Edge of Collapse Series (Book 2): Edge of Madness

by Stone, Kyla

  “Yes. That. It’s such a shame that Arthur passed a few years ago. I think he’d feel vindicated today. At any rate, Winter Haven does have heat, power, and running water.”

  “Good for them,” Reynoso said, sounding more than a little jealous. “But what’s that to the rest of us? How does that keep me warm at night?”

  Rosamond ignored him. “The community includes fifty-one homes. Twenty-nine of them are empty.”

  Chief Briggs scowled. “You checked them already, did you?”

  “Only to see who’s home. We shouldn’t let those resources go to waste. We’re only doing our due diligence.”

  Chief Briggs shoved back his chair. “Absolutely not. We’re not sanctioning taking over people’s homes. Are you crazy? Two days, and we’re already forgoing the Constitution?”

  Tension crackled through the room. All eyes turned to Chief Briggs and the superintendent.

  Wiggins grimaced. Noah was sure he had an opinion on the matter but hesitated to sound like he was crossing Rosamond. Instead, he stewed in silence.

  Rosamond steepled her fingers beneath her chin. Her gaze remained clear, her eyes calm. “Don’t be dramatic, Sam. It doesn’t become you. In normal times, I would never consider such a thing. You know that. But I’m afraid we’re no longer in normal times.”

  “There’s absolutely no justification for this!” Chief Briggs bellowed. “You can’t just—”

  “That’s enough,” Rosamond cut in, her voice quiet but insistent. It commanded attention as much as if she’d shouted.

  Chief Brigg’s mouth tightened in a bloodless line, his eyes flashing.

  “What about transportation?” Mike asked, changing the subject. “There’s over two feet of fresh snowfall and it’s still coming. I can’t even get out of my driveway. I wouldn’t even have made it if Dave hadn’t picked me up.”

  “We requisitioned nine working snowmobiles, three ATVs, and two trucks with attached snowplows for the town’s needs,” Julian said. “And a few old clunkers we can jack up with snow chains. And we’ll get more.”

  “Requisitioned?” Noah raised his brows. “From where?”

  “The community. We already have reserve officers heading out to assess individual needs and tally resources.”

  “The snowmobile we rode in on this morning belonged to the Carter brothers,” Julian said with a tight grin. Noah noted the past-tense verb belonged.

  “They just let you take it?”

  Julian shrugged. “They were agreeable.”

  Noah had never known the Carter brothers to be agreeable about anything. The Fall Creek Police Department had arrested them multiple times for possession, theft, battery—a whole litany of crimes. Along with their passel of useless no-good cousins, they were well known throughout the county.

  Rosamond gazed around the table, pausing at each face. “We have resources here. The river. Winter Haven. A lot of houses are on well and septic. We can take care of our own, but only if we work together. The task is monumental. Fall Creek needs each one of you.”

  The men and women around the table nodded slowly, all but Chief Briggs.

  The chief slammed his fist on the table. “I’m not sanctioning this crap. Not in my town.”

  Rosamond turned toward him, a smile still fixed on her face, but Noah recognized the stiffness in her shoulders, the tightness in her mouth. “Sam. Don’t you think you might be overreacting a bit here? We’re simply taking a census of what we have and who needs help.”

  He shoved back his chair and stood gruffly. He jabbed his finger at the superintendent, then the council members. “You’re the ones overreacting! Acting like a few months without the internet is the end of the world! We’ve all gone without creature comforts. We can do it again.” His eyes narrowed as his gaze landed on Jamal. “Well, my generation at least. You coddled babies wouldn’t know toughness if it bit you on the ass.”

  Jamal blanched. “I don’t think you understand how completely technology has infiltrated every aspect of—”

  The chief waved his arms in the air, his bulldog face purpling in anger. “I don’t need a . . . a millennial to explain life to me!”

  Frustration flared through Noah, but he tamped it down quickly. Chief Briggs was his boss; his personal feelings about Briggs didn’t matter. Briggs liked rules and regulations. He had a hard time thinking outside the box about anything. He was also crotchety and set in his ways.

