One Second After (16 page)

“Well, a lot of what you said is gone,” Charlie replied. “Damn, we were caught flat-footed. Like I said, never a plan in place. The run on the banks triggered it, from there people storming into stores to buy anything and everything. Our people were basically on foot as well, and besides, we were all so used to having radios in our police cars to tell us what the hell was going on. The looting at the Ingram's was full-blown before one of the two officers stationed down there was able to run the mile up here to tell us. By the time we got people back down there to control it, it was already over.

“Hell, there were even people going through the fast-food places by the
interstate waving hundreds of dollars wanting to buy up the burgers uncooked.

“The smart ones, though, they pilled into the three big markets in town, and it went from lines twenty deep to suddenly just people pushing out the door.”

“Did anyone try to stop them?” And he looked at Tom.

Tom sighed.

“John, we're talking about our neighbors here. Damn it all, I saw folks from my church in there, parents of my kids' friends. Yeah, I tried to stop them, but I'll be damned if we were going to shoot them.”

“Somewhere around twenty people died anyhow,” Kate said. “Mostly collapses, heart attacks. A display case in Ingram's was shattered; someone fell into it, and bled to death.”

“John, people just pushed past that woman even as she died,” Tom said quietly.

John looked out the window to Bartlett's VW as it puttered off, leaving behind a stack of boxes, and headed back up Montreat Road.

“John, it was surreal,” Charlie said. “Everybody on foot, the streets filled with people, I think the most coveted item yesterday was a supermarket shopping cart. Every last one has been looted and people were just walking up and down the street pushing their loads home.”

“That's why the heart attacks,” Doc Kellor finally interjected.

John looked at his old friend. Kellor, who as a very young general practitioner had brought Mary into the world, was with her when she left. He now tended to Jennifer and usually would drop over to the house once a month or so, to “check on my favorite girl,” and then stay for a scotch and a round of chess. It rankled him that nine times out of ten John won.

“Fear, combined with people actually having to walk more than fifty yards,” Doc Kellor continued. “There's been something like three hundred deaths since this started.”

“Three hundred?”

“Why not?” Kellor said dryly. “You forget how fragile we really are, the most pampered generations in the history of humanity. Heart attacks, quite a few just damn stupid accidents, at least eight murders, and several suicides. To put it coldly, my friends, all the ones who should have died years ago, would have died years ago without beta-blockers, stents, angioplasties, pacemakers, exotic medications, well, now they're dying all at once.”

John glared at Kellor for a moment, wondering what else he was thinking.

“It even hit pacemakers?” Charlie asked. “Good God, my mother has one.”

Everyone looked at him.

“She's in Florida; I don't know how she is. . . .” And his voice trailed off.

“I'm sorry, Charlie,” Kellor said, “but I've got to be blunt. Some yes, strangely, are still working, but how long the batteries will hold, well, I guess that's a countdown for them. But some died within minutes or hours.”

John looked back at Charlie.

“You're going to have to take control, Charlie,” and John said it sharply, a touch of the “command voice,” in his tone, to shock Charlie back to the reality of the meeting. “Clamp down hard or it's going to get worse. So far we're just in the first stage of panic here.”

“What do you mean?”

“People grabbing what they think they need, but not many thinking yet about a week from now, a month from now.” He paused. “A year from now. Have you held a public meeting to discuss with people what happened and what to do?”

“What a disaster,” Kate sighed. “Yeah, last night. Five or six hundred showed up; it was hard to get the word out. It almost made it worse. The moment Charlie started talking about EMPs and nuclear bursts, some folks just heard ‘nuclear' and went crazy, saying they were going home to dig shelters.”

“Same as in Charlotte, according to Don Barber,” John said. “When the realization finally hits that this is the long haul, people will start looking at each other, wondering if a neighbor has an extra can of food in their basement.”

“Or an extra vial of medicine hidden in a cooler,” Kellor said quietly, and John knew he was talking about him but didn't react.

