One Second After

by William R. Forstchen

  John winced at that. Of course Washington didn’t know about this morning, nor did he notice John’s reaction.

  The phone rang.

  The sound of it when it did happen was still rather startling. The three looked at one another and John stood up, went over to the president’s desk, and picked up the receiver. It was an old rotary phone from the forties or fifties, receiver heavy, wire not even the coiled type yet, just jet-black and hanging down.

  “Matherson here.”

  “John, is that you? It’s Tom here.”

  “Go ahead, Tom.”

  “I’m here with Don Barber. I just picked him up and brought him to the town hall.”

  “What did he see?”

  “Damn, John, he’s pretty shaken.”

  “Can you bring him up?”

  “Sure, John. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Over here.”

  The line continued to hum for several seconds until Judy, the switchboard operator at the town hall, pulled the connect and the line went dead. John hung up.

  “I think we got problems. Barber will be here in a few minutes with his report.”

  They just made small talk as they waited, John standing, looking out the window, smoking what was now his seventh cigarette of the day. A group of students was coming down from behind the upper men’s dorm. Half a dozen girls and a couple of guys. The granola crew, they were called, and though they were mildly disdained before “the Day,” no one mocked them now. Most of them were outdoor ed or bio majors and had become highly proficient at food gathering, knowing which roots to dig, which plants could be brewed into teas, which had some medicinal value. One of the girls had a copy of Peterson’s guide to plants, dirty and worn, in her jeans pocket. Another girl was carrying a basket filled with mushrooms. So far there had been no mistakes on that score. Another was being helped by a boy, the woven basket between them piled high with greens. The boy and girl looked like some Rousseau ideal, a fantasy of the way the world was supposed to be if civilization went away.

  The antique World War II jeep, which Tom had designated his official squad car, turned the corner and pulled up to Gaither. Barber got out along with Tom and they came straight in.

  Barber saw the cigarette in John’s hand and sighed.

  “Damn, I haven’t had one of those in years…,” he said softly. “John, could I?”

  John hesitated, nodded, and handed one over. He was now down to eleven.

  Don took a deep drag, sighed, went over to the table, and sat down. “They’re coming,” he said. No one spoke.

  “Old Fort is a wreck. I flew down there first. At least fifty vehicles loaded with,” he paused, took another drag, and then waved his hand in a gesture of disgust, “I can’t even find a word to describe the scum. They were in the center of the town, most of it burning. There’s fighting going on, even now, but that town is finished.”

  He sighed and looked out the window.

  “Shit, it was like Korea in ’51. If only I had a battery of 105s up here, we could have annihilated their advance guard with one salvo.”

  “Advance guard?” Washington asked.

  Barber nodded.

  “Give me a minute, Washington; my brain’s a bit slower now. Let me tell it in order.” No one spoke.

  “Like I said, about fifty vehicles. Most in the center of the town, those barbarians just running amok. I could see them gunning people down, right in the middle of the street, flushing them out of buildings they were setting on fire. Out on the interstate about ten more vehicles. They took a couple of potshots at me; you’ll see a dozen or so holes in my plane by the way.

  “So I figured to check up the road, fly up along Route 70, then come back down along the interstate. There wasn’t much on 70, though it was obvious they had passed along it. Buildings burning, but a couple hundred yards back from the road I could see people out, still alive. It looked like they just were driving straight through. Marion wasn’t hit hard. Just off the interstate enough, I guess, to be bypassed, plus they had well-manned roadblocks on the access ways in. Some evidence of fighting but looks like the scum backed off.”

  “Think they’ll back off here?” Tom asked.

  “No,” John said forcefully. “First off, their spies have scoped us out; they know we still do have some resources. Second, to get into Asheville, a sweet big city to loot, they first have to go through us. Third, they are heading this way and there is now no backing off. Marion they might mark for later, but I think it’s here first.”

  Washington nodded his agreement.

  “What happened next, Don?” John asked.

  “I pushed on to Morganton, down to Exit 103 on the interstate.”

  He lowered his head.

  “I thought Charlotte was bad when I flew around it back when things started. That was different, though. In Charlotte there was rioting, yes, but people were mostly just trying snatch and grab, or just getting the hell out. This was different.”

  “How so, sir?” John asked.

  “You know the mental hospital grounds there?”

  All nodded. Broughan, the state mental hospital, was set back from the interstate about half a mile. Beautiful open lawn, surrounded by the old sedate southern town of Morganton, complete with some antebellum homes on the main street.

  “A fucking nightmare.”

  John was shocked by Don’s language. He was a devout church-going man.

  “How bad?” Washington asked.

  “My God, I think they’re killing people and eating them,” he whispered.

  No one spoke for a moment, Don just staring off, puffing on his cigarette right down to the filter.

  “You’re kidding,” Charlie whispered. Don looked over at him fiercely.

  “Would I joke about that?” he snapped. “There were a couple of hundred vehicles parked on the grounds of the hospital in a big circle, like they were circling the wagons. Old cars, Jeeps, trucks, even a couple of tractor trailers. Inside that circle the ground was blackened from a huge fire that was still smoldering. It was early when I flew over there; you could see them just sprawled out, sleeping it off. The hospital was burning, dead scattered all around it, most of the downtown burning as well, dead carpeting the streets. But it was what was inside that circle of old cars, trucks, motorcycles.”

