Deep Shadows

by Vannetta Chapman

  Carter almost laughed at that thought. Jason’s crazy slang had a way of sticking in his head.

  Carter moved closer to Kaitlyn’s register, pretending to clean a display that was completely empty. “I heard that he hired some guys to go out and find the shipment that was coming from the warehouse—it was supposed to arrive Friday night but never did. Maybe he thinks it was close.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup. Promised them 20 percent of whatever they found.”

  “If they found a truckload of food, why would they bring it back to him? They could keep it and get 100 percent.”

  “Graves thought of that. He told them that there were at least three trucks headed this way and he knew their route and approximate location. If they came back with the goods from the first, he’d tell them the location of the second.”

  “How could he know that?”

  Carter shrugged. “I worked shipping and receiving a few times. The guys from our regional warehouse have a pretty routine schedule, and we know who was supposed to show up Friday evening.”

  Graves had appeared at that point and barked, “Back to your register, Sparks. I’m not paying you to chat.”

  Carter wanted to walk out. There wasn’t enough left on the shelves to make it worth being open—some jars of jalapeños, most of the spices, and a display of summer stuff no one had wanted to spend money on. Who needed sunscreen and sandals? Food was the priority.

  Carter would rather be home helping with the latrine. He’d stopped by on his way into work, and the digging was going well. Ed said they had hit more dirt, having worked through the layer of rock the day before. Rhonda was already working on the frame, and Frank had brought by a toilet that had been delivered the week before to a house under construction. Not much chance a partially constructed house was going to be finished, so the builder had said they could salvage anything there.

  When Mr. Graves ordered him to get back to work—as if there was any work to get back to—Carter almost took off his name tag and walked away. He thought of that truck of dry goods. If it was true, if the guys Graves hired brought it back, employees would be allowed to purchase three items off the truck first. Graves had said as much. He’d also announced when they’d walked in that he was paying them twenty dollars in cash each day. That was half what Carter made from a normal six-hour shift before, but he’d heard about the lack of cash at the bank. Graves was flush with cash, and Carter knew his mother needed whatever he could earn.

  So he didn’t quit his job.

  He managed to tell Kaitlyn about the Brainiacs, and she’d acted interested in joining him. When their shift was over, they collected their 20 dollars and headed out the back door.

  Carter wasn’t sure how successful the Brainiacs would be, but nothing could be more depressing than standing in an empty grocery store as people searched for food.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  In many ways it seemed like a perfect summer day. Carter was walking down Main Street with the prettiest girl in town. How did it get better than that?

  “The walk is only about fifteen minutes from here,” he said.

  “I always aced science at my old school.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “I guess. Moving here before my senior year was kind of the pits. At least I thought it was when I first got here.”

  “Moving anytime is tough.”

  “Now there probably won’t even be any school.” She laughed and glanced sideways at Carter. “I should be happy about that, but it feels… strange.”

  “Yeah, I was planning on college, but it looks like that isn’t going to happen.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Angelo State.”

  “I have family in San Angelo—an uncle we go and visit a couple of times a year.”

  That thought made Carter’s stomach flip, which was stupid. He wasn’t going to college, so it didn’t matter if Kaitlyn might have been able to visit, but his mind hadn’t quite caught up with events. It insisted on slipping into what-if scenarios.

  Instead of taking her through the front door of the school, which he suspected was locked, Carter walked her around to the back. True to his word, Jason had left the door nearest the science labs propped open.

  Coach Parish, Jason, and five other geeks were waiting. Coach had put on a few pounds since Carter had last seen him, and his red hair was streaked with gray. Other than that, he was the same old Coach Parish, and he didn’t waste any time.

  “We’re dealing with something that has never happened before, so we need to think in a way we have never thought before.”

  Kaitlyn glanced Carter’s way and rolled her eyes. She also seemed excited about being there, so he thought the eye roll was just a nervous gesture.

  “Let’s start a list of our community’s biggest needs. After you work on that, break into small groups and tackle one of the items that sparks your imagination.” Coach paused, his eyes sweeping the room and taking in each person there.

  They were a ragtag group. Carter would admit that, but they were also a smart group. Every person in the room had done well on the SATs, except for Kaitlyn, who hadn’t taken them yet.

  Coach’s voice took on an even more somber tone. “Fear can destroy imagination. It’s worse than quicksand. Give in to fear, and you might as well hang up your cleats and go on home.” Coach was big on sports analogies, though as far as Carter knew no one in the room had played sports.

  “Banish fear, put on your thinking caps, and find solutions.” He waved them toward the board.

  “Did he just say put on your thinking caps?” Kaitlyn asked.

  “And banish fear,” Carter reminded her.

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah. Coach is linguistically stuck somewhere else.” Jason picked up an erasable marker and tossed it at Kaitlyn. “But up here?” Jason tapped his head. “He has it going on.”

  An hour later, Carter, Jason, and Kaitlyn had drawn up a design for a solar oven. Jason had sauntered off to the supply room with a list of items to find.

