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“Go!” Robin screamed a feral sound as she charged down the driveway. The pregnant woman grabbed Jed’s gun and started running, forcing him to chase her away. Charlie’s husband bolted after them.
Tessa lowered her pistol, her heart pounding so hard it threatened to crack her ribs, and she turned to the man bleeding out onto her driveway. His fingers moved blindly against the ground searching for the crowbar and she kicked it out of reach.
“Why did you do this?” Tessa cried. The man looked to her with wide white eyes, staring straight through her as the life left them. The moon reflected off the little league coach emblem embossed on his dark blue wind breaker.
Bile rose in the back of her throat and she turned to throw up on the pavement. Her vision blurred. She dropped to her knees and pressed her palms and the frame of the pistol against her eyes to make it stop.
A heavy hand laid on her shoulder. “You did good. I wasn’t sure you had it in you for a second, but you took care of it.”
“Were you standing there watching?” Tessa scrambled backwards with tears burning her eyes. “Oh God, what did I do?”
“What you had to do.” Arthur slung the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and held out a hand to help her up.
Robin stared at both of them with her beaten face twisted in horror. “We need to call the cops somehow.”
“Yes.” Tessa spit the taste of vomit from her mouth and rose shakily to her feet. “This wasn’t some random druggie. This was one of our neighbors. He could have been someone’s father. The police need to know what happened to him. I’ll drive down to the shelter in the morning to report it.”
Arthur sighed, shaking his head. “How many times are you going to flaunt that giant truck driving past the houses where people are already starting to think about rationing food for their kids?”
“Is that what this is about?” Tessa struggled to fill her lungs with air. “Are bodies going to start piling up on my doorstep because I have a working truck? You have one too.”
“It’s not only about the truck.” Arthur grunted as he grabbed the dead little league coach’s arms and heaved the body over his shoulders.
“People are scared. How many of them do you think are sitting in their homes wondering what they’ll do next week when the power doesn’t come back on? And when it doesn’t, when the reality sets in, they’ll understand that no one is coming to fill the grocery stores. That the numbers they saw last week in their bank accounts, digital numbers on a screen that they spent years of hard work to build, mean absolutely nothing now. The primitive urge to flee to fertile and sustainable land will infect every sane human being that wasn’t prepared for this. You’re already feeling it too. And for those who don’t know what to do, they’re watching you drive around with something they don’t have. A means to escape. As everything runs out, they’re going to take what they need to survive. So, yes, I have a working truck. But there is a reason I haven’t driven it.”
“They’re going to come back here. It isn’t safe.” Robin’s skin was as pale as the full moon.
Tessa laced her fingers around the woman’s cold hand, drawing strength in comforting her. “We’re going to go somewhere safe.”
“Where?” she shrieked. “This is really happening. There’s nowhere safe anymore.”
It was all hitting her too fast. Reality shocking her system as if she’d jumped into an icy lake. It took Tessa days to come to terms with the truth.
She ran her hand up and down Robin’s arm, willing her to focus. “It’s going to be okay. I have a place to go in rural Idaho and you can come with us there. It’s a small town hidden in the mountains. We’ll be safe until this all blows over.”
Tessa cast a sharp glare at Arthur as he started to speak and silenced him. Robin had already been through too much. She didn’t need to hear more right now.
“I can’t leave.” Robin shook her head. “What happens when Joe gets back?”
“Landon knows where we are going. He’ll let Joe know too, but we can leave directions for him just in case.”
“Okay,” Robin whispered. She was checking out, retreating into herself. But Tessa didn’t have time to try to help fix all the damage that had been done to her before they left. She only hoped that whatever crazy strength that had motivated her to rush those men with an unloaded rifle would return if they ever needed it again.
“It’s time to go now.” She gave Arthur a sad smile.
He nodded, shifting the dead man’s weight on his back. “I don’t think you have another choice.”
