Green Light

Green Light

Part 6

Emma strolled down the aisle of Big Mike’s Hardware Store. She could have been in any locally owned hardware store in the country and have seen the same things.

The front door had dinged as she had entered: An old-fashioned bell hung over the door. She had opened and closed the door a half-dozen times. The sound had reminded her of the real world.

Now she stood still, looking around. Directly in front of her were three cashier stations, each personalized with family pictures and funny stickers. The stack of store specials was in a basket at the end of the middle cashier station. Emma picked up a copy and leafed through it as she worked her way to the back of the store.

There was a slightly oily smell to the old building, not oily as in old French fries, but oily as in machine oil. Emma could see her grandfather reaching for a screwdriver and telling her how important the right-sized screwdriver was for any job. Too small, and you’d strip the screw; too large and it wouldn’t fit. His garage had that same machine oil smell. He was one of those who prized his tools, cleaning them and hanging them up in the correct spot over the workbench. Each tool had its own place, its shape outlined on the pegboard. The only time a slot was empty was when Pawpaw was using a particular tool.

Emma walked past the tool section and picked out a portable tool kit. It held a little bit of everything, but surely not enough of any of it. There were screw drives, both Phillip’s and flathead, socket wrenches, a measuring tape, a cheap bubble level, some hex wrenches. There was even a hammer and a set of needle-nosed pliers. It would do. Later, when her power was restored, Emma could come back for other, more important tools like saws and drills. That reminded her: She grabbed a handsaw as she walked past.

In the back corner of the store was a display of generators. There were quite a few to choose from. Emma supposed the electric grid in the country wasn’t as reliable as that in the city. The smallest one with the power she felt she needed, though, was too heavy for her to put into her bike trailer. The cost made her gasp at first, then she remembered she wasn’t paying. She’d get the best one when she came back for one, though. Price was no object. She giggled.

Emma figured she could move the heavier items she needed to the front of the store, and when she figured out her vehicle situation, they’d be ready to go. She chose a red hand truck from an end aisle and used it to move the generator she wanted to take back to the house. Back home. It was home now.

Emma was going to need to find a truck with keys and gas and hope the gas hadn’t all evaporated. She also had to figure out how to siphon gas, though, for the generators. The idea of sucking on a hose until the gas came up wasn’t very appealing. Maybe there was something she could use at the auto parts store, which, handily, was right next door. She’d do that another day, though.

Emma picked up some more kerosene for her camp lights but needed something less toxic that she could use for light until she got the generator over to the farmhouse. Water and electricity were her two biggest concerns, since the previous owners had stocked the basement with preserved food. Ironically, both problems could be solved with a single solution. If she could get a generator out to the farm, she could power the well pump and have fresh, running well water. She had even found an aisle that held water testing kits. She’d try to remember to grab a couple after she got the well pumping out water again.

Lights, too, could be solved with a generator. She could even have a generator for inside the house, one for the barn, and one specifically for the pump house. That would mean a lot of gas siphoning, but there were no other alternatives that she could think of. It was a little too late to take up an interest in the finer art of installing and using solar panels. She was also going to have to figure out a safe way to store gasoline for the winter. So much to do, but it was late summer, just turning to Fall, so there was some time to work with.

There was an old wood stove in the farmhouse, and if it got too cold, she and Boy could camp out in the living room. There were enough quilts in the house to hang over every entryway and keep the draft out if she needed. There was a stack of firewood, too. She had no way of knowing if she had enough, but the hardware store had some split logs wrapped in plastic on display, and she could always come back with a truck and load them all in if she needed. She was also sure that all she had to do was drive around the area, and she’d find a lot of houses with firewood stacked neatly out front.

Lights, lights. What was she going to do about lights? As she wandered through the aisle of the store, at the far end opposite of the generators, Emma found a discount display. The large metal basket was filled with Christmas decorations. At first, it was odd to Emma, seeing those decorations when she was still sweating buckets, then it dawned on her. The world had collapsed more than six months before. Those Christmas decorations were from last season. There would be no more.

Emma abruptly dropped to the floor. No more Christmas, or Halloween, or anyone to say, “Happy birthday”. There was no one to make fun of her first gray hairs or tell her she looked cute while pregnant chubby. Oh, god, there would be no babies! The enormity of the void she faced hit her. If she got sick, no one would bring her cool clothes for her forehead or make her take a couple of Tylenol. No one would drive her to the hospital or call 911 if she was in really bad shape. If she crashed the truck she planned on liberating on her next visit to town, there would be no fire department with the jaws of life to extricate her.

Aside from her German 101 tapes, she hadn’t heard a human voice in half a year. She talked out loud to Boy, but of course, he would never reply, and boy… who would she have to love her when he got old and died? Emma thought about that pistol she had back at the house and swore to keep it safe. That was her out, her escape, but she vowed never to use it while Boy was still alive.

Sensing her distress, Boy sat on the ground next to her and nudged his snout under her arm, forcing her to pet him. What other creature but a dog could make you feel better by making them feel better? There was time enough for tears later, years, in fact. Today was for survival.

Emma stood back up and started rifling through the discount bin. Near the bottom, she found several packages of battery-operated exterior Christmas lights. The only colors remaining were green and white, and she took them all. She hurried to the battery aisle and filled a bag full of batteries.

She had an idea.

The white Christmas lights would go outside the house, wind up trees, and maybe even up on the barn if she could get close enough safely. With the rest of the world dark, those lights should shine for miles. Maybe, just maybe, there was another survivor who would see them. She preferred the white lights for inside, so she could read, but in the long run, the white lights outside could save her life, certainly her sanity.

The green lights, she decided, would hang along the walls to give her something other than the hissing, smelly light from the camp lantern.

Emma filled her bike’s cargo trailer with lights and batteries, plus some literature on generators she found in the book section of the hardware store and pedaled home. Maybe the lights had an intermittent setting, and she could make them flash to draw more attention.

She couldn’t be the only one left, right?