  “It won’t be large,” Kaitlyn said. “But it will be big enough to cook a family roast. Not that anyone has any fresh meat left.”

  “Plenty of deer in the area. Not the right time to shoot one, but I suspect that won’t stop some folks.” Carter glanced around the room. “Let’s go see what everyone else is inventing.”

  Zane was working with his little sister, who hadn’t even been in high school when the club had last met.

  “Windmill. Cool.”

  “It’s better than cool,” Lila said. “It could charge a small generator, maybe enough to operate a few lamps or a fan. The use of sustainable energy to provide creature comforts is the wave of the future.”

  Zane nudged his sister. “We all know that. It’s why we’re here.”

  “I thought you just wanted to get out of digging a three-meter hole in the backyard.”

  Instead of answering her, Zane pointed at their design. “The cool aspect of this design is that we can use items people would have in their garage to make the windmill.”

  “Bicycle parts?” Kaitlyn moved closer. “That is awesome.”

  Zane grinned and pushed his glasses up his nose.

  Quincy was working with Cooper and Annabelle. Carter introduced Kaitlyn, everyone nodded hello, and then they turned their attention to the whiteboard the group had been working on.

  “Our idea was to reclaim all possible water,” Quincy said.

  “But there’s water and then there’s water.” Cooper pointed to the top of the crude house they’d drawn. “Water straight from the roof will be cleaner than water that runs off into a cistern, which is bound to have dirt in it.”

  “Though water from the roof might still need to be filtered before drinking.” Annabelle played with one of her dangly earrings. As long as Carter had known her, ever since elementary school, she’d worn dangly earrings to match every outfit.

  “It would depend what t
he composition of the roof is,” Kaitlyn said.

  “Exactly.” Quincy turned back to his drawing. “We’re trying to create a system that will provide three types of water—for drinking and cooking, personal hygiene, and crops.”

  “We have the spring water, though.” Carter rubbed his thumb against the new callus on his palm. What he wouldn’t give for a hot shower.

  “The spring water will provide enough drinking water for the community,” Cooper admitted. “Our local officials were right about that. But enough to bathe with? Or grow crops? We’re going to need to reclaim every ounce we can find.”

  Coach Parish was standing at the board, adding to the list of needs. Carter and Kaitlyn walked back over to their table where Jason had dumped boxes, foil, black paint, insulation, a piece of glass, and a thermometer.

  It was time to get to work.

  FORTY-NINE

  Max spent the afternoon in his office, closing up case files, writing notes for the mayor and the chief of police, and creating a notice for his door saying he was temporarily suspending his practice. He had a secretary, but she only came in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he doubted he would see her again since she’d been commuting from the next town. No doubt she was home, planting a victory garden while the men built a latrine.

  He decided to skip lunch, opting for peanut butter crackers that he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk. He was tempted to not eat at all, but the hint of a migraine had been dancing just past the corners of his eyes. The last thing he needed was twenty-four hours in a dark room when he should be preparing to leave.

  He’d been diagnosed with basilar migraines when he was in law school. He had been studying in the law library one moment and unconscious the next. The symptoms read like those of a dread disease—double vision, slurred speech, even temporary blindness. Regular migraine medications were useless and could even lead to a stroke. He had painkillers, which he’d rather not take as they knocked him out.

  More than once he had ended up in the hospital.

  That wasn’t an option, so he pulled out the crackers and forced himself to eat.

  His goal was to close up the office by three. He glanced around, wondering if there was anything he should take with him. Feeling foolish, he pulled his law degree off the wall and stuffed the framed document into the leather messenger bag he’d brought. On the one hand, it seemed ridiculous to carry around his degree when the world had moved on, but on the other hand, he’d worked hard for it. At two thirty, Dr. Jerry Lambert walked in. The man literally filled the frame of the door. Standing six feet four inches and weighing in at a solid 250 pounds, he made Max feel small.

  “Jerry. What are you doing here? And how did you get to town?”

  “I drove, same as always.” Jerry clasped Max’s hand in a firm shake before settling into one of the chairs across from his desk.

  “Sorry I don’t have anything cold to drink, but I can offer you a warm soda or a bottle of water.”

  “I’ll take the water. Thanks.”

  Max fetched two bottles from his refrigerator, and then he settled in the chair next to Jerry, turning it so they were facing one another. Jerry Lambert was a retired veterinarian, and one of the best farmers that Max had ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy who had made his first million by the time he was forty-five. You wouldn’t know it by the type of car he drove or the clothes he wore—today he had on old blue jeans and a faded short-sleeved denim shirt, plus the requisite Stetson that he wore everywhere he went. He removed the Stetson and dropped it on the coffee table next to his chair.

  “How are things at High Fields? I was hoping to head that way tomorrow.”

  “Your folks are fine.” Jerry fished in his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Since I was coming to town anyway, they sent along this list. Wanted you to know that it is not a rush—just bring as much of this as you can.”

  Max quickly scanned the list. A few of the items surprised him, but he could probably scrounge up most of it.

  “How up-to-date are you on all that has happened?”

