One Second After

CHAPTER SEVEN

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 sixty.”

“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? Told 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.

“He was an idiot.”

“John, you hardly know me,” she smiled, “so don’t just judge by exteriors. I have my bad side, too.”

“Well, I’ve yet to see it. Volunteering to go up and help at the nursing home. That took guts.”

“Or it could have been calculation,” she replied, “get into the community that way.”

He looked straight at her, remembering what she said on the day he had shot Larry, and shook his head.

“No, you’d of done it regardless of the situation.”

He hesitated, looking back down at the soup bowl.

“And any guys for you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just trying to put the pieces together.”

“No one serious, if that’s what you mean. Gun-shy.”

“And no kids?”

“Thank God no.”

“Why?”

“Now, with this? You think I’d want that worry on top of everything else? Suppose we did have children and I was up here the day it happened. I’d of been clawing through the tide of refugees to get back to Charlotte.”

He nodded. The way she said “clawing through” told him a lot. She liked kids, maybe wished she had some, and had the instinct to kill to protect them, no matter whose they were.

“Let’s talk about Jennifer,” she said quietly.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, suddenly anxious.

“Of course there is, John. You got enough insulin for a little more than four months, though the water temperature where you are storing the vials is just over fifty degrees. I checked it. That will degrade the shelf life somewhat.”

“By how much?” he asked, feeling a sense of panic.

“I’m not sure, John. We’ll start to know when the regular dose doesn’t control her blood sugar. Besides that, we have to start getting conservative with her testing kit. The new one, as you know, is junked, the old one, thank God, survived, but the test strips, no replacements now. So we’re going to have to learn to just eyeball the situation more and only use the strips when we absolutely have to.”

He couldn’t speak, just staring off across the valley. It was all so peaceful. No noise, some plumes from small fires rising up, drifting with the westerly breeze. He reached to his breast pocket. No pocket; he was still in a sweat-soaked T-shirt.

“Cigarette?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’ll get them.”

She came back out a minute later with two, struck a lighter and puffed one to life, hesitated for a second, then handed it to John, putting the second one on the table.

“Ex-smoker?” John asked.

“Yup. Surprising how many nurses smoke. But I looked at one too many cancerous lungs, though.”

“Don’t need to hear it.” She smiled.

“Well, you’re going to run out in about two weeks anyhow. Stretch it and you might make it to four weeks or six, but sooner or later you will quit. Maybe one of the few blessings to come out of this. An entire nation going cold turkey on tobacco, alcohol, drugs. No cars, so we have to walk or ride bikes. Might do us some good.”

“Back to Jennifer,” he said, after taking several puffs. The meal was sitting well on his stomach, but the tobacco hit him after so many days away. He felt shaky and suddenly weak.

“Tyler’s death, the funeral,” she said. “If I had been around and knew, I’d of kept Jennifer home during the burial. It really traumatized her.

“It’s tough enough on any kid of that age to lose their grandpa. But we, all of us, have really isolated death away, kept it hidden. Tyler died in her bedroom. In fact, she is terrified to even go back in there. When she’d come to see you when you were sick, she’d just stand by the doorway. It’s just that she saw it all, and it registered.

“John, she’s a diabetic, and even at twelve that makes anyone very conscious of their mortality. They know their life is dependent on that needle and the vial, but for seventy years now those vials just came across the pharmacy counter, no questions asked. She knows that’s finished.”

“How?”

“Damn it, John, she isn’t deaf or blind. Every day since this started people have been dying and she knows she’s on the short list once the insulin in the basement runs out.”

He shook his head angrily.

“No, God, please no. That’s four months off. By then we’ll have something back in place. At least communications, some emergency medicines.”

“John, you’ve been the very person going around saying that this is bad, real bad, that it might take years, if ever, to come back from it.”

“I never said a word around her.”

“Oh, John, you’re such a father, but you don’t understand kids. I’ve worked in hospitals with kids like Jennifer. Kids that were terminal. They had it figured long before their parents would ever admit it to themselves.”

“She is not terminal,” he snarled, glaring at Makala angrily.

She said nothing.

“Damn you, no,” and he was humiliated by the tears that suddenly clouded his vision.

He struggled to choke back the sobs that now overwhelmed him.

She put her hand out, touching him, and he jerked back, looking at her, filled with impotent rage.

“My girl will live through this,” he gasped. “Jennifer will live through this.”

She leaned over, gently touching his face, paused, and then half stood up, kissing him on the forehead, and drew her chair closer to his side.

“John, with luck, if things straighten out, we’ll get hooked back up to hospitals that work before the insulin runs out.”

