One Second After (15 page)

“They just got through from Charlotte.”

Don Barber nodded slowly.

“Go on, please,” Kate said.

“Well, as I was saying,” Don continued. “By yesterday morning it was out of control. And what I was just telling you, absolute utter stupidity. A couple of helicopters flew in from Fort Bragg the morning after the power went off, landed near town hall, a dozen armed troopers got out, some ass of a major goes in, comes out twenty minutes later, they take off, and then someone comes running out saying we're at war.”

No one spoke.

“War with who?” Tom asked.

“I don't know; nobody knows. That one idiot, running out, shouting we were at war, that we were hit with nuclear weapons and had already lost, set everything off. Just one loudmouth bastard.”

He paused and looked over at his wife.

“Sorry, Wendy.”

“Well, he was a stupid bastard,” she whispered, barely keeping her eyes open, and John smiled.

“Look, I'm old enough to remember 1941. Kennedy in 1963, when Reagan was shot, 2001 of course. Always we at least had radios, television. Someone to tell us what was going on, what to do, offering leadership, and that rallied us together.

“This time it's a vacuum. Just that one idiot running out, and of course a crowd had gathered because of the helicopters landing, then taking off.

“I got down to the street and rumor was building on rumor; you could hear it. People talking about nukes, someone starts shouting about fallout
killing them all, and that was it. Within an hour downtown was in chaos. People looting, fighting with each other, and impossible to control.

“The police were caught completely off guard. Things had been quiet throughout the night. A couple of old cars had been taken by the police and fire departments, driven up and down the streets, someone leaning out the window with an old megaphone and telling folks to stay calm, help was on the way, and so far it was working. But that panic ended it.”

John hesitated but had to ask.

“Were we nuked? I mean a full attack?”

Don shook his head.

“I know the District Attorney for the county. I got my way into his office. That goddamn fool running out, some half-ass bureaucrat, heard a few minutes of the briefing, panicked, and was out the door.

“As for the truth of it, there's precious little. Remember it was a couple of days after nine-eleven before things started to sort out, and we had full communications then. Now, well, according to the District Attorney they were told that one, maybe two or three nuclear weapons were detonated over the United States, up high, a couple of hundred miles up.”

“It's EMP for certain then,” John interjected.

“That's what the DA said. Also, they were told some communications at Fort Bragg survived, aircraft parked inside protective shelters, some vehicles as well.

“Other than that, it's shut down the entire power grid of the United States, except for a few radios and machines that this major said were ‘hardened.' He said the army was going to be working on getting things up and running and for folks to stay calm till then. But it was going to take several weeks.”

Don shook his head.

“It'd have been better if he never showed up. The way he flew in, then took off, made it look like he was running out, and that helped the panic.”

“Several weeks my ass,” John muttered.

Don fell silent.

He looked at Kate.

“You read that report I left here?” John asked.

She nodded.

“Start thinking months, years. What Mr. Barber just told us confirmed it.”

“I know, John.”

Her tone indicated to him that she wanted him to stand back a bit, and he realized she was right.

“Sir, what happened then?” Charlie asked.

“Well, it was already edgy. Two planes had crashed in the downtown, one of them a seven-thirty-seven, right after the power went off. Hell of a mess. Some people were thinking it might have been some sort of failed terrorist strike. Like I said, without any radios, without any communications, rumors running ahead of the truth, the way they always do, no one knew and thus everyone was an expert, and everyone was soon scaring the hell out of each other.

“It was then that I realized I better get Wendy and myself out of Charlotte and up here.”

“Why here?” Kate asked.

“Because it's safe here,” Don said. He looked around the room as if seeking some assurance.

“Sure, Don,” Charlie said. “You're OK now; you're with neighbors now.”

“So I walked home from my office downtown. Four miles, at that moment I thought the toughest four miles I've ever been through since I got shot down over Korea and had to hike back to our lines.

“I got Wendy and from there it took us two days to walk to the airstrip where I keep my L-3.”

“An L-3, what the heck is that?” Tom asked.

“Military designation for a World War II Aeronca recon plane. We used them in Korea as well for liaison and artillery spotting. It's nearly identical to the one I flew as an artillery spotter in Korea.”

He smiled. “Found her as a junker about ten years back and fully restored her to original shape. She's a beauty to fly, slow and low.”

John could not help but smile. Like a lot of older vets, when Don talked about something like that, the years seemed to drift away from his face and his eyes were young again as he spoke of a happy memory.

“All the time we were walking I was afraid she'd be taken or ruined. But sure enough, she was still in the hangar. Nothing fancy in her. Restored to original condition, maybe that's what saved her. No electronics whatsoever, could never find a period radio, so all I used was a small handheld GPS when I took her up. Of course that piece of equipment was fried, but the plane was OK.”

He paused.

“In the old days, you worked your throttle, primed the cylinders by pumping, magneto switch on, and got someone to grab the propeller, and she started right up.”

“So you flew here?” John asked.

“Sure did. Got airborne about four hours ago and circled over Charlotte.”

He paused and lowered his head.

“I saw some bad things in Korea. I was there the second time the commies took Seoul. I never thought I'd see the likes of it here, in America.”

“What did you see?” Kate asked quietly.

“Nine-eleven for example. The way people in New York and Washington acted that day and pulled together. No panic really when you think back on it. Guiliani on television, then the president, it pulled us together.

“But it's a vacuum now and in the cities especially it went out of control like I said. Downtown Charlotte was burning. I could see there was no firefighting equipment out. The water pressure was already failing by the time I decided to walk home, and at my house it was already dry.

