One Second After

CHAPTER FOUR

The sound of the helicopter, a Black Hawk, after silence for so long was startling. It came in hot, about five hundred feet up, skimming over the interstate pass, leveling out.

He felt an emotional surge at the sight of it, the black star on its side. It roared past his house, which was high enough off the valley floor that he could almost see into the pilot’s side window. Elizabeth was jumping up and down, shrieking, waving.

“We’re saved!” Elizabeth shouted gleefully. “We’re saved!” She sounded like a shipwrecked sailor on a desert island.

John found himself waving as well… and the helicopter thundered on, heading due west, growing smaller, the sound receding, then disappearing, the silence all-engulfing again.

The elation disappeared into a sense of overwhelming depression. Somehow, the sight of that lone bird was now symbolic of so much, and maybe it was a portent that within a few more minutes the electricity would come back on.

He stood for several minutes, shading his eyes, gazing westward. And everything was as it had been.

Dejected, Elizabeth walked over to the side of the swimming pool and sat down, dipping her feet in, Ben came over and splashed her. The water was still cold. Without the pump, there was no circulation into the solar heating panels. The water was still clear, though. John was dosing it heavily with chlorine, since it was, for now, their drinking and bathing water. The kids swimming in it would at least keep the water stirred up. Jen was already waiting in the car.

Ben waved, John casually pointed to where the shotgun was, and Ben nodded in reply. Jennifer was down today with her friend Pat, joining a couple of other girls who were going to play Monopoly for the afternoon.

Starting the Edsel, John rolled down the driveway, out onto Route 70, turned east, and drove the short distance up to Miller’s Nursing Home, where Tyler was. Jen had gone up to check on him the day after the outage and said that though it was chaotic, Tyler was doing OK. She was silent now, tense, as they drove.

None of them had left home yesterday, except for one brief foray by John.

He had laid out a long series of tasks. All the meat still in the freezer downstairs was pulled out and cooked thoroughly, with everyone eating as much as they could before wrapping the rest in plastic and storing it. He wasn’t sure if it would help or not, but what salt they had was liberally sprinkled on the meat.

Next came a privy pit dug at the edge of Connie’s orchard, with a privacy screen made out of a tent. The girls had argued that the toilets inside were just fine, and there had been a rather delicate discussion about what the privy could be used for and what the toilets inside would be used for.

“Oh, for that, just do it like Zach does,” Jennifer replied with a grin, “against a tree.”

It took a bit of explaining as to the health hazard of that suggestion. Then a bit of retrofitting around the house. The water bed was already getting chilly without a heater, so extra blankets were dragged up from the basement to lay down as a covering, some old decorative candles pulled out, old clothes that might be cut into strips for toilet paper, and to his surprise an old chain saw, not used in years, actually started up after Ben fiddled around with it for a while.

He then made one quick run down to the market on the east side of town, the old Food Lion, hoping to stock up on some goods, canned food, toilet paper, but it had already been picked over clean. In fact, it looked more as if it had been looted. He could have kicked himself for not having seen to this shopping before the panicked rush.

One of the managers was still inside the darkened store, just sitting, reading a magazine when John came in.

“Helluva show here last night, Professor,” he announced. “Never thought I’d see friends and neighbors act like they did. People running around, loading up baskets to overflowing. I kept trying to say, ‘No cash, no sale,’ and well, they just started pushing by me and that set it off. Place was pretty well cleaned out before the cops finally showed up.”

He shrugged.

“Mind if I look around?” John asked. “Sure, be my guest, sir.”

There was not a basket to be found, so he just simply wandered up and down the aisles. A half dozen or so were in the store, doing as he did, one elderly couple was prowling through the frozen-food freezers, pulling out smashed and soggy boxes of vegetables and waffles, stuffing them into a plastic trash bag.