He noticed how she said “we.”

“I’ve gotten close to her, John. Very close these last few days. She’s a sweet child. Not a twelve-year-old dressing, talking, and sometimes acting like she’s twenty-one. She still sleeps with Rabs in her arms, plays with Beanie Babies, reads a lot. The way perhaps twelve-year-olds were long ago. Rather nerdy actually.”

He struggled for control as Makala described his little girl. He let the burned-out cigarette fall and without comment she lit the second one and handed it over, taking a puff on it first before doing so.

She smiled, and he realized that tears were in her eyes as well.

“It’s just the poor child has really been obsessive about dying since she saw her grandfather go and the way he was buried, the way we’re burying people now by the hundreds.”

“I’ll talk with her.”

“I already have,” Makala said quietly.

“About what?”

She hesitated.

“Go on; about what?”

“About death,” she whispered. “She asked me for the truth. About how long she had if the insulin ran out.”

“And what did you tell her?” he snapped, and she grimaced as he grasped her arm with his hand. “What did you tell her?”

“John, I told you, I’ve worked with kids like her. I know when to lie; I know when it is time to tell the truth. I reassured her that she’d be OK. That you and others were working to get things reestablished and soon medical supplies would start coming in.”

He released his grip.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“But you’ve got to talk with her, too, John.”

He nodded, head lowered, again struggling for control. He felt so damn weak. Not just physically but emotionally. Tyler’s time had played out and though John had come to love that old man as if he were John’s own father, he took solace knowing Tyler had lived a good life. But Jennifer?

“You better keep reassuring her if you want her to be happy.” Makala paused.

“In the time she has left?” he asked, staring at her.

“Let’s just pray for the best.”

He finished his cigarette and sat back.

“You said hundreds have been buried?”

She nodded and then looked away.

He heard barking and then laughter. From out of the field above the house his family was coming. The dogs, seeing him up and about again, made a beeline straight to him. He could not help but laugh, both dogs grinning at him and dancing around his chair. And then with noses raised they were sniffing at the soup pot, Ginger standing up on her hind legs to peer in, nearly burning her feet as she lost balance and almost fell against the stove.

Jennifer came running down and jumped into his arms.

“You’re better, Daddy!”

“Well, not exactly, but almost, pumpkin.”

She buried her head against his shoulder and he wondered for a moment if she was crying. And then she pulled back slightly. “Daddy, you really stink.”

He laughed, tempted to play the old “armpit” game of grabbing her and forcing her up against his armpit. She loved it when she was eight, even as she shrieked in protest. But not now; he knew he really did stink.

“I promise I’ll take a bath later today; I could use it.”

“Outdoors now, Daddy,” she said, pointing to a small kiddie wading pool and a rough-built shower made out of a six-foot ladder with a one-gallon plastic bucket suspended from the top rung by a two-by-four, the bottom of the bucket perforated with a couple of dozen small holes.

“Ben built it. One person showers; the other pours the water into the bucket while standing on the ladder.”

Ben made that and John nodded and then suddenly wondered…

Makala laughed. “I do the pouring for Elizabeth, John.”

“Well, Ben can pour for me and you ladies can go somewhere else.”

Jennifer hugged him tight, let go, and looked into the pot.

“What is it?”

“Hot dogs and potatoes,” Makala announced.

“Yuk, sounds gross.”

“Really, it’s quite good,” John said.

“Can Zach and Ginger have some?”

The two dogs were by his side, tongues hanging out, panting, both with eyes fixed on his empty bowl. Across the years it had become an unconscious act: leave a little extra on the plate, set it down. When Ginger joined the family John would make sure two plates would go down at the same time, because no matter how much the dogs cared for each other, if there was only one plate there’d be a lunge and a yelp, usually from Ginger losing out to Zach, but now, as Zach was starting to show his age, he was becoming the loser in those squabbles.

“We ran out of dog food yesterday,” Makala said quietly.

Damn, he had never even thought of that. “Even the canned stuff?”

Makala didn’t say anything and he realized with a shock that the reason she said nothing was because she or Jen had stashed the canned dog food for emergency use if need be. He suddenly wondered if they made a canned dog food of hot dogs but knew it was best not to ask.

“Come on, Dad; they’re starving.”

He looked down at his two buddies. His companions on many a late night of writing or research, they’d always be curled up in his office. Once it was time for sleep, Ginger would usually paddle off to Jennifer’s room, Zach always to his.

He looked at Jennifer, then back to the dogs.

“Sure, come on, you two fools.”

He picked up his bowl and Makala’s, doled out one ladleful each of the soup, and put the bowls down. The two lunged, devouring the meal within seconds.

