Honey Grove, Texas, United States

July 17, 2024 | 3:51 PM | 41 degrees

---

The mayor had heard the explosion after all.

By the time Ryan and Rivera made it back to the library to tell him about the Valero, Howell and a group of others were already outside staring up at the trail of smoke blotting out part of the sky.

Howell looked to them as the boarded up door swung open. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.” Ryan took a second to catch his breath from the sprint down from the roof to the first floor. It turns out, splitting firewood for three days didn’t actually do that much for getting you in shape. “It’s the Valero.”

The others turned to him with wide eyes.

Howell silenced the growing chatter with a wave. “How do you know?”

Rivera came up behind Ryan, just as winded as he was. “We saw it go up. Big fireball. Right next to the interstate ramps.”

Howell closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Christ almighty. What the hell happened?”

Rivera shook her head. “Not sure. But I think we heard gunshots just before.”

The mayor sighed. “Darren. I knew from that first town hall meeting he would be nothing but trouble.”

His unofficial assistant, Joey, turned away from the direction of the Valero. Like everyone else, he looked worried, but the almost haunted expression of dread on the kid’s face suggested he had probably pieced together what this meant for the school’s fuel supply.

Howell looked back to the others. “Alright, show’s over. Let’s all get back to work.”

The people reluctantly made their way back inside, casting last looks over the trees to where the flames had been painting the sky moments earlier.

When it was the four of them, Howell looked to Rivera and lowered his voice. “Do we think their whole supply is gone?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know much about gas stations, but I’m sure they have safety measures to prevent catastrophic explosions like this. It could just be one ruptured tank burning off. Hard to say. Either way, it’s going to be hard for them to refuel from that one now. Especially if the pumps are gone.”

“Do we have any people at the Mobil?” Ryan asked.

Howell shook his head. “I knew Darren’s people were armed but I didn’t think they were stupid enough to start shooting up gas stations.”

“Maybe someone shot at them,” Joey suggested.

Howell laughed but there was no humor in it. “I’ve known Darren Turner a few years now. He’s never been the type to play defense if offense is a choice.”

“You know what this will mean, right?” Ryan asked.

“It means we need some defense of our own at the Mobil to make sure he doesn’t get too cocky.”

“Do we . . . have any guns?” Ryan felt awkward even asking. He’d never been much of a gun enthusiast; the only time he’d ever fired one was over ten years ago back in Florida, when his Dad took him out to shoot bottles and cans behind their old house in the countryside. He remembered the cold weight of the weapon in his hands, some kind of pistol he didn’t know the name of, and the feeling of raw power that surged through him from having it there in his grip. Too much power, like holding a stick of dynamite that could go off at any moment and kill whoever was close. He’d pulled the trigger a few times and scored a couple direct hits on the trees far behind the targets, and that had been more than enough for him.

“Joey,” Howell said, making the kid jump. “What do we have?”

Joey took out his inventory book and flipped through the pages. “Uh, we have two handguns, a rifle, and one shotgun. Plus boxes of ammo for each.”

Howell raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

“And a few tasers.”

“Oh, good. I’m sure those will scare off guys with AR-15s.”

“That’s just what people turned in to the office for storage,” Joey said. “There’s probably more that people just didn’t hand in.”

Ryan agreed. He had seen more than a few people with firearms holstered to their belts, and even though he had only lived in Texas for a few weeks, that was more than enough time to see how much the people here liked their guns. Turning them over just so the mayor could count them and then lock them in a closet was out of the question.

“We need more,” Howell said, turning toward the door and pulling it open. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about that sooner.”

“Is that the right move?” Rivera asked. “I mean, won’t we be asking for conflict if we start waving guns around?”

He paused in the doorway. “I think conflict is coming either way. I’d just rather be able to protect the school and everyone inside it when it gets here.” He continued inside, Joey trailing behind him.

Rivera looked to Ryan, her eyes searching his face for some indication that he supported her side. On the one hand, he mostly agreed with her in that arming up the whole school sounded like a dangerous proposition. How many people here had the right training? How many knew not to keep their finger on the trigger or to make sure the safety was always on? That many guns in one place, that much power in the hands of so many scared and inexperienced people, it almost begged for an accident to happen.

