William Forstchen - One Second After

“If we got that advantage, let’s press it,” Carl said. “I’ve heard they got dozens of railroad cars loaded with food and are hoarding it for themselves. We could demand some of that as well.”

“Not a bad idea,” Tom said quietly. “You might be on to something there.”

“I’m not reduced to that yet,” Kate snapped back. “Trading water for food. Not yet.”

“Nor I; just keep it to the refugee problem. I think if we demand a cut of their supplies… they’ll fight, and remember, they do have the numbers we don’t have,” John quickly interjected, “and we’ll all wind up losers.

“But regarding the refugees, let’s just say, we’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

Charlie smiled.

“That’s right; you’re from New Jersey originally.” John smiled.

“They back off on the refugee issue and that water just keeps flowing.” Charlie looked around the table and all nodded.

“Tom, send a courier back today. Use one of those mopeds we got running. I don’t want to risk a car the way we did the other day.”

“A pleasure, Charlie. Wish I could see Burns’s face when he gets the note.”

“Just remember this, though,” Charlie replied. “Our sewage runs to the treatment plant in Asheville. The filtration is most likely not running, chances are they’re dumping it straight into the French Broad, but still, if they close the pipe, it backs up clear to our town here. They could shut that down in retaliation.”

“Then we threaten to dump our raw sewage right into Swannanoa Creek, which runs downhill to Asheville,” Tom replied.

“Jesus Christ,” Kellor sighed. “Are we getting reduced to this?”

No one could reply.

“All right,” Charlie said, “the big issue. Our roadblock on I-40 at the top of the gap.” He looked to Tom.

“It’s getting bad there. Like we agreed to yesterday. I had someone take a note down to Old Fort at the bottom of the mountain asking them to post a sign that the road above was closed. Old Fort refused. They’ve got seven, maybe ten thousand refugees camped there, all of them trying to get up into these mountains. They want us to let the people pass; in fact, they’re encouraging them to hike up the interstate and, if need be, force their way through. The pressure is building. There’s refugees strung out all along the highway.

“Last night one of my men shot and killed two of them.”

“What?” Kate snapped. “I didn’t hear of this.”

“Figured I’d bring it up this morning,” Tom said.

“What happened?”

“A crowd of about fifty just would not turn back. The men guarding the gap said they recognized several as folks who had been turned back earlier. They planned what they did and tried to rush us. Someone on their side started to shoot and my men fired back. Two dead on their side, about a dozen wounded.”

Kate shook her head.

“It’s going to get worse,” Tom said. “Remember what Mr. Barber said when he flew up here last week, the interstate clogged with refugees pouring out of Charlotte and Winston-Salem. Well, Charlotte is a hundred and ten miles from here, Winston-Salem about a hundred and forty. Give a family burdened down with stuff about ten to fifteen miles a day. That means the real wave is going to start hitting us today; I’m surprised it hasn’t been sooner. We might find twenty, thirty, maybe fifty thousand pushing up that road.”

“Why I wanted this alliance,” Carl said. “You’re our back door. You let them in, we will be swamped. We’ll be caught between Asheville on the one side and those folks on the other. They’ll eat us clean in a day.”

“Disease as well,” Kellor interjected.

“I thought you said we have that already?” Carl asked.

Kellor sighed and shook his head.

“Salmonella, that’s lurking in any community. I’m talking about the exotics now. Large urban population. You’ll have carriers of hepatitis in every variant. What scares the hell out of me is a recent immigrant from overseas or someone stranded at the airport in Charlotte, which is a major hub. He might look well and feel well, but inside he might be carrying typhoid, cholera, you name it.

“We got one of those in a crowd, given sanitation for those people walking here? Just simple hand contact or fecal to water supply or food distribution supply contact and that bacteria will jump. We give someone a plate of food, they haven’t washed their hands, we don’t clean that plate with boiling water, and within a week thousands will be sick and dying.

“You ever seen cholera?” Kellor asked.

No one spoke.

“I did thirty years back. A mission trip to Africa. It makes salmonella look tame. People in those regions, most of them were exposed to it at some point in their lives and survived. We’re wide open to it. We are six, seven generations removed from it and we have no natural immunity. America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago.

“We’re about to get reintroduced to life as it is now in Africa or most of the third world. Not counting the global flu outbreak of 1918, the last really big epidemic, one that killed off a fair percentage of a population in a matter of weeks, well, I think it was the Chicago typhoid epidemic back in the 1880s that killed tens of thousands. Water supply got polluted with typhoid and they died like flies. It made the famous fire pale in comparison when it came to body count.”

“Inoculations?” Charlie asked.

“Where?” Kellor said with a cynical laugh. “For typhoid or cholera? Those are inoculations administered by the county-level health departmerit for travelers overseas, and even then they have to be special ordered. I bet there’s not one person in a thousand in this valley protected against cholera, unless they’ve traveled to Africa or southern Asia, and damn few against typhoid.

“Thank God our elevation is high enough, our climate cool enough, that I’m not worrying about mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, West Nile, and others. And don’t even get me started on how we better start looking out for parasitic worms, lice…”

His voice trailed off.

“We’ll see infections running rampant that won’t kill but will weaken, leaving the victim open for the next round. Kate, most guys don’t even think of it, but do you have a good supply of what we euphemistically call feminine hygiene products?”

She blushed slightly.

“For this month.”

“Right there, gentlemen, though I bet a lot of women are thinking about it now or finding out real quick. They’re back to Great-grandma’s days, and that combined with no bathing, poor diet, we’ll see a soaring infection rate, and that’s just one of a dozen situations we never thought about before last week.

“Johnnie steps on a rusty nail, get a tetanus shot. We might have a hundred of those left in the whole community. We might be staring at lockjaw come fall. Shall I go on?”

No one spoke.

John looked into his old friend’s eyes and could see that this doctor, more than perhaps anyone else in the room, was haunted by just how medieval this nightmare might get.

As a historian John knew the horror. For every person who died in the westward migration prior to the Civil War from Native Americans attacking, the stuff of American legends, thousands, maybe tens of thousands died from water holes polluted by cholera and typhoid… but that doesn’t make for a good movie.

“One thing we’ve neglected I want taken care of right now,” Kellor said. “And I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. Get the veterinarians organized.”