Jennifer smiled, watching them. Makala said nothing. “I think I want to go into town to see what’s going on, maybe over to the campus.”

“Don’t press your luck, John,” Jen said, a bit breathless from hiking down from the field, coming up to his side and standing on tiptoes to kiss him.

“Damn, you really do stink,” she said disapprovingly, stepping back.

“I’ll drive,” Makala interjected. “Besides, now that our patient is better, I think I should go back up to the nursing home and oversee the transfer up to the conference center.”

Jen said nothing as Makala went into the house. Elizabeth pecked him on the check and sat down to eat.

“She’s a nice girl,” Jen said.

“I think she’s in love with you, Dad,” Elizabeth announced, saying it as if just commenting on the weather or the time of day. Jennifer giggled at that. John looked over at Jen.

“She sat up with you three nights straight. You were in a bad way there, John.”

Jen smiled, but he could see she was just about in tears. “What is it, Mom?”

“Oh, nothing,” and she turned away. And he knew she was thinking of Mary.

The drive into town things looked pretty much the same, except for the fact that several of the men he passed were toting shotguns or rifles. At the elementary school there was a huge stack of firewood, a number of kettles set over a fire boiling.

“How are things in there?”

“John, people who just can’t make it are dying off,” Makala sighed. “Hundreds dead, but things are under control for right now.”

At the station he found out that Charlie was up in Swannanoa, Tom up at the barrier in the gap. He read the town notice board, printed with red marker on the whiteboards tacked to the side of town hall:

John noticed the eraser marks for everything else on the board except for those five words; “Martial Law Still in Effect.”

John paused at that one and thought about it. He realized it was a good decision. No threat of taking food, only if you asked for food. It’d keep hoarders from trying to eat off the public weal while continuing to sit on their own stockpiles. He continued to read.

John found that to be curious, that they had finally gotten around to canceling school. He’d have to tell the girls; they’d be delighted. Also, it was a touch of optimism that some sort of continuity would continue come fall and he was glad to read it.

The names were listed and John scanned it. One he knew, a student of his, cute girl, a sophomore, a bit overweight, with a smile that could light up a room. He remembered she suffered from severe allergies to bee stings, a notice having been sent around to all her professors at the start of each semester to be aware of that situation and immediately get her out of the room if a stinging insect flew in. He wondered if that had been the cause of death.

That bothered him, the last sentence. It was still the defining of a different class within the community. Makala was standing beside him, reading the notice board, and he wondered how she felt about it.

John smiled at that. And if true, it could mean that perhaps, just perhaps, communications gear was on the way to help reestablish links. The downside… why only Great Britain?

It is reported as well that the federal government, even now, is organizing the distribution of radios, which shall originate out of a stockpile kept in a secret reserve. Communications are soon to be reestablished with central authorities.

John turned away from the board and looked at Makala. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Feel like I’m in a bad movie or novel,” she sighed. “‘Long Live the King,’ or ‘Long Live Our Glorious Leader,’ or something like that should be on the board.”

“We are nowhere near that yet,” John said coldly.

“Might as well warn you now, I’m one of those old-style liberals who used to see conspiracies behind everything the right wing did.” He looked at her and saw a trace of a smile.

“I used to feel the same about the left,” and now it was his turn to smile. “Seems absurd now.”

“Still, to go from where we were three weeks ago to this, it’s impossible to grasp.”

They walked back to the Edsel. He noticed that the parking area around the police station had been cleared of all the newer and now-useless cars. There was a row of half a dozen VW Bugs, “Courtesy of Jim Bartlett” stenciled on the side of each with an old-fashioned peace sign added in. That must really rankle Tom, John thought. Two old Jeeps, one of them the antique World War II jeep with a white star stenciled on the hood, an assortment of cars from the fifties and sixties, a few from the seventies, the years that Detroit really started to turn out junk, which didn’t survive as well as the older ones. A number of older motorcycles and mopeds as well.

To his surprise a couple of horses were tethered there as well, and he stopped to look at them.

“Stables at the kids’ camps. Over forty horses in the community,” Makala said. “Most were appropriated by Charlie for patrolling the back roads.”

She walked up and rubbed the horse’s nose and it nickered. “Used to love riding. And you?”

“Actually, yes. The freedom of it when you’re out on open ground. But it’s been a while.”

“Poor things.”

“Why?”

“Charlie said we can use them through the summer, but once we go through the cattle and pigs, they’re next.” He nodded, saying nothing.