Then again, the world had changed. If people were already acting like they were in some kind of Mad Max death-race for resources, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to make sure everyone else could level the playing field. Most of the people who had come to the school wouldn’t stand a chance in a physical fight. Over half the group consisted of young children, elderly church goers, and retired civil workers. Out of the roughly two hundred people here, maybe fifty could hold their own if it came down to it. Darren’s group, on the other hand, appeared to be mostly younger and middle-aged men who acted like they’d been training for this their entire lives. As much as he hated to admit it, Ryan didn’t know how else the school could fend them off without more weapons. The thought of aiming a gun at another person and potentially having to pull the trigger made his stomach turn, but if the alternative was losing the school’s fuel supply and damning everyone to freeze to death in the dark, wouldn’t that justify the act? Ending a few lives to save the majority?

A week earlier, Ryan could have spent hours untangling the morality behind such a scenario before coming up with an answer. Now, it scared him how quickly he saw the clearest solution. The answer was right there in front of him. A no-brainer.

He looked away from Rivera’s questioning eyes and followed Howell inside, hoping that he hadn’t changed as much as everything else.

---

Typical of the hallways of a high school, rumor about the Valero spread like a gas fire.

As the mayor took his place on the auditorium stage for yet another emergency meeting, Ryan caught snippets of conversation going around the large room as the seats filled up:

It was our gas station that blew up, not the Valero.

I bet someone set the fire on purpose.

What if Russia really is attacking?

Each idea fueled further speculation and worry that led to even more ideas, until, just like at that first town hall meeting, imagination was the primary source for the theories bouncing around the room.

“Alright folks,” Howell said, enunciating loud and clear without the aid of a microphone. “So, we might have a little problem.”

He laid out the basics of their predicament and assured his worried audience that the Mobil was perfectly fine, that the explosion was limited to the vicinity of the Valero and wouldn’t affect the school’s generators any time soon. This seemed to calm everyone’s fears, so he took advantage of the moment of rationality and dove straight into the real reason for the meeting.

“We all know Darren and his group have taken this thing too far. That much was clear when they started looting empty houses on day one. When they started breaking into your houses on day two. When they took over the Valero and pointed loaded rifles at you on day three. Now, the Valero is probably down for the count, and that means they’re going to be looking for a new place to get their gas. We can’t afford to let them take the Mobil and blow it to hell, too, so we have to make sure they don’t get the chance.”

Howell paused for a moment, not for the dramatic effect it caused but because he seemed afraid to say the next few words. “And in order to do that, we’re going to need guns. We’re going to need people over at the Mobil who can defend it if Darren decides to make a move, and I have no doubt in my mind that he’ll do that sooner rather than later. I also have no doubt that there’s more guns here in this school than I know about. And that’s fine. You voted for me, you know my stance on the second amendment. I’m not trying to take your guns away. Hell, if I could give each of you a spare pistol and a box of rounds I’d do just that. But I can’t, because our inventory shows we don’t have enough. Unless, of course, that count is wrong.

“I need your help on this,” he continued, dropping the political theatre and taking on a more personal tone. “We’re not just talking about individual safety here, we’re talking about the future of this town. If we lose the Mobil, if we lose the generators, then that winter freeze that’s on the way is gonna hit us a whole lot harder. And it won’t just be uncomfortable. It’ll be dangerous and it’ll be deadly.”

Howell looked over the crowd. “But it doesn’t have to be. If we pool our resources and put more guns in the hands of people who can use them, we can make sure our fuel supply stays safe and the lights stay on. So if anyone has any weapons they can spare, please let me know. If you’re a good shot, let me know. Just be quick about it. God only knows how long it’ll take Darren to make his move.”

The sound of a hundred whispered conversations rose to the ceiling of the auditorium and Howell let them talk amongst themselves as if to prove he was on their side. A few moments later, an older man in the front slowly stood up from his seat and the voices around him fell silent.

“I might be able to help,” the man said. He was frail and bony and had a mess of thinning gray hair on top of his head, hardly the image of a battle-ready warrior Ryan had pictured for the Mobil’s future protector.

Howell nodded and looked around the room. “Anyone willing to help Davie? We need more than one—”

“Now hang on,” Davie interrupted. “I ain’t volunteering to go and get myself shot.” He hesitated for a moment, his wiry eyebrows knitting together as Howell waited for him to elaborate. “But . . . I might have a few guns I can spare back at my house.”

