One Second After

by William R. Fortschen

  Charlie nodded and slowly sat down.

  "Moving food in secret? Secret eating while others starve?" Kate shook her head. "I never dreamed we'd come to this point so fast, and agree to it, here, right here in our town."

  "The first that would get hit by the rioting are the outsiders," John said. "There's been a semblance of acceptance, some bonding, that would disintegrate, Kate, and I'm willing to bet would turn into murders and lynch-ings, a massive scream to throw everyone out who wasn't living here the day of the event. Then our two communities will start glaring at each other. Frankly, Swannanoa has more food per person than we do, a lot more with their extra cattle and hogs. We'll split and those here will start screaming about marching there to take their cattle.

  "You hear that, Kate? It's like something out of ancient history, the Bible; we'll be raiding each other for cattle. Then it will be every man for himself and we'll all die as a result if someone from the outside, with some organization and strength, then comes rolling in. There's your choice, Kate. Go ahead. What should we do?"

  She glared at him, unable to reply.

  John looked over to Tom, who had remained silent throughout the de­bate, and Tom nodded in agreement.

  "I know I couldn't keep order. I'd have to call in the college militia, and even there, most of those kids would be defined as outsiders as well, and the mob ready to turn on them. It would be a helluva mess, Kate. John's right, we have to do this, but we have to keep it quiet."

  "So in other words, horde some food for a selected few, do it in secret so that by the time the rest of the people figure it out, they'll be too weak to act.

  John stared at her. "Yes."

  "You bastards."

  "Kate, it's been this way throughout history. America, though, hasn't faced it since," he paused, "maybe parts of the South in the Civil War. Even then that was just limited. We've never seen anything like this before, but in reality, it has to be done if any survive. We can't keep social order, defend ourselves, and at the same time give out some kind of equal amounts of food to everyone else. If we try that, everyone will die."

  "I won't accept extra food."

  "No one is forcing you to," John said softly.

  "Kate, you cannot discuss this outside this room," Charlie said sharply.

  She glared at him.

  "Or what?"

  "I'll have you arrested."

  "Sieg heil, mein Fuhrer," and she raised her hand in the fascist salute.

  "Damn it, Kate," Charlie snapped, his voice almost breaking. "I don't want this any more than you, so don't ride me on it."

  She lowered her head.

  "It has to stay in this room," John said sharply.

  "Are you getting an extra?" Kate asked.

  "Hell, no. We're still getting by."

  "All right, Charlie. You don't take extra rations, none of us here do, and I'll go along with it."

  "Tom has to be on the list for extra rations," Kellor said.

  "Like hell."

  John looked at Tom. His rotund pre-war form had melted away quickly, belt drawn in now by several notches.

  "All police, firefighters, the militia, those doing essential work," John said, "and grave diggers."

  There was a long silence.

  "And Doc, you, too," John said.

  Doc nodded.

  "I won't hide behind false heroics. I hate the thought, but I know my performance is degrading fast. I set a compound fracture yesterday, one of the Quincy boys, fell off a horse. I thought I was going to faint towards the end of it. If we don't have doctors and nurses in this town who can function, well, we're all dead anyhow then."

  "How many will we lose?" Charlie asked.

  "When?"

  "You said the curve is going to start going up again. How many do we lose in two or three months?" Doc looked around the room.

  "One-third to one-half if we follow the plan just outlined."

  "And if we don't?" Kate asked.

  "We drag it out a little longer, Kate, by not much more than thirty days extra; then everyone will be dead by winter." No one spoke.

  "Malthus is finally being proven right," Charlie said. "Our population here is three, four times higher than the carrying capacity. It was all about infrastructure. Out in Southern California right now I bet hundreds of thousands of tons of vegetables are rotting. The Midwest will be up to their eyeballs in unpicked corn in another six weeks. But there is no way to get that from there to here."