  He finished the cigarette, stubbed it out in an empty coffee cup, and looked, appealing, at John. John handed him another and pulled one out for himself; it was down to nine now.

  “They had something like a gallows set up. Bodies were hanging from it….” Don shook and started to cry.

  “They were cut open, some without legs and arms. Ten or more like that. Like hogs hung up to be butchered. My God…”

  He fought for composure.

  “You could see other people who were prisoners. As I flew over they were looking up at me, started to jump up and down, waving like poor bastards stranded in a nightmare. I sideslipped to get down lower for a closer look. One of those scum, I could see him looking up at me, and as I flew over he cut a woman’s throat, cut it so I could see it.

  “That’s when I almost got shot down. They have an automatic and it opened up. Stitched my starboard wing. I dived down low, skimmed over not a dozen feet high, weaved and dodged.”

  He smiled.

  “Like the old days. Damn, I was good then, could put my spotter between two trees not thirty feet apart with telephone wires waiting on the other side.”

  And then he seemed to unfocus again.

  “I don’t want to believe what I saw.”

  John sighed, sat back, lost in thought. Cannibalism. Leningrad, Stalingrad, with those cases it was civilians driven mad by hunger. Reports as well in China and, frightfully, documentation of Japanese soldiers doing it either out of desperation when cut off by the island hopping campaign, or ritualistically against American POWs.

  “Not here,” Charlie sighed, “not here. This is America, for heaven’s sake.”

  �
�Yes, here,” John said softly. “Why should we be any different?”

  “Damn it all, we’re Americans; it just doesn’t happen here.”

  “Donner Pass, the Essex… Jeffrey Dahmer? Our sick fascination with films about that Lecter character. Sixty days with little or no food just because the electric suddenly shut off. Hell, yes,” John said coldly.

  “Most likely some damn cult down there. Like Doc said, psychotics running loose.”

  The cult over in Knoxville with its leader proclaiming he was John the Baptist reincarnated was still running. There were reports of others, some nutcase proclaiming he was the messiah, others speaking in tongues and looking for answers in Revelation, others just beyond madness believing that aliens had invaded. He thought of that one small coven up above Haw Creek, a couple of dozen families and a church, which according to rumors not too long ago was into passing snakes around. They had sealed themselves off completely, said that it was the end-time and God’s wrath was at hand. No one dared to even get within a hundred yards of their barrier now, and John wondered what madness they were practicing up there.

  “They have nothing to lose now,” John continued. “A nation under martial law, they’ve looted, raped, murdered. They know that if civilization ever gets the upper hand again, any semblance of order, all of them will be put against the wall and shot. So nothing to lose.

  “Mix into that the terror of it all. We figured out it was an EMP, but others… especially others who were already off-kilter? What’s the answer? God got angry, Gaia the Earth spirit got pissed, Satan took over?”

  He found he was almost on the edge of hysteria himself. His hands shaking slightly, he pulled out another cigarette and tossed yet another over to Don.

  “Satan’s taken over. Maybe whoever’s leading them is preaching that. God has turned his back on America, Satan has won, so anything goes. I doubt if all of them are doing it; I want to think most of them are as terrified of whoever is running their crew as we are. But I’m willing to bet whoever is running it is shouting that he has the inside dope from God, Satan, whomever.”

  “It’s insane,” Charlie whispered.

  “Remember Jonestown. Those were Americans, even though they no longer lived in the forty-eight. And nearly a thousand of them committed suicide because of some damn nutcase who told them to drink Kool-Aid laced with poison because God had ordered it through him.

  “Look, you get people scared, then you knock out every prop that we’ve taken for granted. After these last sixty days I bet there’s a dozen prophets running around this country saying, ‘Follow me,’ and even if but one-tenth of one percent of the survivors do so, that will still be hundreds of thousands of barbarians on the march and the rest of us running, scared shitless of them.

  “Damn our enemies who did this to us, they knew us well,” John sighed. “They knew human nature too well, and just how fragile civilization is, and how tough it is to defend it. Something we forgot.”

  No one spoke until Don finally stirred.

  “I flew back along the interstate,” he said softly. “I counted, between Morganton, Old Fort, and on the road, about two hundred-fifty vehicles total.”

  “A thousand to fifteen hundred people then,” Washington said.

  “And just remember this, gentlemen. I was a trained artillery spotter, so I know how to count and how to spot.”

  “We don’t doubt you,” Charlie said.

  “In this case, don’t doubt me. Now for the troubling aspect tactically.”

  “They’re coming round the back,” John said.

  “Exactly. That’s why I flew over here on my way back. I counted two dozen vehicles on the old dirt road, right at the base of the mountains by Andrew’s Geyser. Some on the abandoned paved road. A couple more farther up, near where the railroad track crosses over the old dirt road. They know our back door, and not just the interstate.”

  “Any on the old fire roads?” Charlie asked. Don shook his head.

  “Hard to see, with the summer canopy,” he said.

