One Second After

by William R. Forstchen

  “Sure, Dad.”

  He went up to the swing and looked down at Jennifer. “You ok, sweetie?”

  She didn’t speak, head lowered. She had brought Rabs along and was clutching him tight.

  John fumbled, fighting the fever, not sure what to say, afraid of what might be said.

  “Remember when I used to push you on this swing?” he said, filled now with nostalgia for that time when Mary was still alive and they’d bring the girls down here to play, to feed the ducks, and, while Mary still had the strength, to walk around the lake.

  He got behind Jennifer, reached down with one hand to pull the swing back.

  “How about we do it again? I’ll push to get you started.” And with that she was off the swing, crushing herself against his side, sobbing.

  “Daddy, when will I be buried here?” He knelt down and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Daddy, don’t bury me here. I’d be afraid during the night. I always want to stay close to you. Please don’t bury me here.” He dissolved into tears, hugging her tight.

  “I promise, sweetheart. You have years and years ahead. Daddy will always protect you.”

  She drew back slightly and looked at him with solemn eyes, eyes filled with the wisdom of a child. “I don’t think so, Daddy.” That was all she said.

  Later he would remember that they remained like that for what seemed an eternity and then gentle hands separated them, Jen’s hands. And strong hands. Ben, John’s two students, helped him back to the car and then the fever drowned out all else.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DAY 18

  He awoke feeling so weak he could barely lift his head. “So the good professor is back from the dead.” He turned his head, focused; it was Makala.

  She put the back of her hand to his forehead, a finger to his throat, and held it there for several seconds.

  “Fever’s broke. Figured that during the night. Good pulse, too.” She smiled. “Well, John Matherson, I think you’re going to pull through just fine now.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, you had it bad, real bad. Doc Kellor was right, staph infection. I thought there was a chance that was your problem but hoped it was something simpler and the Cipro would knock it out.

  “Thought we’d lose you there for a couple of days. Or at the very least your hand.”

  Panicked, he looked down. His hand was still there. Shriveled, sore, but still there.

  “Twice its normal size three days back. Started to look like septicemia and gangrene. But we kept hand and soul attached. Charlie Fuller approved some rather rare antibiotics for you, just a few doses left now in our reserves, and Doc Fuller was up here pumping them into you.”

  “All that from a cut.”

  “I told you to wash it out thoroughly and keep it bandaged,” she said chastisingly. “I regret now not coming up here that first night and doing it personally, but you might of seen that as too forward of me.”

  “Wish you had, forward or not.”

  She smiled and with a damp cloth wiped his brow.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I’ll get you some soup.”

  “Bathroom?”

  “I’ll get a bedpan.”

  “Like hell,” he whispered.

  “Don’t be embarrassed, for God’s sake. I’ve been your nurse for the last week.”

  “Help me up.”

  “OK then, but if you feel light-headed, get back down.”

  She helped him to his feet. He did feel light-headed but said nothing; in fact, he felt like shit, mouth pasty, an atrocious taste. He brushed his good hand against his face, rough stubble actually turning into a beard, and just had a general feeling of being gritty and disgusting.

  He pushed her aside at the bathroom door and went in. Used the toilet—fortunately someone had filled up the tank—and looked longingly at the bathtub. He so wanted a bath, to wash off.

  Later, we’ll have to boil up some water, I’ll be damned if I take a cold bath. He brushed his teeth. The tube of toothpaste was nearly empty and beside it was a glass filled with ground-up wood charcoal. He used the toothpaste anyhow—that alone made a world of difference—and came back out.

  There was a smell, food, and he felt ravenous and slowly walked back into the living room. Makala was out on the porch stirring a pot. The old grill was pushed to one side; it must have finally run out of propane. Someone, most likely Ben or a couple of John’s students, had rigged up something of an outdoor stove out of an old woodstove, its legs jacked up with cinder blocks underneath so the cook didn’t have to bend over.

  Makala looked at him and smiled.

  “Hot dog soup with some potatoes mixed in. I’d suggest a merlot, but the wine steward has the day off.”

  John smiled and sat down at the patio table. “Where are the girls?”

  “Jen took them out for a walk with the dogs.”

  Makala set the bowl down. Sure enough, it was hot dogs, cut up into bite-size pieces, mixed in with potatoes. He dug in, the first few spoonfuls scalding hot.

  “Take it slow.” She laughed, sitting down across from him, pushing the meat around with her spoon before taking a taste. She grimaced slightly. “I’m definitely not a cook.”

  “It’s great.”

  “It’s just because you’re hungry. What I wouldn’t give for shrimp, chilled jumbo shrimp, a salad, a nice glass of chardonnay.” He looked up at her.

  “If you hadn’t saved my life, I think I’d tell you to shut up,” he said with a bit of a grin.

  She smiled back and he could not help but notice how her T-shirt, sweat soaked, clung to her body. His gaze lingered on her for several seconds until she made eye contact with him again.

  “My, you are getting healthy again,” she said softly, still smiling, and he lowered his eyes.

  The potatoes were good, though still a bit undercooked. He scraped down to the bottom of the bowl, picked it up to sip the last of the greasy fluid, and set it back down.

