William Forstchen - One Second After

“The first that would get hit by the rioting are the outsiders,” John said. “There’s been a semblance of acceptance, some bonding, that would disintegrate, Kate, and I’m willing to bet would turn into murders and lynch-ings, a massive scream to throw everyone out who wasn’t living here the day of the event. Then our two communities will start glaring at each other. Frankly, Swannanoa has more food per person than we do, a lot more with their extra cattle and hogs. We’ll split and those here will start screaming about marching there to take their cattle.

“You hear that, Kate? It’s like something out of ancient history, the Bible; we’ll be raiding each other for cattle. Then it will be every man for himself and we’ll all die as a result if someone from the outside, with some organization and strength, then comes rolling in. There’s your choice, Kate. Go ahead. What should we do?”

She glared at him, unable to reply.

John looked over to Tom, who had remained silent throughout the debate, and Tom nodded in agreement.

“I know I couldn’t keep order. I’d have to call in the college militia, and even there, most of those kids would be defined as outsiders as well, and the mob ready to turn on them. It would be a helluva mess, Kate. John’s right, we have to do this, but we have to keep it quiet.”

“So in other words, horde some food for a selected few, do it in secret so that by the time the rest of the people figure it out, they’ll be too weak to act.

John stared at her. “Yes.”

“You bastards.”

“Kate, it’s been this way throughout history. America, though, hasn’t faced it since,” he paused, “maybe parts of the South in the Civil War. Even then that was just limited. We’ve never seen anything like this before, but in reality, it has to be done if any survive. We can’t keep social order, defend ourselves, and at the same time give out some kind of equal amounts of food to everyone else. If we try that, everyone will die.”

“I won’t accept extra food.”

“No one is forcing you to,” John said softly.

“Kate, you cannot discuss this outside this room,” Charlie said sharply.

She glared at him.

“Or what?”

“I’ll have you arrested.”

“Sieg heil, mein Fuhrer,” and she raised her hand in the fascist salute.

“Damn it, Kate,” Charlie snapped, his voice almost breaking. “I don’t want this any more than you, so don’t ride me on it.”

She lowered her head.

“It has to stay in this room,” John said sharply.

“Are you getting an extra?” Kate asked.

“Hell, no. We’re still getting by.”

“All right, Charlie. You don’t take extra rations, none of us here do, and I’ll go along with it.”

“Tom has to be on the list for extra rations,” Kellor said.

“Like hell.”

John looked at Tom. His rotund pre-war form had melted away quickly, belt drawn in now by several notches.

“All police, firefighters, the militia, those doing essential work,” John said, “and grave diggers.”

There was a long silence.

“And Doc, you, too,” John said.

Doc nodded.

“I won’t hide behind false heroics. I hate the thought, but I know my performance is degrading fast. I set a compound fracture yesterday, one of the Quincy boys, fell off a horse. I thought I was going to faint towards the end of it. If we don’t have doctors and nurses in this town who can function, well, we’re all dead anyhow then.”

“How many will we lose?” Charlie asked.

“When?”

“You said the curve is going to start going up again. How many do we lose in two or three months?” Doc looked around the room.

“One-third to one-half if we follow the plan just outlined.”

“And if we don’t?” Kate asked.

“We drag it out a little longer, Kate, by not much more than thirty days extra; then everyone will be dead by winter.” No one spoke.

“Malthus is finally being proven right,” Charlie said. “Our population here is three, four times higher than the carrying capacity. It was all about infrastructure. Out in Southern California right now I bet hundreds of thousands of tons of vegetables are rotting. The Midwest will be up to their eyeballs in unpicked corn in another six weeks. But there is no way to get that from there to here.”

Silence, and John knew all were dwelling on food, the standard thoughts of someone going into starving and malnutrition. He could picture the hundreds of thousands of head of cattle out in Texas and Oklahoma. For that matter, just two hundred miles east of here, the hog farms. They were contemptible, usually rammed into poorer communities, five to ten thousand hogs raised at a clip in sheds where they could barely move from birth until slaughter, the stench and pollution killing property value for miles around… and to have one of them here now would be greeted with people falling on their knees and thanking God.

But even then, John realized, it wouldn’t work. The farms were dependent on hundreds of tons of feed being shipped in each week. If those farms had not already been looted, the waste going on was most likely beyond imagining. The animals starving to death, people who almost thought meat was grown inside a pink foam package now trying to chase a hog down, kill it, and dress it. No, they’d cut off what they could, others would join in like vultures, and half of it would then just rot in the sun. If the hogs escaped, they would be into the woods now, wild boar in short order and damn dangerous.

Charlie finally stirred.

“Anything else?”

Silence.

“Minor point, but it’s starting to get dangerous. Dogs.” John looked over at him.

“A lot of dogs are starting to run loose now. They’re starving and they’re going wild. We had an incident up on Fifth Street last night; two children got cornered by a pack of dogs. Fortunately, the father had a shotgun and dropped several of them; the rest took off.”

After the grimness of the previous conversation John knew he shouldn’t be reacting so hard, but he suddenly felt a tightness in his throat. The two fools Zach and Ginger were indeed getting hungry, begging ferociously at every meal, and yet still the family would share a few scraps. Most of the squirrels John had dropped over the last week had been tossed to the dogs raw.

“I think we have to order the shooting of all dogs in the town,” Charlie said.

“No, damn it, no,” Tom snapped. “I’ll burn in hell before I’d go home and in front of my kids take Rags outside and blow his brains out. No way. If they’re running loose and proving to be a danger, sure, but not that.”

“What did the father do with the bodies of the dogs he shot?” Kellor asked quietly.

“Jesus, I never thought of that,” Charlie replied.

“How many dogs in this town?” Kellor asked. “At least a couple of thousand. That’s enough meat for full rations for three or four days at least, half rations for a week and a half.”

“You can go straight to hell, Doc!” Tom shouted, and John was surprised to see tears in Tom’s eyes. For the first time since this crisis had started, from the initial panic, the executions, the fight at the gap, it was now Tom who was breaking into tears.

“We got Rags the week my youngest was born. He’s been with us ten years, as much a part of the family as any person. He’d die to defend us, and frankly, I’d do the same for him. I’m not giving him up and that’s final.”

“Tom, what I was talking about earlier,” Kellor said, “that’s only the first starve-off. I didn’t even have the heart to talk about the second starve-off. Those that survive into the fall, chances are by the end of the winter most will be dead anyhow. Do you think any dogs will still be alive by then? And if so, they’ll be feral, reverting back to packs of wolves, killing people to survive.”