William Forstchen - One Second After

Ben waved, John casually pointed to where the shotgun was, and Ben nodded in reply. Jennifer was down today with her friend Pat, joining a couple of other girls who were going to play Monopoly for the afternoon.

Starting the Edsel, John rolled down the driveway, out onto Route 70, turned east, and drove the short distance up to Miller’s Nursing Home, where Tyler was. Jen had gone up to check on him the day after the outage and said that though it was chaotic, Tyler was doing OK. She was silent now, tense, as they drove.

None of them had left home yesterday, except for one brief foray by John.

He had laid out a long series of tasks. All the meat still in the freezer downstairs was pulled out and cooked thoroughly, with everyone eating as much as they could before wrapping the rest in plastic and storing it. He wasn’t sure if it would help or not, but what salt they had was liberally sprinkled on the meat.

Next came a privy pit dug at the edge of Connie’s orchard, with a privacy screen made out of a tent. The girls had argued that the toilets inside were just fine, and there had been a rather delicate discussion about what the privy could be used for and what the toilets inside would be used for.

“Oh, for that, just do it like Zach does,” Jennifer replied with a grin, “against a tree.”

It took a bit of explaining as to the health hazard of that suggestion. Then a bit of retrofitting around the house. The water bed was already getting chilly without a heater, so extra blankets were dragged up from the basement to lay down as a covering, some old decorative candles pulled out, old clothes that might be cut into strips for toilet paper, and to his surprise an old chain saw, not used in years, actually started up after Ben fiddled around with it for a while.

He then made one quick run down to the market on the east side of town, the old Food Lion, hoping to stock up on some goods, canned food, toilet paper, but it had already been picked over clean. In fact, it looked more as if it had been looted. He could have kicked himself for not having seen to this shopping before the panicked rush.

One of the managers was still inside the darkened store, just sitting, reading a magazine when John came in.

“Helluva show here last night, Professor,” he announced. “Never thought I’d see friends and neighbors act like they did. People running around, loading up baskets to overflowing. I kept trying to say, ‘No cash, no sale,’ and well, they just started pushing by me and that set it off. Place was pretty well cleaned out before the cops finally showed up.”

He shrugged.

“Mind if I look around?” John asked. “Sure, be my guest, sir.”

There was not a basket to be found, so he just simply wandered up and down the aisles. A half dozen or so were in the store, doing as he did, one elderly couple was prowling through the frozen-food freezers, pulling out smashed and soggy boxes of vegetables and waffles, stuffing them into a plastic trash bag.

All the canned goods were picked clean of course. Underfoot were smashed bottles, busted cans, bits of meat, chicken, and seafood. The floor was slippery and began to smell in the heat, hundreds of flies were already buzzing about. Over in the bakery goods he found a busted twenty-pound bag of flour kicked to one side on the floor and immediately grabbed it. In the pet foods was a twenty-five-pound bag of dry dog food, torn open, maybe fifteen to twenty pounds still inside, which he grabbed as well. Near the door he saw a ten-pound bag of rock salt, left over from winter, and instantly snatched it. There was not much else and he headed for the door.

He looked at the manager.

“Just take it, Doc; it’s ok.”

John paused, curious.

“Why are you here, Ernie?” He motioned to the darkened store. The elderly couple slowly dragged the trash bag full of defrosted food: the air around him was thick with the rising scent of decay.

Ernie looked at him, slowly shaking his head.

“Don’t know, Doc. Habit, I guess. No family. Dolores and the kids left me last year. Just habit, I guess.”

John nodded his thanks and tossed the loot into the backseat of the car. Backing up to the Dollar Store, he went in and found much the same chaos, this store torn apart, with no one inside.

“Who’s in there?”

Turning, he saw Vern Cooper, one of the town police, looking through the broken front window.

“It’s me, Vern, John Matherson.”

“Out of there now, sir.”

He came out and felt a change, a profound change in his world. Vern had always been so easygoing, almost a bit of the town’s “Barney Fife.” Now he was carrying a shotgun and it was half-raised, not quite pointing at John but almost.

“Just looking around, Vern.”

“John, I could arrest you for looting.”

“What?”

“Just that, John. It got real bad here last night.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Just get out of here and go home, John,” Vern sighed.

John didn’t hang around to ask for details and did as Vern “suggested.”

At the U-Rent store they had already sold out of extra propane tanks, and John didn’t even bother to go into the hardware store; it was utter chaos, with a line out the door and halfway down the block. The mere fact that he had a car that moved caused nearly everyone to turn and look at him, a reaction that made him nervous. So he just turned around and went home.

The rock salt was a golden find, he realized, and they had then unpacked all the meat, salted it down, then repacked it. Next had come a wood detail, for sooner rather than later he knew the propane for the grill would run out, and by the end of the day they were all exhausted.

He had promised Jen they’d go see Tyler today, then make a run up to her house to get some clothes and of course, check on the cat, so John got back in the car. It was only a short drive up to the nursing home, just about a mile. They passed half a dozen abandoned cars, a family walking by in the opposite direction, mother and father both pushing supermarket shopping carts, one with two kids inside, the other stacked with some few family treasures. Who they were he didn’t know, where they were going he could not figure out, nor did he slow to find out.

Again, such a change. A week ago, seeing a couple like that he’d have pulled over asked if they needed a lift; the sight was so pathetic.

As they pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home John instantly knew something was terribly wrong. Three people were wandering about outside. At the sight of them he could see they were patients, shuffling, confused, one of them naked.

“My God, what is going on here?” Jen gasped.

John started to go for the nearest of the wanderers, to guide her back inside, but Jen shouted for him to follow her.

And the moment he opened the door, he knew something was horribly wrong. The stench was overwhelming, so bad that he gagged, backed out, and gasped for breath.

Jen, made of far sterner stuff, just stood in the doorway.

“Take a few deep breaths. I’ll be down in Tyler’s room.”

John waited for a moment, tempted to light a cigarette. He held back, having gone through five packs in just two days. That left him six packs plus two cartons and he was already beginning to count each one.

He took another deep breath, braced himself, and went in. Again the stench, feces, urine, vomit. He gasped, struggled, nearly vomiting, and fought it down.

The corridor, which a week before had been so brightly lit and spotless, was dark, a large linen gurney parked in a side alcove the source of the worst of the smell. He quickly walked past it, turned the corner, and reached the west wing’s nurses’ station. One woman was behind the counter and looked up at him wearily. Her gown of Winnie the Poohs was stained and stained again. He spotted her name tag: Caroline, and vaguely remembered she was usually part of the night shift.