Unraveling (After The End #1), Page 2

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  It might have been her imagination, but Cabela’s seemed busier than the few times she’d been in before. In particular, there was a long line in the gun department, and she felt fortunate to be able to purchase a couple of rifles, spare magazines, and several boxes of ammunition before they ran out of stock. The department for camping and dehydrated foods also seemed extremely busy.

  As she loaded several large cans into her cart, she heard a couple nearby whispering to each other.

  “Get the MREs. They’ll last longer,” said the husband.

  The wife was shaking her head. “We want to get some, but the kids won’t eat them well. We also need to get the foods they’re familiar with.”

  “There’s no room, Sharon, and no time. If the website is correct, we only have a few hours to get to the cabin.”

  She pointed at the cans near Lily, accidentally catching her eye. “We have room for both. You can’t expect them to start eating something they’ve never tried before.”

  After a moment, her husband nodded, moving over beside Lily to start loading cans into his cart. He glanced at hers before nodding at the boxes his wife was loading. “You should get some cases of MREs too. They’ll last a long time, and one meal provides all the calories you need for a day, if it comes to that.”

  Without questioning him, Lily took several boxes of the MREs, not entirely sure what they were. Pausing for just a second, she asked the couple, “What website?”

  They shared a look, clearly distrustful.

  She licked her lips. “Does it have something to do with a solar superstorm?”

  The man’s eyes widened, and Sharon nodded. “There’s a prepper blog we follow, and the guy who owns it has been warning about a solar event for a few weeks. I don’t know his sources, but today, he got very specific and listed the areas that were most at risk. North America, particularly the north and into Canada, are going to be hit the hardest, but he says the whole world will be affected, and it’s all going down today.”

  In a low tone, looking as though he was prepared to be dismissed as a kook, he added, “According to the blogger, the government is going to make sure this is a worldwide phenomenon. According to his source, some shadowy government commander named Celia Archer is in charge of a project that can cripple any government with an EMP weapon.”

  Lily squeezed her eyes shut, trying to absorb it all. When she opened them a second later, the couple had resumed filling their cart farther down the aisle, concentrating on water purification. She followed them, slipping in beside Sharon. “Listen, I don’t know the details, but a friend called me to give me a very similar warning this morning. I believe him, and I believe something awful will happen. Get your kids and get somewhere safe.”

  “You too,” said the husband, nodding to Hutch, who had been her patient shadow during the shopping trip, his leash clipped to the cart. “And I hope that guy bites. Hard.”

  Despite the gravity of the situation, she almost giggled at imagining Hutch attacking anyone. He was a furry fluff ball who ran from squirrels. “Good luck,” she told them as they parted ways. A few minutes later, she had everything she could think of and had room for, so she checked out. She’d never spent that much in one store in her life and was grateful again that Ethan’s software had been so successful for predicting stock trends.

  At the bank, Lily loitered in the parking lot for a bit, hoping to see Ethan’s sporty little coupe zip in, but she conceded defeat after ten minutes. With reluctance, she left Hutch in the car with the air conditioner running and ran inside the local branch. In ten minutes, she had emptied all the funds in the checking account and some of the savings, maxing out the daily withdrawal limit.

  She clutched the backpack full of money tighter as she exited the bank, hitting the remote she had unclipped from the keychain to let herself in. Stowing the money under the seat seemed like not enough precaution, but what else could she do? At the last minute, she opened the lockbox and stuck one of the handguns inside the bag. She had fired it a few times, and knew the basics, but hoped it wouldn’t come down to her having to defend herself against another human being.

  With nothing else to do, and no more excuse to linger, Lily got on the road. She had almost reached the exit when she pulled off in a parking lot to impulsively text her route to Ethan. She didn’t think he would follow her, at least not right away. If things went to hell in the next few hours, it would take his sports car with it, and he’d have to travel on foot. Feeling defeated, she started driving again, wondering if she would ever see her husband again, and if he would ever know about their child.