“That's when either we try to pull together and keep order or it will go over to complete anarchy.”

“That old
Twilight Zone
episode,” Kate said. “The one where a bunch of polite middle-class types are having a friendly social, the radio announces nuclear war, and by the end of the half hour they were killing each other trying to get into the shelter one had in his basement.”

Funny how we think in terms of film and tele vi sion now, John thought.
The Twilight Zone
. Last eve ning he'd been dwelling on the episode where the aliens started flicking lights on and off in different people's houses and soon everyone was in a panic, ready to kill one another, the aliens sitting back and laughing.

What would Rod Serling say about this now? “Presented for your consideration, America disintegrating when the plug is pulled . . .”

“To hell with
The Twilight Zone
for the moment,” Tom said, “Refugees. We're starting to get swarmed with outsiders. That has me worried the most now. At least we know our neighbors who we can count on, but all these outsiders, who knows what they might do? And if too many come in, we'll all be starving in a matter of days.”

“There's a million or more in Charlotte,” Charlie said. “Even more in the Triad. If one in a hundred decides to make the trek, that means twenty, thirty thousand mouths to feed.”

He fell silent and no one spoke for a very long minute.

“We'll have to have a plan,” Kate said.

“Sure, a plan, what plan?” Charlie sighed. “We had a plan for everything else, but never for this one. Never once for this one.

“And that's why I got caught so off balance,” Charlie said sadly, shaking his head. “I was waiting for someone to call, to do something. I'm sorry.”

“Charlie, anyone would have been overwhelmed,” John said, not altogether truthfully, but still he could see Charlie's thinking. Like the military preparing for combat: disasters were something they drilled for. No one had ever drilled for something at this level, had a master plan up and ready to go, and therefore the precious first few days, when so much could have been done, were lost.

“Maybe someone in Asheville is getting a handle on it,” Tom said. “We all saw that Black Hawk go over. He was beelining straight for Asheville. Maybe they got some kind of link up there.”

John was silent. Asheville. Exit 64 to Exit 53, eleven miles. A day hardly went by without Elizabeth trying to figure out some excuse to go to the mall. A week didn't go by when he didn't drop into the Barnes & Noble to browse the military history shelves and then have a coffee, or take the kids downtown to their favorite pizza joint, the Magic Mushroom, where all
the weirdos and hippies, as Jennifer called them went, much to the kids' delight as they enjoyed a meal and “people-watched” the street scene.

Eleven miles, across unknown territory, it seemed like a journey filled with peril. My God, in just four days have we already become so agoraphobic, so drawn in on ourselves?

“I think we should go into Asheville tomorrow and see what the hell is going on there,” John finally ventured.

“Agreed,” Charlie replied.

John looked around and realized he had put his foot into it.

“OK, I'll drive.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This is impossible,” Charlie announced, and John grunted in agreement.

Just past Exit 55, heading west, the interstate was completely blocked with scores of abandoned cars. During rush hour, it was this stretch of road where backups usually gridlocked, and when the EMP did hit, all the traffic had simply stopped, blocking the road across both lanes and the shoulder, where so many had drifted over as their engines stalled.

He went into reverse, weaving around the roadblock of cars back to the exit, swung around, and got off the road, then went down to Route 70, which paralleled the interstate on the north side.

“I wanted to go this way anyhow,” Washington said, sitting in the backseat of the Edsel. “Maybe the veterans hospital has some sort of connection.”

Flanking Washington were two of the boys from the college ball team, Phil Vail and Jeremiah Sims. At Washington's recommendation, which Charlie had agreed to, the two had come along “for the ride,” and concealed down by their feet were two shotguns and in Washington's hand a Colt .45.

John nodded, took the turnoff onto 70, then headed west again, weaving around stalled cars, under the bridge for the Blue Ridge Parkway, and just past that, on their right, were the grounds of the veterans hospital.

