William Forstchen - One Second After

Past his old bedroom he looked in for a second.

“I’m all right. Now don’t move!” he hissed. “Elizabeth, you have your gun.”

“Yes, Daddy,” and her voice was trembling.

“If I come back to this room, I’ll call out first. If anyone else comes through, you shoot and don’t hesitate.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Back out through his office and then the front door, which he slipped open, circling back around the house.

No one else. He slipped through the rear door into the kitchen and touched the basement door; it was still locked. Then once more, down low, sweeping Jennifer’s and Elizabeth’s rooms yet again, nervously popping the closet doors open, both rooms still empty.

He went back into the kitchen.

“Jen, light a candle and get out here.”

A minute later the flickering light illuminated the kitchen. Jen recoiled at the sight of the first man, face gone. The second was crying louder now, curled up. And then there was Zach.

John went over to his old buddy, his friend of so many years, who had saved their lives with his warning. He was shot in the top of the back, just behind the shoulder blades.

“Oh, God, Zach,” John sighed. And like so many dogs, so desperately hurt, Zach licked John’s hand as if by doing so he’d feel better.

John looked over at Jen, wide-eyed.

“You got to help me.” It was the wounded man. “Please help me.” John actually felt stunned with how quickly he reacted. The Glock he kept strapped to his side even when he slept was out, round already chambered.

“John?” It was Jen.

He squeezed the trigger, the discharge of the 9mm round an explosion that set Elizabeth and Jennifer to screaming again.

“It’s all right!” John shouted. “It’s all right, girls, but stay put.” John looked at Jen, who stood stock-still, horrified. “I’d of shot him in town if he lived that long.”

John had executed five in the last week. Two of them locals, who had stolen a pig, killed it, and were gorging themselves up in a mountain hollow when finally tracked down, the two pathetic fools never fully realizing that hungry men could now smell meat cooking from half a mile away. The other three caught raiding a house, just like the two on the floor now.

“Jen, you’ll have to help me drag them outside. I don’t want the girls to see this mess.”

Zach’s whimpers made John turn around. Ginger was lying by Zach’s side, licking her old friend.

John filled up. The execution-style killing had bothered him not in the least. Washington Parker was right. After the first one, it starts to get easier, and in this case, the men invading his home, threatening his girls, it didn’t bother John in the slightest.

It was Zach, though. Zach and Ginger were down to skin and bones, ribs showing through their once sleek coats. Regardless of the ban on letting dogs run wild, John had let them out to forage since their old stomping grounds had been up in the woods that became Pisgah National Forest not a hundred yards away. Though he worried that others out hunting would bag them, so far they had been lucky.

He knelt down by Zach’s side. Zach lifted his head and again licked John.

“Thank you, old friend,” John sighed. “Thank you for everything.”

“Do you want me to do it?” Jen whispered.

Startled, he looked up at her.

“No, he was our dog, Mary’s and mine.”

He pulled out the .22 taken from the dead man, cocked it, and put it behind Zach’s ear. Ginger stood up, sensing something, whimpering loudly now… and John couldn’t do it, dissolving into tears.

“I’ll take care of him,” Jen whispered. “You go outside, take Ginger with you. You don’t want her to see it either. Now go on.”

Jen left the room and was back seconds later with the last pack of cigarettes and the bottle of scotch that held a final precious ounce.

“Girls, we’re safe, but you are to stay in your room, on the floor!” Jen shouted.

John looked at Zach and felt at that moment like a coward, completely unmanned. He knelt down and kissed Zach on the forehead. He was bloody, panting hard. He stood back up and then went outside, dragging Ginger by the collar, and let her loose. He lit the cigarette and uncorked the bottle.

“There, there, Zach,” he could hear Jen in the kitchen. “Tell Tyler I love him. You remember our dog Lady. Its time to play with her now….”

The muffled crack of the pistol had John leaning over the deck railing, crying, Ginger whimpering and nuzzling against his legs.

There was such a surreal sense of disconnect. I just killed two men, executing one without a second’s hesitation. But this? Sobbing over a dog?

Jen came out the door a moment later bearing Zach, wrapped in a blanket.

“He’s so light,” she said softly. “He’s better off now.”

“I’ll bury him once it gets light,” John said.

“No, John.”

“What?”

And then he realized. No, not Zach, no, he couldn’t. “I’d vomit. The girls, too. We can’t.”

“Take him down to the Robinsons. It won’t be the same for them. Besides, poor Pattie is starving to death.”

“They’re on rations. Any food hoarding by getting something additional they lose their cards. According to the law we can eat him, but they can’t. I’m supposed to turn him in to the communal food supply.”

“Damn it, John. You are so cold-blooded logical in some ways and an idiot in other ways. Take him down to the Robinsons now. They can trade us something for him later.”

John finally nodded.

She handed Zach’s body to him.

“I’ll get Lee to help with the bodies. You keep the girls out of the living room and kitchen.”

“You’ll tell them?” John asked.

She nodded.

John slowly walked over to the car.

“Don’t move another goddamn inch.” a voice hissed in the darkness.

He froze, cursing himself as an idiot. There had been a third man, maybe a fourth or fifth. John prepared to drop Zach, shout a warning before they got him, give Jen and Elizabeth time to be ready.

“John, that you?”

And now he recognized the voice; it was Lee Robinson.

“Jesus, Lee, yeah, it’s me.”

“I heard shots, came up to help.”

“Thanks, Lee.”

He stepped out of the shadows and drew closer. “John, what are you carrying? Oh Jesus, not one of the dogs.”

“Zach. If he and Ginger hadn’t of warned us, they’d of had us, two of them. I killed both. Zach got shot by one of the bastards.”

“I just heard a shot a minute ago.”

“I couldn’t do it,” John admitted, and he found himself clutching Zach tighter. “What a piece of shit. Jen had to do it.”

“It’s ok, John; it’s ok,” and Lee’s arm was around John’s shoulder.

Southerners, he thought. Southerners and their dogs, they understand. He could feel Lee shaking a bit; he had been partial to Zach as well, their old dog Max a buddy. Max had disappeared a week ago, most likely poached while wandering in the woods, and Lee was absolutely distraught over him.

John gained control and the two stood there looking at Zach and each knew what the other was thinking.

“Take him, Lee,” was all John could say.

“John, not in a million years did I ever think we’d come to this.” John handed the body over.

“I’ll take him down to Mona. She’ll be respectful as she…” He started to choke up as well and couldn’t speak for a moment. “Thank you. I was getting frantic over Pattie. The damn rations just aren’t enough. John, Zach saved her life, too.”

John started his drive down to town several hours later. The bodies of the two robbers stretched out on the porch as he pulled away from the house. Bartlett’s meat wagon, as they now sardonically called it, the old VW Bus, could be sent up later to get them.