After they shook, she stood. A silent, friendly signal that the meeting was over. To the crowd, she said, “I’m sure Ben can use as much help as you are all willing to give.”

Half the room stood and headed for the door.

“Those of you who are willing to work a shift as a security guard, please speak with my friends, Major McCrea and First Sergeant Copley. Would you mind organizing that, Major?”

McCrea looked startled to be called upon. “Sure.”

A muscular young man, with well-trimmed blond hair and beard, raised his hand and stood from the table nearest the jukebox in the back of the restaurant. “What exactly is going on here . . . Is it Vicky?”

“Yes. Vicky Emerson.”

“Eric Lofland. What makes you think we need you to be our queen?”

Victoria was ready for this. She’d heard this question in one form or another for years while stumping for her House seat. Not everyone is ready to embrace leadership from a female. She got that a female outsider could be even harder to take.

“Not only do I not want to be your queen,” she said, “I don’t even want to stick around for more than a day or two. I’ve got another place to be. But were you a part of the mob that was trying to kill the Foster boys?”

Eric Lofland blushed.

She took that to mean yes. “In my experience, the only way to head off panic is to give people a sense of organization. A plan. What happened last night may prove to be the worst disaster the world has ever faced. I don’t know that to be the case, but it may well be. People are frightened, and angry, and soon they’ll be hungry. I figure if we can give them confidence that they at least won’t starve, we can keep the panic down. As far as who you’d prefer over me to be up here taking notes, I’m ready to walk away in a second.”

Carol Robinson said, “Sit down, Eric. She’s doing fine.”

Eric sat.

“Eric,” Victoria said, “I promise that my intentions are pure. Now, Maggie, do you have a pad and something to write with?”

Over the course of the next hour, as food and other items arrived from Ben Barnett’s store and got stacked on Maggie’s floor and tables, Victoria led what would have been a council meeting in a different venue. Together, the group established leadership teams for everything from medical supplies to hunter teams, from sanitation to building supplies. They determined to figure out a way to make sure that kids could still be educated, even though it was not reasonable to expect them to make the daily ten-mile trek to the brick-and-mortar building that had been their real school.