IV bags. Nearly all the IV bags in America were made in just a few places. Million a day. And they were boxed in sterile environments and then shipped to other factories that filled them with blood drawn perhaps a thousand miles away, or various solutions mixed in Oregon and shipped to Texas there to meet the bags to be filled.
And so much, so much from overseas that were in containerships offloaded by diesel-electric-powered cranes, then loaded into trucks. Perhaps the plastic to make the IV bag first emerging from the ground as oil in Kuwait, and from there to Texas to be cracked and the appropriate chemicals siphoned off and shipped to Louisiana to be turned into plastics, some of them for plastic bags to come to Asheville.
Such a vast, intricate, beautiful, profoundly complex web, the most complex in history, and all along a few enemies, enemies whom Americans had for years ignored, and then in one day had come to hate, and that hate had slowly changed, as it does with Americans, to remoteness, disdain, and a smug sense of ultimate victory, perhaps even victory by the simple fact that they made a wish that the enemies were no longer there. For ultimately, what did 9/11 do in the coldest sense? It killed three thousand. Did the economy collapse the next day? Did John's Jennifer miss an insulin shot? Did the workers in a factory that made insulin scatter in panic on 9/11? No. And in spite of outrage, people's tears of empathy, unless it was a friend or one of their own blood lost that day, their world really did not change other than the annoyance of getting through an airport.
The web of our society, John thought, was like the beautiful spiderwebs he'd find as a boy in the back lot after dawn on summer days, dew making them visible. Vast, beautiful intricate things. And at the single touch of a match the web just collapsed and all that was left for the spider to do, if it survived that day, was to rebuild the web entirely from scratch. And our enemies knew that and planned for it... and succeeded.
He tossed the second butt out the window, lit another, and drove into town to report the attack on his house and get Jim to bring up the meat wagon.
The soup line at the elementary school was already forming up, even though distribution of the day's rations wasn't until noon. The carcass of a hog was trussed up to a tree, actually barely a suckling, already stripped down to the bones, which would be tossed into the pot as well.
The people on line were skeletal, their weight really falling away now. Many could barely shuffle along. Kids were beginning to have bloated stomachs. Out along the curb half a dozen bodies lay, dragged out for the meat wagon, no longer even given the dignity of a sheet to cover them. A man, three kids, most likely their parents dead and no one to truly care for them, and a woman, obviously a suicide, with her wrists slashed open.
It made John think of the woman on the road.... Carol, that was her name. Most likely dead by suicide long ago.
The refugee center was starting to empty out, people beginning to move into the homes of locals who had died.
In the short drive he could sense the collapse setting in. The bodies in front of the elementary school, the fact of just how dusty and litter-strewn the streets were. Without the usual maintenance, storm drains had plugged up with debris; several trees had dropped and were then cut back just enough to let a single vehicle through. One of the beautiful towering pines in front of the elementary school had collapsed across the road, smashing in the Front Porch diner across the street. Enough of the tree had been cut away to clear the road for traffic, the rest just left in place.
Nothing had been done to repair the diner's crushed roof, the inside now left open to the elements, the building itself broken into repeatedly by scavengers who were now willing to scrape the grease out of the traps as food.
That broke his heart every time he drove past it. The diner had been his usual stop on many a morning long ago. Mary would have freaked on his breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hash browns, but he so loved the place, the owner a man he truly respected, hardworking, starting from a hole in the wall a block away to create a diner that was "the" place in Black Mountain for breakfast. Truckers, construction workers, shop owners, and at least one professor type. How many mornings had John spent there, after dropping the kids off at school, for a great meal, a cigarette, the usual banter, playing one of the games the owner carved out of wood, trick puzzles, and then going on to his late morning lecture?
"What a world we once had," he sighed.
The parking lot of the bank at the next corner was becoming weed choked, though that was being held back a bit by children from the refugee center plucking out any dandelions they saw and eating them. The bank had been one of the last of an old but dead breed, locally owned, the owner's Land Rover still parked out front, covered in dust and dried mud.
John turned past Hamid's store. A few cars out front, a VW Bug and a rust bucket of a '65 Chevy, a couple of mopeds. Hamid had traded some smokes for an old generator, traded some cigarettes to someone else to get it fixed, and now he actually had some juice. It had been quite the thing when he fired it up, and the lights flickered on dimly. He had diverted the juice into two things: a fridge and one of the pumps for his gas tanks. John had instantly thought of asking Hamid to take the vials of insulin he still had, but Makala had vetoed it. The generator-driven power was variable, shutting down, fired back up again. Better to keep it at a steady fifty-five than at forty degrees that might suddenly climb to sixty or seventy before plunging back down below freezing.
But still his old friend had come through for him, a debt he could never repay, and he felt like a beggar every time he wandered in.
"For my favorite little girl," Hamid would say as he pressed a small package into John's hands, a piece of newspaper with a pound or two of ice inside. Ice, a precious pound or two of ice to try to keep the temperature of the remaining vials down a few degrees.
"I still owe you twenty bucks," John would always say, and Hamid would just smile, for he had little girls, too, and he knew, and he was proud to be an American helping a friend.