  Silence, and John knew all were dwelling on food, the standard thoughts of someone going into starving and malnutrition. He could picture the hundreds of thousands of head of cattle out in Texas and Oklahoma. For that matter, just two hundred miles east of here, the hog farms. They were contemptible, usually rammed into poorer communities, five to ten thousand hogs raised at a clip in sheds where they could barely move from birth until slaughter, the stench and pollution killing property value for miles around ... and to have one of them here now would be greeted with people falling on their knees and thanking God.

  But even then, John realized, it wouldn't work. The farms were dependent on hundreds of tons of feed being shipped in each week. If those farms had not already been looted, the waste going on was most likely beyond imagining. The animals starving to death, people who almost thought meat was grown inside a pink foam package now trying to chase a hog down, kill it, and dress it. No, they'd cut off what they could, others would join in like vultures, and half of it would then just rot in the sun. If the hogs escaped, they would be into the woods now, wild boar in short order and damn dangerous.

  Charlie finally stirred.

  "Anything else?"

  Silence.

  "Minor point, but it's starting to get dangerous. Dogs." John looked over at him.

  "A lot of dogs are starting to run loose now. They're starving and they're going wild. We had an incident up on Fifth Street last night; two children got cornered by a pack of dogs. Fortunately, the father had a shot­gun and dropped several of them; the rest took off."

  After the grimness of the previous conversation John knew he shouldn't be reacting so hard, but he suddenly felt a tightness in his throat. The two fools Zach and Ginger were indeed getting hungry, beg­ging ferociously at every meal, and yet still the family would share a few scraps. Most of the squirrels John had dropped over the last week had been tossed to the dogs raw.

  "I think we have to order the shooting of all dogs in the town," Charlie said.

  "No, damn it, no," Tom snapped. "I'll burn in hell before I'd go home and in front of my kids take Rags outside and blow his brains out. No way. If they're running loose and proving to be a danger, sure, but not that."

  "What did the father do with the bodies of the dogs he shot?" Kellor asked quietly.

  "Jesus, I never thought of that," Charlie replied.

  "How many dogs in this town?" Kellor asked. "At least a couple of thousand. That's enough meat for full rations for three or four days at least, half rations for a week and a half."

  "You can go straight to hell, Doc!" Tom shouted, and John was sur­prised to see tears in Tom's eyes. For the first time since this crisis had started, from the initial panic, the executions, the fight at the gap, it was now Tom who was breaking into tears.

  "We got Rags the week my youngest was born. He's been with us ten years, as much a part of the family as any person. He'd die to defend us, and frankly, I'd do the same for him. I'm not giving him up and that's final."

  "Tom, what I was talking about earlier," Kellor said, "that's only the first starve-off. I didn't even have the heart to talk about the second starve-off. Those that survive into the fall, chances are by the end of the winter most will be dead anyhow. Do you think any dogs will still be alive by then? And if so, they'll be feral, reverting back to packs of wolves, killing people to survive."

  "Help will be here long before then!" Tom shouted. "It's starting al­ready; you heard what John said.

  "Charlie, I don't care what th
e hell you order, I will not do it to Rags or any other dog that the owners are still taking care of."

  Tom was red faced, in John's eyes almost like a boy in a sentimental movie about a dog or other beloved pet, the obligatory scene when the kid is about to lose the dog, but we all know that at the end of the film, except in Old Yeller and The Yearling, things will be ok. And as for those two films, John had seen both as a kid and refused to ever see them again.

  He was in tears now thinking of Zach and Ginger. How would Jen­nifer react? Ginger was her buddy, the two inseparable. It was terrifying enough trying to avoid the fate looming for Jennifer, but to do that to her, to kill Ginger? No, John would refuse as well. And he knew, as well, that in his heart, even without Jennifer, he would reach the same conclusion.

  "I'm siding with Tom," John said.

  "John, we have to leave sentiment behind," Kellor said.

  "It's more than that," John snapped back. "It's yet another step back­wards in who we are."

