With that, he decided to try to end the conversation. He wasn’t nearly as hard-hearted as he wanted to appear. He gestured at Owen to get back to work then walked over to the lumber to grab some posts. Beth stood there in the yard for a bit, gazing off at Mrs. Eddies’s house. Shane thought he heard voices over there, cries of disgust. The kids had apparently seen the dead bodies.
Finally, Beth shook her head, gave Shane a disappointed look, and headed back into the house. He was tempted to defend himself, and to reinforce his point, but he turned away. When the front door slammed shut, he jumped.
She still wants to save the world, he thought. When will she realize we can only save ourselves?
21
Though Mrs. Eddies’s house was now cleaner than it had been in years, an awful smell lingered, particularly in the hallway and around the bedroom door. Beth didn’t blame the Horton kids for spending most of their time away from the place. In fact, they seemed to prefer Beth’s living room. Thankfully, Shane didn’t continue to complain about this, though Beth could tell he was irritated.
He’ll get over it, she told herself. He’ll have to. It’s my house, and I’ve made up my mind about this.
Two days had passed, and the town hall meeting was scheduled for that evening. James seemed particularly anxious about the meeting, and he kept pacing from the kitchen through the living room and down the hall, wondering out loud in a hundred different ways if anyone would show up to the high school. Everyone else had gathered in the living room, including the Horton kids, to discuss who was going. Though the sun was setting outside, the living room was particularly bright thanks to the LED lantern attached to the batteries on the table near the front windows.
“We should all go,” Violet said, letting Ruby lead her through the crowd to the couch. “Everyone needs to be part of the conversation. Anything they discuss or decide concerns each of us.”
“I think that’s reasonable,” Corbin said.
“It can’t just be adults making decisions,” Libby said. She still had the trading cards with her, and Beth observed that she constantly fiddled with them, almost like a nervous tic. “The last time adults made a decision without any input from kids, we got abandoned at the school gym.”
“I agree,” her sister, Amelia, said. “We all need to be there.”
David nodded vigorously.
Jodi was sitting on the couch. She looked awful, her hair dusty and dirty, her face scratched and bruised, and both arms injured. Kaylee tried to climb on her lap, but Jodi’s grunts of discomfort convinced her to sit beside her instead.
“I’m up for going,” Jodi said. “I think I can manage it, and the kids are right. It would be good for all of us to participate in whatever discussion takes place tonight. This could be a big deal. This meeting might be the point at which we start to reestablish some order.”
Beth felt immediate opposition to Jodi going, but before she could say anything, Shane spoke.
“Wait a minute,” he said. He’d worked on the last section of the fence that afternoon, and he was dabbing his face with a handkerchief. His cheeks and neck were sunburned. “Jodi, surely you don’t intend to go. You are still very much on the mend.”
“Shane is right,” Beth said. “Jodi, dear, you have to stay here and rest. Your accident was only a few days ago, and this meeting is liable to be noisy and crowded, neither of which are good for you.”
“It’ll be crowded if we’re lucky,” James said.
“Even if only a few people show up,” Beth said, “the fact remains, some of you need to stay here. We don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into or what sort of people we’ll be dealing with tonight. Kaylee, you need to stay with your mommy and take care of her.”
“Okay, Grammy,” Kaylee said, giving Jodi such a big hug that Jodi winced in pain. “I’ll keep Mommy safe from bad people.”
“Violet, you should stay here as well,” Beth said. Mostly, she was worried about Violet and Ruby being stuck in the room if a fight broke out. Anything was possible, and she assumed tensions would be high.
Violet made a furious face, lips pursed and twisted so far to one side it made her whole face look broken. “Of course,” she muttered bitterly. “Of course, you’re going to make me stay here. I knew it.”
“Sweetheart,” Shane said, “it’s nothing personal. I agree with Beth. You can help Kaylee look after your mom.”
“Right, right, help Kaylee,” Violet said, speaking through clenched teeth. “I get it. I know what it’s all about. I’ll stay here and take care of everyone. Fine.” She pulled Ruby close to her, wrapped her arms around the dog, and turned her face away.
“Violet, it’s a matter of safety,” Beth said. “It’s not a reflection on your abilities.”
“I know what it is,” she replied. “Meanwhile, you’re going to leave our injured mother, plus a six-year-old, and me here at the house, and what if there’s trouble? What are we supposed to do?”
“There’s not going to be trouble here,” Shane said. “If there’s trouble, it’ll be at the meeting. That’s why I want you to stay with your mom.”
Corbin cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Sir, I’d like to volunteer to stay at the house as well. I don’t really need to go back to the high school, to be honest, and anyway, Violet makes a good point. Someone should be here to deal with any problems, just in case.”
Shane and Jodi traded a look, and Jodi shrugged. Jodi didn’t really know Corbin. They hadn’t had a single conversation yet, and Beth could tell her daughter was reluctant to let him stay.
“I guess…I guess I’m fine with that,” Jodi said, finally.
“So Jodi, Violet, Kaylee, and Corbin are staying here,” Beth said. “Everyone else, get in the cars. We’ll take the sheriff’s car and the LTD, so take your pick where you want to ride.”