They got into the Edsel, Makala still driving, and headed up towards the college. As they approached the arched stone gate, a huge hand-lettered sign greeted them:

He rolled to a stop and two of his students, both with shotguns, blocked his approach, weapons leveled, but upon their recognizing him there were grins.

“What the hell is this?” John asked.

“Sorry, Professor. Interior defense. Some of those runaways from the interstate are still out there. Also, we’re starting to get people trying to sneak in off the old toll road behind us. Sergeant Parker has posted a twenty-four-hour guard here.”

John nodded, saying nothing as Makala drove through the gatehouse and then into the campus.

All was quiet here and then he saw them, lined up on the grassy slope in front of Gaither Hall. He motioned for Makala to pull over and stop.

He sat in the car for a moment and watched. Damn, it was like boot camp, fifty kids, a platoon-size unit, standing at attention, inspection arms, and every kid was indeed armed. Some had shotguns, others hunting rifles; a few stood there with pistols. Every weapon imaginable, from a Chinese SKS, to .22 semiautos, to a monstrous double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun, and he quickly recognized two boys carrying reproductions of Civil War .58 Springfield rifles.

He got out of the car to watch. A few of them looked his way. One girl grinned and started to wave; then realizing what she was supposed to be doing, she came back to attention.

And there was Washington Parker, walking down the line, grabbing a weapon from one student, levering the bolt action back, looking into the chamber, then slapping the weapon back into the student’s hands.

“Not clean enough! You want to live? You keep your weapon clean!”

John slowly walked up and the eye contact from students was a tip-off to Washington to turn. There was the flicker of a smile and Washington came to attention and saluted.

“Good day, Colonel, sir. Care to inspect the troops?”

John found himself returning the salute.

“Are we feeling better today, Colonel, sir?”

“Yes, Mr….” He fumbled for a second. “Yes, Sergeant Parker, I am, thank you.”

Embarrassed, John turned to look at his students, kids of but three weeks back. He had spoken to them more than once about the privileges they had. That kids their age were defending them on distant fronts even as they sat half-dozing in class. Several graduates of the college had been in Iraq, another in Afghanistan, and whenever an e-mail came in from overseas John usually read it to these same students. And now they stood lined up with guns, in front of the main campus building that housed the admissions office, the registrar, the music department, and one of the two chapels on campus.

He knew they were expecting him to now say something, but words failed him. He saw his two favorites, Jeremiah and Phil, to the right of the line, sergeant’s chevrons stenciled on the dark blue college T-shirts all of them were wearing like uniforms.

Jeremiah and Phil made eye contact and he nodded.

He wondered if these kids knew what he had done in the park. Of course they did, the whole town knew, and as he gazed at them he could see it in their eyes. They were looking at him differently. He had been the executioner. He was no longer the history professor who, though a former military man, was seen as having a soft heart.

“They look good,” was all he could say as he turned to face Washington, who saluted him. John returned the salute and headed into Gaither Hall.

“Rather paramilitary, isn’t it?” Makala asked, returning to his side.

John did not reply.

He walked into the building and for a moment wasn’t sure what to actually expect. Of course the corridors were darkened, the air heavy and humid. Fortunately, the building was old, having been designed long before central AC, so at least there was some circulation. The door to the admissions office and registrar were closed, but he could hear a piano in the chapel. He motioned for Makala to follow and he opened the door.

The chapel had been built in the 1930s, just as the chestnut blight had ripped through the Carolina mountains, so the trees had been harvested off and now were the beams, paneling, and ceiling, a beautiful warm, dark golden wood. Austere to a certain degree, for this was, after all, a Presbyterian school, but still a wonderful chapel in John’s eyes.

Up on the stage several kids were standing around the piano, Jessie, one of the music majors, just fooling around a bit.

A student whose name John did remember, Laura, said something, Jessie played a few chords, and she began to sing. Instantly John felt his throat tighten. Laura had sung this song in the spring musical review, and though it was from a play that he thought was way too sentimental, The Fantasticks, the song was haunting and, to him, such a metaphor for all that was happening.

He felt Makala’s hand slip into his and they were silent. He could feel a shudder run through Makala; she was crying. Laura’s voice echoed:

John could hear Parker shouting orders outside, the students now going through the manual of arms. It was almost to much for him to bear. It wasn’t supposed to happen here, but it had happened here.

Laura finished the second stanza and drifted into the third:

“I can’t bear this,” Makala whispered.

They slipped out of the chapel, Laura, the others, not even knowing he had been there.

Makala leaned against him for a moment, sobbing, and his arms were around her and then she stepped back, breaking away from his embrace, looking up at him. Sorry.

“No, it was rather nice actually,” he said.

