like this one—that are self-sustaining. They know country folk have guns and gardens, and that’s what they’ll want.”
Sela hadn’t noticed Ted Parsons in the crowd, but now he maneuvered into the nucleus of the conversation. “Looters and gangs will be in the minority. A lot of regular people will be leaving the cities, too, and they could be a lot of help. There’s safety in numbers. A gang will look for isolated people they can overwhelm, not a place where they’ll be outnumbered.”
“If we had unlimited resources I wouldn’t disagree with you,” Mike said.
“As it is, we wouldn’t be able to house and feed a bunch of other people,” Carol pointed out. “All the vegetable gardens have stopped producing, and we won’t have a fresh supply of food or the ability to grow more until next spring . . . say, eight months until more crops are