William Forstchen - One Second After

“Well, a group was being escorted through and they broke. Started running to get off the interstate and into the woods. Two of them had concealed pistols, shot the two policemen escorting them. Shot them dead on the spot. And then they just started scattering.

“Tom ordered them rounded up, Doc Kellor was having a fit as well that they might be carrying something. It turned ugly. Most were too weak to get far, but some of them did put up a fight. About twenty are unaccounted for, disappeared up into the hills. Most are harmless, but a few, the ringleaders, they’re out there and Tom is hunting them down.

“That triggered the riot back at the barrier. Charlie ordered it shut down until the mess was straightened out and they just rioted. I mean thousands of them just pushing against the barrier of cars and trucks. Tom did have some tear gas to push them back, but then they came back in….”

“So we opened fire?”

She nodded.

“You could hear it all over town. Sounded like a regular war. Tom had a couple of men with automatic weapons posted up on the side of the pass firing down. John, I never dreamed we’d be doing this to each other.”

She fell silent, poking at a piece of hot dog at the bottom of her bowl.

He looked at her, realizing how random fate had played out in her life. If she had not come to Asheville for a meeting that day, she’d have been in Charlotte when everything shut down. Maybe she’d be secure, given her job at a hospital. Then again, she could have been one of the refugees storming the barrier, desperate for a piece of bread, half a bowl of the soup he and she were now eating.

“I could have been on the other side,” she said quietly. She looked up at him and for a moment there was rage in her eyes, as if they actually were from opposing camps, two enemies sharing a meal under a temporary truce before the killing started again.

“You weren’t, though. You’re here and you’re safe.”

“For how long, John? Some might say I’m still an ‘outsider.’”

“Damn it, Makala, don’t say that word again.”

“Well, you should have heard some of the people talking after that fight. Twenty-seven locals were killed in it, a couple of them police officers, and there were more than one standing around the town offices yesterday talking about kicking out anyone who didn’t belong.”

“That’s bullshit. Scared talk by scared people.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” she said, shaking her head. “Three weeks ago we were all Americans. Hell, if somebody said an offensive word, made a racial or sexist slur, my God, everyone would be up in arms and it’d be front-page news. Turn off the electricity and bang, we’re at each other’s throats in a matter of days. Outsiders, locals, is the whole country now like this, ten thousand little fiefdoms ready to kill each other, and everyone on the road part of some barbarian horde on the march?”

He couldn’t reply. He feared that it just might be true, but still, he couldn’t believe it, in spite of what had just happened.

“We’re still Americans,” he sighed. “I need to believe that. We’ve turned on each other in the past. Remember, we once fought a war against ourselves with six hundred thousand dead. As a kid I remember the riots in Newark, the hatred that created between us, how that still lingered years afterwards. And yet, when it really counted, we did band together as one.”

“But now?”

“People are hungry, scared. We were spoiled unlike any generation in history, and we forgot completely just how dependent we were on the juice flowing through the wires, the buttons doing something when we pushed them. If only we had some communication. If only we knew the government still worked, a voice that we trusted being heard, that would make all the difference.

“My grandfather used to tell me how back during the Depression the banks started to collapse; there was panic, even the scent of revolution in the air. And then FDR got on the radio, just one radio talk, reminding us we were all neighbors, to cooperate and help each other, and though the Depression went on for seven more years, the panic ended.

“Same thing on nine-eleven. I think it’s the silence that is driving people crazy now. No one knows what is going on, what is being done, if we are indeed at war, and if so, who we are fighting and whether we are winning or losing. We are as isolated now as someone in Europe seven hundred years ago and there is a rumor, just a rumor, that the Tartars are coming or there is plague in the next village.”

He sighed, motioning for another bowl. She refilled his and hers.

“In the past, any disaster, it was always local, or regional at worst. The hurricanes in 2004. It slammed us pretty hard here. Most of the news focused on Florida, but I tell you we got some of the worst of it right here, with two of those hurricanes literally crisscrossing over the top of us only days apart. But all along we knew help was out there. The guys who hooked my electric back up after four days were a crew from Birmingham, Alabama. The truck that brought in thousands of gallon jugs of water came from Charlotte actually, and always there were still battery-powered radios.

“If only we could get a link back up, I think that would calm a lot of nerves. Has there been any contact at all from the outside?”

She sipped a spoonful of soup, then shook her head.

“Not a word. A helicopter flew over two days ago. You should have seen people. It was like some god was passing by in a floating chariot, everyone with hands raised up, shouting. No, not a word other than rumors from those passing through. Global war, Chinese invading, help coming from Europe, plague in Washington, a military coup. A lot of talk now about some religious crazies forming into gangs, claiming it’s the apocalypse and either join them or die. It’s all crazy and they know about as much as you or me.”

“It’s the cars as well,” John said. “They are such an ingrained part of our lives, right down to the fact that there are suburbs and people commute into cities. Hell, a hundred years ago this house never would have even been built, no matter how great the view. Too far from downtown, even if the town is just a small village. This isn’t farmland; it’s actually useless land other than for timber. But the auto made this valuable. Look at how people are migrating even now; by instinct they’re following the interstate highways. Turn off all the cars, I think that is what scared us the most.

The damn things were not just about transportation; they were definers of social status, wealth, age, class. You for instance.”

“Me?”

“Beemer Three-thirty? Told me right off you didn’t have kids; if you were married you and your husband were definitely upwardly mobile types, professionals.”

She laughed softly.

“Postdivorce crisis car.”

He nodded.

“I really know nothing about you, Makala.”

“Just that, postdivorce car. My husband and I met as undergrads at Duke. Both pre-med.” John laughed.

“Mary and I were Duke as well, though I guess around ten, fifteen years ahead of you. I was history; she was biology; we both wanted to teach. I got into the army through ROTC when they offered me a darn good deal.”

“Saw that; your diploma’s in your office. Rather impressive, John, master’s from Purdue, Ph.D. from UVA in history. I thought you were army?”

“Hey, the army educates and they were crazy enough to pay for it and send me. For every hour I carried a gun I spent a hundred in a classroom or archive. Did have a few field commands. First with a recon company with the First Cav in Germany just before communism gave up the ghost. Actually enjoyed that posting, gave me a lot of time to explore history over there besides my duties. Then Desert Storm. My battalion mobilized over and I was looking forward to the challenge of command in a line company when I got promoted to major, then kicked up the ladder to battalion XO. It took me out of the front line and I always wondered since if I had somehow missed something as a result. But enough on me…”