That meant he never let down his guard. He had a top-notch security system, monitors, alarms; he was serious about keeping people at a distance. A couple of times some nosy neighbors—or tourists, and he didn’t know the difference because he didn’t know any of his neighbors, if someone who lived over a mile away could be called a “neighbor”—had hiked all the way up here. His motion alarm had alerted him the moment they cleared the curve and set foot on the wide, flat area where his house sat, and he’d stepped out on the porch with his shotgun broken open and draped over his arm. Neither time had he had to say a word; just the sight of a big, muscular man with a dark scowl on his face and a shotgun in his hands was enough to send the trespassers the hell off his property.
Sitting here on his porch in the predawn darkness, listening to the nightbirds, the rustling of the trees, not a soul anywhere around him—this was why he’d moved to the Tennessee mountains. He didn’t have PTSD—no nightmares, no flashbacks, no sweats of terror. Maybe some shrink would tell him that his extreme withdrawal was a form of PTSD, but that’s what shrinks did: come up with diagnoses that justified their jobs. As far as Ben was concerned, anyone sane who had spent years dealing with the bullshit he’d dealt with would react the same way.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know people, or at least know their names. By necessity, he’d met some of the valley residents. People insisted on talking to him, even when he limited his responses to grunts. That was almost the only drawback to the area: Southerners were friendly. They talked to everyone. He didn’t want to be talked to. Once an elderly couple he’d just met had invited him to supper; getting away from old people was almost as hard as escaping an ambush, because they were persistent with their offers of hospitality. He’d felt as if his skin was being peeled away, and all he’d wanted to do was duck and cover.
He hadn’t even met any women he’d been remotely attracted to. Scratch that, his subconscious immediately said. Sela Gordon, the owner of the little general store / gas station on the highway . . . he’d noticed her. For one thing, she was quiet; she didn’t bombard him with questions or try to draw him into conversation. He could go into her store and pick up a few items without feeling as if he were under attack. Maybe she was a little shy, because she didn’t get real talkative with any of her customers. Shy was a bonus; she wasn’t likely to start feeling comfortable around him and start up a conversation.
She was slim, quiet, dark hair and soft brown eyes, just curvy enough to leave no doubt she was female. She didn’t wear a wedding ring—or any rings at all. When she wasn’t looking at him, which was most of the time whenever he was in the store, he’d indulge himself by looking at her, though he was careful not to let her ever catch him at it. That was the only time in the past three years his dick had shown any signs of life.
Brooding, he watched a lone car on the highway far below, its headlight beams crawling from left to right. Okay, so maybe he did have a form of PTSD. A few years ago he’d have been all over Sela Gordon, trying to score; the fact that he’d noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring said a lot. Still, his reluctant interest couldn’t overcome his much stronger need for solitude.
The people down in the valley were still sleeping peacefully, for the most part. Maybe there were a few who didn’t sleep well and were waiting for dawn the way he was, maybe there was even someone who had a NOAA space storm alarm on their computer the way he did, though he doubted it. Their lives were about to change in drastic ways. His, not so much. His income stream would dry up when the CMEs hit and he stopped writing columns for survivalist magazines; his military pension would accrue until such time as the government and banks were up and running again, but the hard fact was there wouldn’t be any bills he needed to pay because utilities would stop working, and he’d be feeding himself with what he could hunt or grow. As an extra hedge, he had about a year’s worth of freeze-dried food stored in a secure locker under the house, he had canned goods, and he had plenty of ammunition stockpiled to protect his food and property.
If the think tank people were right and only ten percent of the population survived the coming Very Bad Day event, then he intended to be one of the ten percent.
Business had been brisk, for a weekday. Sela Gordon’s grocery store / gas station was located right on Highway 321, so business was usually good anyway. She wouldn’t get rich off the store, but she made a decent living. The gas pumps were out front, in the center of the smallish parking lot. Inside, there were seven rows of shelves filled with basic goods. No one would do their regular grocery shopping here, but if someone in the valley ran out of a few things and didn’t want to go all the way to town, this was where they came. Aunt Carol called it the “toilet paper and Spam” collection, and she wasn’t all that wrong, though there were also chips, and cookies, and a few boxes of cereal, some canned goods, and a small section of staples such as salt and sugar and pepper. One aisle was dedicated to over-the-counter meds, bandages, and feminine products. The small floor-to-ceiling cooler in the back was filled with beer, soft drinks, and juice. She’d carried milk for a while, but it hadn’t sold well enough to justify the necessary space. When it came to pricing, she couldn’t compete with the bigger grocery stores in town, and the dairy sell-by dates came and went too quickly. Now she kept a few packs of powdered milk and some cans of condensed sweetened milk that sold mostly in the summer when people were making homemade ice cream.
Between the locals and the tourists, who either stayed in Wears Valley or passed by on their way to and from Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg, she stayed busy enough to make this small venture profitable. She’d never own a private jet or buy her own vacation home, but she did okay, and okay was good enough.
Carol said Sela liked her small business because it was safe, and again, she wasn’t wrong.
Taking chances, both personally and professionally, was for people who liked an adrenaline rush. Sela wasn’t one of those people.
A big gray pickup truck, riding high on its chassis, pulled up to one of the gas pumps. She recognized a lot of the locals’ vehicles, including this one. Ben Jernigan didn’t come in all that often, though he did stop for gas now and then, and he’d run in for beer and cereal a time or two—but she recognized him because it was impossible to ignore him. Both the truck and the man were impressive, he more than the truck. He was big, at least a couple of inches over six feet, with muscles that strained the cotton T-shirt he wore. His arms were thick and roped, decorated with a few tattoos, his hands scarred and callused. Usually he was somewhat scruffy, with at least two days’ growth of beard. He almost always wore sunglasses, though he’d slide them up on top of his head whenever he came inside, and his pale green eyes always had a remote, cool expression that cut like a laser. She tried to be friendly with her customers even though she wasn’t an outgoing person, but with him she couldn’t manage even that much. She stayed quiet, like a rabbit hoping the wolf didn’t notice her.
She didn’t like tattoos, but she couldn’t imagine his arms without them. She was vaguely alarmed that she’d given his arms that much thought.
Whenever he came in, her heart pounded hard and fast for at least a few minutes after he’d left. Rabbit, indeed.