One Year After: A Novel Page 12

  In spite of the heat, Dale still wore the blue blazer as if it were a uniform but, perhaps in a gesture of informality, had foregone the necktie, which, ever since the Day, was something rarely seen. Makala was out to meet him with a courteous smile, directing him around the back walkway to the sunroom. Elizabeth, with Ben in her arms, had agreed with the suggestion that she take the toddler for a walk to avoid any maudlin encounter and for Jen to just stand clear, even though the woman was eager to “give that bastard a piece of my mind”—said, of course, with proper Southern ladylike charm.

  John made a slight gesture to get up, but Dale, smiling, extended a hand.

  “Don’t bother; you’re the one that’s wounded. Just relax, John.”

  Makala, role-playing a proper hostess, returned a few minutes later with a tray and two cups of fresh mint tea, and then she left the room, closing the door behind her.

  “How you doing, John? When I heard what happened, I was preparing to send an operation up over the mountain to see if we could pull you out.”

  That would have been one helluva mess, John thought without replying at first, sipping the soothing brew. Not coffee, with which Burnett had spoiled him for several days, but still good.

  “So what happened?” Dale asked, leaning forward attentively. Then he hesitated. “If you feel okay to talk. Your wife said you were pretty banged up.”

  “Not too bad, actually. They didn’t kill me on the spot, and once the trade for salt was arranged, I knew I’d get out of it alive.”

  He didn’t mention that he had also been shot and if not for the Kevlar vest, he most certainly would have been dead.

  “Trading you for salt. Damn barbaric. Perhaps we should talk about working together on this. It’s about time these—what do you call them? Reivers? I just call them damn bandits—got taken out.”

  John sipped at his tea and nodded. Perhaps it was the way Makala had first reacted to Dale, but his instinct was to just sit back and play the concussed and very fatigued ex-prisoner for a while.

  “Do you have the personnel to launch that kind of operation?” John finally asked. “Once off Interstate 26, you get into some pretty wild country now. There are reiver groups holed up in every county from Tennessee clear on up to Virginia and most likely beyond.”

  Dale smiled. “More assets are coming in every day. Bluemont is really pulling out all the stops to bring places like this back in line. From what I’ve learned about you, John, you’re a man worth saving.”

  “Appreciate that, Dale. But it didn’t prove necessary, after all.”

  There was a long pause, Dale absently stirring his untouched tea with a spoon and then looking back at John. “I think I got some good news for you regarding that draft call.”

  With that, John did sit up slightly.

  “I kicked your concerns straight up the ladder to Bluemont. We have a good radio hookup now. Even got through to the new secretary of National Unification.”

  “The what?”

  “Secretary of National Unification.”

  “Never heard of it till just now.”

  “Well, word does travel a bit slow yet. The president decided that the task of reestablishing functioning government in the lower forty-eight states required a separate branch of government.”

  “What about the Department of Defense? Its mission since the day the Constitution went into effect was to protect and defend this nation.”

  “But that does get a bit dicey when it is matters of internal security, John. As a military man, you know that. We’re fighting a situation here on two fronts. Foreign incursions under the guise of humanitarian aid, but we all know they came here maybe to help at the start but are now here to stay. That is obviously a task for our traditional military. The lawlessness inside our country, though, that used to be the job of the various states themselves. It was decided we needed a new kind of national force to address that while Department of Defense handled the border situations.”

  “So who is this secretary of National Unification?”

  “Secretary Jensen. Used to be a senator from the Midwest. Good, solid man—I know him personally. He’s the one who pushed for this new national mobilization.”

  “I see. And the men and women mobilized, will they be sworn into our army or into some new force?”

  “Standard oath to defend the Constitution and acknowledge the president as commander in chief, but they will answer in chain of command through Jensen to the president,” he replied casually. “We’re trying to work at the local levels to find out who did service in the traditional military and call them back in to train and lead these new troops. It is one of the reasons I felt it essential to see you as soon as possible, and thank God you are alive.”

  “Why?” John asked cautiously.

  “I spoke personally to Jensen about you. What you accomplished. John, though you’re over fifty, we feel your country needs you. You’ve done your job here in Black Mountain; in fact, it could serve as a model for a thousand other towns that all but collapsed. They want to promote you to the rank of major general—in fact, even arrange transport by air up to Bluemont and put you to work up there.”

  “My God,” John whispered. Major general? He had turned down a one-star promotion because of Mary and cancer, moving here so many years ago. The path in life not taken, which he never for a moment regretted. But major general?