  Noah was an easygoing, good-natured guy. He didn’t want to cause more problems when tension was already vibrating through the room. He gritted his teeth and forced a smile. “I think we should all take a breath.”

  “I don’t need to take a damn breath!” the chief nearly shouted. “No one in this town is going to ‘pool’ their resources while I’m in charge! We’re not doing it.”

  He spun on his heels and stalked from the room. The door slammed behind him.

  For a moment, no one spoke in the stunned silence.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Noah said evenly. “We’re all a little stressed right now. He’ll come around. We’re all just trying to help.”

  “Excellent start, everyone.” Rosamond’s gaze slanted toward the closed door with the slightest frown. “We’re family here. We’ll stick together like a family, too. And we will get through this. I promise you.” She smiled. “And despite everything, Merry Christmas.”

  The room broke into tepid applause, but it quickly grew louder and more enthusiastic. Noah found himself clapping, too, despite the growing anxiety tangled in his gut.

  People needed someone to take charge. They needed hope, a plan.

  Rosamond Sinclair knew how to give it to them.

  23

  Quinn

  Day Three

  Quinn had never seen Friendly’s Grocery like this. It felt like there were more people crammed into the grocery store right now than existed in the entire town.

  A cashier—a bubbly redheaded chick named Whitney that Quinn went to high school with but didn’t particularly like—wandered up and down the aisles, announcing the credit card machines were down and only cash would be accepted.

  The generators were running, but they were mostly on for the refrigerated and freezer sections of the store. Half the fluorescent lights were off, and the other half buzzed and flickered, the most bland and boring grocery store taking on an eerie, even sinister, vibe.

  Not to mention the headache it was giving her.

  Whoever thought it would take a while for people to figure out this EMP thing was a long-term crisis was an idiot. The masses had grown up glued to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix, but they weren’t totally clueless.

  Even though the government was still spewing their “temporary blackout” nonsense over the emergency broadcasts, people had figured out things were more serious than that.

  Soccer moms and preppy dads were rushing through the aisles, their faces strained and tight-lipped, dragging their whiny kids behind them, nearly crashing their carts into other shoppers in their rush to grab everything they could.

  Things hadn’t devolved to full chaos, though. This wasn’t a dense, high-crime city bristling with gangs, like Detroit or Benton Harbor.

  Fall Creek was a small town. These people all knew each other, were always sticking their noses into each other’s business. You sure knew who your enemies were.

  Quinn gripped her cart with fresh determination, nearly accidentally sideswiping Annette King, the principal of the high school, who was busy piling bags of rice and dry beans into her cart.

  She had a bunch of salt containers, jugs of bleach, jars of instant coffee, and oil, which could be used in lamps, not just for cooking. At least ten packages of toilet paper were stuffed in the rack underneath the cart.

  For a principal, she was smart. Definitely too smart to go after the frozen meats or refrigerated perishables like the big crowd of idiots in the back.

  The principal gave her a tight wave. Quinn nodded back, feeling just as tense.r />
  The list Gran had given her didn’t have any food on it, which was weird. Gran’s pantry was stuffed with weeks’ worth of goods, but it still didn’t feel like enough to endure a long Michigan winter that promised snow well into March, even April.

  Quinn glanced at the hastily scrawled list in her hand again. On a low fixed income, Gran only had a hundred and fifty dollars in cash. Quinn had tossed in her own savings of a whopping twenty-five dollars, which a distant aunt had sent her as an early birthday present.

  “Just get as much as you can,” Gran had told her.

  So she did. She maneuvered away from the food aisles and headed for the health section. She’d already grabbed rechargeable batteries of different sizes. She toppled a row of ibuprofen and aspirin bottles and antibacterial ointment into her cart, followed by a bunch of bottles of hand soap, tubes of toothpaste, and feminine hygiene products. It would really suck to run out of that stuff.