The song finished in the chapel and he started out of the building, then noticed that the door to President Hunt’s office was ajar. He tapped on it and walked in. The administrative assistant, Kim McMurty, was not behind her desk. That was a disappointment. She always reminded him a bit of the actress Nicole Kidman, perhaps better looking actually, and he had to admit he was smitten with Kim in a friendly sort of way, friendly, of course, because her husband, the director of computer services, was a darn good friend… and besides, Mary was still a haunting presence. What had just happened with Makala? He wasn’t sure how to react to her now.

“President Hunt?”

“In here.”

John walked into the back office and was startled.

Hunt seemed to have aged a dozen years in as many days, eyes sunken, hair disheveled, and then John wondered how he looked as well, still wobbly, unshaved, filthy, exhausted.

“John, you look like hell.”

“Well, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look like hell, too.”

Dan pointed to a chair and John sat down. He had always liked this office. John looked back and saw Makala out in Kim’s office. Makala nodded and left, motioning that she’d wait outside.

The first time he had come to this office to be interviewed for the job that Bob Scales had engineered for him, what caught his eye was three paintings on the far wall. The first was what was to be expected of a president of a Christ-centered college, a nicely framed section from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, the hand of God reaching out to touch Adam.

The other two, though. The second was sort of a transition between religion and the military, a painting of Washington, kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge, praying. The third was Howard Pyle’s The Nation Makers, a stunning portrait of a line of Revolutionary War infantry going into battle, men tattered but defiant, the American flag little more than a rag but going forward relentlessly to what could only be ultimate victory.

The paintings were still there, as always, but as John turned to look back out the window at the students drilling, Pyle’s work took on new meaning.

Dan was silent and then, to John’s surprise, reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of scotch and a couple of coffee cups.

“If the board of trustees ever knew about this, they’d hang me,” Dan said, and John wondered it he was being serious or just joking. It was, after all, a dry campus.

John took the offered cup and waited for Dan to pour an ounce. He held it up.

“For the Republic, may God preserve her,” Dan said. The two drained the cups down in a single gulp, Dan exhaling noisily as he put his down.

“What’s up, John?” Dan asked.

“Well, sir, I guess you knew I was out of the loop for a week or so.”

“You had us scared there, John. At chapel every day for the last week Reverend Abel and the kids offered prayers for you.”

“Well, it most certainly worked,” John said, looking down at his hand. “What about classes. Are they still meeting?”

Dan shook his head.

“Remember, most of our faculty live miles from here; no, classes are canceled.”

“But you still hold daily chapel.”

“Now more than ever,” Dan said quietly.

That was reassuring, darn reassuring, a link to the past somehow. And yes, as well, in any time of crisis churches would fill up again. The Sunday after 9/11 John remembered the small chapel he and Mary used to go to over in Swannanoa was packed to overflowing.

“I felt I should check in, see what was happening on campus. After all, this place is my job.” He hesitated. “No, actually my life in so many ways. I was wondering if there was anything I should be doing here now.”

“Appreciate that,” Hunt replied softly, “but I think you have other responsibilities now.” John said nothing.

“I heard about your role on what people are now calling the Council. I think it’s darn good you’re part of that. They need someone like you. Focus your efforts on that; don’t worry about us.”

“These are my kids, too, Dan. I worry about them.”

Outside came the echo of Washington’s voice, chewing someone out. He sounded like a Marine DI again, the right edge of sarcasm but, in respect to the traditions of the campus, at least no overtly sexual, scatological, or downright obscene phrases thrown in.

“To survive, to keep these kids alive, we’re selling our services,” Dan said quietly. “But there’s a lot more behind this as well.”

John stood up and walked to the window, empty cup in hand, and watched as Washington, finished with the inspection, now started to run the kids through some close-order drill.

“What is that out there?” John asked.

“First Platoon of Company A of the Black Mountain Militia,” Dan said.

“What?”

“Just that. Charlie Fuller and I agreed on it a couple of days ago. A hundred and fifty kids so far. The other two platoons are out on a conditioning run up to Graybeard and back. We’d have more, but that’s all the weapons we could find so far. Company B will start forming up once we get more weapons.”

“Isn’t this a little overboard?” John asked. “Hell, I know Washington’s a good man, a great man actually, but come on, Dan. What is he doing out there, getting turned on with old memories, that it’s Parris Island or Khe Sanh again?”

“In truth, John, yes. I guess you heard about the riot at the gap.”

“Yes.”

“It was then that Charlie realized something, and Washington had most likely put the bug in his ear already: we need an army.” John sighed.

