William Forstchen - One Second After

John, following Kellor, walked past the other operating bays. The floor was slick with blood, and as John looked down he was stunned to see that it was covered with sawdust, an assistant throwing more down on the floor even as the doctors continued to operate.

As they passed the last table one of the doctors, a woman, stepped back.

“God damn it!”

She tore off her gloves stepped back, and leaned against the wall, sobbing, and then looked over at John, glaring at him as if he had intruded into a world that he should never have ventured into.

Two assistants lifted the body off the table, the boy’s chest still laid wide open from her frantic attempt to save him.

Kellor took John by the arm and led him out of the room.

“A friend of her daughter’s,” he whispered. “They were neighbors.”

The next room was set up as a postop, barely any floor space left. There was a precious small supply of plasma that had been saved from the clinic over in Swannanoa. Half a dozen bottles were hooked up, not necessarily to those who needed it the most but instead to those for whom a single bottle could ensure survival.

Some volunteers from the town who had not been in the fight were now sacrificing their own lives. They had volunteered to donate blood. In their weakened state not more than half a pint would be drawn, but even that was too much for so many of them. But they volunteered anyhow.

Those who knew their type were being matched up with the wounded. The letters had been marked on the chests and backs of those who had known their blood type before the fight with a grease pencil. The blood transfer was direct. To John it looked absolutely primitive, using old-fashioned rubber hoses, squeeze balls, and needles, the donors lying on cots higher than the patients receiving the precious fluid.

Kellor led John through a side door and out into the open air. After the last twenty minutes, it was impossible for John to believe that there was still a world out here of sunlight, a warm summer breeze… but then he saw the long line of bodies in the parking lot behind the store… the dead.

He fumbled in his pocket. There were but two cigarettes left. With trembling hands he pulled out one and lit it.

Kellor looked at him, started to hold up a finger. “Makala already diagnosed me. Concussion.”

“And some burns. You better get some ointment on that face and sterile bandage. Have Jen boil a sheet and cover it. You can’t risk another infection. You’re still weak from the last one.”

“Sure, Doc.”

“John, we’re going to have a terrible problem in a few days.”

“What? What after this?”

“Disease. I was up at the battle site after you pushed them back from the bridge. Saw some of the Posse. Talked to a few of them before…” His voice trailed away. “Before Tom’s men shot them.”

“John, their camp was loaded with disease. Flu, hepatitis, I think some exotics as well, typhoid perhaps. You look at their bodies you could see they weren’t much better off than the people they were terrorizing. I think we’re going to have some kind of epidemic here in a matter of days and it will be far worse than the last one. All that blood splattered about, many of them obviously drug users, we might be looking at hep B and C, maybe even HIV.”

“Tell Charlie,” John sighed. “I can’t bear any more.”

“Charlie?”

John looked at him.

“John, didn’t you know? Charlie’s dead. He was killed in the fight at the overpass.”

“Oh Jesus. I told him to stay back here. He was too weak. His job wasn’t in the front lines.”

“You knew Charlie,” Kellor said with a sigh. “He wouldn’t stay back, not at a time like that.”

“Damn.”

“John, you’re in charge of this town now.”

“What?”

“Charlie appointed you. He told me just before he died. Kate was in here, witnessed it, and agreed. You’re in charge now under martial law.” John sagged against the wall.

“I just want to go home right now.” Kellor nodded and put a reassuring arm around him. “Things will run by themselves for the rest of the day. I’ll take care of it. And John…” He hesitated. “I think you should go home.”

“Why?”

John took the last puff of his cigarette and tossed it to the ground. Kellor reached into John’s breast pocket, fished out the last, the last of all his cigarettes, and offered it to him and helped him light it. “My God, what else?”

Kellor reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring, a high school ring. “What is this?” John asked. “Ben’s ring.”

He couldn’t speak. He just held it, looking down at it, flecks of dried blood coating it.

“He died an hour ago. He was triaged off as a three, but I saw him by the bridge and brought him back anyhow, John.”

Kellor nodded to one of the bodies, one of the few with a sheet covering it.

“He was a good kid, John. A damn good kid. Stayed on the bridge even as it was getting overrun. A lot of people saw it, saw how he rallied people about to panic, shouting for them to charge, and then he went down. I thought you knew. You passed within feet of him when the counterattack started.”

John couldn’t speak.

Kellor sighed.

“John, he’ll leave behind a child you shall be proud of. Proud that Ben was the father. Someday I’ll come up and tell Elizabeth about him. Hell, I helped to bring him into the world seventeen years ago.”

He shook his head.

“We might of lost the fight without kids like him, a lot of kids like him. “John, he asked me to tell you that he was sorry if he had disappointed you. And asked that you love the child he and Elizabeth will have.” Kellor began to cry.

“Damn all of this,” he sighed, then looked back at John. “Now go home to Elizabeth.” John could not speak.

He walked over to the body and was about to remove the sheet, but Kellor stopped him.

“Don’t, John; remember him as he was.” John looked down at the body.

“You are my son,” he whispered. “And I will take care of your baby; I promise it. Son, I am proud of you.”

Woodenly John turned and walked away.

Going around the building, he came out onto State Street. Another truck was pulling up from the front, half a dozen wounded in the back, three of them with twos marked on their foreheads, the others with ones.

He walked around them, barely noticing.

“Colonel, damn it, we won!”

He didn’t even bother to look back at who was speaking.

His old Edsel was parked in front of the town hall. A crowd was gathered round. Someone had written on the bulletin board but one word: “VICTORY!!!!”

Some began to ask questions as he approached, others asking for orders, others asking what they should do now.

He did not reply; he simply got into the car. The keys were in the ignition, the engine turned over, and he backed out.

The radio was on. Voice of America.

“This morning, a containership from Australia docked in Charleston. Our allies have sent us over a million rations, a thousand two-way radios, six steam-powered railroad locomotives—”

He switched it off.

The barrier was still up at the gate into the Cove, two students guarding it. He rolled to a stop. “What’s the news?” He looked at the girl holding a pistol. “Sir, are you ok?”

“We won,” was all he could say.

The girl grinned and saluted, motioning for the other student to move the Volkswagen that blocked the gate back.

John drove through and turned onto Hickory Lane, rolling to a stop at number 12, Jen and Tyler’s house.

As John pulled into the driveway, all four of them were out the door, Jen, Jennifer, Ginger wagging her tail… and Elizabeth.

He sat in the car, unable to move as they came running down to him.