  Jerry finished off the bottle of water and tossed it into a nearby trash can. “My foreman keeps a ham radio. He monitored the emergency station until the reports stopped.” Jerry spent the next five minutes sharing the information he’d heard.

  Max said, “Same things we’re hearing around here. Other than… did you hear about the president’s announcement?”

  “Folks have been talking about it, but we didn’t hear the actual announcement ourselves. One old boy who lives down the way from your folks, he was in town that night and gave us the gist of it.”

  “What concerns me most is the president—if that message was indeed from the president—” He paused and waited for Jerry to offer his opinion, but the man motioned for him to continue. “If he did in fact authorize the US military to perform law enforcement functions, I think we might have a bigger problem than the lasting effects of the flare.”

  As an afterthought he added what Danny Vail had told Shelby the night before.

  “Out where we are, folks are arming up. There’s a reason your pop put ammunition on his list.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “As do we, but we won’t sit idly by and allow anyone to seize what few resources we have.”

  “Even if it means taking on the military?”

  “I can’t answer that question, Max. We’ll know what to do when the time comes. I can guarantee you that if Eugene Stone shows up trying to requisition supplies, he’d best be wearing body armor.”

  Jerry stood and repositioned his Stetson on his head. “I should get on about my business. My plan is to be home well before dark. There’s talk of bandits in Adamsville.”

  “Bandits?” Max thought of Charles Striker and his story about folks looting east of town.

  “Haven’t seen them myself,” Jerry admitted.

  “Why are you in town, other than delivering my mail?”

  “I still have a few friends who are in the veterinary business. Thought I’d stop by and call in a few favors… pick up some salt and mineral licks.”

  “Do you need them already?”

  “No. But we will later in the summer. As well as vaccinations for next year’s calves.”

  Max reached for his water bottle, his throat suddenly dry. He thought he’d accepted that the changes were permanent, but knowing it and having others confirm it were two different things.

  Jerry walked to the door, but before he opened it he turned back around. “Be careful, Max. I’m glad you’re moving to your parents’ place for the duration, just… don’t wait too long.”

  He turned and walked out to his truck.

  Alone once again, Max pulled out his parents’ note and smoothed the sheet with the palm of his hand. Something about his mother’s handwriting stirred bittersweet emotions deep in his heart. He had known they were fine, had convinced himself they were. Why wouldn’t they be? Both had grown up in the fifties, when technology was just finding its way into most homes. They’d often laughed at the new gadgets he bought them. And now? Well, now they would probably have less trouble adjusting to the new order than Max.

  Pop says to tell you there is no rush with this list. We trust you are well and know you will make your way to us as soon as you can. There’ s plenty of room for Shelby and Carter in Granny’ s old house.

  Ammunition for handguns—S&W, Sig

  Shells for Remington and Browning

  Cartridges for Winchester, Ruger, and Marlin

  Gun cleaning kit

  Fishing line

  Fishing hooks

  Brandy

  Aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen

  Wrap bandages

  Quick-clot gauze

  Disposable gloves

  Burn creams

  Antibiotic ointment

  Matches and/or flint

  Tire repair kit

  Bleach

 
; Heirloom seeds

  Salt

  Max reached the bottom of the list and started over at the top. He sat back, tapping his pen against the piece of paper. Everything on the list his parents already had, except maybe the brandy. It wasn’t lost on him that the alcohol was listed at the beginning of the medical supplies. He’d always thought that brandy as a cure-all was an old wives’ tale, but what did he know? He wasn’t a doctor, and his knowledge of first aid was rudimentary at best.

  He hoped the ammunition was for hunting.

  The last five items on the list seemed a random assortment. Things they expected to need more of? Worst-case scenario provisions? Supplies for a neighbor?

  At the bottom his pop had added the word chocolate, but someone had scratched it out—probably his mother. He would have added it for her, and she would have insisted it wasn’t a necessity.

  Max folded the list and stuck it in his pocket. He stared around the office and wondered what he was doing there. No one’s divorce was going to be presented to a judge. Child custody agreements and wills would have to wait. The legal system had halted, and who knew when it would start again?

  What he did know, what he could tell from the list, was that his parents were thinking long-term.

  Max donned his own Stetson. Yes, he wore one similar to Dr. Lambert, but in Abney every male over twelve wore a cowboy hat. He taped the handmade sign on his door—“Closed Until Further Notice.” Max had spent the last seven years building a steady, solid, small-town business. Now he was walking away from it, not knowing or caring if it would still be there when he came back.

  One thing he was sure of. His priorities had changed.

  FIFTY

  Max stepped out into a day that had begun its descent, casting long shadows down a nearly deserted Main Street. Should he take a few minutes and walk over to speak with the mayor? Maybe check on the situation with Charles Striker? But there wasn’t time for that. He didn’t know why he felt things were moving along so quickly. Jerry had been adamant that he didn’t need to hurry, as had his mom. Both assurances did little to mitigate his growing sense of alarm. Instead of heading to the mayor’s office, Max turned toward home.