“Three weeks ago those kids were dozing in classes, trying to sneak up to Lookout Mountain with their boyfriend or girlfriend, or maybe, just maybe, studying for exams. Now we’re making them into an army?”

“I was younger than them when I lost this,” Dan said, and he slapped his left leg, a hollow thump resounding. “You were a lieutenant at twenty-two yourself.”

“Yeah, but Dan, this is a college. A small Christian college up in the mountains of North Carolina. Somehow it just doesn’t feel right to me.”

“Where else in this entire valley are there four hundred young men and women, in fairly good shape to start with, intelligence pretty darn good, already imbued with a sense of identity for the school and those who lead it, like you, me, Washington?”

“I don’t know,” John sighed, watching as the column went to right flank march and two girls screwed up, Washington in their faces and reaming them out so that one was crying as she tried to march.

“We had six hundred kids here, on the day before things went down,” Dan said, now at John’s side and watching the kids drill.

“About a hundred and fifty have left, trying to strike out for home. That was hard; you were not here for that meeting in the chapel. A lot of praying, soul-searching. I advised them to stay. Told them that if anything, their parents would want them to stay here until this crisis was over, knowing that they would be safe. Most who left are local, a day’s walk away, but a couple of them are from Florida, said they felt they should try and get home.”

John shook his head. The ones trying to get to Florida were most likely now facing hundreds of thousands heading the other way.

“The rest agreed to stay. Remember how several years back we had all those discussions in faculty meetings about orienting the college more to service? A couple of other colleges in the area, our rivals, were touting that all the time, so we put into the curriculum community service. That’s what we’re doing now.”

“Dan, there’s a helluva difference between kids working at a homeless shelter or community day-care center and drilling like an army.”

“I don’t think so, John. The times, as the old song went, are a-changin’.”

The column of students turned and marched back across the green, weapons at the shoulder, and the sight of it sent a chill down his spine. He looked back at Pyle’s painting and then back to them.

My God, no difference, John realized. The tradition of close-order drill was a primal memory left over from the days when armies really did go into battle that way, shoulder to shoulder. Today it was supposedly about discipline and spirit and the fact that soldiers were at least expected to march. But no different, no different from what he used to talk about with such enthusiasm at the Civil War Roundtable and see at reenactments.

The difference was, though, this was for real. From close-order drill Washington would take them to elementary tactics: fire and movement, holding a fixed position, laying down fields of fire, assault of a fixed position, marksmanship, leadership in combat, emergency first aid, infiltration tactics, hand-to-hand combat, how to kill with a knife, how to kill with your bare hands.

The sight of them drilling such struck home, as forcefully as what John had been forced to do in the park.

“Washington thinks the world of you,” Dan said. “By the way, he told me what happened in the park. Said you handled yourself well.”

“Handled myself well? I puked my guts out.”

“No, not that. First time you shoot someone, if you got any heart in you, any touch of the divine spark, you should be horrified.” He looked off.

“I lost my leg during Tet. The day before that, though, I was on point, turned the corner of a trail, and there he was….” He sighed, shaking his head. “The Thomas Hardy poem, remember it?”

John nodded. “‘I shot at him and he at me, And killed him in his place.’”

“Well, I got him first; he was walking point for his unit and we just ran into each other. Before I even quite realized it I emptied my M16 into him. Hell of a firefight exploded, and I was on the ground, lying by his side, and I could hear him gasping for air. Do you know what he said?”

John was silent, half-suspecting.

“He was crying for his mother. I understood enough of the language to know that….”

His voice trailed off and John could see tears in Dan’s eyes.

“The kid I shot,” John said, “certainly wasn’t calling for his mother. He died filled with hate.”

“Perhaps he sees things different now,” Dan replied. “I know it’s not orthodox with some, but I have a hard time not seeing God as forgiving, even after death.”

John tried to smile. There were some on campus who were rather traditionally “hard-line” in their views of salvation. Dan had never voiced this view before and it was a comfort, for the memory of that twisted kid’s final seconds lingered like a recurring nightmare.

“Washington told me how you reacted and the kids know that, too. Remember, this is a Christian school and the reaction could have been bad if it seemed you were cold-blooded about it. So a lesson was taught there, John, but it’s what you said as well that resonated.

“Washington and later Charlie Fuller told me that at that moment we as a community were balanced on a razor. Charlie had made the right decision, but he did not know how to see it carried through correctly.

“You did. At that moment we could have sunk into a mob or, worse, a mob that would then follow a leader, even a leader of good heart like Charlie, but still follow him with bloodlust and thus would start the slide.