  “John, you accomplished a miracle here, and everyone knows it. Think of what you could do for your country working at the federal level at Bluemont, helping to pull things back together.”

  “But what about here?” John asked.

  “I have a second piece of news for you, General Matherson,” Dale said, smiling broadly, interrupting John’s musings.

  “Don’t call me that yet,” John replied, his tone a bit icy. “A soldier is not addressed by a rank until it becomes formal, sir.”

  Dale fumbled a bit and muttered an apology.

  “So what’s the news?” John asked, trying to sound relaxed again.

  “I got deferments from the draft for most of your people from this town, so you don’t have to worry about security here.”

  “What?”

  “Deferments for the draft from your community. It took some talking, but Secretary Jensen relented—said we can cut the number by half with you coming aboard. I explained that with your leaving, additional personnel needed to be left behind for security purposes.” He paused. “At least for now.”

  “For now? What do you mean?”

  “I daresay by the time there would be any additional call-ups, you and the team up in Bluemont will have set things straight. But anyhow, the draft allotment for Black Mountain, Montreat, and Swannanoa has been cut from 113 to 56. We’ll need to discuss who you have here who are vets with combat experience. If they are not on the draft list but volunteer, they’ll most likely step in as NCOs and officers. That will cut the number drafted, as well. We got a promise as well that the unit from here will most likely go with you to Bluemont to help provide security there. Light duty and not some of the tougher assignments like the rebellions in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago.”

  “Who will pick the fifty-six?” John asked.

  “You, of course,” Dale replied, smiling broadly. “You know the community, the hardship cases, the ones that can be called up without too much stress on their families.”

  “So I become the judge, the head of the draft board, is that it?”

  “I think you are the best man qualified. I read that was how it was done back during the Second World War and Vietnam. Local draft boards. If you feel strongly about particular cases, you can assign someone else to go. When we drew up the draft list, we had to rely on a list of those who signed up for ration cards when the army was here last year. I worried that the list was incomplete and believe you can work it out in a fair manner.”

  So that is how they got the names, John thought. There had been some limited allotments of rations, MREs from the army
battalion based in Asheville, but those who took them had to fill out ration cards.

  “John, I know you are a man of integrity and fair play. I assume you’ll pick your daughter for the draft as an example for the rest of the community. Do so and she can then serve as your adjutant up in Bluemont. I heard how you trained the unit here and the way they fought in the action against the Posse and provided security for the community ever since. I think with experienced young men and women like that, the basic training can be skipped, and they just go into a unit that would serve directly under you.”

  “It sounds good, Dale, and I appreciate your effort on my behalf. Please don’t think I’m not grateful, but honestly, at the moment, I feel like a size-ten head stuffed into a size-five hat. I need a little time to think this over.”

  “Sure, John, sure. Sleep on it. Why don’t you and your lovely wife come up my way for dinner when you’re feeling better, and we can talk about it more then?”

  John nodded, not replying.

  Dale stood up as if to leave, saying he’d show himself out. He reached for the back door and then stopped. “Say. I heard some of your old students got a new electrical generator system running and are looking at starting to wire up the town. Is that right?”

  “How did you hear that?”

  “Word of such wonders travels fast. Mind if I go up to take a look at what they’re doing? If those kids are all that some are reporting, I got far bigger projects waiting for them in Asheville.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be glad to show you around their workshop and power plant.”

  “Thanks, John. Now get some rest.”

  As the screen door slammed shut, the Humvee outside roared to life.

  There was a gentle tapping on the door. It cracked open, and Makala peeked in.

  “Enter?” she asked with a smile, and he nodded. “You look exhausted, John. We’ll talk about whatever happened later, but for now, dear patient, you need to get some sleep.”

  She slipped out of the darkened room, but sleep would not come. There was far too much to think about now.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DAY 738

  “So that’s the offer,” John said to the hundreds gathered in the town square, finishing up a recounting of his discussion with Dale two days earlier.

  The members of the town council had come to sit down with John the day after Fredericks’s visit. No one was really sure how to read their new district administrator. He seemed friendly enough, but all were bothered by the fact that, after finishing his visit with John, he had spent a fair part of the day “poking around,” as Ed put it. He had indeed been up to the dam to talk to Paul and Becka, then to the campus to watch as the students still living there were running through a practice drill of clearing a house, using the MacGregor dorm with several “aggressors” hiding inside. The fact that Dale had seen only that troubled John; he was concerned it would leave the wrong impression that the college had become nothing more than a military barrack.

