surprise, Carlette Broward stepped back. “I deserve it as much as anyone else,” she muttered resentfully.
“Really?” Sela moved forward again, all but spitting the words out. “Do you deserve it as much as the people who’ve been working their asses off cutting wood for others? Staying awake at night, patrolling, trying to keep everyone safe? Feeding old people who don’t have enough food? What have you contributed to the community? Anything? Bitching doesn’t count.”
A couple of snorts of laughter made Carlette turn red. “I don’t have to take this shit,” she snarled, taking two steps back this time.
“That’s right, you don’t. You don’t have to take my gasoline, either. Feel free to leave at any time.”
“Don’t think I’ll forget this, you snotty bitch!” Carlette threw over her shoulder as she stomped away.
“Thanks for the warning!” Breathing hard, Sela stared after her, then growled a bit and said, “Shit!” under her breath. Before Carlette got out of hearing she called out, “Carlette!”
The woman whirled. “Fuck you!”
Sela ground her teeth together again, reaching for her thin store of patience. “Bring your car tomorrow. And bring your kids. I won’t stop you from getting gas.” Not if she did have two little kids, that is. No kids, no gas.
Carlette paused, still looking violently resentful and sulky. Then she said, “What about filling a gas can?”
“That, too, if you have one.”
With a jerky nod, the woman walked away.
“Oh, jear Desus,” Sela said, and closed her eyes. She was trembling and breathing hard and for some reason felt torn between wanting to cry and wanting to hop up and down and scream as loud as she could. She didn’t do confrontations, didn’t know how to fight, but she’d been ready to get into a face-slapping, hair-pulling battle with a woman who outweighed her by a good forty or fifty pounds.
Nancy Meador, one of her neighbors, came and put an arm around her. “You did good, hon,” she said, giving Sela a hug and a smile. “Gave me a smile today.”
Sela was astonished. “You like seeing fights?” Violence had always made her a little sick to her stomach.
“Well, the TV’s out, so we have to do something for entertainment,” Nancy said, throwing back her head on a laugh. Several other people around them laughed and nodded.
“Besides, you have to stand up to bullies or they just get worse.” Nancy squeezed her shoulders. “You should go take a nap, you look worn out. I bet you stayed up with Carol last night, didn’t you?”
Sela nodded. “And I need to get back to check on her. Not that Barb and Olivia aren’t there, but—”
“I know. Carol can be a handful. Tell you what—I’ll come stay with her tonight, let you get some rest. How does that sound?”
She opened her mouth to tell Nancy she could handle it, then paused. Neighbors helped neighbors, and truth to tell she could use more sleep than she’d gotten the night before, or she wouldn’t be any use to Carol or anyone else. “That sounds wonderful,” she said truthfully.
“Good deal. I’ll come over tonight after I get the supper dishes washed and everything squared away. See you then.”
Other people wanted to give her encouraging words or pats and she worked her way through them, wanting nothing more than to be alone so she could scream, or cry, or jump up and down in a hissy fit. She didn’t know which. Maybe all three. “I’m not good at this crap,” she muttered under her breath as she walked home. “I’m so not good at this crap.”
She walked past Carol’s house, though she knew they’d be waiting to hear the details of everything that had happened; she didn’t feel like rehashing it all, and more than anything she wanted to go to bed, pull the covers over her head, and take a long nap. She wouldn’t do that, but she desperately needed to be alone and get her emotional bearings again.
Dead leaves crunched under her feet as she walked. Now that there was no vehicular traffic to blow them off, leaves accumulated on the roads, and had almost completely covered the paved surfaces in her neighborhood. When the CME hit, civilization had slipped backward about two hundred years; she had coped, she had thought and planned and tried to organize, and though she’d accomplished some things at the end of the day she was acutely aware of how much she fell short.
Mike Kilgore was a rock, but he wasn’t a leader. He would back her