months since the power went out she had met and recognized many more of the valley residents than she had before, but every week she saw new faces after the meetings, people who didn’t necessarily want to attend a meeting but who wanted to talk to the ones who had. They were usually people who lived in Wears Valley but well beyond the heart of the community, and who had to travel several miles to get here. Most of them just wanted to make sure that their neighborhoods weren’t forgotten, and to be included in any food distribution—as if that ship hadn’t sailed back at the very beginning. What people had now was what they had either put back, or hunted, fished, or bartered for.
As she had requested beforehand, the members of the community patrol remained behind, and gathered closer around now that the majority of people had gone outside. “What’s up?” Mike asked.
“Do we need to step up patrols, after what happened with the Livingstons?” Ted suggested, which wasn’t a bad idea.
“Probably,” she replied, nodding at him. Being a pain in the ass didn’t mean all of his suggestions were bad—it just meant he was a pain in the ass. He looked somewhat gratified, and smug, that she hadn’t shot him down again. “But that’s up to y’all, because you know what you can do. This is something else entirely.” She blew out a breath. “When the announcement came that the solar storm was coming, I shut down my gas pumps.”
There was silence, realization dawning across their faces. “Holy shit,” Trey said. “You’re sitting on gold.”
“Not really. It’s gold with a time limit. It’s ethanol gasoline so it’ll go bad if I keep it much longer. We need to dispense it, get it out into the community where it can be put to use. Likely January and February would be times when it’ll be more needed, but who knows if it’ll be any good by then? We’d be gambling big. By now the octane level has degraded but it’s still usable.”
She took a breath, organized her thoughts. “We can fill up your vehicles, run some generators, chain saws to cut more wood. People can get warm, take hot showers, do some emergency cooking. If we can find a kiln anywhere near and use the gasoline to fire it up, to make braziers, then we’ll have heat sources for people who don’t have fireplaces. Those are my suggestions. If anyone has more, or different uses, that’s up to them. I’m not about to try overseeing all that.”
Predictably, Ted burst out with anger. “You’ve been sitting on tanks of gasoline all this time—”
“Saving it for when we’d need it more. Yes.” Her tone didn’t quite have an edge to it, but she was getting there. It took a lot to get her angry . . . but she was definitely getting there. If the chore of “community leader” actually paid anything, or had prestige, his resentful attitude would make more sense—but it didn’t, and mostly it was endless lists, a pain in the butt, and listening to people bitch. And damn if she’d apologize to Ted for how she managed her resources.
“The first freeze can come anytime,” Mike said. “I’m surprised it’s held off this long. I’d say you have good timing.”
“I have tanks for ten thousand gallons each of 87 and 91 octane, and would get a delivery every four days during the tourist off-season, every three days during peak. It had been two days since my last delivery, so I have roughly five thousand gallons of each, ten thousand total. What I don’t have is a way of getting it out of the tanks. Does anyone know how to rig a suction pump?” She’d asked Ben about rigging a pump, but he wasn’t here at the moment so she might as well see if anyone else could handle it.
“I’ve siphoned gas out of a car, but never anything that big,” Trey said. “Most of us have done that. Still, I guess the principle’s the same. I think I could have something rigged up by tomorrow.”
Someone else said, “Some people have propane generators, so there’s no help for them, but just as many have gasoline powered.”
“Get the word out,” she said. “Hoarding it won’t do any good, because it’ll go bad. What they get, they need to use. Everyone who can needs to come tomorrow to fill their tanks or gas cans.”
“Another suggestion,” Trey said. “It’s up to you, because