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since she was an infant. So perhaps she was use to it or learned how to ignore it because she had never liked that kind of attention, unless she was also interested in the person paying attention to her.
    While they walked down the street, it unnerved Tammy to see the young men they passed divert their eyes directly to her daughter just like she knew they would. Perhaps it was the threat from the day before telling her to be careful. Now all males were suddenly potential predators. She hooked her arm in Charlie’s.
    Charlie was about to pull away when she saw someone and rested her hand on Tammy’s arm instead.
    She clenched her jaw when she realized who Charlie was looking at. A thought  about that creepy guy had just entered her brain and there he was, leaning against a stop sign across the street. At least he was by himself. He stared right at Charlie and smiled. It was an unattractive smile, more like leering or like disgusting thoughts were running through his head. They couldn’t walk off in some other direction because the church was on the same side of the street as he was and only a couple houses away.
    Tammy kept her distance, staying on their side of the street until they walked past him. She picked up the pace once she checked the time again and Charlie had no problem keeping up with the undesirable jerk eyeing them. Once they were on the sidewalk that led to the front doors of the church, Charlie whispered, “I shouldn’t have looked back. He winked at me.”
    “Maybe we can walk home with someone.”
    “I hope so. He’s a creeper.”
    The meeting was well underway in the gym with what looked like ambiance lighting. It was actually floor lamps powered by a generator that lit the room and it was stifling hot.
    A police officer stood in the front of the gym giving a run down on what was happening. Tammy immediately regretted not being there on time.
    “From this list, it looks as if there is a large number of loved ones trying to get home. In the meantime, I’m sure you’ve seen the influx of strangers in your neighborhoods. Of course you need to be cautious but many of the people walking the quieter streets are trying to avoid the larger mobs that are gathering on the busy ones for some unknown reason.
    “I know many of you are prepared for this kind of emergency. Please don’t hesitate to help your neighbors. The stores are inaccessible. Looters have hit them pretty hard already.”
    “How long is this going to last?” someone interrupted.
    “It’s impossible to say. This is a worst-case scenario situation. We do know the power grid failure was intentional and it sounds like the entire country has been hit along with the southern part of Canada.”
    It sounded as if the room gasped at once and then the murmuring started.
    “What about Alaska?” Charlie stood and shouted over the escalating conversations.
    “I don’t know. All I can tell you is what we have gleaned from rather primitive means. We’re close to Canada, so we
have
heard there are issues there. It’s pretty crazy here already. In some of the larger cities on the west coast, it is much worse. Be very aware if you are using flame sources for light and cooking, we can’t do much about fires. I mean, right now everyone needs to do what they can to survive, be very careful, and hopefully at least some of you can help your neighbors that weren’t as prepared.”
    Tammy wrung her hands. She had prepared well for this. She wanted to help, she had shelves full of food storage and water that was specifically to be given away when this sort of thing happened, but should she donate it all at once or provision it in case she needed to barter with some of it later?
    A huge portion of her emergency supplies and long-term food storage were kept at the cabin in the mountains. Without knowing when or if there would be a safe time to go there, how long would her in-town supplies need to last
her
? Too much math with too many unknown variables.