  “More?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Just take it slow. You had a rough siege of it there. Staph infections like that, well, you are one tough guy to be up on your feet.” She stood and refilled his bowl. “The girls, how are they?”

  “Jen, she’s a remarkable woman. Tough as nails. Of course she misses Tyler terribly, I could hear her crying at night, but at the same time is able to accept it and then focus on those she loves that she feels responsible for. Actually, I think she was a bit upset that I moved in here for several days to see after you. Said she could handle it herself.”

  “You moved in?”

  “Only temporary, John,” she replied with a smile as she put the bowl down in front of him and sat to resume her meal. “Doctor’s orders actually. Kellor and Charlie were damn worried about you. Said they wanted you alive and back on your feet, so I sort of got volunteered.”

  “Reluctantly?” John asked. She smiled. “Not exactly.”

  “I really don’t remember that much.”

  “Well, you damn near had your brain fried. Temp up at one-oh-five, hand swollen like a balloon. Three weeks back and you’d of been in isolation in an ICU, ice packed, IVs. It got a bit rough there. Kellor thought he’d have to go to amputation to save you if the antibiotics didn’t get the infection under control.”

  “Just from a cut in a stupid fight.”

  “I warned you,” she said, half-waving her spoon at him. “Staph in a hospital is a twenty-four-seven fight. That nursing home, three days without cleaning, sanitation, you had a hundred different microbes floating around there and you just so happened to pick one of the worst.”

  “How?”

  “How? You had an open wound damn near to the bone. Touching a counter, a patient, remember, John, the old days are gone; hospitals are more dangerous now than just staying at home.”

  “How is it up there?”

  “Twelve left of the original patients.”

  “What? There used to be over si
xty.”

  “Thirty-one dead. Six just disappeared.”

  “What do you mean, disappeared?”

  “Alzheimer’s that were still mobile. Remember, no security alarms. They just wandered outside, into the woods. Poor souls, most likely died within a day or two from exposure. We decided yesterday to abandon the place, move those who are left up to a dorm in the conference center. Without all the electronics you can’t keep an eye on the Alzheimer’s. I never thought I’d see such a thing again, but we have them restrained, tied to their beds.”

  She sighed.

  “Sounds horrible, John, but it will be best when they’re gone. We need at least four people staffing them around the clock. At least at the dorm there’s only two doors in and out, and frankly, it’s cleaner.”

  “What else?”

  She sighed.

  “It’s been bad.”

  “How so?”

  “A fight at the gap two nights ago.”

  “How bad?”

  “More than two hundred dead on both sides, several hundred injured.”

  “Jesus, what happened?”

  “Well, we were letting folks through a hundred a time, again your suggestion, good professor. It was going slow, though, and now the refugees from Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Greensboro, even some from as far as Durham were piling up on that road. God, John, it’s positively medieval down on that road. Squatters’ camps, people fighting for a scrap of food. Disease breaking out, mostly salmonella, pneumonia, a nasty variant of the flu.

  “Well, a group was being escorted through and they broke. Started running to get off the interstate and into the woods. Two of them had concealed pistols, shot the two policemen escorting them. Shot them dead on the spot. And then they just started scattering.

  “Tom ordered them rounded up, Doc Kellor was having a fit as well that they might be carrying something. It turned ugly. Most were too weak to get far, but some of them did put up a fight. About twenty are unaccounted for, disappeared up into the hills. Most are harmless, but a few, the ringleaders, they’re out there and Tom is hunting them down.

  “That triggered the riot back at the barrier. Charlie ordered it shut down until the mess was straightened out and they just rioted. I mean thousands of them just pushing against the barrier of cars and trucks. Tom did have some tear gas to push them back, but then they came back in….”

  “So we opened fire?”

  She nodded.

  “You could hear it all over town. Sounded like a regular war. Tom had a couple of men with automatic weapons posted up on the side of the pass firing down. John, I never dreamed we’d be doing this to each other.”

  She fell silent, poking at a piece of hot dog at the bottom of her bowl.

  He looked at her, realizing how random fate had played out in her life. If she had not come to Asheville for a meeting that day, she’d have been in Charlotte when everything shut down. Maybe she’d be secure, given her job at a hospital. Then again, she could have been one of the refugees storming the barrier, desperate for a piece of bread, half a bowl of the soup he and she were now eating.

  “I could have been on the other side,” she said quietly. She looked up at him and for a moment there was rage in her eyes, as if they actually were from opposing camps, two enemies sharing a meal under a temporary truce before the killing started again.

  “You weren’t, though. You’re here and you’re safe.”

  “For how long, John? Some might say I’m still an ‘outsider.’”

  “Damn it, Makala, don’t say that word again.”

  “Well, you should have heard some of the people talking after that fight. Twenty-seven locals were killed in it, a couple of them police officers, and there were more than one standing around the town offices yesterday talking about kicking out anyone who didn’t belong.”