Mike was first to the door. He’d been standing in the foyer saying very little. Though he looked as sickly as ever, he didn’t stick around to discuss whether or not he should go. Beth watched him pull the LTD keys out of his pocket, bounce them in his hand, and step outside.
“I think that’s our cue,” she said.
She hugged Violet in passing, but felt her granddaughter tense up. Then she found Corbin in the crowd and pointed at him.
“You keep an eye on things, young man,” she said. “I’m trusting you.”
“I’ve got it,” Corbin replied, giving her a salute. “Everything will be fine here. Just watch out for the weirdos at the school. When you start talking about food, people are bound to get mad.”
In the end, Beth rode with James and the Horton kids in his patrol car, while Shane and Owen rode with Mike in the LTD. After stepping outside, Shane made sure the front door was locked. Then he waited as the vehicles backed out of the driveway so he could shut and latch the big gate he’d installed. Beth hated how her property looked with a fence surrounding it on all sides. It was ugly, and it made her feel imprisoned in her own home. Still, she understood the need for it.
James led the way, driving somewhat slowly through the neighborhood. He seemed anxious, constantly adjusting his grip on the steering wheel.
“Still convinced no one will show up?” she asked.
“You read me like a book,” he replied. “Either no one will show up, or we’ll get a few weirdos looking for a handout.”
“People will come. You wait and see.”
The Horton kids seemed restless in the back seat. Libby and Amelia were arguing about something, but they were whispering so Beth couldn’t make out what they were saying. They sounded anxious. Maybe they weren’t all that excited about returning to the school where they’d been stranded for days.
As the cruiser turned a corner and came in sight of the school, Beth saw the interior lights shining brightly through the front doors. James had come out in the morning with fuel for the generators, and then he’d come out again two hours before the meeting to turn the power on. Seeing electric lights shining in such a
big building was a rare sight. In their new world of candlelight and lamps, the brilliance of fluorescents seemed almost magical.
Shadows moved beneath the lights, dozens of them. People. Beth realized it first, and she inadvertently gasped. James glanced at her, then squinted into the distance.
“We got a crowd,” he said, as he turned into the parking lot.
He parked along the curb just behind the abandoned school bus, and the big Ford LTD pulled in behind him. As Beth got out of the car, she realized the foyer inside the school was practically full, and it seemed like someone had already taken control of the situation. People were all facing in the same direction, standing quietly, nodding as if they were being spoken to.
“I wonder who came,” James said, locking his door and nudging it shut.
“Let’s find out,” Beth replied.
The Horton kids followed them down the sidewalk, whispering as they drew near the school. Shane, Owen, and Mike caught up with them just before they passed through the door.
“Looks like a good turnout,” Shane said, opening the door for them.
As she stepped through the door, Beth realized two things. First, the crowd was larger than she’d initially thought. There were at least two hundred people crowded into the foyer and nearby hallways, possibly more. Second, the reason things already seemed so orderly, the crowd so calm, was because the mayor of their little community, Frank Zion, had showed up and was currently addressing the crowd.
Frank was a girthy gentleman who favored vests and khaki pants. His black hair was combed back and gelled in place, revealing a lined forehead above small but intelligent eyes. At the moment, he was gesturing at the crowd as he spoke, the overhead lights catching the edge of his gold wedding ring.
“Now, we’re going to gather in the auditorium because the gym and cafeteria are still a mess,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly how we will conduct the discussion, particularly the questions, but I think…”
He trailed off as he spotted the newcomers stepping through the door. Sheriff Cooley moved up beside Beth, and the mayor immediately gestured at him.
“That’s the man I was looking for,” Frank said. “Sheriff, come on up here, if you please.”
James gently but insistently forced his way through the crowd, and Beth followed in his wake. When he got to the front, the mayor grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him in close. Though he spoke quietly, Beth overheard him.
“I didn’t plan this thing, James,” the mayor said. “I just got the flyer and figured I’d better show up and exert some authority.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” James said. He reached up and brushed the long scar on his temple with his finger. “I’m not quite a hundred percent yet, Frank. I don’t suppose you’d do me the huge favor of running this meeting, would you? It looks like you’ve already got things well in hand.”
“They’ve been relatively sane so far,” Frank said. “I’ll do what I can. If things start to get out of control, I’d appreciate it if you could flash your badge, in a manner of speaking.”
“Will do,” James said.
Mayor Frank waved at the crowd with both hands. “Let’s move into the auditorium, folks. Try to keep things orderly, please! This whole meeting will be a lot more productive if we cooperate and get along. No pushing.”
The transition from the foyer into the auditorium next door was as orderly as anything Beth had seen since the EMP. Most of the crowd seemed somber, but she wondered if they weren’t expecting more from this meeting than could be delivered. James had called the meeting so everyone could get on the same page. What if most of these people expected their mayor and sheriff to provide solutions to all of their problems, including the power outage?