“Where’s that?”

“Far side of town. Oak Street. Mine’s the one with the blue shutters right before the cemetery.”

“I think Darren’s people already got to that street,” Howell said. “Most of the homes there were looted the other day.”

Davie was unfazed by this. “I keep them in a safe out in the shed. No way they got into it.”

“Alright, that’s good. How many do you have?”

“Now, first off, these guns might not all be accounted for. Legally, I mean. Would that be a problem?”

Howell smiled. “Davie, I don’t think the ATF will be returning my calls any time soon even if it was a problem. How many can you spare?”

A grin spread across the old man’s face. “Oh, a few.”

---

An hour later, Ryan and Carlos silently followed the two others along the chilly darkness of Oak Street. Beasley hung close to her master’s leg, claws clacking loudly against the pavement with each step. Or maybe the midnight silence that hung over the world just made it sound louder than it really was. The dog didn’t care one way or the other; her tail wagged and she wore that blissfully unaware grin that dogs got when they were happy, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Beasley wasn’t worried about Darren or any other danger because she was a spoiled rotten, mostly inside dog who had no notions of petty human conflict. She was just excited to be along for the trip.

The group traveled by starlight alone, walking along the dim glow reflected off the painted yellow lines of the road. Flashlights were too risky. The last thing they wanted was for one of Darren’s people to see them sneaking around and get the idea that they had been responsible for the explosion. Ryan didn’t think there was much logic to that conclusion considering the gunshots he had heard leading up to the fireball, but something told him logic had left Darren’s army of looters and anarchists a week ago. Probably longer.

So the four of them made the decision to walk in darkness.

Oak Street ran west from the school to the Oakwood Cemetery on the other side of town, a straight shot to Davie’s house. The old man wasn’t making the trip himself, but he had provided detailed instructions on finding and opening the safe to anyone brave (or stupid) enough to go out. A thirty-ish woman named Terri and a middle-aged man named Franklin had volunteered almost without hesitation. Both already had handguns of their own strapped to their hips, and Terri had been in the Army prior to The Blink. Franklin had never worn a uniform, but he considered himself a gun enthusiast and claimed to have a small stash at his own house a quarter-mile from Davie’s.

As to why Ryan found himself venturing out into the night? He had Howell to thank for that.

After the meeting, the mayor had approached him and asked if he could go with the two volunteers and get a closer look at the state of the Valero. Ryan had wanted to laugh in his face and refuse the request, but he didn’t. Cabin fever had already started to set in after so many unchanging nights locked inside the school and he knew he’d never forgive himself for passing on a chance to freely walk around beneath the stars. In just a few months, stepping outside might mean instant frostbite. If the world was dying, he wanted to spend every last moment with it before the funeral.

As to why Carlos was going? He had his wife to thank. Rivera had been adamantly against Ryan venturing so close to Darren’s gun-toting lunatics, especially by himself, and when she couldn’t change his mind she had simply looked at Carlos and that was all it took. She didn’t even have to say anything, he just sighed and said he’d go.

And as to why Beasley padded alongside them like this was nothing more than a little late night stroll? Well, that one was easy. Beasley went wherever Carlos went. Leaving her behind at the school wasn’t an option, not unless they wanted to replace all the doors she would undoubtedly chew through to escape and chase after him. Plus Ryan expected that going from a partly outside dog to one confined inside the linoleum halls of a crowded school made her feel more stir-crazy than any of them.

It took around half an hour of blind stumbling to reach the first stop of their journey. Franklin’s house stood just off the street in the surrounding dimness, white picket fence the only visible indication that someone had ever lived there. Their eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness, pupils fully expanded to absorb as much light from the stars as possible, but even so vision was limited to blurred shapes and outlines. Walking up the driveway, the tan brick walls of the small home gave it a washed out and ghostly glow.

Terri took out a small LED flashlight and switched it on. Warm red light painted the front wall, not bright enough to fully see the house by but also not glaring enough to be a beacon to any potential threats. Rivera had suggested the idea before they left and applied strips of clear packing tape painted with red Sharpie over the bulb, which filtered the harsh LEDs down to a much less intense color. She called it a “poor man’s astronomy lamp.”