“You’re the historian; you know that of all the revolutions in history, only a handful have truly succeeded, have kept their soul, their original intent.”

Though it struck John as slightly melodramatic, Dan pointed to the portrait of Washington kneeling in the snow.

“I don’t think we are in a revolution,” John said. “We’re trying to survive until such time as some order is restored. Communications up, enough vehicles put back on the road to link us together again as a nation.”

“But suppose that never happens,” Dan said quietly.

“What?”

“Just that, John. Suppose it never happens. Suppose the old America, so wonderful, the country we so loved, suppose at four fifty P.M. eighteen days ago, it died. It died from complacency, from blindness, from not being willing to face the harsh realities of the world. Died from complacent self-centeredness. Suppose America died that day.”

“For heaven’s sake, Dan, don’t talk like that,” John sighed.

“Well, I think it did die, John. I think our enemies caught us with total surprise. We should have seen it. I’m willing to bet there were a hundred reports floating around Congress warning of this, experts who truly did know their stuff screaming that we were wide open. It happens to all nations, all empires in history. Hell, you’re the historian; you know that. And at the moment it does happen, no one believes it actually is happening. They can’t comprehend how their own greatness can be humbled by another whom they view as being so beneath them, so meaningless, so backwards so as not to be a threat. You know that, John. Nine-eleven, Pearl Harbor, were like fleabites in comparison to this.”

“The Mongols hitting Eastern Europe in 1241,” John said softly. “The Teutonic Knights, when they first saw the Mongols at the Battle of Leignitz, supposedly laughed hysterically at the sight of their opponents on horses so small they were the size of ponies. Ponies that would be crushed under the first charge of lancers. They lowered their lances, charged, and at a hundred and fifty yards the Mongols decimated them with their compound bows, unheard of in Europe, each bolt hitting at fifty yards with the kinetic energy of a .38. Thirty thousand Mongols annihilated tens of thousands of Europe’s finest that day.”

Dan nodded.

“The French knights at Crecy mocking the English longbowmen. The British mocking us at Monmouth and Cowpens. The Germans disdainful of the Russians in 1941,” John said.

“And us in Vietnam,” Dan said quietly, “though that was not a war for our national survival, but it certainly was for them. I remember going over there filled with a bunch of crap about how we were going to walk all over the gooks. Well, I’ve not walked right since.

“Nation makers out there, John. Some of our profs might think I’ve sold this college to the community, but the hell with them. I know a college nearby, one that put out a lot of majors in peace studies, and if there was a protest anywhere against our military, they’d show; it was almost required. If an army recruiter ever showed up there, they’d get mobbed, all in the name of peace of course. Can you imagine you or me ever getting a job there? Diversity worked for them only as long as you toed the line with their views, and now the whirlwind is upon us.” He sniffed derisively. “They’ll never make it now. I bet on that campus, today, they’re sitting around like the French nobles did at Versailles even as the mob swarmed over the gates. I bet they’re singing ‘Give Peace a Chance,’ even as they starve to death.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen to my kids,” Dan said coldly, “and in our doing so our community will survive as well.”

“A hundred and fifty for Company A. Another hundred for Company B once we get the weapons in. You take a close look and a couple of those kids are carrying reenactor Springfields from the Civil War by the way. The others are doing community service work or working on other projects. Kids that helped stop the salmonella outbreak, volunteering up at the isolation ward. Already have a crew of kids starting to cut firewood for the winter. Professor Daniels with the outdoor ed department figures we can retrofit a couple of the old oil boilers to burn wood in this building and the library and have steam heat. We’ll need over three hundred cords of wood, though. Professor Lassiter is talking about rigging up a water turbine in the dam at Lake Susan. He thinks we could have it up and running by autumn and have electricity.” John could not help but smile.

Most of the towns in the area, back a hundred or more years ago, first got their electricity that way. Entrepreneurs would come in, sell the community a generator, show them how to hook it up to a mill dam, string some wire, and the miracle, what was then the miracle, of electricity arrived.

“Professor Sonnenberg tells me that in our school library are back issues of Scientific American all the way back to the 1850s. Also Popular Mechanics. In those golden pages are plans from eighty years ago, a hundred years ago, to build radios, telegraphs, steam engines, batteries, internal combustion engines, formulas for nearly every advance in chemistry.

“In our library we got darn near every issue of Mother Earth News, and the Foxfire books.” Dan chuckled at that. “Most of the other profs had viewed such publications with disdain, but on the faculty was a beloved old professor from before your time, now dead, who was definitely, as the kids said, ‘a granola eater.’ That prof left us a gold mine. How to find food, how to preserve it, how to store it up. We got several groups out now, those books in hand, harvesting enough to keep us alive. Hard to believe, John, but rattlesnake shish kebab isn’t all that bad.