She took a seat in the second row on the left side. The Horton kids joined her, while Shane, Owen, and Mike took the row just behind. As people filed in, they quickly filled up the small auditorium. Frank and James spent some time in the back, trying to figure out how to get the stage lights turned on. Once they managed it, they both walked down to the front of the auditorium and climbed the steps onto the stage.
Frank tried to get a mic working. When he couldn’t do it, he stepped up to the front of the stage and let his booming voice command the attention of the room.
“Folks, our good sheriff here called this meeting so we can coordinate a little bit,” he said. “Hopefully, this will be an opportunity to answer some of your questions, make a few plans, and restore some semblance of order in our town.” He turned to James. “Does that about cover it?”
“That’s about it,” the sheriff said.
Someone near the back of the crowd shouted, “We want to know what happened? What caused the power loss? What do you know?”
Others began to echo the question, until it seemed the meeting might immediately spiral out of control.
“Yeah, what caused it?”
“Who did it? Was it the CIA?”
“What’s the truth? Was it a foreign power?”
“What about aliens?”
Frank held up his hands and patted the air the until the crowd calmed down. “Those are very good questions, folks. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself. In fact, if anyone happens to know anything…”
He spotted someone in the crowd and pointed. Beth realized he was pointing at Mike, who had raised his hand. Mike, wincing, stood up.
“I can answer that question,” he said. “My sister works for a government agency, and she talked to her boss the day of the incident.”
This produced a buzz of excitement in the crowd and, Beth thought, a few suspicious glances.
“The widespread power outage was caused by something called a Coronal Mass Ejection,” Mike said. He didn’t have the strength to project his voice to the back of the room, and Beth heard people whispering as they passed along the information. “It’s basically a huge burst of plasma from the sun that produces a geomagnetic storm which can disrupt electronics. In this instance, it apparently fried the entire power grid, which means the whole thing will have to be rebuilt, and that could take a very, very long time.”
For a few seconds, the crowd seemed to absorb this information, then the questions resumed in earnest, with people speaking over each other.
“Why wasn’t there a warning?”
“Can’t they see it coming? Don’t we have observatories?”
“Why weren’t they prepared for it?”
Mike grimaced at Beth, as if to say, “What did I get myself into?” He quickly sat down. Frank spent a while trying to regain control of the audience. James helped by waving a hand over his head.
“Look, that’s more than I’d heard,” Frank said. “It sounds like a reasonable explanation to me.”
“I don’t think it does,” someone shouted. “The government would know if a big solar event was coming. What about NASA?”
“Maybe they knew it was coming and let it happen,” someone else said.
Many seemed to agree with this, as a wave of muttering and nodding went through the crowd.
“He said his sister works for a government agency,” someone else said. “Sounds pretty damned mysterious to me.”
“Okay, folks,” Mayor Frank said. “Let’s settle down. Your frustrations are perfectly understandable, but we have to take our turns.”
Beth didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. Mike’s simple attempt at an explanation had already turned into widespread suspicion. It seemed best to rein it in before it took hold. She rose and turned to face the gathered crowd. She saw quite a few hostile eyes gazing back at her. Many in this crowd knew her, of course, and there were a few friendly faces here and there, but they were the minority.
“Hello, friends,” she said, trying to set the tone. “The sister he’s talking about is my daughter, Jodi McDonald. She works at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and she spoke to her boss on the phone the day of the incident. I can vouch for what Mike said. This was a solar even
t. I don’t know why there wasn’t advanced warning. It hit too fast, I guess, but Jodi’s boss had nothing to gain by lying. He’s suffering as much as anyone else.”
This settled a few in the crowd, but not everyone.
“If you’re right, then this could last for months,” someone shouted.
“It could last forever,” another added. “We can’t count on the government. We have to take care of ourselves.”
“We can’t wait for help,” said a third. “No help is coming.”
Frank worked to regain control of the audience again. “Folks. Folks. Folks!” Finally, he began clapping loudly, and this eventually got everyone’s attention. “Let’s not turn this into a shouting match. We’re all in this together. Look, I agree with whoever said we need to take care of ourselves, so I think we should concentrate on reorganizing. Let’s get a handle on everyone’s situation. I will appoint a committee to take a census in the community over the next few days, so we can determine how each family is doing.”
“Everyone should provide an inventory of their food,” someone shouted from the back of the room. “We need to start sharing now that the grocery stores are all closing.”
A thick-limbed fellow stood up, arms crossed to reveal a US Navy tattoo on his forearm. “It’s nobody’s business what food we got. This ain’t no socialist state. Not yet. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“Okay, okay, let’s table the idea of sharing a food inventory,” Frank said.
This seemed to satisfy the sailor, who sat back down. A woman near the front stood up, raising her hand until Frank acknowledged her.
“Hello, I’m the manager of C & R Supermarket,” she said. “I have some food left. All the perishables went bad when the generator died, but there are cans and dry goods still on the shelves. I’ve been closed because I didn’t know how to handle the panicking crowds.”
Shane stood up then. “Do what the wholesale club did. Use armed guards and limit the number of customers.”
This caused a lot of unhappy murmuring.
Surviving The End (Book 2): Fallen World Page 19