  “I doubt it,” Washington interjected. “Unless they have a couple of local boys, those old fire roads are mazes. My bet is they’ll stick to the old abandoned paved road, the dirt road farther to the north, and the railroad track as their flanker, and they’ll hit there first.”

  “I agree,” Charlie said.

  “They could be here trying to maneuver into a flanking position by late afternoon,” Don said. John nodded.

  “They must have a good military leader in there, knows his stuff and has done a thorough recon on us by now and sees the flank roads as the opening move. They’ll hit just before dawn,” John said. “Hope to catch us sleeping. If I was one of them, Don here flying around would tell me that what’s waiting for them has some kind of warning, so they will move fast rather than give us time to prepare.

  “We can pray they’re just a mob that overruns by numbers and surprise, but it looks like there are some ex-military with them. Worst case, they got a couple of recon types who know how to figure out the ground, the defenses, the approaches, and formulate the plan of attack.

  “Their advance party is in Old Fort to secure the place for the rest of them later today. I’d bet by late afternoon their advance will start probing, and we’ve got to meet them forward of the potential line of battle. They see our setup, get a good judgment on our strength, we’ll have even more problems holding. They’ll laager in Old Fort tonight and tear the place apart, then hit us before dawn.”

  “We’ll be prepared,” Washington said sharply, and stood up.

  “We feed the troops, then move them into position today. Washington, we’ve talked about this scenario, so we both know the plans. I want officers’ briefing within the hour. Tom, start to evacuate all homes behind our fallback line beyond the old toll road as we’ve talked about before. Charlie, I want every citizen who can carry a gun as our reserve. Mr. Barber, I hope you can stay up in the air most of the day. Keep high, though, sir, real high; just keep an eye on their movements,” John said.

  Washington looked around the room, a thin smile on his face. Charlie, shriveled with emaciation, said nothing, but his gaze communicated volumes. John was now in charge.

  “I think we should get to work, gentlemen,” John said.

  Tom headed back to his car with Don by his side.

  Washington looked over at John and Charlie.

  “Gentlemen, I think it’s important you join us in chapel and for our meal.”

  Two hours later, after the officers’ briefing and a map exercise, the 1:25,000 geological survey maps taken from the small map store in Black Mountain spread out on the table, John felt everyone understood their mission. Several of the platoon leaders were students, Jeremiah and Phil having been promoted to second lieutenants, in the first and second platoons of Company A. The others were vets from around the town, a good sprinkling of men from Desert Storm, a few from Nam.

  John walked into the dining hall. Strange, it still looked basically the same. The counter where kids used to get their meal cards swiped with a laser scanner, circular tables, the twin doors leading into the food-serving area.

  It was a room filled with a lot of happy memories and a few poignant ones. This school was unlike what he had expected when he had first come here. He feared that his old commandant, in his rush to get John a job where Mary once lived, had most likely hooked him into some fundamentalist camp meeting. Not that he had any particular objection on a philosophical level as an American, but still, he was a Catholic kid from Jersey. His fears could not be farther from the truth. It had turned into the warmest place he had ever worked in.

  He had been greeted with open arms into a community where friendly intellectual debate was encouraged. Though a few might be a bit judgmental, most were actually very open-minded, saying that was the true spirit of what Christ tried to teach and not the nuttiness most outside the South believed of them, and all were guided by a desire to put their students first. The school was b
etter than John ever imagined and now, at this moment, he realized yet again just how much he loved them all, especially “the kids” now sitting at the tables, decked out in camo gear, weapons stacked along the walls.

  The tradition with faculty was not to eat segregated off but rather to join a table with their students, laugh, debate, argue, tease, stimulate.

  Mary had attended this college her first year before transferring to far more competitive Duke, and coming here was coming home for her. Several of the professors had even taught her long ago.

  Towards the end, she often came here to join John for lunch, and always kids would gather round their table and those who fully knew her condition would usually leave her with a kiss to the forehead, an embrace, and, “I’m praying for you every day, ma’am.”

  And then she was gone.

  But still, in the four years afterwards, so many happy days here, of shared meals, of the absolutely ridiculous but still touching dumb skits by the faculty for the Senior Breakfast the day before their graduation.

  But now…

  The cafeteria lines were closed, the food service off to the far side, tables set up near the back door, the grill outside smoking madly with the slabs of bear meat. Most of the students had already taken their plates, each proportion carefully cut, a slab of bear meat, some greens, a cup of herbal tea, that was it, but still a pound or more of meat, while downtown, at this moment, everyone else was getting thin soup with just a couple ounces of meat mixed in.

  And yet in spite of their hunger, they remained restrained. None had yet to cut in; all sat around their tables, talking, but not touching the food. John looked over at Charlie. “You will eat,” John said sharply. “John?”

  “Charlie, you will eat.”

  He pushed Charlie forward and they joined the back of the line. It only took a few seconds before they were handed the plate, the piece of meat already cut. John noticed that the cooking staff actually had a scale behind the carving table, each piece of meat thrown on it before being put on a plate. Maybe the measurement would be off by an ounce or two one way or the other, but still it was a message to stifle any arguments.