Garden things are swept up quickly too. Hand tools like hoes and shovels are gone almost before Charlotte even realizes it. They were at an ebb in the seed market at the time of The Dying. The fall things hadn’t come in and the spring seeds were long past. People are worried because they use hybrid seeds and that means they’ll have none for next year, or they won’t breed true.
Charlotte and Tabitha spend one entire night going through all the older inventory, hoping to find a missed crate of seeds. They don’t. It’s the first time they regret how carefully they manage their inventory.
Horse feed is more judiciously doled out. Tabitha takes meticulous notes, working out exactly what each person needs or can get by with. Small sacks of oats that will sprout if planted are doled out to those who want to try their hand at growing and have sufficient land to do so. She spends time with the customers, helping them to work out what they can do to safely extend the feed they get, how to supplement it, how to look for signs that it’s no longer working for the horse.
Grass seed for pastures goes fast too. Horses are terrible to pastureland. Unlike sheep, they can strip a piece of land bare. Those who can’t rotate their horses through sufficient pasture space will need to take great pains to re-plant, giving the land the time it needs to grow before rotating a horse back into it. There are involved discussions over maps. City and county properties that used to require mowing are outlined in green marker and the closest residents shown where they might be able to safely graze a horse.
After a few weeks, the shelves are entirely empty. Not so much as a single stray oat can be found. There isn’t even enough to tempt mice inside. They lock up the building for the last time, signs posted with an apology and a hope for strength to anyone who comes.
Life slowly returns to something like normal at their little oasis. No longer fearful of the sun, they go about their days with their usual industry. What they lack in entertainment, they make up for by doing things together. Strangely, it isn’t bad. Despite the horror of what’s happened, their days are pleasant and filled with satisfying tasks.
Tomatoes are canned, then more are canned. Then a great load of them are canned when the vines all seem to want to ripen at once. Long beans, short beans, corn from their small patch, enough squash to make them both sick of it.
Charlotte begins to smell the vaguely dirty-sweet scent of dehydrating squash everywhere. Still, she knows they’ll be glad of it during winter, so she keeps working the dehydrator, filling up huge mylar bags with dried vegetables and sucking the air out with a vacuum sealer before stacking the bags in the basement.
Perhaps the most stressful thing for them is that they can go nowhere. Not even the library or the grocery store. Not the big discount store, not the shoe store, not the pharmacy. Luckily, the sheriff has enlisted the aid of several of his deputies—many of whom are freshly deputized—to do errands for the survivors. It feels odd for Charlotte to hand a deputy a list for the drugstore with personal items on it, but such is life now.
Beyond their home, things do not return to normal. Not even remotely. Sometimes, that abnormality comes close to touching their world, but it never truly does. Not really. They’re too far away from the city for that.
Even standing at the highest point on their land, they can see only three houses across the fields and pastures. Each one is like theirs, nestled and tucked away from the world beyond. They’d gone to each of those houses to check on their neighbors. In each one there had been losses, but only one was entirely bereft of females.
Two girl children have survived in one, five-year old twins. Their mother was taken in the first wave of The Dying. In another, it’s the mother who survived. Her college aged daughter had died while sleeping off a night out with friends. In the third, all save the father are gone. A stern man who follows strict religious tenets, he’d not been shy about claiming the devil had taken his women.
Those were his exact words; his women.
Charlotte is relieved when her mother says they won’t be returning to his house again.
They aren't entirely isolated. Sheriff Dewalt makes several visits over the weeks, plus the errand-running deputies. Once he got wind of the store being open, he’d shown up with his daughter in tow to pick up dog food for their two beagles. A sweet, but very wild child, the girl had run around the store like her hair was on fire, her father laughing at her antics. When she got too loud, he’d call her name. Lilly. It’s a perfect name for her.
He said that his daughter was a sprite left by the fairies, so who was he to try and curb her nature. He’d been only half joking when he said it.
Charlotte almost believed him too. With her wild, dark hair in two lopsided braids, she’d run the aisles making odd whooping noises. By the time her father whistled and she came roaring back to the front, one braid had come entirely loose and her hair was a cloud around half her head. Her green eyes had been as big as saucers and sparkled with mischief. Her grin was almost feral, especially with a gap made by a missing baby tooth. Charlotte had been fascinated by her fearlessness.
Since that day, Charlotte always asks after Lilly when the sheriff comes by, always strangely disappointed that she isn’t with him. He says he leaves her at their tiny station while he makes rounds, not trusting anyone with her at home. As to the girl’s mother,
