Free The Silver Bough by Lisa Tuttle Page B

heard the unusually high level of sound, a babble of half-hysterical shouting as people raced through the aisles, throwing cans of soup and jars of instant coffee and rolls of toilet paper into their trolleys as if stocking for a siege. She stood still, puzzled, gazing in surprise at the ranks of empty stalls that lined the first aisle. Normally the fresh fruit and vegetables were displayed here, but today there was nothing, not a single bag of potatoes, not a solitary orange.
    She walked down to the bakery section, where the racks that usually displayed the fresh-baked rolls, pastries, and specialty breads were just as bare. The shelves of prepackaged breads held only one loaf of whole wheat and a vacuum pack of pita breads. She noticed a store employee in a white apron, behind the bakery counter, standing with her arms folded tightly across her full breasts, her cheeks flushed and a look of barely contained excitement on her round, young face. Nell caught her eye. “What happened?”
    “Haven’t you heard?”
    “Heard what?”
    “There was an earthquake!”
    Nell shook her head, making no sense of it. “Where?”
    “Here! Under the sea, off the coast, actually. Didn’t you feel it last night?
I
did. My dog started howling and woke me up a minute before it happened.”
    “The store’s still standing,” Nell pointed out, not trying to hide her scepticism.
    The young woman rolled her eyes. “It only caused a landslide, didn’t it? Blocked the road, up at that narrow bit below what they call Fairview. Our first delivery gets here at four o’clock in the morning, but not today. He couldn’t get past the rock. Nobody can. So we’re not getting our ten o’clock either. Nobody knows how long that road’ll be closed for.”
    A woman hurried up the aisle pushing a laden trolley ahead of her. With a wary, sideways glance at Nell, as if expecting argument, she reached past her and snatched the whole wheat loaf off the shelf before rushing away.
    “As soon as word got round, people went absolutely mental,” said the store employee in a curiously satisfied way. “We sold out of fresh milk in five minutes, and since then they’ve been buying absolutely everything. I shouldn’t think there’ll be anything left by lunchtime. We’ll have to close early.”
    Nell left without trying to buy anything. Even if there had been a few things on the shelves that she needed, she shrank away from the feverish hunter-gatherer mentality now ruling the aisles. She didn’t know if things would be any better at the smaller shops—in her view, big stores brought out the worst in people—but even if she went home empty-handed, she could survive for a week or more on home-grown produce and the contents of her freezer.
    The streets of Appleton were as crowded and lively as she had ever seen them, even at the height of the summer tourist season. In the glorious sunshine and unreasonably warm weather, everyone seemed to be on vacation. She was usually confident about finding a place to park in the old marketplace (which had been turned over entirely to parking since the demise of the weekly street market) but today it was double-parked and impossible to enter. She found a place to leave the car on a side street near the library, and, deciding that might as well be her first call, lifted the heavy book bag out of the backseat.
    Like the supermarket, the library was a hive of activity on Saturday morning, mostly for the elderly and parents with young children. Entering the cool, spacious foyer, she heard the chatter and hum of talk, definitely up a few decibels from the usual sedate exchange of remarks about the weather. But the feverish, hysterical edge she’d sensed in the store was absent. The people here weren’t worried, only pleased to have something new to talk about.
    The new librarian—American like herself—was behind the counter, and her smile of recognition was so warm and welcoming that Nell felt disconcerted. No one had