  She wished Friendly’s sold her brand of blue hair dye so she could stock up, but she’d had to order it on Amazon. Prime shipping wasn’t exactly happening anymore.

  Thing was, she didn’t care as much as she’d thought she would. Tragedy had a way of putting everything into sharp focus.

  She brushed her bangs out of her eyes, took a weary breath, and kept going. As much as she tried to focus on the task at hand, her mind kept straying to thoughts of Gramps.

  She kept seeing his frozen face. His wrinkled brown skin turning that weird, sickening bluish gray. The snowflakes collecting on his dead glassy eyeballs.

  Her chest ached. Like a giant hand squeezing her heart. She’d never known grief was such a physical thing.

  Staying busy helped a little. Gran had her running around like a chicken with her head cut off. She’d spent yesterday afternoon—Christmas Day, not like it mattered—helping Gran plaster every window with aluminum foil to help insulate the house and reflect the heat back into the room.

  Stillness wasn’t a part of Gran’s makeup. She was always working on the house, the garden, attending prayer meetings, or volunteering at church. She needed to be moving, bustling around, making or building or cooking things. Even after the stroke and the cane, Gran didn’t let anything stop her.

  Quinn blinked against the sudden tears. She wouldn’t cry. If she did, she’d fall apart right here in the store. And no way was she letting that happen. Besides, it’d wreck her eye makeup.

  A tall, scowling Caucasian man in an expensive-looking wool coat rammed into her cart. He pushed past her on the way toward a display table in the center aisle stacked with packs of bottled water.

  She recognized him as the father of Whitney, the bubbly redheaded cashier, but she didn’t know his name. Didn’t care, either.

  “Hey!” she yelled after him. “You don’t have to be rude!”

  The man in the wool coat completely ignored her. He shouldered in and grabbed the last package of bottled waters right out of the hands of a young mom with two little kids crammed into the cart, along with boxes of breakfast cereal, pasta, and Pop-Tarts.

  Quinn didn’t hesitate. It didn’t matter that she had a list, a task. Or that she didn’t know that mother and her snotty-nosed kids. One thing she hated was a bully. And wool coat guy was a total jerkwad.

  She was half-tempted to pull out the tactical slingshot she’d started carrying around for protection and use it on him, just to teach him a lesson.

  Instead, she jerked her cart around, took two striding steps, and slammed her cart into his as hard as she could. It bucked backward and smashed into him, the handle striking him in the stomach.

  He let out an oof. He turned toward her, his eyes widening in surprise. “What the—”

  “Don’t be a dick.” She smiled. “It’s store policy.”

  He scowled. His whole face turned beet red. “Get the hell out of this store before I call the store manager and have you arrested for assault!”

  Quinn didn’t flinch. Angry adults didn’t scare her. She was used to being screamed at. “Go ahead. And we’ll just tell him how you were stealing from this poor woman.”

  Other customers were watching now. Some rubbernecking just to see what was happening, others looking perturbed.

  “It’s okay,” the mom said tremulously. “I don’t need it that bad. He can just have it.”

  Quinn lifted her chin. “He’s a bully, and he should be called out for it.”

  Wool Coat dropped the precious pack of bottled waters into his already overstuffed cart and lurched toward her, hands balled into fists. “Look here, you little—”

  “Leave her alone!” Principal King stood in the center aisle, pale but frowning. “Mr. Blair, what on Earth are you doing?”

  Wool Coat—Mr. Blair—seemed to notice the growing crowd for the first time. Instead of embarrassment, he glared at them in self-righteous fury.

  “Don’t you get it?” Mr. Blair snarled. “This is it! World War III has started and you lot are still worried about being cordial with your neighbors? How are you gonna feel in two weeks when you’ve got empty cupboards and nothing to feed your kids? What are you going to tell them? That you waited in line nicely? There’s no blue ribbon or sticker awards for being nice, people! That time is done and gone. War isn’t coming. It’s already here!”

  Principal King blanched.