All the canned goods were picked clean of course. Underfoot were smashed bottles, busted cans, bits of meat, chicken, and seafood. The floor was slippery and began to smell in the heat, hundreds of flies were already buzzing about. Over in the bakery goods he found a busted twenty-pound bag of flour kicked to one side on the floor and immediately grabbed it. In the pet foods was a twenty-five-pound bag of dry dog food, torn open, maybe fifteen to twenty pounds still inside, which he grabbed as well. Near the door he saw a ten-pound bag of rock salt, left over from winter, and instantly snatched it. There was not much else and he headed for the door.

He looked at the manager.

“Just take it, Doc; it’s ok.”

John paused, curious.

“Why are you here, Ernie?” He motioned to the darkened store. The elderly couple slowly dragged the trash bag full of defrosted food: the air around him was thick with the rising scent of decay.

Ernie looked at him, slowly shaking his head.

“Don’t know, Doc. Habit, I guess. No family. Dolores and the kids left me last year. Just habit, I guess.”

John nodded his thanks and tossed the loot into the backseat of the car. Backing up to the Dollar Store, he went in and found much the same chaos, this store torn apart, with no one inside.

“Who’s in there?”

Turning, he saw Vern Cooper, one of the town police, looking through the broken front window.

“It’s me, Vern, John Matherson.”

“Out of there now, sir.”

He came out and felt a change, a profound change in his world. Vern had always been so easygoing, almost a bit of the town’s “Barney Fife.” Now he was carrying a shotgun and it was half-raised, not quite pointing at John but almost.

“Just looking around, Vern.”

“John, I could arrest you for looting.”

“What?”

“Just that, John. It got real bad here last night.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Just get out of here and go home, John,” Vern sighed.

John didn’t hang around to ask for details and did as Vern “suggested.”

At the U-Rent store they had already sold out of extra propane tanks, and John didn’t even bother to go into the hardware store; it was utter chaos, with a line out the door and halfway down the block. The mere fact that he had a car that moved caused nearly everyone to turn and look at him, a reaction that made him nervous. So he just turned around and went home.

The rock salt was a golden find, he realized, and they had then unpacked all the meat, salted it down, then repacked it. Next had come a wood detail, for sooner rather than later he knew the propane for the grill would run out, and by the end of the day they were all exhausted.

He had promised Jen they’d go see Tyler today, then make a run up to her house to get some clothes and of course, check on the cat, so John got back in the car. It was only a short drive up to the nursing home, just about a mile. They passed half a dozen abandoned cars, a family walking by in the opposite direction, mother and father both pushing supermarket shopping carts, one with two kids inside, the other stacked with some few family treasures. Who they were he didn’t know, where they were going he could not figure out, nor did he slow to find out.

Again, such a change. A week ago, seeing a couple like that he’d have pulled over asked if they needed a lift; the sight was so pathetic.

As they pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home John instantly knew something was terribly wrong. Three people were wandering about outside. At the sight of them he could see they were patients, shuffling, confused, one of them naked.

“My God, what is going on here?” Jen gasped.

John started to go for the nearest of the wanderers, to guide her back inside, but Jen shouted for him to follow her.

And the moment he opened the door, he knew something was horribly wrong. The stench was overwhelming, so bad that he gagged, backed out, and gasped for breath.

Jen, made of far sterner stuff, just stood in the doorway.

“Take a few deep breaths. I’ll be down in Tyler’s room.”

John waited for a moment, tempted to light a cigarette. He held back, having gone through five packs in just two days. That left him six packs plus two cartons and he was already beginning to count each one.

He took another deep breath, braced himself, and went in. Again the stench, feces, urine, vomit. He gasped, struggled, nearly vomiting, and fought it down.

The corridor, which a week before had been so brightly lit and spotless, was dark, a large linen gurney parked in a side alcove the source of the worst of the smell. He quickly walked past it, turned the corner, and reached the west wing’s nurses’ station. One woman was behind the counter and looked up at him wearily. Her gown of Winnie the Poohs was stained and stained again. He spotted her name tag: Caroline, and vaguely remembered she was usually part of the night shift.

He wanted to blow but could see she was exhausted, beleaguered.

“How are you, Caroline?”

“Fine, I guess,” she said woodenly.