“Shit,” Franklin muttered, moving his own red light over the busted out window of his open front door. He looked back at the others. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but still.”

The group stepped over the broken glass and moved inside, cautious despite knowing the place was empty. Franklin groaned as he saw what remained of his living room: overturned furniture, books and DVDs scattered across the floor, picture frames shattered. It was the same in every room. Most of the damage was completely unnecessary, like the looters had gotten a taste for destruction after breaking through the door and had been unable to help themselves. The kitchen was by far the worst. Drawers of silverware pulled out and emptied carelessly onto the floor, cabinets yanked off their hinges. Even the doors of the refrigerator had been broken off, jars and bottles tossed aside and shattered. Not a single scrap of food remained.

Wanting to give Franklin a moment alone amid the wreckage of his life, the group slowly drifted to the front door and walked back out into the night. Terri leaned against the porch rail and stared toward the street, eyes moving left and right in the sort of hyper vigilance Ryan expected of a former soldier.

Ryan sat down on the edge of the porch steps and moved his light along the yard. The grass was, somewhat bizarrely, overgrown. He’d expected it all to be dead after spending a week in darkness, but thinning shoots rose up from the ground almost to knee height, each blade reaching desperately upward for sunlight they would never find. Every plant he saw seemed to have stretched vertically in this way, their leaves lifted high in a last ditch effort to feel daylight. The small garden Franklin had tended around the porch was now filled with tall and lanky flowers that stood among weeds that had grown skyward much like the grass had. Though the red from his flashlight made the yard look nearly black, Ryan imagined it was starting to turn yellow, pigments shifting toward an ethereal white as chlorophyll faded and left the grass devoid of color.

He reached down and ran his hand over the grass and it felt brittle and lifeless. The world was dying and these pale echoes of flora were its ghosts.

Carlos sat down beside him on the steps. “Has Kit been alright today?”

“She’s . . . I don’t know,” Ryan said. “She seemed off earlier. Howell said she ran out of the water meeting looking like she’d seen a ghost. I found her up on the roof—” he almost mentioned the cigarette, then remembered the way Rivera had tried to hide it from him and chose not to rat her out in case her husband didn’t know about her secret habit, “—just looking up at the stars.”

Carlos was quiet for a moment. “I’m worried about her. She’s always been . . . sensitive when it comes to stuff like this. Disasters, I mean. Before, every time there was a record heatwave or some new oil pipeline approved it broke a little part of her. She’s always seen a few steps ahead and thought about the longterm effects whenever anything happens. Always the first to shoulder a burden she doesn’t need to carry, no matter the pain it causes her. That’s just who she is, it’s what I love about her.” He sighed. “It also worries the hell out of me.”

Ryan waited for him to continue, but Carlos remained silent. “I talked to her a bit on the roof. I think. . . I think she’s really struggling with all this. We all are, obviously, but the way she talked . . .” He shook his head. “It was like she was ready to give up.”

Carlos didn’t say anything back. Just before Ryan could ask him if he’d been able to talk to her any today, Franklin walked out through the front door behind them.

He smiled, or tried to, but no one missed the way his eyes seemed to glitter a bit more in the red glow of their flashlights. Clearing his throat, he said, “They got it all. Guns, medicine, just about everything. Even took the jewelry my Donna used to wear.”

“Damn,” Terri said, clicking off her light. “I’m sorry, Frank.”

“Don’t worry about it. They didn’t get everything,” he said, and held out his hand. A simple unadorned wedding band—one that matched the ring he wore on his own finger—dangled from a length of twine knotted into a loop. Franklin slid the makeshift necklace over his head and tucked the ring into his shirt. “We ready to go?”

Ryan looked at Carlos to see if he wanted to say anything more, but he and Beasley were already on their feet.

The group moved back to the street and continued the trek to Davie’s house. Blindly they followed the painted yellow line of Oak Street, always listening for any signs that they were being followed. There was nothing but the sound of their own footsteps striking the pavement, and Beasley’s claws.

A few minutes later, Terri clicked her light on and moved it over the last house on the street. Blue shutters—black under the red light—on each of the windows, and a front door that had been left wide open.

“Let’s hope the old man’s safe was locked up better than his door,” she said.