  “That’s bullshit. Scared talk by scared people.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” she said, shaking her head. “Three weeks ago we were all Americans. Hell, if somebody said an offensive word, made a racial or sexist slur, my God, everyone would be up in arms and it’d be front-page news. Turn off the electricity and bang, we’re at each other’s throats in a matter of days. Outsiders, locals, is the whole country now like this, ten thousand little fiefdoms ready to kill each other, and everyone on the road part of some barbarian horde on the march?”

  He couldn’t reply. He feared that it just might be true, but still, he couldn’t believe it, in spite of what had just happened.

  “We’re still Americans,” he sighed. “I need to believe that. We’ve turned on each other in the past. Remember, we once fought a war against ourselves with six hundred thousand dead. As a kid I remember the riots in Newark, the hatred that created between us, how that still lingered years afterwards. And yet, when it really counted, we did band together as one.”

  “But now?”

  “People are hungry, scared. We were spoiled unlike any generation in history, and we forgot completely just how dependent we were on the juice flowing through the wires, the buttons doing something when we pushed them. If only we had some communication. If only we knew the government still worked, a voice that we trusted being heard, that would make all the difference.

  “My grandfather used to tell me how back during the Depression the banks started to collapse; there was panic, even the scent of revolution in the air. And then FDR got on the radio, just one radio talk, reminding us we were all neighbors, to cooperate and help each other, and though the Depression went on for seven more years, the panic ended.

  “Same thing on nine-eleven. I think it’s the silence that is driving people crazy now. No one knows what is going on, what is being done, if we are indeed at war, and if so, who we are fighting and whether we are winning or losing. We are as isolated now as someone in Europe seven hundred years ago and there is a rumor, just a rumor, that the Tartars are coming or there is plague in the next village.”

  He sighed, motioning for another bowl. She refilled his and hers.

  “In the past, any disaster, it was always local, or regional at worst. The hurricanes in 2004. It slammed us pretty hard here. Most of the news focused on Florida, but I tell you we got some of the worst of it right here, with two of those hurricanes literally crisscrossing over the top of us only days apart. But all along we knew help was out there. The guys who hooked my electric back up after four days were a crew from Birmingham, Alabama. The truck that brought in thousands of gallon jugs of water came from Charlotte actually, and always there were still battery-powered radios.

  “If only we could get a link back up, I think that would calm a lot of nerves. Has there been any contact at all from the outside?”

  She sipped a spoonful of soup, then shook her head.

  “Not a word. A helicopter flew over two days ago. You should have seen people. It was like some god was passing by in a floating chariot, everyone with hands raised up, shouting. No, not a word other than rumors from those passing through. Global war, Chinese invading, help coming from Europe, plague in Washington, a military coup. A lot of talk now about some religious crazies forming into gangs, claiming it’s the apocalypse and either join them or die. It’s all crazy and they know about as much as you or me.”

  “It’s the cars as well,” John said. “They are such an ingrained part of our lives, right down to the fact that there are suburbs and people commute into cities. Hell, a hundred years ago this house never would have even been built, no matter how great the view. Too far from downtown, even if the town is just a small village. This isn’t farmland; it’s actually useless land other than for timber. But the auto made this valuable. Look at how people are migrating even now; by instinct they’re following the interstate highways. Turn off all the cars, I think that is what scared us the most.

  The damn things were not just about transportation; they were definers of social status, wealth, age, class. You for instance.”

  “Me?”

  “Beemer Three-thirty? To
ld me right off you didn’t have kids; if you were married you and your husband were definitely upwardly mobile types, professionals.”

  She laughed softly.

  “Postdivorce crisis car.”

  He nodded.

  “I really know nothing about you, Makala.”

  “Just that, postdivorce car. My husband and I met as undergrads at Duke. Both pre-med.” John laughed.

  “Mary and I were Duke as well, though I guess around ten, fifteen years ahead of you. I was history; she was biology; we both wanted to teach. I got into the army through ROTC when they offered me a darn good deal.”

  “Saw that; your diploma’s in your office. Rather impressive, John, master’s from Purdue, Ph.D. from UVA in history. I thought you were army?”

  “Hey, the army educates and they were crazy enough to pay for it and send me. For every hour I carried a gun I spent a hundred in a classroom or archive. Did have a few field commands. First with a recon company with the First Cav in Germany just before communism gave up the ghost. Actually enjoyed that posting, gave me a lot of time to explore history over there besides my duties. Then Desert Storm. My battalion mobilized over and I was looking forward to the challenge of command in a line company when I got promoted to major, then kicked up the ladder to battalion XO. It took me out of the front line and I always wondered since if I had somehow missed something as a result. But enough on me…”

  She smiled.

  “Well, we got married right after he graduated, two years ahead of me, and the classic old routine,” Makala said with a sigh. “I switched majors to nursing to start the money rolling; agreement was once he got into residency I’d go back for pre-med.”

  “And let me guess,” John interjected. “He got his M.D. and you got the divorce as a thank-you.”

  “Something like that. Just grew apart, I guess. Another woman wandered in, actually several women, and I got fed up and left. Young doctors with big egos, starry-eyed nurses saying, ‘Oh, Doctor,’ it’s two in the morning, happens all the time.”

  He looked at her, the slight show of dimples when she smiled, clear blue eyes, tall, slender figure, and shook his head.