“Looting, people running crazy.” He paused. “I saw dead people lying in the streets. National Guard ringing a shopping plaza, thousands swarming around trying to break through to get at the food inside, and you could see the guardsmen falling back, shooting into the crowd.

“It looked, it looked like the old newsreels from the Second World War, or like Saigon when it fell, like what happened over there in Somalia. I never dreamed I'd see it here, never here.”

He fell silent for a moment, gazing out the window.

“We flew along I-85, then up through Hickory Nut Gorge. My first thought was to land in Asheville, but then what? We'd still be thirty miles from home.”

“Did you see anything moving?” Charlie asked. “Especially over in Asheville.”

“It looked like a couple of cars, but nothing else. A lot of burning, some houses, several forest fires, I could see the one up on Craggy from fifty miles away. Passed over the wreck of a commuter plane just short of Asheville that was still burning.”

“Why this talk about so many planes down?” Kate asked.

“Because nearly every commercial liner out there is so loaded with electronics
now,” Don replied. “Hell, the stick isn't even connected to a wire anymore like in the old days; it's computer links for the control surfaces. Pop that and most likely every last plane in America nosed in.”

“Jesus,” Tom sighed. “On nine-eleven we only lost four.”

“Figure around three thousand planes falling out of the sky, which is the typical number airborne around that time of day,” Don said coldly. “Two hundred passengers on average per plane . . . do the math.”

He sighed again, looking off as if a great distance into a dark land.

“The mall was burning, big fire there. That convinced me to set down as close to home as possible. If I had landed at the airport, I'd never have gotten here. There was a couple of hundred yards on I-40 just west of town that was wide open and that little baby of mine just squeezed right in.”

Tom grinned.

“Damnedest sight I've ever seen. A plane taxiing down the exit ramp, then parking in the Ingram's lot. Painted just like the old army planes, complete with D-day invasion stripes, hell, it made my heart leap at the sight of it.”

“You've got it guarded?” Charlie asked.

“Of course I do. It's an asset for us.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barber,” Charlie said. “I'm glad you made it home.”

“Look, we're kind of bushed. Is there any way we can find a ride up to our place?”

“I think we can arrange something special for you,” Charlie said, “for a swap.”

“And that is?”

“We can use your plane.”

“As long as I'm flying it you can,” he said defensively. “I put five years into restoring her, so no one else touches her but me. A little work and I can retro fit her to burn automobile gas. But wherever you want me to go, I'll do it.”

“A deal.”

Charlie stood up and went to the door, opening it.

“One last thing,” Don said. “On the interstates. They're swarming with people. Thousands of them. Like an exodus . . . and they're coming this way.”

He left the room and Charlie closed the door.

“What I figured,” Charlie said softly. “We talked about it in some of the
disaster exercises, the ones centered on a conventional nuclear strike, one or more weapons hitting urban centers. If the crap hits the fan, first there'll be rioting, people snatching what they think they need to survive; then like a homing instinct people will flee the city and literally ‘head for the hills.' The same concern with a biological outbreak. Panic, then trying to head for the hills.”

“Why?” Kate asked.

“Why are we here?” John interjected.

“What do you mean?”

“When you get down to the deepest core reasons. Sure I moved here because of Mary. But why were her parents here? There seems to be some sort of instinct, or call it a Mayberry fantasy, that up in the hills things are secure, safe, neighborly. People will help each other. When you think about it, before all this happened, that's exactly how we were.”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn't neighborly yesterday,” Tom said.

“How bad did it get?” John asked.

“You didn't see it?”

John wondered if Tom was making a jab at him, implying that Vern had talked to him about the foray into the Dollar Store.

“I was up nearly all day at home taking care of things. I came down late in the day to Food Lion and it was wiped.”

“Yeah, Vern said he ran into you poking around the Dollar Store,” Tom finally said coolly.

“Jesus, Tom, if I was going to be looting I'd pick a place a damn sight better than that.”

He suddenly wondered if what few things he did pick up would now indeed classify him as a looter. Hell, in Russia and Germany during the war people got shot for a lot less; in Leningrad stealing a slice of bread could get you hung.

“Then why were you in there?”

“Go ahead and arrest me if that's what you're implying,” John snapped.

“Both of you,” Kate interjected, “cool it.”

“Look, John, it got real bad here,” Charlie said. “My fault maybe. I should have slapped down strict martial law the first day; I didn't. The night between the second and third days, it was as if a mass panic hit the town. Most people still don't have it really figured out what happened; all they know is something bad happened.

“First there was the run on the banks to get their money out, but all the banks use electronic rec ords for accounts and digging up the paperwork for each takes time. Not like the old days when we still had bankbooks and they got stamped. They were mobbed, and that's where Tom had most of his people.

“The banks quickly ran out of money. Before I put a stop to it, one woman was actually trying to pull out fifty thousand dollars from First Charter.”

John almost had to laugh at that one.

“It's nothing but paper now anyhow,” he sighed.

“I don't need to hear that,” Kate interjected.

“Sorry, Kate, but you better hear it. Until the federal government truly gets things stitched back together, and with that rec ords retrieved and the same for financial institutions, what little paper money there is floating around out there is worthless. Our entire economy is built now on electronic money. It's all faith, and if a crack appears in that faith, then what?”

“It's going to be barter then, isn't it?” Charlie asked.

John nodded in agreement. “And you set the pa ram e ters.”

“How so?”

“I'd suggest impounding anything still out there that has worth for survival . . . medicine, tools, auto parts that can be used to retrofit, construction materials, especially piping and such, and most of all food. Impound it, haul it up here, set up rationing, and the rations become the medium of exchange for various things.”

“Sounds communist to me,” Tom sniffed.

“Survival,” John replied sharply, “and Tom, you know my politics, so don't insult me.”