He looked down the corridor. The stench was so overwhelming that he felt it should be a visible fog.

“What in hell is going on here?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

She was in shock. He could now see that. The poor girl was numbed, hollow eyed.

“When did you last sleep?”

She looked up at the clock on the wall. It was frozen at 4:50.

Feeble cries echoed down the corridor: “help me, help me, help me…”

“A few hours last night, I guess.”

“Are any other staff here?”

“There’s Janice down on the other wing. I think Waldo is still here.”

“And that’s it?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be right back.”

He braced himself and started down the corridor. All exterior doors were open, but there was no breeze and the heat was suffocating. Yet another building designed for complete climate control and year-round comfort with computerized environmental controls. The small windows in each room barely cracked open, and the temperature inside was as high, perhaps higher than outside.

The first room he looked into revealed an elderly woman; he remembered her as having Alzheimer’s. She was rocking back and forth, sheets kicked off, lying in her own filth.

The next room: two elderly men, one sitting in a motorized wheelchair that no longer moved, the other lying on a bed, the sheets drenched in urine.

They both glanced up at him.

“Son, could you get us some water?” the one in the wheelchair asked, ever so politely. “Sure.”

He backed out of the room and went back to the desk.

“Can I have a pitcher for some water?”

She shook her head.

“We ran out last night.”

“What do you mean, ‘ran out’?”

“Just that. No running water.”

“Don’t you have a reserve tank? Aren’t you supposed to have a reserve somewhere?”

“I don’t know,” she said listlessly. “I think there’s an emergency well that runs off the generator.”

“Jesus Christ.”

He opened the door to the hallway bathroom and recoiled, gagging. A woman was sitting on the toilet, slumped over… dead, already the smell of decay filling the tiny room.

He turned and went back down the main corridor to the kitchen, storming in. One elderly man was there, balanced on his walker, heavy steel fridge door open, a package of hot dogs in his hand, and he was eating them cold.

“Hi there,” the man said. “Care for one?” And he offered the pack up. “No thanks.”

John went over to the sink, turned the taps… nothing. “Damn it.”

Back out in the dining area, he took the lid off a large recessed canister that usually held ice. There was water in the bottom, and taking two juice cups, he filled them up and was back out and down the hall, returning to the room with the two old men. He handed each of them a cup.

“Thank God,” the one in the wheelchair whispered, sipping on it, John having to hold the other cup so that the man in the bed could sip it down.

The man in the wheelchair was wearing an old commemorative cap, “Big Red One—Omaha Beach 1944-2004” emblazoned on it. Pins across the front, which John instantly recognized, Combat Infantry Badge, Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, miniature sergeant’s chevrons. He felt sick looking at the man, sipping the last of the water in the cup and holding it back up.

“Son, I hate to bother you,” the man whispered. “My chair just won’t move. Would you mind getting me another drink?”

“John, where in hell are you?”

It was Jen, her voice shrill.

“Right there, Mom.”

“Sir, I’ll be back shortly,” John said, and he fled the room.

He tried to not look into the rooms as he walked down the corridor. An elderly woman, naked, sitting curled up and crying, a sickly scent from the next room, and he dared to look in…. A body of a bloated man, face yellowing with the beginnings of decay, bedsheets kicked off from his final struggle, his roommate sitting in a chair, looking vacantly out the window.

John reached Tyler’s room, Jen in the doorway, crying.

“We got to take him home,” she said.

For a moment John thought Tyler was dead, head back, face unshaved. The IV was still in his arm. Gravity fed, it was empty. The feeding tube into his stomach was driven by a small electrical pump, the plastic container attached to it… empty.

He was semi-conscious, muttering incoherently.

The smell of feces hung in the room and John struggled to control his stomach. It was something that always defeated him. He prided himself on being a damn good father, but when Mary was alive the diapers was her job. Mary’s chemo was a nightmare, but he had manfully stood by, holding her when she vomited, cleaning her up, then rushing to the bathroom to vomit as well. After she died, when the kids were sick Jen would come over to help. He was horrified by what he had to confront now.

