One Second After (18 page)

He chuckled sadly and shook his head.

“They don't get it now. If this is as bad as I think it is . . . they'll be the first to die. They don't know how to survive without a society that supports them even as they curse it or rebel against it.”

He sighed.

“Once they run out of food, then the reality will set in, but by that point, anyone with a gun will tell them to kiss off if they come begging. And if those poor kids, if they have food, the ones with guns will take it. They're used to free clinics, homeless shelters when they need 'em, former hippie types smiling and giving them a few bucks. That's all finished. They'll die like flies, poor kids. No idea whatsoever how vicious the world can really be when it's scared and hungry.

“Damn, I hate to see it. Wish their idealisms were true.

“Gandhi and Stalin.”

“What?” John asked.

“I used to tell Monica that when we'd get into politics. She'd always talk about how great Gandhi was. I'd tell her the only reason Gandhi survived after his first protest was that he was dealing with the Brits. If Stalin had been running India, he'd have been dead in a second, his name forgotten.”

John filed that one away; it was a good point.

The procession disappeared around the corner, heading back towards their traditional hangout, Pack Place, in the center of town.

“A Black Hawk flew over yesterday.” John asked, “Did it land here?”

“Yes, right down in Pack Place. From Fort Bragg.”

“What did you hear?”

“That's when Ed finally declared martial law. We're at war. That's all I know. The guy on board, bird colonel, said he'll be back in a week or so, then took off.”

“War with who?”

“No one really knows. Terrorists, North Korea, Iran, China. Just that we got hit with an EMP nuke, so he said that means we're at war. How are things over in Black Mountain?”

“About the same. Some looting, but Charlie got that under control.”

“Memorial Mission Hospital, is it running?” John asked.

“No, sir. Generators never kicked on. I had to help take an old lady with a heart attack up there last night. We have some old trucks that run, a few cars we use as ambulances. My God, it was a damn nightmare up there. A
hundred bodies or more lying in the parking lot . . .” And he stopped speaking, looking back towards the town where the old Battery Park Hotel, a hollowed-out shell, brick walls standing, was continuing to burn. Fires dotted the ridgelines beyond.

“The Doors,” Bill said.

“What?”

“You know, the Doors. The song ‘This Is the End,' been thinking it a lot.”

“Here comes Charlie,” Washington announced.

He was coming back up the slope, jogging, obviously a bit winded, and motioned for them to get in the car.

John looked at Bill and Gus, who was still on the pavement, eyes red rimmed, glaring.

John went over to the Edsel, pulled a notebook out from under the passenger side, opened it and scribbled a note, then signed it.

He handed it to Washington, who read it, smiled, then signed as well.

 

To Chief of Police, Asheville, NC:

The officer bearing this note, Bill Andrews, is a professional and has our highest recommendation. The incident between us was unfortunate but solely the blame of Gus Carter, a stupid ass who should be fired before he gets himself killed.

Signed,                                              
John Matherson, Col. (Ret.)              
Professor of History                          
Montreat College                              

 

Sergeant Major Washington Parker
U.S. Marines (Ret.)                           

 

Washington grinned and then added underneath a postscript:

 

Carter's lucky I didn't kill him; a baby could disarm him.

 

John tore the note out of the pad, folded it, and handed it to Bill.

“Hope that covers you.”

“What does it say?” Gus asked.

“None of your damn business,” John snapped.

“Get in the car now!” Charlie shouted, coming up the last few dozen yards.

“Colonel,” Washington said, “clear Bill's weapon please, keep the ammo, and return it.”

John pulled the clip, chambered out the round in the barrel, and handed it back to Bill. Gus was on his feet, looking at Washington.

“I like your gun,” Washington said calmly. “And frankly, you are a danger to everyone but the bad guys when you are armed.”

“Give it back,” Gus snapped.

“I'm keeping it. Go explain to your boss how you lost it.”

“You damn nig—” He didn't get the rest of the word out, Washington delivering a butt stroke to his stomach, knocking him back over.

Bill said nothing.

“Good luck, Bill,” John said, extending his hand, shaking Bill's. John reached into his pocket, pulled out the rest of his pack. Two cigarettes left, he handed the one to Bill.

Again, a flash thought of the Second World War. A GI with a pack of cigarettes was a wealthy man, to share one with another man, or even a captured or wounded enemy, a significant gesture.

“We're out of here,” Charlie said, coming up to the car, gasping for air.

Phil turned the engine over, got out from behind the wheel, and John piled in.

“I'll take shotgun,” Washington said, getting into the passenger seat. Charlie nodded and climbed into the back with the two boys.

John went into reverse, swung around, then drove back down the on-ramp, feeling strange driving on the wrong side of the highway, moving fast.

Washington took the two pistols he now had, the .45 and the Glock, and placed the Glock by John's side. He kept the AR-15 at the ready.

“What happened back there?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, we made peace,” John said, “and you?”

“Jesus Christ, it's a mad house in the county office. Ed Torrell is dead.”

“What?”

“Collapsed about four hours ago, dead in a couple of minutes. That really got people panicked. Ed was a good man, tough, but fair.”

“Fair like with our car?”

“I'm doing the same thing.”

John looked up in the rearview mirror.

“Like with me?”

Charlie hesitated, then shook his head.

“Course not, John. As long as you help out like this. I know I can count on you when we need it.”

John relaxed.

“OK, what's happening?”

“That Black Hawk was from Fort Bragg.”

“Yeah, we heard about that from one of the cops.”

“Well, it's bad, real bad. There is no communication anywhere yet. They say they had some radios stored away that were in hardened sites and will start getting them out, but nothing prepositioned. Plans as well to see if any ham radio operators have old tube sets, maybe Morse code.”

