“Hey!” Dana cried out, looking around. “Where’s Lara?”

Alice pulled her head into a fearful shrug of her shoulders. “God, no. Please. Don’t let me have to.”

“She’s staying here,” Jenny said softly. “She doesn’t want to leave her staff and they’re too scared to leave.”

“They need a flashlight, then, some”

Jenny shook her head. “They’ve got a lot of candles. For the warming
pans. She said they’d be fine until the lights come back on or the sun
comes up, whichever happens first.”

Worry tugged at the corners of Dana’s mouth. She was clearly not
comfortable with leaving her Soup Chef behind. Alice gripped her
muscular forearm. “She’ll be fine, Dana. Lara can handle herself.”

Dana allowed herself to go numb. She didn’t want to feel what she was
feeling, what she’d been feeling ever since Lara came back to take the
Head Chef job at The Planet. That was a can of worms that didn’t need
to be opened. Not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But sooner or later, it
was something she’d have to face. As much as she loved Alice, LaraLara
set her heart soaring. She felt like her old self again whenever she
was around her. She didn’t have a dozen loves under her belt, but she
knew what she knew. And what she knew was that it was all wrong with
Alice. No matter how hard they tried, it was what it wasa friendship
with benefitsand not more than that.

A series of gunshots rang out, not that far away, and an angry yell”Get the ***** away from my house, you *****.”

“Girls,” Helena spoke up in a calm voice, “we need to get going.
There’s not much traffic on the roads, not right now. The sooner we
leave.”

“The sooner we’ll be safe again,” Carmen exhaled.

“Yeh,” Helena nodded and gave Carmen a reassuring hug. “Safe again.”

“All right, troops!” Alice yelled out. “Let’s move out! I’ll take point. Shane? You cover the rear. All right?”

Silence met her impromptu bit of military cheer. “Ok, then, let’s get going!”

Like a leaderless scout troop, they headed toward the exit of the
parking lot, walking mostly in pairs. Alice and Dana in front followed
by Marina and Jenny. Helena took the middle with her industrial
strength flashlight. Tina turned to join Bette who trailed behind Shane
and Carmen, but Bette shook her head angrily and waved her off. So she
joined Helena instead, careful to keep some physical distance between
them. The last thing they needed was another outburst from Bette.

What they needed was to be friends again, a coherent group, watching
each other’s backs. What they were was a ragtag lot of jittery women,
not all of them happy to be in this situation. Or in present company.
Whatever fears they carried in their hearts and minds, the darkness
seeded them and they’d begun to bloom. Paranoia was creeping under
their skins as they walked onto the road, Helena nodding in the
direction they needed to take.

“Stay to the side of the road,” she cautioned. “Remember, any cars
coming our way aren’t going to be watching out for pedestrians. They’ve
got their own business to tend to tonight. I don’t want to wind up
somebody’s road kill.”

Shane bobbed her head and sang a dark trance tune under her breath.

soulless is everywhere
hopeless time to roam
the distance to your home
fades away to nowhere