“I’ll clean him up,” Jen said. “You find a gurney so we can move him out to the car.”

“How in hell are you going to clean him up?” John gasped. “Just find a gurney. I’ll take care of the rest.”

He backed out of the room and stormed back down the corridor to the nurses’ station.

“I’m pulling my father-in-law out.”

“Good, you should,” Caroline said quietly.

“How in God’s name can you allow this?”

She looked up at him and then just dissolved into sobs.

“No one’s come into work. I’ve been here since… since the power went off. Wallace and Kimberly—they took off last night—said they had to get home somehow to check on their kids and would come back, but they haven’t. I’ve got a kid at home, too. Her father’s such a bum, shacked up with someone else now. I’m worried he hasn’t gone over to check on her and she’s alone.”

Caroline looked at him, tears were streaming down her face.

“I need a smoke,” John said.

She nodded and fumbled in her purse and pulled out a pack, as if he were asking for one.

He shook his head, reached into his pocket, and took two cigarettes out, offering her one. They lit up. It was a nursing home, but at this moment he felt at least a smoke would mask the smell and help calm her down.

She took a deep drag, exhaled, and the tears stopped.

“I need a gurney to move my father-in-law.”

“I think you’ll find one down the next corridor. Waldo took it a couple of hours ago.”

“When was the last time these people were cleaned, fed, had water?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think, damn it.”

“I think two days ago. Then it just all seemed to unravel. Mr. Yarborough died, then Miss Emily, then Mr. Cohen. No one’s come to take their bodies. Usually the funeral home has the hearse here within a half hour. I think I called, but they haven’t shown up. Mrs. Johnston in room twenty-three fell, I think she broke her hip, and Mr. Brunelli, I think he’s had another heart attack.

“Now they’re all dying. All of them. Miss Kilpatrick is dead in the next room. God, how I loved her,” and she started to sob again.

He remembered Miss Kilpatrick, actually rather young. Bad auto accident, paralyzed from the waist down and in rehab and training before going home. Science teacher at the high school until she was nailed head-on by a drunk, one of her own students.

“She got some scissors and cut her wrists. She’s dead in the sitting room.”

He didn’t even see her as they came in.

“She said she knew what had happened and wouldn’t live through it.”

“Caroline, you’ve got to get help up here.”

“I don’t know. I’m just an LPN. I’m not trained for this, sir.”

She began to sob again.

“Where’s the supervisor?”

“In her office, I think.”

He nodded, left Caroline, and went down towards the opposite wing and turned into the administrative corridor. The door to the supervisor’s office was closed, and without bothering to knock he pushed it open.

The woman behind the desk was fast asleep, head on her desk.

“Ira, wake up,” John snapped angrily.

She raised her head.

“Professor Matherson?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

She rubbed her eyes and sat up.

“I know you must be upset.”

“‘Upset’ isn’t the word for it. This is an outrage.”

She nodded silently.

“I know. I’ve got four people in the building, maybe three; I think Kim-berly took off. I sent the last of our kitchen staff down to the town to try and get help. But that was hours ago and no one’s come back. No water, no air-conditioning, no refrigeration for food or medication…”

She fell silent, then looked down at a checklist on her desk. The woman was obviously pushed over the edge and reverting to an almost standard routine to hide in.

“Last rounds I counted seventeen dead. Six families have pulled their relatives out…. Let’s see, that leaves forty patients and three staff on overtime. Normally during the day I have over thirty working here.”

God, you’d think everyone would have pulled their people out, John thought, then realized the difficulties of that. Some had no family nearby at all. A couple retired here, the spouse died, the other wound up here, the kids somewhere else, New York, California, Chicago… the American way.

Even for locals, just five or ten miles away. How to get a sick, demented, or dying parent or grandparent moved? And many most likely just assumed or wanted to assume that “Grandpa is safe there; we’re paying five thousand a month to make sure of that.”

“But you’ve got to do something,” John protested weakly.

“Pray, tell me what I should do first,” she said quietly. “Did I tell you we were robbed last night?”

“What.”