  "John, ten minutes ago you agreed to letting some people starve faster than others. What in hell do you mean about stepping backwards?"

  "I know this is illogical. It's just that we're Americans. We and the Brits especially are alike in this. We see something more in our pets than just brute beasts. For old people alone, they're a final source of comfort and love. For children, the beloved buddy that understands even when adults don't..."

  He was ashamed, he was starting to cry.

  "I'd kill every dog in the town if I could save one life by it," Kellor snapped back.

  "That will take something out of us forever, maybe a line I don't want to cross, would rather not live in ... No."

  "The line is there," Kellor replied. "It is there no matter what." Charlie stirred.

  "How about this then? Loose animals will be shot and given to the communal food supply. Owners must keep pets inside or leashed. If an owner decides to dispatch a pet on their own, they can keep it for their own food supply. Is that agreeable?"

  Tom jumped on it and nodded.

  "Fine then."

  "And every day they'll lose weight, that could be turned into food," Kel­lor snapped, "and eat food that people will give to them, even as they're starving."

  "That's their choice," Tom replied.

  He seemed ashamed of his emotional display, wiped his face, and stood up.

  "Anything else, Charlie?" Charlie shook his head sadly.

  "John, that broadcast we should monitor from now on. We'll pull an old car radio, get some batteries, and rig out an antenna."

  "Good idea."

  "Maybe they'll be coming soon," Charlie said hopefully. "Sure, Charlie. Maybe they will."

  John left the meeting and started for home. The radio was now set on the dial to the Voice of America channel, but it was only static, maybe a whisper of a voice for a second or two, then static again.

  He thought of stopping in to see Hamid, perhaps try to trade something for a few cigarettes to round out his day, even though it was still only mid-morning. The meeting had worn him to the edge.

  He opened the glove compartment; extra ammo for the Glock strapped to his side was in there, along with what he called his reserve, a cigarette. He lit it up, inhaling deeply as he pulled onto State Street and drove past the elementary school. The once beautiful front lawn was now ragged, beat down, torn out in places. Some kids were down in the playground, playing baseball. They already looked skinnier to him, reminding him of photos of German kids playing in the rubble after World War II.

  The cook fire was going. Today it was horse; one of the older beasts, close to death, had been shot. A crowd was gathered round it, butchering it, legs sticking up, yet another memory of a World War II film, of Ger­man civilians in rubble-strewn Berlin, hacking at a dead animal. One of Tom's men standing by, shotgun cradled casually under his arm, was watch­ing the proceedings. Everything, every ounce of fat, bone, innards, every­thing would go into the kettle. Some greens would be mixed in, and there were at least fifty or more people standing around listlessly, watching every move hungrily.

  John passed the school, continued on, the interstate to his left. Makala's Beemer still resting where it had rolled to a stop thirty-five days ago. He was tempted to drive the extra mile up to the isolation hospital, stand out­side, and call for her. If he stepped in, he was stuck there for at least three days. He missed her. He slowed, drove past the turnoff to his house, and continued on, but then on reaching the turn to the conference center he figured he'd better not. So he continued on, driving several hundred more yards to a bridge that spanned over the interstate just behind the gap. He got out of the car, nursing his cigarette for one more puff before he got down to the filter.

  The sound of the car running caused some of his old students, standing guard on the bridge, to turn. At the sight of him they waved.

  His old students, my kids, he always called them. Hell, Mary and I were the same age when we met and no one could have defined us as kids to our­selves and she most definitely was not a kid at twenty ... He remembered so many insane nights with her when neither got a wink of sleep till dawn and then they went to classes. And yet now, the years stretching away, those standing guard were indeed kids in his eyes.

  They were uniformed. Blue jogging trousers of the college, blue long-sleeve shirts, college baseball caps ... and guns. Several were in the baggy white hazmat suits. One of the girls, hunting rifle poised, was talking across the double barrier of stalled cars to a band of refugees on the other side. She had sat in his 101 class only the semester before. Cute, yes, a bit sexy looking with her long blond hair, blue eyes, and tight blouses, but still just a kid to him now, his own daughter not much more than two years younger.