Makala. Funny, John hadn't thought of her these last few days. My own starvation, he thought. The unessentials of the body shut down first and after four years of celibacy after the death of Mary he had grown used to it. He knew Makala was interested in him; in a vastly different world they would definitely have been dating, but not now. Besides, he did not want to upset the delicate balance of his family. Jen had been Mary's mother; how would she react? The girls? They might like Makala as a friend, but as something more? For Jennifer, her mom was already becoming remote, but for Elizabeth, the death had hit at twelve, a most vulnerable of times, and her room still had half a dozen pictures of the two of them together and one that still touched John's heart, a beautifully framed portrait from Mary's high school graduation, the color fading but Mary very much the girl he had met in college.
He pulled up to the town hall complex. The rumble of a generator outside varied up and down in pitch as more power or less was being used.
One of the fire trucks was being washed down. The mechanics had finally bypassed all the electronics, done some retrofitting, and the engine had finally kicked back to life ten days ago.
He walked in. Charlie was in his office, cot in the corner unmade, looking up as John came in.
Charlie had lost at least thirty pounds or more, face pinched. He had a cup of what looked to be some herbal tea.
"Two dead up at my house, shot them this morning," John said matter-of-factly.
"That's eight reported now just this morning," Charlie replied, his voice hoarse.
John sat down, looked at his pack of cigarettes, fourteen left, and offered one to Charlie, who did not hesitate to take it.
"Damn it, Charlie. You got to get at least one extra meal in you."
He shook his head.
"Might not matter soon anyhow."
"Why's that?"
"We think the Posse is coming this way."
"What?"
"Don Barber flew his recon plane out a couple hours ago to take a l
ook for us along Interstate 40 heading towards Hickory; he's yet to get back. Four days ago we didn't have a single refugee at the barrier, two days ago nearly a hundred, yesterday more than two hundred; it's as if something is pressuring them from behind. Rumors running with them that Morgan-ton was just looted clean, a damn medieval pillage. Also, we had a shooting last night on the interstate."
"So, that's becoming almost a daily routine," John said coolly.
"This one was different. One of the few heading east. Big guy, looked fairly well fed."
"So what did he do?"
"Washington spotted him. He just had a gut feeling because he had seen this same guy, the day before, heading west; he stood out because he looked so well fed. Washington tagged along with the escort taking this guy and some other refugees east and played dumb. The big guy was peppering him with questions. How many folks lived here, how much food left, any organized defense."
"A spy?"
"Exactly."
"So Washington drew down on him just before the gap, and almost got killed for it. The guy had what Washington called an old-fashioned pimp gun up the sleeve of his jacket. Small .22. He actually got off the first shot and then Washington blew him away."
"Washington ok?"
"Nicked on the side. Kellor said another inch in and, given the way things are now, he'd of been in deep trouble."
"Where is Washington now?"
"Up at the college."
"I think we should go up."
Charlie nodded and the two got into John's Edsel for the short drive.
The drive up to the campus reminded him yet again of the lost world of but several months back, his daily commute of not much more than four miles, and he thought again of bacon and eggs. Damn, that would be good now.
He almost said it to Charlie. Food had indeed become the obsessive topic on people's minds, but now there was a ban on it being spoken of, a major breech of etiquette. It just made everyone crazy to talk about what they would eat when things "got better."
As they passed the turnoff to the North Fork road, there were two more bodies covered with sheets out in front of a home.
"Ah, shit, not the Elliotts," Charlie sighed.
Three children were out on the lawn, all of them skinny as rails, except that their stomachs were bloating, a neighbor clinging to them. That had started to appear over the last couple of weeks, kids with stomachs bloating out, even as they starved. Kellor told John it was edema, fluid buildup as their bodies inside began to shut down. It was the type of images he would always turn off when an infomercial ran for some save-the-kids type charity. Always it was kids in Africa or some disaster-stricken area in Asia with the bloated stomachs. He wondered if now, at this very moment, in a place in the world where electricity still flowed, such images were on their screens: "Give now to save the starving children in America."
God, it was a sobering thought. Would our friends overseas, those we had helped so many times, without a thought of any return, now be coming to us? Were ships, loaded with food, racing towards us ... or was there silence or, worse, laughter and contempt?
"He was getting an extra ration as a grave digger, in fact two rations because he was digging two a day," Charlie said, interrupting John's thoughts.
"And taking them home to the kids and his wife," John said quietly.
They didn't even slow down but just drove on.
They passed three boys, early teens, two of them toting .22s, the other a pellet gun, and the youngest with, yes, a bloated stomach as well. All three moving stealthily, peering up at the trees, the interlacing telephone and power lines.
There was most likely barely a squirrel or rabbit left in town now, and birds were now becoming part of the pot. John's own hunts had started to come up empty unless he went deeper and deeper into the Pisgah forest. It knotted him up thinking about it. Zach had not even died with a meal in his stomach. He had come close to fighting with his Ginger for the rabbit he had bagged yesterday. Ginger was only allowed the bones after Jen had scraped off every bit of flesh for a rabbit stew.