“We’ll meet you back here in half an hour,” Ryan said, unslinging his empty duffel bag from his shoulder and handing it to her.

Terri took it and nodded. Her face was barely visible in the gloom. “Be careful. Use the dark to your advantage. If someone spots you, run toward something to break line of sight then lose them. Zig-zag, no running in straight lines.” To Carlos, she patted the handgun at her hip and lifted an eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want to borrow this?”

Carlos laughed nervously. “No, that’s alright. Thanks though.”

“Your choice. Just keep quiet and be smart and you’ll be fine.” Terri turned and followed Franklin inside the house.

Ryan took a deep breath. He hadn’t felt nervous on the way to Davie’s place, but now that they were actually going toward the Valero that had changed. Hearing Terri assure them they would be fine reminded him there was a chance they might not be. Was he seriously about to waltz right up to a flaming gas station surrounded by armed looters with no way to defend himself? Not that a weapon would have been of any use to him; Ryan’s entire body trembled with nervous energy and his hands felt like numb blocks of ice. He’d be more likely to shoot himself than anyone in front of him. “Ready?”

“Let’s get this over with.” Carlos snapped his fingers and Beasley’s entire demeanor instantly shifted. The dog stopped sniffing around and planted herself firmly by her master’s foot, mouth shut and ears on high alert. It was like a switch had been flipped.

They left Davie’s house behind them and started down the street, cutting north onto a dirt road that led into the Oakwood Cemetery. Headstones glowing faintly with starlight jutted up from the ground like weathered teeth. Something bothered Ryan about the scene. Like part of his mind had detected some unnatural aspect of the grassy field he walked through, an aspect his conscious mind hadn’t yet pinpointed. He desperately wanted to take out his light and banish the ghosts he felt watching him from behind those numerous stones but resisted the urge. The stretch of road leading out of town—and toward the Valero—lay just beyond the cemetery fence somewhere to his left, meaning he had no way of knowing who might be close enough to see the red glow of his flashlight. Instead, he reminded himself he was a big boy far too old to worry about threats of the imagination and tried to push the fear out of his mind.

It didn’t work.

“She’s not taking her meds,” Carlos whispered, his voice startling Ryan as it issued from the darkness. “I grabbed a few things from the house when I went back for my chainsaw today. I found her pill bottles still on the bedside table, full. Which means she hasn’t taken them for close to a week now.”

Though he was pretty sure he knew the answer, Ryan asked, “What kind of medication?”

“An antidepressant. Plus another for anxiety. She’s been on them since—well, she’s been on them for about ten years.”

Even though Carlos’ face wasn’t visible, Ryan detected that same sense of avoidance in his tone he had encountered following the power outage at the farmhouse. His voice laced with pain and something else. Guilt, maybe. But why would he feel guilty? What had he done? The way he had stopped himself from saying whatever it was that preceded Rivera taking antidepressants, like he was ashamed or unwilling to bring it up. Carlos was still hiding something from him, something he didn’t want him to know.

Then it clicked. All at once the dots connected themselves and Ryan felt stupid for not drawing the lines sooner.

“She tried to kill herself,” Ryan whispered. “Didn’t she?”

For several seconds Carlos didn’t answer, the silence growing so long Ryan thought he hadn’t heard him. When he finally answered, the shaky word so strained and heavy with hurt it was like a punch to the gut. “Yes.”

This time Ryan was the reason for the long silence. Finally, he asked, “Why?”

Carlos cleared his throat, sniffed. “Why does anyone? The pain of living, real or imagined, becomes too much to deal with. I think she felt trapped, like the decades of work and research she did was being ignored by the people who were supposed to be using it to fix the problem. And it was. At every turn. World leaders made one bad decision after another and ignored every warning people like Kit had been telling them since the sixties. She felt worthless, like her entire life’s work was for nothing. She had been telling the world what was going to happen if we didn’t change, and even when it started coming true people still ignored her.

“I know that sounds like a poor reason to decide life isn’t worth living,” he said, “but Kit didn’t come up with that conclusion. A sick brain did. And listening to the news every day, hearing stories from all the people it actually affected, it was too much for anyone to keep a hopeful attitude about. I think Kit—her sick brain—started to blame herself for it. Like she hadn’t done enough to stop it from happening. That was when she started going downhill.