  And now his former student stood with rifle poised, drilled to fire if anyone did indeed try to scramble over the cars and break through.

  One of the doctors, helped by a nurse, both in biohazard suits, was walking along a line of refugees who had been admitted through the bar­rier, looking at old driver's licenses, interviewing, maybe finding the one or two who might be allowed to stay, their skills on the checklist John and Charlie had created.... Anyone who worked with steam, electricians, doctors, farmers, precision tool and die makers, oil and gas chemists, the list went on.

  Someone was culled out of the line and stepped forward. He anxiously looked back and was then relieved when a woman and three children were allowed to follow him. Five more mouths, John thought. He hoped the trade in skills was a damn good one as they were led off via a path to where Makala worked.

  Someone with a hand-pumped weed sprayer now walked down the line, spraying down each person in turn with a mixture cooked up by Kellor. At least it would take care of lice, fleas, but also was a psychological tool, to remind them that they were somehow different once past the line and would be kept apart.

  The group set off, led and followed by two students in biohazard suits who were toting shotguns. Behind the cavalcade a Volkswagen Bug followed, "Black Mountain Militia" stenciled on the side. Inside were a student and one of Tom's policemen, any weapons confiscated from the line of refugees piled in the back to be returned once they reached the far side of the barrier at Exit 59.

  "Hey, Colonel, sir!"

  It was Washington Parker up by the barrier. John waved.

  Parker waved for him to come down and there seemed to be an urgency to his gesturing.

  The refugees were now filing under the bridge and the sight was heart­breaking. They wore ragged, torn, filthy clothing, several pushing super­market shopping carts with children piled inside.

  John went to the edge of the bridge to slide down the embankment to the road.

  "Good morning, Colonel, sir."

  Startled, he saw one of his students lying in the high grass, dressed in hunting camo, face darkened green. It was Brett Huffman, one of his ballplayers, a darn nice kid, backwoods type from up in Madison County, baseball scholarship with a real interest in history and wanted to teach
high school. A kid who was a natural leader and looked up to by his class­mates. John noticed the black sergeant's stripes stenciled on his hunting jacket. He had a wad of tobacco tucked into his jaw.

  "Brett, just what the hell—," John started to ask.

  "Vinnie Bartelli is on the other side of the bridge, staked out like me. If there's any trouble at the barrier, or any of them folks down there try and bolt..."

  He said nothing for a moment, just patted the 30/30 Savage with mounted scope.

  "I had to shoot one yesterday, sir. Good shot, though, got him in the leg, thank God, didn't have to kill him."

  John couldn't reply. There was a bit of tightness in Brett's voice but al­ready the sort of casualness John had heard so often in debriefings after Desert Storm. Good young kids trained to be killers and trying to be hard­ened to it, though it was still a shock.

  "I guess, though, with a 30/30 through the leg he's a goner anyhow."

  "You did what you had to do," John offered reassuringly.

  "Still, sir. Reminded me of my first deer. Same kind of feeling, maybe a bit worse."

  "Take care of yourself, Brett."

  Yes, sir.

  John slid down the embankment and out onto the road. He looked back. Brett was impossible to see. It registered, so many of the college kids from small towns, more than a few hunters, or Boy Scouts or just outdoor types, of course they'd learn, and darn quick. The refugees were moving along on the other side, a long strung-out column.

  They moved slowly, a few listlessly looking up at John. They were like something out of another age, some so obvious caught ill prepared, a man in a three-piece business suit, scuffed worn dress shoes, bandage around his head. Looked like a lawyer or upper-level corporate type ... with no skills to sell here for a bowl of watery soup. Parents side by side, exhausted, pushing a shopping cart, the wheels worn, squeaking, two children inside, both asleep, pale faced.