William Forstchen - One Second After

There were so many vehicles running now that a salvaged generator had been hooked up at Smiley ’sand the gas from Hamid’s belowground tanks was flowing again.

Smiley’s had become something of the old “general store.” There was precious little to sell, other than his legendary horde of cigarettes, which were now doled out one at a time in exchange for a dead squirrel, old silver coins, or whatever might capture Hamid’s fancy.

John almost regretted his sense of fair play that first day. He should have purchased a dozen cartons. He was down to five packs and rationing himself to no more than five cigarettes a day now.

“OK, everybody, time for the meeting, so let’s clear the room,” Charlie announced.

Those who had gathered to gaze at the phone reluctantly left the room. Charlie closed the windows and dropped the Venetian blinds.

It was the usual group. Charlie, Bob, Kate, Doc Kellor, and John. Carl and Mike from Swannanoa came down from their end if there was something directly related to them at the moment but today were caught up with a forest fire up along Haw Creek that was threatening to turn into a real inferno.

A ritual John had insisted on was now enacted, the group turning to face an American flag in the corner of the room and recite the Pledge of

Allegiance, and then Kate led them in a brief prayer before Charlie announced the meeting was now in order.

“I hate to jump the gun on the agenda, but I’ve got something important,” John said.

“What?”

“Outside news.”

“Well, for God’s sake, man, why didn’t you say something when you came in?” Charlie asked.

“Everyone was excited about the phone, and well, frankly, some of it isn’t all that good.”

“Go on; tell us,” Kate said.

“There’s a station on the radio now. Voice of America.”

“Wow. When?” Kate cried.

“I was driving last night, fiddling with the dial on the car, and it came in clear as day.”

“The radio?” Charlie shouted. “Tell us about it. My God, we got radio again!

“The old radio in the Edsel. I don’t know, I was just fooling with the dial and suddenly it came in loud and clear, frequency at the old Civil Defense band. We sat there listening to it for a half hour or so, then atmospheric skip and it faded.”

“We?” Kate asked.

He didn’t reply. Makala had come down to join them for a meal and check on Jennifer and he was just driving her back to the conference center, which was now the nursing home and isolation ward for incoming refugees who were allowed to stay.

“So what the hell is going on?” Tom asked.

“They’re broadcasting off the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, part of our fleet stationed in the Persian Gulf when things started. They beelined it back here. They said the carrier was somewhere off the coast of the United States and was now the command post for relief and recovery operations.

“They said that help is on the way. Kept repeating that every five minutes. Said the nation is still under martial law.”

“No news there,” Kate said.

“What kind of help?” Tom asked.

“Didn’t say, other than relief supplies are coming from Britain, Australia, and India and China.”

“India and China?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, struck me as strange. That earlier report about a weapon detonated over the western Pacific.”

“Who we fighting?” Tom asked.

“Didn’t say. Just that allied forces are fighting, in Iran, Iraq, Korea. Good news is that Charleston, Wilmington, and Norfolk have been declared emergency restructuring centers.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Kellor asked.

“I guess it means if we have some kind of functional assets overseas that didn’t get hit, ships that can provide electrical power, aircraft, trained personnel, they’d be coming back here and those are three local places.”

“Charleston is the nearest, two hundred and fifty miles away,” Charlie sighed. “That won’t help us a damn bit.”

“I know,” John said.

“What about the war?” Tom asked.

“Anything beyond the three cities?” Kate interjected.

“Nothing else. Oh yeah, the president is the former secretary of state. She’s in charge.”

No one spoke at that news.

“Apparently the president died aboard Air Force One; they got him up in the air and the plane wasn’t hardened sufficiently to absorb the pulse. They didn’t say what happened to the vice president or Speaker of the House.”

“Nothing really that affects us directly,” Charlie said, and no one replied. Strange, the death of a president and now we say it doesn’t affect us, John thought.

“That was it. Then they played music.”

“What?” Charlie cried. “Music?”

“Patriotic stuff. ‘God Bless America,’ it faded out with the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’.”

John looked around the room.

“At least we know they’re out there.”

“The legendary ‘they,’” Kellor replied coldly. “Doesn’t help us here and now with what I’ve got to talk about.”

“Go on,” Charlie said. “In fact, what you just told us, John, depresses the hell out of me. The thought that they’re so close. Hell, a month and a half ago a C-130 loaded with medical supplies could have flown here in an hour from Charleston. Now it’s like they’re on the far side of the moon.

“Doc, why don’t you go ahead.”

“Only thirteen deaths yesterday,” Doc said, and there was a murmur of approval, the lowest number since they had started to keep count. “Two were heart attacks; two, though, were our dialysis patients. I think that is the last of them. Everyone in our communities who was on dialysis is now dead.”

No one spoke.

“We also lost one of our diabetics.”

Again no one spoke, but John felt eyes turning towards him. Of course they knew. He stared straight ahead, saying nothing. “And we had a birth.”

“Who?” Kate asked.

“Mary Turnbill. A healthy six-pound baby girl. Named Grace America Turnbill.”

“Damn, that’s good,” Tom said out loud.

“Eight births so far, and only one lost child and mother. Not much of a statistical base yet, but still it’s better than average compared to a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Good work, Doc,” Charlie said.

“Well, I better go from that to the downside of things. In one sense we are in what I would call the grace period right now, the calm between storms. Our initial die-off in the first days, those needing major medical intervention, the first round of food poisoning, those woefully out of shape, as you know, approximately twelve hundred deaths out of ten thousand, five hundred total here in Black Mountain and Swannanoa. We still don’t have an exact figure on those who got in the first few days, but it had to be well over a thousand, so let’s put our total number at twelve thousand, now back down to roughly ten thousand or so.”

“That doesn’t count the casualties from the fighting at the gap, and refugees dying outside the barrier,” Tom interjected.

“No, I’m only counting those who died of natural causes at the moment. What I’m saying is that those who would die quickly have pretty well died off. Across the next fifteen days or so the numbers should be fairly low as long as we keep the community stable and nothing exotic sneaks in on us, but then, I hate to say, it’s going to start sliding up again and within thirty days be far worse than anything we’ve seen so far.”

Kellor hesitated, looking at John for a moment. Kellor knew his secret regarding the stash of insulin.

“Nearly all our type one diabetics will die this month. The pharmacies, in general, allocated one bottle of a thousand units per person. That supply is now running out for them. So we can expect all of them, approximately a hundred and twenty in our communities, to start dying.”