They pulled through the gate, and John's heart sank. Somehow, he had hoped that here, a veterans hospital, a federal facility, maybe there
was a miracle, a hardened generator, or at least some semblance of normal life, of orderliness. He half-expected to see troops lined up guarding the place.

Instead it was elderly patients scattered on the lawn, some lying on blankets, others just wandering about. A lane had been cleared of stalled cars approaching the highway, a “rent-a-cop” holding a shotgun standing in the middle of the road, motioning them to stop.

John leaned out as the cop came cautiously around to the side of the car, shotgun half-leveled.

“I'm Colonel John Matherson,” he announced, feeling a bit self-conscious using that title again. He was so used to being called Professor or Doc these last few years, but Washington had advised him to revert to his old title for this trip.

“I live in Black Mountain. And this is Charlie Fuller, our director of public safety. In the backseat there is Sergeant Washington, a retired marine, and a couple of students from the college.”

The cop nodded, saying nothing, but he turned the gun away from John.

“We're heading into Asheville to try and find out some information. Is anything running here? Electricity?”

“Nope. No power. You folks got any?”

“No, sir.”

“Is there anyone in charge here who knows what's going on? Contact with Raleigh or Washington?”

Again the cop shook his head.

“Damn.”

“Yeah, damn,” the cop replied. “It's hell inside there. These old guys dying off left and right. Wouldn't think they could die so fast when without medicine for a few days.”

John thought of the nursing home, of Tyler. He had been ner vous about leaving Jen and the girls alone with Tyler. But Ben had become something of a permanent fixture at the house, and John's across-the-street neighbors Lee Robinson and his wife, Mona, parents of Seth and Pat, had volunteered to come up and give Jen some time off to sleep.

Tyler, of course, was failing. There was no IV, no oxygen, just pouring Ensure and water into him through his stomach tube. The agony was no
painkillers. It was a blessing perhaps that the few days of neglect had pushed him to the edge of a coma. But when he was conscious John could see the agony in Tyler's eyes. Jen had stayed up through the night, and just before John left, Mona had walked up to lend a hand.

John looked around again at the grounds, the patients, a few nurses lugging buckets of water up from a creek at the edge of the hospital grounds. He could only imagine what it was like inside; it was already turning into one hell of a hot day.

“I think we best head into town,” Charlie said.

The cop nodded.

“Good luck. And tell people up there we really need help here,” the cop said. “Some of the staff, the doctors and nurses, have stayed on, but a lot left, and hardly anyone has come back.”

“Why are you here?” John asked out of curiosity.

“Somebody came in yesterday and said a couple of the nursing homes in the area were hit by druggies. Well, there's a lot of that stuff inside that building. Figure they need some protection. Besides, I was a marine, took one at Hue, 1968. Those are my comrades in there. I don't have no family to worry about, so I guess these guys are my family.”

He then thumped his left leg and there was a hollow echo.

“Semper fi,” Washington said, and he leaned out the open window and shook the guard's hand.

“Some advice,” Washington then said. “Don't stand out in the middle of the road. Set up some sort of road barrier and keep to one side; use a stalled car as protection. I could have blown you away before you even blinked.”

The cop nodded.

“Yeah, guess you're right. Forgot. Tired, I guess.”

“Good luck, Marine.”

“You, too.”

They backed out of the driveway, pulled out onto 70, and continued towards Asheville. A mile farther on, as they came up out of a hollow and started down the long hill that would pass the Department of Motor Vehicles; straight ahead they could see the Asheville Mall . . . a thick pall of smoke hanging over it.

“Get on the bypass,” Charlie said. “Don't go anywhere near it.”

Driving fast, John went up the ramp onto the I-240 bypass that led straight into the heart of Asheville. Once onto the bypass he began to wonder, yet again, about the wisdom of coming into the city.

It was like driving an obstacle course with all the stalled cars. Ahead, through the highway cut in Beaucatcher Mountain, he could see numerous fires burning in the city, plumes of smoke rising up, spreading out in the morning heat, forming a shadowy cloud.