Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

And then the Internet went down, right around the time the radio went down, so she had no idea what was going on. The servers across the country weren’t adequately connecting to each other. On certain evenings she couldn’t get the news site, and finally she couldn’t get anything at all, not even her home page.

This particular brand of Armageddon, at least at first, was of a slow and creeping kind, but it was pernicious. It was formally announced, on one of the few evenings the radio came back on, that fully ninety percent of next year’s crops had been lost, and that many livestock had already starved to death.

Things couldn’t survive without light.

When Leigh told her that there had been several home invasions over in Willington—people just trying to find some food—she tried to buy stronger locks for her doors, and even traveled all the way to Raleigh to find a locksmith who was open. But it seemed as if locksmithing, as a profession, had entirely disappeared, and she was forced to make do with the crappy old locks she already had on her doors.

Are you afraid of the dark? This question kept parading through Glenda’s mind once the rolling blackouts became a more permanent feature of their day-to-day living. And she was sure it was the same all over the country. Twelve hours of night was one thing. But at the end of that twelve hours, daylight was supposed to come back. Now it didn’t. Not with the power off most of the time. It was dark twenty-four hours a day. The days had stretched into weeks, and the weeks had stretched into the first month, and they had received only occasional blips of power every now and again. They were officially at war with the Tarsalans, but most of it was happening up there, beyond the black skin of the shroud, while down here it just got darker and darker, and colder and colder, so that on a few occasions it had actually snowed, right here in North Carolina, in the middle of summer.

Her kids sat on the floor around the living room coffee table playing chess because it was the only “board” game they owned. All their other games were electronic, and with no electricity they couldn’t play them. They played by candlelight and she watched them with low-level apprehension because everything was running out—food, medicine, electricity—and she didn’t know how much longer she could hang on.

She could be grateful for one thing only: Leigh next door was providing them with food every now and again. But Leigh was getting that look in his eyes, like a boy who had a high school crush, and she was afraid that he was going to do something stupid, like make a pass at her, and then she wouldn’t be able to accept his food anymore.

She hated it all. But mainly it was the dark. It was like a chronic disease, something that made her feel not only anxious but also under the weather, as if she were suffering from the weakness of persistent anemia.

Even worse was her loneliness. God, how she wanted Gerry. She sipped her cold chamomile tea. She wanted to be pressed against his tallness. She wanted to feel his arms around her. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for exploding like that.

She was just thinking she might try the fone again, which had become like a talisman of futility to her, when she noticed light coming through the front window.

She looked out the window and saw firelight far to the west. Something was burning? She walked to the door, opened it, and went out onto the porch. She gazed to the west and saw the glow of what must have been a considerable conflagration just over the hill. Was that Tammy St. Martin’s place burning?

Tammy with her two little girls, and her husband, Denny, who was with the National Guard and trying to keep the peace in Raleigh? Jake came out onto the porch and, after a moment, so did Hanna.

“Is it a house fire?” said Jake.

“I think it must be the St. Martin place. I hope Tammy and her girls are okay.”

“Where’s the fire department?”

It was a good question, but one she already knew the answer to. Who’s afraid of the dark? They all were, including the men in the local fire department. People were afraid, and fear was driving them—driving them as much as the darkness. People weren’t showing up for their jobs. She was going to the nursing home only when she felt like it. All the stores were closed. The banks were closed.

Commerce, for the moment, had been suspended. And people were starting to fight each other. She glanced at Leigh’s place. Leigh had the right idea. Stock up, hunker down, and hope for the best.

“Maybe we should go up and help,” suggested Hanna.

Glenda looked around the yard, then along the highway, then out into the farms and fields beyond the highway.

“I think we should stay put.”

“Are they going to let it burn to the ground?” asked Jake.

“Kids, we’ve got to be real careful with those candles.”

She then saw another source of light, blue flashing police lights coming over the hill to the east, and a second later Sheriff Maynard Fulton’s police cruiser appeared. It came racing down the highway at seventy or eighty miles per hour, and in addition to her fear of the darkness, she now felt her long-standing fear of the sheriff. An old truck, one that bumped and rattled along the road, followed the sheriff’s cruiser, and she recognized the truck as that of the sheriff’s younger brother, Buzz Fulton. She felt an additional old fear, the fear of Gerry’s alcoholism. Because wasn’t Buzz Gerry’s favorite drinking

buddy in Old Hill? And hadn’t they gotten so magnificently plastered on more than one occasion that Sheriff Fulton had had to intervene? And hadn’t Sheriff Fulton then eyed her in an uncomfortable fashion when she had come to pick Gerry up in the drunk tank?

“Kids, get inside. Don’t let them see us.”

“Mom, it’s just the sheriff.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

She herded her kids inside and shut the door, just as the Fulton brothers sped by.

She hurried to the kitchen window where, in a moment, she got a view of the cruiser and truck hurtling west on the highway toward Tammy’s place. She gripped the edge of the counter for support.

She watched the fire burn for the next fifteen minutes, and her shoulders eased. At last she went back to the living room and sat in Gerry’s easy chair. She liked sitting in the chair because it had his smell. She thought the emergency was over, and that they could go back to the apprehension and ennui of total darkness twenty-four–seven. But then, glancing out the living room window, she saw headlights swinging back down the highway, coming from Tammy St. Martin’s place, and the two feared vehicles finally came up her drive; first the cruiser, then the truck.

Her body stiffened because she knew Fulton possessed all those characteristics you didn’t want in a cop. He was a man who was liable to abuse his power at the first opportunity.

She sprang from Gerry’s chair and rushed to the kitchen. She pulled their few cans of food from the shelves, shoved them into a canvas bag, quickly took it down to the basement, and hid it among all the boxes, then hurried upstairs just in time to hear Fulton knock at the front door.

“Kids, let me do the talking,” she said.

She smoothed her hair, walked to the front door, and opened it.

Fulton looked thin. He was a square-jawed man with a mustache, and squarish aquamarine eyes atop squarish red cheeks. His flashlight printed a cream circle on the porch step, and in its glow she saw an expression of mistrust on his face. Buzz came up behind the sheriff.

“We thought we’d check up on you, Glenda,” said Maynard.

“Howdy, Glenda,” said Buzz.

“Buzz here was telling me you usually go down to Marblehill around this time of the year, so we really didn’t expect to find you here.”