“Sounds like that movie
Independence Day
,” Jeremiah interjected.

“You're right, and almost as desperate.”

“But news, I mean news from the outside?” John asked.

“State government's moving to Bragg. Some assets there did survive. Plus it's damn secure.”

“Are we at war?”

“Nobody knows for sure with who. At least at this level. Rumors that we nuked Tehran yesterday and half a dozen cities in Iran and just blew the shit out of North Korea.”

“So they did it?” Jeremiah asked.

“Like I said, rumors.”

“How can we do that?” Phil asked.

“What?”

“I mean hit them when we can't get anything moving here.”

“It must have been an event limited to the continental United States. Our assets overseas are still intact, at least for the moment.

“Oh yeah, there's a rumor the president is dead.”

“What?” John exclaimed.

“Someone said the White House got word about fifteen minutes before the blast. Got the president airborne on Air Force One . . . and the goddamn plane wasn't hardened sufficiently, and went down.”

“I can't believe they didn't harden Air Force One,” Washington interjected.

“Yeah, we can't be that dumb,” Charlie interjected, his voice bitter with irony.

“Here. Right now. What is going on?” John asked.

Even as he asked, it felt strange. At any other time in the nation's history, the word that the president might be dead froze the nation in place. John could still remember the day Reagan was shot, the incredible gaffe by Alexander Haig at the press conference when he said, “I'm in charge here.” That mere misstatement had nearly set off panic with some about an attempted coup.

Air Force One went down? Horrible as the realization was, John felt at that moment it didn't matter to him. It was survival, survival here, at this moment, his family that counted, and he drove on, weaving around a stalled 18-wheeler, a truck that had been hauling junk food, potato chips, corn chips, and it was picked over like a carcass lying in the desert, hundreds of smashed-open cardboard shipping boxes littering the side of the road, bags of chips smashed and torn open lying along the side of the road. An old woman was carefully picking over the torn bags, emptying their meager contents into a plastic trash bag.

“They did get lucky with some vehicles in Asheville,” Charlie said. “A scattering of cars parked in underground garages. Their big problem is water. At least we're gravity fed, but part of their downtown has to have the water pumped over Beaucatcher, though down by Biltmore, and on the east side of the mountain they're still getting supplied from the reservoir. They're badly screwed in that department; that's why there's so many fires.”

He hesitated.

“Therefore Asheville is trying to organize an evacuation.”

“To where?” Washington asked.

“Well, to Black Mountain for one. The new guy in charge, I don't even know him, he told me we're supposed to take five thousand refugees from the city. Didn't ask, no discussion. An order like he was now the dictator of the mountains.

“Almost the first words out of his mouth when I reported in to him. They want to spread their people out all over the region, as far west as Waynesville, north to Mars Hill, south to Flat Rock.”

“Why?”

“Because they think we have food, that's why. The water thing is just an
excuse. Hell, they're right on the French Broad River. I heard they even have a tank truck that can haul five thousand gallons at a clip. It's just an excuse. It's about the food.”

“Do we have as much on hand as they do?” John replied.

Charlie shook his head, features angry.

“They got lucky with the stalled trucks on the interstates. A fair number with bulk food on board them, also the rail yard. Two trucks loaded with a hundred hogs even. They were roasting one right behind the courthouse. Dozens of railcars packed with bulk stuff as well down in the Norfolk and Southern rail yard. Got that from the assistant police chief, a good friend.

“I tried to raise with this new tin-plated idiot that the county should pool all resources and he wouldn't even talk about it, just kept ordering me to prepare to take five thousand refugees starting in a couple of days.”

“Hell, it should be us moving in with them,” Washington said.

“Why then?” John asked, a bit incredulous that control had so completely broken down that even on the county level there was no cooperation.

“He's planning ahead,” Washington said bitterly. “Far ahead. Get rid of half the people and you have food enough for twice as long and let someone else worry about the rest. And I'll bet more than one of the inside crowd, some of the political heels up in that office and their cronies, will still be eating good six months from now.

“Besides, it's like all city folk, they somehow think there's more food out in the country.”

John sighed. Scale of social order, he thought. The larger the group, the more likely it was that it would fragment under stress, with a few in power looking out for themselves first. Five thousand might be convinced to share and cooperate. A hundred thousand, self-interests, them and us, would begin to take over, especially with the breakdown in communications.

That had always been the power of media in the hands of a good leader. To get individuals to feel as if the leader was speaking directly to them, Churchill in 1940, Jack Kennedy in 1962, and Reagan in the 1980s. A single voice like that now could break the paradigm, but there would be no such voice and a few cronies of an old political machine in a county government
hall might start thinking of themselves and their friends first, and the hell with the rest. John could barely imagine what it might be like, at this very minute, in a city of a million, of five or ten million.

“If we let them all in, it will cut in half the time we have before we run out,” Charlie sighed, “and I doubt if they'll help us then.

“So I figured it was best not to stick around and argue. I just told him I'll take it back to the town council. He then said it was an order. I didn't argue. I just got out. As I left, a couple of cops asked me how I got into town and I lied, said I had walked it. Well, that's why I was running. I got a block or two and they started to follow me.”

“I know this might sound stupid.” It was Jeremiah. “But I thought we were all in this together. We're neighbors. . . .”

He hesitated.

“We're Americans. . . .”

John glanced back to the rearview mirror, unable to speak, then focused his attention ahead.

They were up to the turnoff onto Route 70. He went down the ramp, swung onto what he still felt was the correct side of the road, and floored it.

The line of refugees they had passed earlier was actually larger now, more people on foot, some on bicycles, others having already learned the old refugee trick that a bicycle can be a pack horse; loaded it down, properly balanced, it could be pushed along with a couple of hundred pounds.