“And the worst thing is I knew she was spiraling. I’d seen the exhaustion in her eyes, watched the way her smile fell away when she thought I wasn’t looking. Her happiness was like a mask she put on so I wouldn’t worry about her. But then she stopped carrying on conversations, stopped going out with friends, went to bed earlier and earlier each day. She was always so tired. The warning signs were all there, I knew they were. But I didn’t think . . .” Carlos paused. “No, I didn’t act. I changed the channel when the news came on, stopped bringing up the weather, tried to only talk about positive changes happening in the world, but that’s all I did. I thought she’d come out of it on her own eventually, but she didn’t. You can’t just snap out of something like that. I knew that. But I ignored it.”

Unsure of what to say, Ryan said, “You couldn’t have known what she was going to do,”

“But I should have,” Carlos said, his words louder with barely suppressed anger. “That’s why I’m so worried about her now. Stopping her meds would be bad enough on its own, but combine that with everything going on right now? I don’t know if she can handle that much all at once.”

“Maybe you can talk to her when we get back, let her know that you’re worried. Try to convince her to start taking her meds again. Maybe she’s just been too distracted to think about them.”

“Yeah,” Carlos said. “But you know how stubborn she is. There’s probably some reason she stopped taking them that’s entirely justified in her mind, and good luck trying to convince her of anything once she’s made a decision.” He hesitated. “Don’t mention any of this to her. It’s not something she’s really open about, not even with me.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Carlos considered him for a moment. “You know, when I first met you I wasn’t sure if you were a good guy or just someone desperate to find a story to sell. After the last few days, I think I know which one you are.”

“Damn, I guess my cover’s blown.”

He laughed. “Seriously, though. Thanks for listening to me whine. I’ve never really talked to anyone about this before.”

“Any time,” Ryan said, and he meant it.

The pale gravestones abruptly ended a few paces ahead, signaling the border of the cemetery. The path joined a paved road just beneath a wrought iron archway with the words OAKWOOD CEMETERY spelled out at the top. They knew this only because a brief flare from the gas station fire lit up the sky and revealed the black letters.

Once they passed beneath the arch and started walking along the road, Ryan felt the tension seep out of his neck and shoulders. Trees stood on either side of the empty road, the silhouettes of their leaves blocking out the stars, and this sudden closeness of nature strangely comforted him. He felt better grounded to the world by the canopies above and around him, like those dying leaves and branches sheltered him from the infinite universe that loomed overhead.

They continued walking along the left side of the road and at last the flames from the Valero came into view. Ryan dropped into the tall grasses growing along the ditch line and Carlos followed suit, one hand clinging to Beasley’s collar in case she decided to bound away. They crawled through the grass until the Valero was directly across from them, and the extent of the damage became clear.

It was almost entirely destroyed.

A dozen people stood around the blaze and shouted at one another or just stared dumbly on as their source of fuel burned. Not that they could have done much to control the fire anyway, even if they had the means to do it.

Ryan took out the binoculars Howell had given him and put them up to his eyes.

The blackened walls of the gas station were entirely consumed with smoke and fire that billowed out the windows and up through the roof. Half of the canopy above the station’s two pumps had collapsed into the flames, leaving only one pump free of rubble and still visible. But it was most definitely out of service.

An SUV bearing an Arizona license plate rested over the crumpled remains of the pump with its front tires lifted into the air. The windshield had spiderwebbed when the glass fractured, not from the impact or the heat but from four bullet-sized holes each of the cracks could be traced back to. Ryan’s best guess was that the driver had plowed straight into the pump after the shooting started, then Murphy’s Law took over as all the station’s failsafes failed in the most unsafe ways. He only hoped that the driver he couldn’t bring himself to look at had been killed quickly by one of the bullets.

He lowered the binoculars. “I don’t think they’re gonna be filling up from here anymore.”

“Don’t need binoculars to see that,” Carlos agreed.

Ryan glassed the area again and searched the faces for Darren, but didn’t see him anywhere among the others. He thought for certain the man would have been one of the first to the scene following the explosion.