“Some punks. One had a gun, and demanded the drugs. They took all the painkillers, pills, the liquid morphine.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. The one with the gun had a shaved head, earring, tattoo of a serpent on his left arm, red motorbike.”

“Animals,” John said coldly.

Tyler was on a morphine pump. Jesus, if he comes round it will be hell for him.

“That’s what I called them and they laughed.”

John found he couldn’t answer her and was filled with a sudden pity for her. She was a good woman, her eldest son a member of his scout troop a couple of years back.

“I’ll get into town and see if we can get these people evacuated somehow.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m taking my father-in-law out now.”

“That’s good.”

“What about his feeding tube, the formula?”

“I wouldn’t trust the formula anymore. It’s supposed to be refrigerated.

We still might have some cans of Ensure. Use a funnel and gravity feed it into him.”

John nodded, stomach rebelling.

“I better go.”

He left her in her miserable solitude, and went into the next corridor. It was a deeper hell here. The entire wing was the “restricted wing,” all the patients with Alzheimer’s or another form of severe dementia. A number of them were out in the hallway, those capable of some mobility wandering aimlessly, at his approach reaching out with withered hands, some speaking, others just muttering or making incoherent sounds. He felt as if he had just fallen into a surreal nightmare. He could not stop for them, help them; to do so would trap him in the nightmare forever.

Passing an emergency exit door, he looked outside. There was a patient slowly shuffling towards the woods. With the entire security system down, the ankle bracelets that were touted as the newest thing in safety, which automatically locked the door and set off an alarm at the nurses’ station if someone with dementia tried to open it, were now deactivated. It was a wonder that any who could still walk were inside the building, and he wondered how many had indeed just wandered into the woods.

He spotted a gurney at the end of the corridor, and as he approached it, to his horror he saw that the body of small, withered old man was on it, an elderly woman standing beside the body, stroking the man’s hair.

John approached, determined to take the gurney, if need be, but as she looked up at him, his will failed and he backed away, then fled the ward.

He returned back to the wing where Tyler was. Somehow, Jen had indeed cleaned him up, a pile of torn soiled sheets tossed on the floor, a torn blanket wrapped around him. She looked at John, eyes calm, her strength amazing him.

“Did you find a gurney?”

“I’ll carry him out.”

She had already disconnected the hose of the feeding tube and the IV tube. John slipped his arms under Tyler and stood up. The man, in spite of his wasting away, was still heavy, and John braced himself for a second before daring to take a step. He turned to ease out the door and then continued out into the corridor, walking fast, a race against dropping Tyler. They went past the desk, Caroline said nothing, Jen raced ahead to open the back door.

In the corner of the sitting room John saw the slumped-over body of Miss Kilpatrick in the corner, a pool of drying blood was soaked into the berber carpet beneath her, flies were swarming on it.

Gasping for breath, John was out the door and down to the car, laying Tyler down in the backseat. He opened his eyes; there was a glint of recognition.

“It’s ok, Tyler; we’re taking you home. It’s ok.”

He couldn’t speak. The cancer had long ago devoured his throat, vocal cords, and spread into his chest. His breathing was raspy, sounding like another bout of pneumonia was setting in.

Still, he had enough strength to grasp John’s arm and squeeze it, then let go.

“Jen, start the car; I’ll be right back,” and John handed her the keys. He went back in and returned to the nurses’ station. “Caroline, I need some Ensure.”

She nodded towards the storage room. He went in, again a struggle for control. Someone had vomited on the floor. He gingerly stepped around the mess, tearing open storage cabinets; the bandage that covered his injured finger was soaked through with God knows what and finally just slipped off. Empty shipping cases of the precious liquid were scattered about, and when just about to give up, he found two cartons of twenty-four cans, grabbed them, and stepped back out.

He started for the door, hesitated, and then turned, going back to the room with the two old men. He took two six-packs and placed them on the old veteran’s lap.

“Thanks for what you once did for us, Sergeant,” he whispered.

The old man smiled and nodded. John felt a bit foolish at first but could not stop himself. He came to attention and saluted the old man, who stiffened in his chair, smiled, and returned the salute. John left him and headed to the car.

