Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

She gave him a sympathetic grin. “I’m sure they all have their own stashes.”

“Glenda… I saw this thing coming a long time ago. I never trusted the Tarsalans. I’ve been stocking up for the last three months, since the minute the negotiations got rocky. I knew they were going to try something. And these guys at work—they’re always so full of themselves. We were talking about the shroud… and I had something to brag about for a change, so I bragged.” He shook his head and glanced out to the highway again. “Now I realize it was a big mistake. I keep thinking they’re going to come to my house and take everything I have. I haven’t slept. My whole cycle is screwed up.”

He lapsed into silence.

She tried to be helpful. “Where do these guys live? Do they live far?”

“In Raleigh.”

“And you think they’re going to come all the way out here and raid your house?” She shook her head.

“Doesn’t that sound a little… crazy?”

“It’s just this one guy, Jamie… the last day I worked, the way he looked at me. He knew I was taking time off. Just the way he was looking at me. Like he had plans for me. Like he was going to hook up with these other guys, Lars and Perry, and they were going to come out… I wouldn’t put it past them, Glenda.

These guys are real assholes.”

“Yes, but how much of a stash do you have? All the stores are closed. Would it be worth their while?”

“I’ve got two fifty-gallon barrels of fresh water. I’ve got candles, and boxes of ammunition for my rifle. I bought a lot of dried-food dinners from a specialty place in Raleigh, those little vacu-packed ones. I’ve got a hundred rolls of toilet paper. I know that might sound stupid… but toilet paper is something you don’t want to do without.”

“Jeez, Leigh. I really don’t have more than enough supplies to last me a week now.”

Leigh’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “If you guys get hungry, I’ve got tons.”

She nodded, trying to swallow her pride. “The government relief truck didn’t come to the school yesterday.”

“I’ve got an extra rifle, too. You know how to use a rifle?”

“My dad used to take me partridge hunting. Back when I was a kid in Kansas.”

“Because you should really have a rifle in the house.”

“I hate to ask you for a handout.”

“The food reserves in this country have been horribly managed.”

“Bayard’s doing everything he can.”

“Not really.”

“He’s downed a total of thirty killer satellites. We’re chipping away at them.”

Leigh shook his head. “That doesn’t help the food situation, does it?”

His complexion was pale, and he had great dark patches under his eyes. Despite his boasts of more than enough food, he looked as if he had lost weight. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in days, and his face was unshaven.

“Leigh, why don’t you come over and sit with us for a while?”

Leigh drifted for a few seconds, staring at the dead grass; then his eyes narrowed and the corners of his lips tightened. He looked like an entirely different man. “I would like to see Jamie try,” he said darkly. He turned to her. “Let me get that rifle.”

As he went inside, the lights turned on automatically. Their glow spilled onto the front stoop. The begonias in the terra-cotta planters had died. The ivy covering the side of the house was nothing more than a dry, spidery track.

Leigh came back a few moments later with the rifle and a plastic bag. “Here. I hope you won’t have to use it, but you never know.” He held up the plastic bag. “And here’s three freeze-dried dinners and a few

boxes of ammo. Put the freeze-dried dinners in boiling water and they cook up nicely. If you need more, let me know. I’ve got a stash in the basement, plus some stuff buried out behind the shed.”

She took the rifle and bag. “Thanks.” She inspected the rifle, a Remington. “It’s pump action?”

“You ever fire one before?”

“No. Just bolt action.”

He took the rifle and demonstrated how to use it, then handed it back. “It’s got a four-round magazine.

It’s not the best rifle, but it’s not the worst, either.”

When she finally went back home with her rifle, food, and ammo, she had a lot of jittery new thoughts, ones she knew she wouldn’t have if it were broad daylight. Thoughts of Jamie, Lars, and Perry. Thoughts of Leigh going beserko on her. Of everybody going crazy because of the damn dark. But most of all she thought of how Leigh had a stash buried behind the shed. Because if worse came to worst… She nodded to herself. Yes, if worse came to worst.

She heard about people getting into confrontations. Fighting over food. Even killing each other for it. But she never got in a confrontation herself. She talked to Tammy St. Martin, who lived over the west hill, and learned that every single store in Old Hill had been looted clean and there wasn’t even one can of beans left anywhere.

And then the mailman stopped coming and she phoned the post office, and the computerized voice on the other end told her that, because of labor difficulties, the post office would now implement a system of rotational mail deliveries, and that any given addressee couldn’t reasonably expect to get their mail more than once a week.

She learned from Whit that fully half the Old Hill Fire Department had quit.

“Everybody’s looking out for their own. Especially because this… this darkness is starting to go on for a while.”

Other strange things happened, and these things told her that the whole country was being affected.

Small, ridiculous things, details one wouldn’t normally think of, but details that seemed to be more frightening to her than the larger calamities that might eventually come. For one thing, she stopped getting bulk or spam e-mails, as if the people or corporations who generated this crap now had much more serious things to worry about.

On the television, people were indignant about the nearly total lack of food relief and ranted against the Western Secessionists for being so tightfisted with the assistance. Why wasn’t the government doing something to intervene?

Then there would be sound bites of farmers plowing under crops, or killing their livestock because they had nothing to feed them with.

Shortly after that, she couldn’t get any network television at all, just the Emergency Broadcast System, and that was too bad, because there was nothing but a test pattern on the EBS most of the time.

The radio still worked, though, and that’s how she got her news.

There was news of how the electrical utility workers were deserting their jobs and management was struggling to hang on, but it was hard because people had to spend a lot of time looking for food and the other essentials of survival, and couldn’t spend a lot of time at work. She got news from the Internet, and learned that there had been a cascading blackout in the West affecting forty million people. Then she got the scare of her life because the power went out in Wake County, and the blackout lasted five hours.

Also, a few buildings burned to the ground downtown, set alight by looters, and no firemen came to put them out.

So, little by little things got worse, but out here on the highway she and her kids remained okay, because Leigh kept giving them food. She started filling empty pails and jars with tap water and storing them downstairs in the basement in case the water stopped working. She tried to get through to Gerry every day, but never could. The power went out again, and this time the utility told the customers it wasn’t their fault; that they were caught in the middle of a cascade, and they were having these cascades because there simply wasn’t the maintenance staff to keep the electrical equipment properly serviced.