He brought the binoculars down again. “I don’t—”

Beasley suddenly jumped to her feet and let out a low woof Ryan was certain everyone at the Valero had heard. Carlos yanked the collar and pulled her back into the grass, whispering for her to hush. She struggled against him and craned her neck toward the road they had come from, and following her gaze Ryan saw two points of light on the road that were moving directly toward them, and fast. The sound of the vehicle’s engine reached his ears a few seconds later and his blood went cold.

“Someone’s coming,” he whispered, trying his best to sink into the ground and disappear. Carlos swore and flattened himself over Beasley, gently stroking her fur and trying to calm her down.

As the truck roared closer Ryan understood why rabbits so often bolted out from their safe grasses and fled into the road to their deaths. There was no doubt in his mind that the driver had spotted them and that he would feel four tires thunder over his body at any second. He dug his fingers into the grass and squeezed his eyes shut, mostly to keep himself from obeying that primal instinct screaming for him to abandon the ditch and run as hard as he could. Then the truck screeched to a stop in the Valero’s turn off twenty feet away from their hiding place in the grass. Lifting his head, Ryan could see from the brake lights that it was a newer looking white pickup with two flags—one American and the other Confederate—installed along the sides of the bed. The driver door flew open and a man he had no doubt was Darren Turner rushed toward the burning gas station, waving his arms and shouting at his dumbstruck followers over the sound of the fire. Ryan couldn’t make out what he said, but from the way the people shrank back and averted their gazes he didn’t think it was anything positive.

One of the men shouted something back and jabbed a finger toward the wrecked SUV, to which Darren answered by screaming something else into his face. The two took a few turns arguing back and forth, then it ended when Darren threw his fist into the man’s jaw and dropped him to the pavement. He pointed back to the gas station and gave some final order to the ones still on their feet, then stormed away toward his truck.

Ryan held his breath until Darren had climbed back behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. He didn’t start breathing again until the truck peeled out of the parking lot and sped back the way it came, flags whipping behind it like the wings of some furious beast. Only when the taillights disappeared around a bend in the road did he remind himself to take a breath.

Carlos glanced at him, still clinging to Beasley, and gave a small questioning nod. Ryan cautiously pushed himself up off the ground and made sure the group at the Valero weren’t looking his way. They weren’t, most of them had moved away from the road to do whatever Darren had demanded of them, so he made his way along the ditch line with Carlos right on his heels. Neither of them spoke until the orange glow of firelight was far away and blocked by the trees of the cemetery.

“That was too damn close,” Carlos said once they passed beneath the cast-iron archway and started back through the graveyard. “Thanks, Howell. Glad we could risk our lives to find out something we already knew.”

Ryan ignored his sarcastic tone as they walked by the silent headstones. “We learned at least one thing we didn’t know. That SUV had out of state tags, which means Darren’s people shot someone just for driving into town, probably someone looking to fill up and get back on the interstate. So now we know that it wasn’t stupidity or some freak accident that caused the explosion, it was murder.”

Carlos didn’t respond and Ryan didn’t follow the statement up with anything else. Both were too tired to hold a conversation, their nerves too frazzled from the night’s unexpected adrenaline rush. As they continued through the quiet cemetery, Ryan realized the reason for the unnatural feeling he had picked up on when they first passed through.

The crickets were gone. Nighttime in Honey Grove had always been accompanied by the steady croaking chirps of crickets in the grass, even after The Blink had happened. He was certain he had heard them a few days earlier just outside the school, but now they had all fallen silent.

He and Carlos made it back to Davie’s house and were met by a very relieved Terri and Franklin, both of whom seemed to have a hundred questions about how they had gotten away from the truck that had driven right past the house. Ryan’s answers were short, exhaustion setting in as he hefted one of the three duffel bags weighted down with rifles and handguns over his shoulder and began the walk back to the high school.

Three questions had been answered that night and none of them helped to put his mind at ease. One: the fuel supply from the Valero was officially off the board, which confirmed the immediacy of Howell’s desire to get guards at the Mobil. Two: Darren’s people were ready and willing to kill people to ensure their own survival. Again proving the need for more defenses. And three: Davie’s guns and ammo had all been present and accounted for. That should have made Ryan feel better, but it didn’t. The answers all pointed to a single question that tied his stomach in knots.

How long would it be before Darren made his move to take over the Mobil?

And perhaps more importantly, how did a school filled with children and untrained civilians ever hope to hold them off?