Dumping the cans onto the floor of the front seat of the car, John climbed in.

“Get us the hell out of here,” John said.

He turned away, blocking out the sight of the demented patients wandering about outside. If he stopped for them he would be pulled back into the nightmare, with Tyler stuck in the backseat in the sweltering heat.

They drove out and several minutes later were back home. “Ben, Elizabeth!” John shouted.

The two kids, soaking wet, came out of the pool, laughing, but then slowed as they saw John struggling to maneuver Tyler out of the car. Elizabeth stepped back. “Oh, Pop-pop,” and she began to cry. “You need help, sir?” Ben asked nervously. “Just get the door.”

John carried Tyler in, Jen following, and headed for Jennifer’s room, putting him down on her bed, and then stood up.

Jen pulled a chair over and was by Tyler’s side, gently brushing his cheek.

“It’s ok, Tyler. We’re home; we’re home,” she whispered.

John stepped back, suddenly feeling a terrible need to wash. Elizabeth stood in the living room, looking wide-eyed towards Jen’s room.

“Elizabeth.”

She was crying.

“It’s going to be hard, but we’ve got to handle it. I want you to go get a bucket of water. Heat it up on the grill, find some soap, some towels, then go in and help Grandma.”

Elizabeth stifled back a sob and nodded.

He was glad Jennifer was not home to have seen this.

He went into the master bathroom. He poured some water from a bucket into the sink and thoroughly washed his hands; then grimacing, the pain coursing up his arm, he doused his wound with some rubbing alcohol.

He cut a piece of old sheeting taken from the linen closet and wrapped it around the cut on his hand and went back to Jennifer’s room. “Mom, you ok?” She looked up at him and smiled. “Sure. I can handle this now, John. Thank you.”

Ben came in carrying the warm bucket, Elizabeth hesitating before coming in with a towel and soap.

“Elizabeth honey. Your Pop-pop is a proud man,” Jen said, her features serious. “I don’t think he’d want his granddaughter helping with this.”

Jen looked at John.

“And you, John, have the weakest stomach in the world. Why don’t you two go outside?”

“I’ll stay,” Ben said quietly.

All three looked at him with surprise.

“Heck, I diapered my kid brother a hundred times. I’ll help Miss Jen.”

“Good man, Ben.”

“Actually, I better go into town,” John said. “I’ll see if we can get some help up there.”

“That’s good, John.”

He hesitated and looked at Elizabeth.

“Maybe you should come along.”

“You sure, Dad?”

“It’s ok.”

She looked at him with relief and the two went to the car and got in. “Sorry, Dad, I don’t think I could have handled that. I’d of tried, though.”

“Listen, kid, I barely handled it myself. Buckle up.” She laughed softly, though still shaken. “This is a ’59 Edsel, Dad, no seat belts.”

They drove into town and he immediately felt as if he was now coming into an entirely different world.

Pete’s free barbecue was shut down, the small-town feel of an outdoor fair atmosphere gone. Two police officers, both armed with shotguns, stood outside the elementary school, a large crowd standing in line. An open fire was burning, a kettle hung over it.

There were half a dozen more cops and an equal number of firemen in a loose cordon around the town hall, police station, and firehouse. Several men were at the back of Jim Bartlett’s Volkswagen Bus, off-loading boxes. There was an assortment of bicycles, a few motorbikes, an old Harley motorcycle, a Jeep from the garage, the antique World War Two jeep, and a few old farm pickup trucks parked there as well, the doors into the firehouse open, the engines rolled out. Boxes, crates, containers filling up inside.

There was another line formed, an old military-style water tank on wheels, a guard by the side of it, the line of people carrying plastic jugs. John rolled to a stop and got out with Elizabeth.

“One gallon per person,” the guard was saying, repeating himself over and over, as John pulled Elizabeth closer in to his side and headed towards the mayor’s office.

Though the downtown area had water, those living upslope were out and now having to do the long walk just to get a single gallon. One of the guards saw John and nodded. “Hi, Professor.”

