Page 43 of Heart of the Sun

There was a small crash that made us all turn quickly toward the sound, and a cat came running from an alleyway, leaped over a short bush, and darted out of sight. Emily brought her hand to her chest, letting out a small, nervous laugh. Charlie released a breath, and I slowly straightened from where I’d braced for some sort of impact, my hand going to the short, whittled stake that I’d made a few days ago and stuck through one of my belt loops.

“Listen,” I said, stopping when the sound of what I thought were voices hit my ears.

“People,” Charlie said. “There are people up ahead.”

We walked another block, the voices getting louder until we saw a drugstore with the door standing open, the heated conversation obviously emanating from there.

We stepped through the doors of the dim store. “It’s been four goddamn days,” someone said. “My boy needs a new inhaler.”

“I understand the situation, Jeb,” another man said. “But we don’t keep much stock here and even if we did, I can’t dispense medication.”

“My mom needs her pills,” a woman said. “What are we supposed to do?”

We all walked farther inside, and I took in the state of the store. Most of the shelves at the front were bare.

We turned down another aisle—makeup and skin care—and that one was almost completely stocked. And yet the refrigerators along the wall a few aisles over were dark and empty. People had obviously bought—or taken—things in a hurry.

More people started shouting about the items they needed from the pharmacy, voices rising in pitch, obviously scared and desperate.

“Enough!” the man with the deepest voice yelled. “This is not my doing.My own boy’s arm is broken and all we’ve got is Tylenol. I’m working around the clock to try to keep this town safe, but there are some things that we’re going to have to do without.”

“Do without, Sheriff? Brent’s not gonna die of a broken arm, but that’s not true of everyone who needs medication. Doing without some things is a matter of life and death!” a woman said.

We continued through the store, and I looked at a shelf at the end of the aisle that was completely empty of product, only the logos remaining.Batteries.

“Lorena, like I said, your mother’s medication isn’t stocked here, and the last shipment was a week ago. I’m sorry. Jeb, when Kari gets back, I’ll ask her if she knows anyone else in town who might have an inhaler to loan you,” the man who’d been addressed as “Sheriff” with the deep voice answered.

“When’s Kari getting back?”

“I don’t know. She’s doing what she can at the hospital. Things there aren’t good.”

“Things here aren’t good,” someone else said.

As I turned the corner, I saw the group of people gathered near the pharmacy. Like the shelves at the front, the ones back here were virtually empty too. I read the price tags under the barren spaces.Pain relief. Bandages. Eye care. Vitamins.All but wiped out.

A man in a sheriff’s uniform caught sight of us, his expression registering surprise. “Who are you?” he asked as the others turned to peer at us.

I looked among the people, their worried expressions morphing into curiosity and some wariness.

“Hi,” Emily said, beginning to step around me. But I stopped her with a hand on her arm. She glanced down at my hand and gave me an impatient look. I was glad to see that, at least for the moment, she’d shaken off Leonard’s showdown. But I wasn’t certain yet that that was a good idea.Leonardhad been a good reminder that societal rules had recently changed. These looked like a group of normal townsfolk with their sheriff, but who knew how they felt about strangers walking into their midst?

I let go of her but stepped in front of both her and Charlie. “My name is Tucker Mattice, and I’m traveling with Charlie Cannon and Emily Swanson,” I said, gesturing behind me.

The sheriff stepped forward as well. He was an older man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard that was more salt than pepper. I noted that the man’s hand had gone to the holster on his belt and was now resting there, and that, like me, he’d stepped in front of the people he was with. I held my hand out. He looked at it for a beat before reaching out and shaking. “Sheriff David Goodfellow. Where are you traveling from and why?”

“Sir, if you have a way to reach people—” Charlie started to say, but the man held up his hand, his gaze still on me as he waited for the answer to his question.

“We were in a plane crash,” I answered. “It was a three-day walk to the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois. From there we hitched a ride and were dropped off at the exit to Silver Creek.”

“Then a man who gave us a ride shot and killed a…a bandit who tried to take his car,” Emily blurted. “It was murder. But it was also self-defense so, yeah, we should report that because there’s a dead body lying out there near the turnoff to your town.”

“Christ,” someone muttered from behind the sheriff. “The world has lost its mind.”

Sheriff Goodfellow looked at Emily. “I’ll have you write out a statement. But there’s not a lot I can do right now.”

“Okay, well, his name was Leonard and he’s driving a green car named Bridget. His brother has a trailer somewhere near a lake in—” she waved her hand backward “—that direction somewhere, and and—” She stopped talking, pulling in a big breath as an older woman came over to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Breathe,honey.”

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