She pushed to the backpack section, saw labels and crumpled tissue packing material scattered across the floor—and a single remaining backpack frame on the bottom shelf. One of the aluminum support bars was twisted, as if someone had tripped over it; the neon-pink fabric was garish, but what did that matter? She hoped the fabric wouldn’t dissolve, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
As she hurried to the last pack, a man wearing jeans and a Bugs Bunny t-shirt sprinted for it. Heather hesitated, then decided to race him. She’d had enough of being stepped on, and things were damn well going to change!
Bugs Bunny had tucked three bottles of propane for a gas cooking stove under his arm, which gave him trouble running. Heather grabbed the bent strut of the backpack, and the man pulled on the opposite side.
“I got it—” the man said.
Heather answered by jamming an elbow in his gut. With a surprised “oof!” Bugs dropped his three metal bottles of propane. They clanged and bounced on the floor, and Bugs released his hold to scramble for them.
Heather yanked the neon-pink backpack free and clutched it to her chest. “It isn’t your color anyway,” she said, then stalked down another aisle. The incident sparked her mood. It was time to stop accepting everybody’s leftovers.
Heather stood taller than most of the other women in the store and a good many of the men. She quit excusing herself every time she bumped into another shopper. They could damned well get out of her way. She recalled the advice given in the self-defense seminars Surety Insurance required their employees to take. “Don’t look like a victim.” She tried to appear stern, imagining Al Sysco standing in front of her. The thought brought a flash of cold-metal anger, and she could feel her face tighten.
People moved out of the way. She shoved aside the ones who didn’t.
She stuffed the backpack with dehydrated food in foil packages. Staring at a tiny gas-burner backpacking stove, she decided that she could cook over a campfire. She opted for a large hunting knife, some fishing equipment, and a mummy sleeping bag rated to 20 below zero.
Heather glared around the store, rejecting most of the items. A tent would be too bulky to carry all the way home. Some compact pots and pans would be nice, but unnecessary—she could adapt her own utensils. She took matches, a snakebite kit, a solar still for purifying water.
Heather felt supercharged. On a normal day, she would have been at the office processing forms, answering telephone calls, gritting her teeth against Sysco’s treatment of her. But not today, honey, she told herself. Not anymore.
Then, realizing that she wouldn’t have a car, or even a bicycle unless she could find one without a plastic-based inner tube, Heather remembered the most important piece of her ensemble—sturdy hiking boots, made of leather with genuine rubber soles. She had to avoid anything with plastic stitching, vinyl sides, synthetic rubber soles. Just in case.
Guarding her stuffed neon-pink backpack, she searched through the ransacked boxes of hiking boots. Other people had the same idea, but this caused her less concern. Heather had big feet, and shoes her size wouldn’t fit many other women.
Finally, dangling a pair of black hiking boots with sparkly purple laces, she waited in line. She had little cash in her savings, and she no longer had a job—but the man at the cashier counter was accepting credit cards. Credit cards! As if they were going to be worth anything!
Heather smiled smugly. Unclear on the concept, she thought. She just hoped she would reach the counter before the plastic cards dissolved in her purse.
The power went out for the second time that day, and Heather had no real expectation it would ever come on again. She sat in her living room with the drapes open and the windows cracked to let in a breeze. While she still had enough light, she wanted to sort her new equipment. From now on, she had to plan with a whole new mindset.
She lived in the suburbs of Flagstaff in a two-bedroom house with a small backyard and a carport instead of a garage. Aluminum awnings thrust out above every window. The place had been built in the fifties, with the stomach-turning decor of the times: yellow siding, olive-green carpeting, speckled Formica countertops. Heather had rented it for four years now, always intending to move to something better, but never able to. She suspected she would be leaving the city soon, though.
Heather tied her hair back in a pony tail, then squatted on the floor to organize the dried food and read the instructions on the camping gear. She had gone backpacking in the Grand Canyon with her last boyfriend, Derek, a fellow employee of Surety Insurance. He had eventually dumped her when he took a promotion at a competitor’s company in Tucson. Nothing much about the relationship had been memorable, but she had enjoyed the camping, and she missed the sex. The Grand Canyon was only an hour and a half drive north of Flagstaff, but for some reason Heather had never considered going back there alone.
Why the hell not? she asked herself. Stop being a puppy-dog trying to please everyone but you!
The phone rang twice, then fell silent before Heather could reach it. She stared at it. The phone lines had been dead four of the five times she had tried to dial out, and the one time she heard a dial tone she hesitated and then hung up again.
Her family would be trying to call her from Phoenix, but she had no interest in contacting them. They would want her to come back home so they could weather the tragedy together. And that was definitely not in Heather Dixon’s new agenda.
Her family lived three hours’ drive away. She had two sisters and three brothers, with Heather right in the middle, the “undistinguished child.” Growing up, she’d had to put up with sisters’ boyfriends, brothers’ softball games, without finding her own niche.
The University at Flagstaff was far enough away that she could find independence, but her interest faded quickly. She quit school after a year and took a job at Surety Insurance. She never admitted that she had missed her home—but every conversation with her parents made it clear that they knew so. It was time to get away and go someplace safe.
She thought of Al Sysco weaseling into the promotion that should have been hers; she thought of Derek, using her as a springboard for jumping to another insurance company.
Well, what goes around comes around. Sysco was probably still waiting for a phone call from the Boston office, telling him the crisis was over. Heather tried to imagine him fighting to survive, hunting his own food; she started to snicker. Then she realized that Sysco probably couldn’t conceive of clunky, unassuming Heather Dixon doing that either. She had not found the nerve to make her escape until the petroplague struck.
Kneeling on the threadbare olive carpet, Heather unfolded her AAA maps of northern Arizona. There were trails, and she had supplies; she saw no reason why she couldn’t hike from one end of the Grand Canyon to the other. Where else could she find somewhere as safe to go?
She had just begun taking inventory of her dried food when a knock came at the door, putting her on guard. Once the stores ran out of food, looters would go door to door, breaking in and raiding pantries. But they certainly wouldn’t politely knock, would they?
Heather debated not answering, but her drapes were open and she sat in plain view. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t home. Taking a deep breath, wishing she had a gun, she strode to the front door. She was tired of turning her back and hiding.