"You know, we're actually starting to run short of small-caliber ammunition," Charlie said as they drove past the boys.
"Most folks who had a .22 in the closet rarely dragged it out and at best maybe had a box of fifty to a hundred rounds. Understand trading now is five bullets for a squirrel or rabbit."
Fortunately, John still had several hundred himself, but he was short on shotgun shells. The heavier-caliber stuff, he had kept that for other reasons.
The gate ahead was roadblocked. In the past the students guarding it recognized his car and waved it through. Not today. They forced him to a stop, one of them standing back with a 12-gauge leveled, while the other came around the side and looked in.
"Good morning, sir; are you ok?"
"It's Rebecca, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
She looked in his backseat, nodded, and two students started up the Volkswagen blocking the gate, let it roll forward for him to pass, then backed it into place and shut it down.
"Kids are getting more cautious."
"Well, with all the dead last night in break-ins," John said. "Lord knows how many others we'll find out today were successful and the families inside the homes are now dead and rotting.
"I think it's safe to assume that some of this Posse crowd have already infiltrated in, looked us over, and decided we are worth taking, at the very least to then move on to Asheville. Perhaps some are even holed up in some houses watching if we are getting prepared."
They turned into the drive leading up to Gaither Hall. And the troops were out. The days of close-order drill long past, they were practicing covering fire and withdrawing in front of the library, Washington pacing back and forth, yelling instructions as John pulled up and turned off the car.
Washington turned and went through the ritual, still the annoying ritual for John, of saluting, which he returned.
Kids were all around. Hunkered down low, concealed behind trees, under vehicles, up in windows of buildings. Farther up the road John could see what must be the red force, Company B, deployed out beyond the girls' dorm, a dozen vehicles running, some Volkswagens, again courtesy of Jim-mie Bartlett, a few farm pickup trucks. One had a fake machine gun mounted on the back, technicals, John thought they were called in Somalia.
Washington held up his megaphone.
"Captain Malady. Now!"
Kevin Malady had been, of all things, an assistant librarian. With his strong, massive shoulders, thick black hair, and lantern jaw that made him look a bit like Schwarzenegger, the kids quickly giving him the nickname Conan the Librarian. He was ex-military, a sergeant with a mech unit in Iraq back in '03. He had just resigned from the library staff and had planned to go to Princeton Theological in the fall. Now he was the CO of Company B.
He knew his stuff as they simulated the assault. The technical supposedly laying down fire support, a vehicle with a plow bolted to the front driving straight at the barrier.
Of course it came to a stop, Washington shouting that the barrier had been pierced.
Malady had more of his troops storm from around abandoned cars, rushing the barrier.
If this had been done a few months ago, the kids would have been laughing, seeing it as playacting, shouting and whooping. Not now. They were silent, following directions from their officers, several of them staff and faculty with military experience, the defensive force pulling back, to try to lure the attackers into what would be the killing zone if the gap was pierced on the interstate. A couple of hundred yards back from the gap, the road was flanked on one side by a high concrete wall, a sound barrier erected for several hundred yards to shield the conference center.
Washington had already established firing positions on the reverse side of the wall. The campus chapel, the new one built several years back, which now housed a famous fresco, The Return of the Prodigal, by the famous artist Ben Long, was serving as a simulator for th
e wall, students suddenly popping up from behind the ridge of the roof.
"That's it!" Washington shouted. "Once up, it's fire superiority. Pour it down fast and hard, fast and hard. Panic them!"
The simulation was starting to break down, kids standing around. There could be no realism to it, no blanks, no miles laser packs.
They had used paintballs at the start, but the supply of those was used up in two days.
Washington blew his whistle.
"Stand down. That's it. Take an hour break. Dinner at noon."
To John's amazement, a fifer started to play and it sent a chill down his back. It was the D'Inzzenzo boy, not a student at the college, a local kid who had belonged to the reenactment unit and had taken to hanging around the college. Washington had taken a liking to him and he was now the official fifer for the militia, playing "Yankee Doodle" as the exercise ended.
"Good marching stuff," Washington said as John looked back at the kid, wearing a Union kepi. "The students love it and it's good for morale."
Students came out from buildings, crawled out from under concealment, all of them armed. Their equipment had been gradually upgraded. Most were armed with semiautos, heavier caliber, a great percentage of Company B with deer rifles, a lot with scopes. Charlie had already said that if a crisis came, he'd release the automatic weapons kept in the police station to Washington. A few civilians had come forward as well, one showing up with what had been an illegal full auto M16 with over four hundred rounds, saying as long as he could tote it in a fight, he'd be part of the militia, a vet from the early days in Nam.
Both companies were now rounded out by vets who had seen service, as far back as Korea, adding nearly a hundred to their ranks. These vets might be old, but they had combat experience and were now slotted in as squad and platoon leaders.
Others, the survivalist types, including the legendary Franklins, were teaching the kids how to concoct homemade claymores, land mines, satchel charges, and homemade rocket launchers fashioned out of PVC pipe. The reenactors in the town regretted they could not get their hands on an original cannon, but were now mixing up black powder for these weapons and rigging up a field piece made out of steel pipe that would be packed with canister.
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