William Forstchen - One Second After

Sixty cattle, two or three a day turned into soup, stew, could stretch things. But far more pragmatic, how to keep control, to prevent someone else from rustling them, from raiding the farm one night, killing the owners, and then just slaughtering what they could drag away quickly, leaving the rest to rot?

Again a film image, from Dances with Wolves, the Indians finding the hundreds of buffalo slaughtered by white hunters who just took their hides and tongues, leaving the rest to rot. It could be the same here, and yet again it caught him how movies had so defined so much of the country’s image of self and now the screens were blank. A movie about us fifty years from now, if there are movies, what will it show?

“Charlie, we have to make a deal with the few farmers in this valley. We just can’t go marching up there, take their cattle, and ride off. A deal. We protect their food, they get more than a fair cut because they are sharing with the rest of the community. In exchange we protect them, their herd and crops. And Charlie, we have to keep some stock alive.”

“What do you mean?”

“For next year. A couple of males, enough females. We might be looking at next year and we’re still in the same boat. We got to keep breeding stock alive even if it means we go hungry now. In the old days, eating your breeding stock was the final act of desperation.”

“John,” Kate said. “I don’t need to hear this now. Are you saying this will still be going on a year from now?”

“Maybe. And if we don’t plan now, there won’t be a next year for any of us.”

“Ok, John,” Charlie said. “We’ll go up the North Fork later today and start talking.”

“And suppose someone up there, shotgun in hand, tells us to go to hell and get off his land?” Kate asked. “You said I grew up here. I did and I know some of these folks. They’re good people, but they don’t hold much truck with someone telling them what to do.”

“Then maybe you should be the one to go talk with them,” John said quietly.

“Me?”

“Exactly. Everyone in town knows you, Kate, even more than they know Charlie or Tom here. You going first would be nonthreatening.”

“Because I’m mayor or because I’m a woman?” she asked sharply.

“Frankly, Kate, it’s both. Tom shows up, gun on his hip, it’s commissar time. You show up, sit down with the family, have a chat, I think you can help folks with these small farms to see reason. They have to strike a deal because if they stay on their own, sooner or later someone will go for them and take what they have. We promise to post twenty-four-hour guards on their places, we offer protection, they trade some food back to the commu-nity.

“Sounds a bit like where you come from originally up in New Jersey,” Charlie said with a trace of a smile. “Protection racket.”

John tried to smile in spite of his light-headedness.

“Like it or not, that’s the way it is now. I’m dead set against people’s homes being cleaned out, but I think we can agree that farms have to be protected but something given back in return to help the entire coramu-nity.

She nodded in agreement. “Ok, I’ll go.” Charlie looked down at his notepad. “Transportation. Anything new?”

“We got three more cars running,” Tom said. “Actually I should say that Jim Bartlett down in that Volkswagen junkyard of his did. Beetles, another van.”

“He’s become a regular friend of yours,” Kate said, and there was, at least for a moment, a touch of a smile.

“Yeah, damn old hippie. Though I’m not buying his line that we should be using pot for medicine.”

“I might agree with him now,” Kellor said.

“It’s breaking the law,” Tom replied sharply.

“The cars, Tom,” Kate interjected. “Let’s stick with that.”

“All right, other garages say they can get ten or fifteen more old junkers up and going, including an old tractor trailer down at Younger’s.”

“We’ll have forty or fifty within the week,” the policeman from Swan-nanoa said quietly.

No one spoke, looking at him.

“You folks up here in Black Mountain always kind of looked down on us in Swannanoa. Maybe because we was poorer, but that poorness makes us worth more now.”

John smiled at that and knew it was true. He could remember Tyler calling Swannanoa a “poor white trash” town with its trailer parks, auto junkyards, a town that had essentially gone to hell ever since the big woolen and blanket mill closed down years ago. What had once been a thriving small downtown area in Swannanoa was all but abandoned, especially after the big mill burned several years ago. Route 70, which went straight through Swannanoa, was lined with aging strip malls, thrift shops, and repair shops. It was finally starting to turn around, at least until last week, as more and more “outsiders” came in looking for land with the spectacular views the region offered. The area north of the town was developing, with high-priced homes, but that was now a tragic loss; half a dozen old farms had been chopped up into “McMansion estates” over the last few years.

In the old trailer parks there were a lot of cars that a week before anyone in a Beemer or new SUV would have given a wide berth to on the interstate. Some of those rolling heaps were now worth a hundred Beemers.

“Folks, this is Carl Erwin,” Tom interjected. “Chief of police for Swannanoa. I invited him here today to talk about a proposal we have.”

Everyone nodded politely. Carl definitely had their attention with Tom’s last statement.

“And the proposal is?” Kate asked.

“An alliance.”

John smiled. Again the historian in him, picturing kings of the ancient world, riding to a meeting in chariots to discuss water rights, the exchange of daughters, to band their armies together.

“Carl and I have been talking about this for days,” Tom interjected. “It’s ok with me.”

“What’s ok?” Kate asked.

“That we band our towns together for the duration of this crisis.”

“For what purpose?”

“Defense,” Carl said. “We hold the door to the west; you have the one to the east. We cooperate, we survive; we don’t, we are all in the deep dip.” Charlie stood up and pointed to the county map pinned to the wall.

“We have the bottleneck for I-40 and Route 70 in our town on the east side; that’s up just past Exit 66. Just west of Exit 59 there’s another bottleneck where the Swannanoa Mountain range has a spur that comes down. The two highways, the railroad, and the creek are practically side by side over there in Swannanoa. A defendable position only a couple of hundred yards wide. We have the front door; they have the back door.”

“Maybe it’s the other way around,” Carl said, a bit of an edge to his voice. “Remember, we’re closer to Asheville and they’re still trying to force us to take five thousand for my town and five thousand for yours. I’m holding them back and it’s getting ugly real quick. We’ve had half a dozen deaths at the barrier the last two days.”

“From what?” Kellor asked.

“Gunshot, that’s what,” Carl replied sharply. “There’s people that walked down here told they’d find food, we’re telling them there ain’t none, it’s getting bad. I understand it’s chaos on Old 70 and the interstate back towards Asheville.”

“Why in hell didn’t those idiots in the county office just tell people to stay in place?” Charlie snapped bitterly. “They just started this move even when we told them not to.”

“Because they want to survive,” John said, “and the numbers are not adding up.”

“It’ll be a die-off,” Kellor interjected. “A bad one, and Asheville wants it to rest on us, not them. Can’t blame them really.”