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 madhouse 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 packhorse; loaded it down, properly balanced, it could be pushed along with a couple of hundred pounds.
“Gun,” Washington announced. “Swerve left.”
John swung the old Edsel across the highway. Strange, it was right in front of the DMV office. A week ago, a dozen cops would have been piling out to give him a ticket, the gunman cause for a SWAT team to jump in.
The gunman was the same as before, standing in front of a car dealership, now stepping out, waving his pistol.
Washington raised his AR-15, leveled it out the window. Some refugees were scattering, others just staring at the sight of the Edsel, some just oblivious.
“Don’t do it,” Washington hissed.
As if the man had heard Washington or, far more likely, seen the leveled rifle, he stepped back.
Washington tracked on him as they sped past, then exhaled noisily.
“Professor, I think your student just asked a question,” Washington said calmly.
John, trembling from the tension, spared a quick glance back at Jeremiah, Charlie by his side.
“We’re still Americans,” John said softly.
* * *
An hour later they were back into Black Mountain. There was a roadblock up on the west side of Swannanoa; the chief there had chosen a good spot, a bottleneck where ridges came down on both sides, Route 70, Swannanoa Creek railroad track, and I-40 side by side. The roadblock had not been up when they had driven through several hours earlier.
John had slowed as they approached the barrier. Charlie leaned out of the car and a couple of the cops recognized him, asked for news, and he had confirmed the rumor that had already reached them that more refugees were coming out of Asheville.
John pulled back onto the interstate there, and once past the sign marking the town limits of Black Mountain he breathed a sigh of relief and he felt the others in the car relax as well, Washington finally lowering the AR-15. It was if they had gone to an alien land and were now safely back home.
But as they rolled into the parking area in front of the firehouse and police station, John tensed up again. A crowd had gathered, half a thousand or more, and for a few seconds he thought they were trying to storm the building for the emergency supplies.
The five of them got out, and at the sight of Charlie several came running up.
“They got two thieves in there, Charlie,” someone said excitedly.
John shook his head. Hell, half of the people in this town in the last five days had stolen something. Even himself, he had never bothered to go back to the drugstore to pay for the medication or chocolate or the twenty bucks he still owed Hamid. Besides, there was no money anyhow.
“The bastards that raided the nursing home!” someone else shouted, and an angry mutter went through the crowd.
Charlie pushed his way through, and John followed along with Washington.
They got to the door.
“John, maybe you should wait.”
“I got a stake in this. I was there; Tyler was affected.”
“Ok.”
He followed Charlie in. There was a crowd gathered round the door to the conference room, and John stepped through the group with Charlie. Kate looked up, visible relief in her eyes. “You’re back safe, thank God.”
“What’s going on here?”
“Got these two,” Tom said.
At the far end of the room two men, midtwenties from the look of them, one as described by Ira, shaved head, distinguishing tattoo, earring; the other, almost an opposite, looking not much different from John’s students now waiting outside: fairly well built, hair cut short, but his eyes… John could tell this kid was something of a stoner.
“Charlie, Tom wants to shoot them,” Kate said quietly.
Charlie sat down against the edge of the table and looked at them.
“What do you got, Tom?”
“When I got the description from the nursing home, I knew where to look for him,” Tom said, pointing at the serpent arm.
“Busted him three years back on a meth charge. Regular lab, a home just up over the crest of Route 9. Owned by his cousin here.”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it!” the clean-cut one cried. “Larry here, he’s the one.”
“Shut the fuck up, Bruce,” Larry snapped, trying to lunge towards him but unable to move. Both were handcuffed and bound to chairs.
“So I went up there this morning and sure enough found these two. Wasted as shit. You’ll see the track marks from the morphine.”
John looked closely at the clean-cut kid; there was some recognition.
“Professor Matherson. You know me, I took History one-oh-one with you four years ago. You know me.”
John looked at him carefully. He was never that good with names, but faces he did remember. Yes, Bruce had been a student, showed some promise, then just disappeared from the campus after a semester or two.
Tom looked over at John.
“He was a student once. Several years back.”
“That doesn’t matter now,” Tom said.
“I want a lawyer. A fucking lawyer!” Larry shouted. “I know my rights. You dumb-ass cop, you didn’t even read me my Miranda, so you really fucked up this bust. I’m outta here once I get a lawyer. Brutality as well,” and he turned his head to show a swollen cheek, right eye half-shut.
“We are under martial law now,” Charlie said quietly, breaking into the argument.
Bruce looked over at Charlie, eyes wide.
“What does that mean?”
Charlie stood up and looked around.
“Witnesses?”
“We fetched the supervisor down from the nursing home. She’s outside.”
“Bring her in,” Charlie said.
John stood up as Ira came in. She looked worse than yesterday, hair uncombed, dirty. It was obvious from the stains on her silk blouse, and the smell, that she had, at some point, snapped out of her shock and was trying to help with the patients.
She looked at the two young men.
“The one with the tattoo, that’s definitely him.”
“Lying bitch, it was dark; how could you see me?”
“How do you know it was dark when they were robbed?” Charlie asked.
“Heard it from somebody,” came the muttered reply.
“The other one, I’m not sure. But that tattoo, I remember that.”
“Thanks for the identification.”
She nodded.
Charlie hesitated, looking around. “Will you swear to this?”
“Sure, Charlie.”
“Someone find a Bible.”
Kate went into her office and returned a moment later with a King James. Charlie wasn’t sure of the exact line, so Kate swore her in, and Ira repeated her testimony.
“You got the drugs, Tom?” Charlie asked.
“In my office.”
“Go get them.”
He returned with several dozen vials of liquid morphine, containers of other drugs in pill form.
“Tom, just look on the containers,” Ira said. “‘Miller’s Nursing Home,’ followed by a code number, should be on them. All controlled substances, when shipped, have tracking numbers and delivery ID numbers,” and she repeated the coding.
“The same,” Tom replied.
“John, would you witness to that?”
John looked over with surprise at Charlie, as if being dragged in. But the memory of the suffering in the nursing home filled him. Kate swore John in, he went over, picked up a container.
“It says: ‘Miller’s Nursing Home.’”
“Tom, you next,” Charlie said.
Sworn in, Tom repeated his testimony as well.
Finished, he stepped back around behind the two.
“You men have anything to say?” Charlie asked.
“I want a fucking lawyer!” Larry shouted.
“Do you have anything to say?” Charlie repeated.
“Yeah, I sure as hell do; give me the damn Bible,” Bruce said.
Charlie reddened, looking over at Kate.
“The Holy Bible please,” she said slowly, forcefully.
Larry said nothing.
“I want the Holy Bible please,” Bruce said.
Charlie picked it up, walked it down the length of the table, and put it down in front of Bruce, who was then sworn in. “Tell us your story, Bruce.”
For the next five minutes he rambled on. He had nothing to do with it, Larry just coming in with the drugs. Who the second guy was, Bruce didn’t know. He and Larry had divided the loot.
John watched Bruce carefully. The man, still not much more than a boy actually, maybe twenty-one or -two, was obviously terrified. And, as well, John could sense Bruce was lying. All the years as a prof had sharpened his bullshit detector, as he called it.
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