“It’s all at our fingertips if only we look down at our fingertips to see it there.

“But the kids out there must keep this place secure and, if need be, buy time.”

“Buy time for what? We have the passes secured.”

“You know about the fight there, don’t you?” Dan asked. “Yes.”

“Well, that was a disorganized mob. Word is starting to filter in that groups are starting to come together. Most are just scared people banding together for survival and mutual protection, exactly what we are doing here. But some, John, there’s rumors about cults. A family that was allowed to pass through here yesterday, actually heading east, coming out of Tennessee, said that over by Knoxville there’s a guy claiming this is the start of a holy war.”

“And let me guess, it’s his vision of holiness you subscribe to or you die.”

Dan nodded his head.

“Says that Jesus appeared to him just before the power went off and gave him his mission, that he is the new John the Baptist preparing the way for the final return. And good God, supposedly there are hundreds now following him and killing those who disagree.”

“Several weeks, that’s all it’s taken,” John sighed.

Dan rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Just remember Ecclesiastes, John: ‘A time for war, a time for peace.’”

“So now it’s back to this. And back to kids drilling on the town green. I want to think that across America, today, there’s a thousand such groups drilling in order to keep civilization intact so that we don’t become a mob where one eats only because he is stronger than others or we kill each other in an insane frenzy of crazed beliefs.”

“That’s why those kids out there are drilling and that’s why I want you to be in command of them.”

“Me?” he asked, incredulous at the suggestion. “Hell, you’re the one with the vision.”

“I’m a college president,” Dan said with a smile. “A one-legged college president.”

“A wounded war veteran,” John replied sharply.

“Yeah, a dumb eighteen-year-old kid from Mocksville, North Carolina, so damn stupid I couldn’t see I was in a mine field. But I got the GI Bill, disability checks, and, since I could no longer run or play ball, a realization that I had to be something else. So here I now sit.

“John, while we work here, I want you to lead in the town. Charlie is a good man, a damn good man, but his focus, it’s on the moment, on survival for the community, and God bless him for it. But we need something more. We need someone with vision who can see beyond, like the song said, ‘to patriots’ dreams…’ You have the respect of everyone in this town now. The kids, the community, the police, Charlie, everyone.”

“Why?” John said coldly. “Because I fumbled the job of blowing some junkie’s brains out?”

“No, because of what you said before you blew his brains out, as you now so crudely put it. Maybe that poor devil-consumed kid really did have a purpose in life after all. Maybe it was to give you that moment.

“For some, the fact that you did shoot him, well, for some that created fear and awe. But for the rest, they heard your words and will not forget them. John, that gives you a power. And you did hold the rank of colonel and were offered a star, which you turned down for Mary’s sake. Mary’s family is an old family here and you tossing over being a general to bring her home was the talk of the town back then, and I think you saw on day one the respect everyone held for you.”

Frankly, he did not; he was far too focused on Mary and, yes, somewhat bitter as well that the powers that be in the Pentagon had not found a way around his problem, but that was in the past and for so many reasons now especially he thanked God he was here in this place.

“Dan, my entire combat experience was a hundred hours in Desert Storm, nearly all of it locked up in a command Bradley, one minor jolt when a shell landed a hundred yards away, and that was it. Heck, give it to Washington. He’s the DI; he’s the guy who was at Kha Sanh.”

“He doesn’t want it and he fully agrees with what I’m saying here now.

“He explained it to me the other day when we began to plan this unit and the question came up of command. I left it open, at first thinking he’d take it, but he immediately said you should be the one.”

“What did he say?”

“He laughed. Said he knew he was the best DI in the United States Marine Corps, but it takes more than that to lead an army. He wants someone with an advanced education, someone who will remain cool under stress, someone who’s studied war and knows the history of it and can thus apply it in a crisis. Of course that means you, John. I think if it ever comes to a major fight it should be Washington on the firing line, but he wants someone like you behind him.”

“I still think he should lead.”

“He’s von Steuben out there, John, even though his name is Washington, and he knows that. It’s your job and Charlie agreed that if a crisis comes where a militia is needed, you lead it.”

“Thanks, as if I wanted it.”

“John, if you really did want it, I don’t think your name would have been in the hat. We wanted someone who would see it as a service and, above all else, even while defending this community would be thinking ahead to afterwards.

“John, we dream of America. We want America to come to us. But I think it never will. The America we knew died when those warheads burst. If so, then it is up to us to not wait, but instead to rebuild America as we want it to be.”