It was one of his old students, graduated several years back, now a teacher in the middle school, and he was embarrassed that he couldn’t remember his name.

“What’s going on?”

“Well, Charlie declared martial law. We’re moving all medical supplies here to the firehouse and any food that can still be retrieved from the supermarkets, but most of that got cleaned out.”

“I saw Food Lion, but all of the markets?”

“Well, sir, I guess you could say it was a riot. Folks just started storming into the markets taking what they wanted and then getting out. It got pretty ugly there for a while. Mostly the outsiders.”

“Outsiders?”

“You know, the folks from the highway.”

The way he said “outsiders” hit a nerve with John. It didn’t feel right.

“We had a lot of people coming down the road from Asheville, a lot of them people who live here who got stranded, but a lot of people just getting out of the city as well. A thousand or more flooded in here last night. Word is it’s pretty bad up there.

“The folks coming in from Asheville said a mob, mostly kids, started busting up the Asheville Mall, vandals, and part of it burned. Somebody said over fifty people were killed, hundreds of people rampaging through the stores along Tunnel Road.”

He took it in.

“Quite a few dead on the road they say as well. People collapsing, bad hearts, elderly. Somebody said he counted at least twenty dead between here and Exit 53.”

It was hard to believe.

“Thanks. Is the mayor in?”

“She sure is. They’re having some sort of conference in there.”

He didn’t ask for permission; he just headed in and parked Elizabeth by the door, telling her not to move. As he walked in, his eye caught the commemorative plaque: “9.11.01 In Remembrance of the First Responders Who Gave Their Lives. .. Rest in Peace.”

Half a dozen men and women milled about in the corridor. The door into the conference room was closed.

“I’d like to see the mayor,” John said to one of the cops standing by the door.

“There’s a meeting on in there, sir.”

“I know, but this is urgent.”

“I think, sir, you’ll have to wait.”

“This can’t wait,” John said loudly.

“Sir, please just go outside and wait.”

The memory of the vet, begging for a drink of water, pushed John forward.

“I think I’ll see her now,” John said sharply. “Now step aside.”

“Sir, don’t force me to stop you.”

He could see that the cop, not much more than a kid, was still out of his league. A week ago he was most likely the junior kid on the force, the biggest challenge ever faced a drunk on a Saturday night.

John reached past him, grabbed the doorknob, and pushed the door open.

“Sir! Please step back.”

Charlie, Kate, and Tom were in the room, along with Doc Kellor and, interestingly, Washington Parker and an elderly couple who looked vaguely familiar.

“It’s ok, Gene. That’s Professor Matherson. Come on in, John.”

John gave a curt nod to the young policeman and walked in. Everyone was gazing at John, and he suddenly felt a touch of embarrassment for barging in thus, but the memory of what he had seen in the nursing home stilled that.

“What is it, John, that’s got you all fired up?” Charlie asked. “I was just up at Miller’s Nursing Home. My God, it’s a hellhole up there.”

“We know all about it, John,” Kate said. “Mr. Parker here is sending a bunch of kids, volunteers from the college, to help out with some food and water. Kellor’s canvassing the refugees for nurses to go help as well.”

“I think it’s going to take more than some kids and a few nurses,” John replied, “but thanks, Washington.”

“You know they were robbed? Some punks stole all the morphine and painkillers?”

“We’re on that, too, John,” Tom said softly. Now John did feel embarrassed.

Charlie hesitated, made eye contact with Kate, and she nodded. “John, actually, I should have invited you to this meeting,” Charlie said softly. “We’re talking some things over. Maybe you can give us some input. “Do you know the Barbers?”

John looked over at the elderly couple. In fact, he did know them. They had a summer home, actually more of a mansion, up in the Cove, just up the road from his in-laws.

They looked haggard, Mrs. Barber pale, struggling, it seemed, to stay awake.

“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 of 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 1-85, 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 records 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 records 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 parameters.”

“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.”

“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 television now, John thought. The Twilight Zone. Last evening 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.”