  “You’re on the town council,” Mr. Blair hissed at her. “You probably already know, don’t you? This is some sort of cyberattack by Iran or Russia or whoever. The government knows—you know—but you aren’t telling the truth. What aren’t you telling us, Annette?”

  Flustered, Principal King raised both hands, a can of kidney beans still gripped in one hand. Her face had gone white. “Now, Mr. Blair. That’s not how it is—”

  “They’re keeping things from us!” Mr. Blair said loudly, so loud most of the store could hear him. “Superintendent Sinclair. The council. It goes all the way to the governor! Are you going to just let them control us—”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” a loud voice blared through a megaphone. “Please remain calm.”

  Startled, everyone in the store froze.

  24

  Quinn

  Day Three

  “This is Officer Daniel Hayes,” the voice over the megaphone continued. “Officer Reynoso is with me, along with four reserve officers. For everyone’s protection, we are closing down Friendly’s early.”

  Groans and gasps followed his announcement. People looked at each other, confusion, stress, and frustration quickly transforming to actual fear.

  Quinn disentangled her cart from Mr. Blair’s and turned toward the front entrance of the grocery store. Several police officers in uniform stood in front of the checkout line. The heavy, middle-aged Caucasian guy in the middle—Officer Hayes—held the megaphone.

  “Friendly’s will reopen tomorrow,” he said, “but purchase limits will be in place to prevent a run on food. A fifty-dollar limit per family per day is effective as of today, December 27th. Transactions will remain cash-only. Please make your way to the checkout line immediately. Items in excess of the limit will be removed. If you do not comply, you will be escorted from the store without your items.”

  “Fifty dollars?” someone shouted. “Are you kidding me?”

  “We can’t feed our families with that!”

  “This can’t be right.”

  “This is illegal!”

  “Did the council approve this dreck?” Mr. Blair turned on Principal King, contempt in his gaze. “I told you they were against us!”

  Voices grew louder, frustration and fear and anger rising. The tension was fast reaching a boiling point. Anxiety twisted in Quinn’s belly. This wasn’t good.

  Officer Hayes cleared his throat nervously. “You may speak with Superintendent Sinclair about the town’s policies. We’re only doing our jobs.”

  “First time for everything, eh Hayes?” Mr. Blair spat.

  Folks that had been tense but cordial five minutes ago quickly became agi
tated, almost frantic. Several customers who’d been headed for the checkout now turned and headed back for more supplies—Officer Hayes’ decree be damned.

  Carts banged against each other. No one apologized. Little kids started crying.

  Officer Hayes gave further instructions to remain calm and orderly, but few people were listening to him. A few men and a woman angrily confronted the officers, waving and pointing their fingers in their faces, Mr. Blair included.

  Officer Reynoso’s expression grew strained. His hand lowered to his service weapon. “We will maintain order, no matter how much you don’t like it, Mr. Blair. Please take a step back, right now.”

  Things were going to get ugly fast.

  Quinn needed to get out of here. She glanced toward the two checkout counters. A dozen people at least in each, all with stuffed carts. Two reserve officers were stopping the carts and sorting through them.

  It would take forever. And they wouldn’t let her take even half the stuff in her cart.

  “Hey, Quinn!” a small voice piped up.

  Quinn whirled around.

  Little Milo Sheridan peeked around the endcap of the pasta aisle and grinned at her, all black curly hair and big dark eyes.

  She didn’t like kids. They were all annoying little devil monkeys. This one wasn’t horrible, though. “Hey, Small Fry.”

  Noah came around the corner and plopped a few oversized jars of Jif creamy peanut butter into his nearly empty cart. The shadows under his eyes were darker than the last time she’d seen him on Christmas Eve. Day one of whatever the hell this was.

  “Hey, Noah the Cop.”

  He looked at her. “It’s Officer Sheridan to you.”

  Quinn gave a flippant shrug, trying to hide her anxiety. “As I recall, my brilliant fence-as-trampoline idea may have saved your kid’s life. Or at least a broken bone or two. You owe me.”

  He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw and sighed. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked tired. “Fine. Should I call you Smurf then?”