  Fredericks had then made a show of going about town in his Humvee, rarely talking to anyone. John knew the reaction to Fredericks was actually rather normal. Across the previous two years, he and the community had learned how to function on their own. What Ed and the others saw as “poking around” was a normal part of an inspection tour upon taking a new command. Most would look askew at new guys until they had proven themselves. Though John had his own questions—and Makala had outright disdain—he was willing to concede a testing-out time.

  “The few that cornered him long enough to ask about the draft,” Ed continued, “were given a stock reply, John, that the two of you were working out an arrangement that ‘everyone will be happy with.’”

  So the word was out. After the visit by the town council, it was decided to call for a town-square meeting to be held in the town park if the weather was good. Makala had objected to the physical strain of him addressing what might be several hundred or more who might get a bit ugly, but he felt it had to be done before he went back to Asheville. The town still had a functional bullhorn, and she insisted that everyone understood why he was sitting down rather than his usual method of delivery, which was on his feet, walking about and into the crowd.

  * * *

  The crowd was far bigger than he had expected, five hundred or more. A mixed array of vehicles were parked along State and Main—motorcycles and mopeds, precomputerized cars from the ’50s and ’60s, tractors, vehicles that ran on recycled cooking oil, an old flatbed tractor trailer from up in Swannanoa that hauled fifty or more people in, even half a dozen cars with the strange-looking canvas balloons on their roofs storing gas from charcoal burners strapped to tailgates or pickup truck flatbeds. How those worked John still couldn’t figure out, but apparently they had been something of a fixture on the streets of Japan in the final months of the Second World War.

  They opened with what was now the firm tradition of Reverend Black offering a prayer, followed by the news. The public announcement was made of Pat Stepp’s death; at John’s behest, Reverend Black did not state the cause of death, and then he quickly moved on to the happy news of three births in the community. Then the group sang the national anthem and pledged to the flag.

  The first question from the crowd actually asked for a brief account of what had transpired with the reivers. With a couple dozen of the Stepp family present, he thought it best not to have two controversies blow in one night, so he simply said he was taken prisoner, traded for salt—for which, since it came from the town supplies, he would personally find a way to compensate the community—expressed remorse for the loss the Stepps had endured, and said that, henceforth, the guard along that border would be doubled. He felt it best to talk to the Stepps afterward, in private, to ask how they felt about a truce rather than seeing them go out on a vendetta raid.

  And then he recounted the discussion with Dale, struggling a bit to remember precisely the nature of the exchange, asking for forgiveness if he had forgotten anything but that he was still rather battered up when Dale had arrived. Taking a deep breath, he opened the meeting for questions, asking that folks step up in front of all and speak loudly so all could hear, and that if anyone wished to comment, to keep it to the agreed-upon limit of two minutes; otherwise, they would be at it half the night.

  The community had reverted in many ways to the old New England tradition of open town meetings, except in cases of actual trials for crimes, which were again handled as they had been before the Day. Norm Schiach, the town’s well-respected lawyer, acted as judge. There was no town jail other than a holding tank in the police station for the drunk and disorderly. Theft of food was still considered to be just about the most heinous of offenses, and several times, the punishment of banishment from the community had been the sentence. The starving times were still such a close memory that all saw such an act as close to murder.

  John finished his description of the conversation with Dale Fredericks and then dropped the bomb—that he had been offered a position with the federal government and that if he accepted, the draft for their community would be cut in half. That caused a stir, and it was several minutes before the meeting came somewhat back to order. He sighed inwardly.

  Ernie Franklin was already on his feet, and half a dozen followed him, ready to pull the parliamentarian game that as Ernie’s time was up, the next person behind him would just announce, “I yield my time to speak to Ernie,” who could then continue to press whatever it was he was peeved about.

  It was going to be a long night, and regardless of how his head still throbbed, John would have to play his role.

  “So let me get this straight,” Ernie said without preamble or need for introduction. “You volunteer to go in with the fancy rank of major general and half of those who got draft notices are let off the hook. Is that it, John?”

  “Yes. If I volunteer, the draft quota is cut in half.”

  “So which half goes if you accept?”

  “I didn’t say I’d volunteer,�
�� John replied. “I just said that was the offer.”

  “Well, are you going to volunteer, John? I mean, what the hell … you get to be a major general. Rations must be damn good with those pencil pushers who created this mess in the first place and then ran to their bunkers up in Virginia, most likely even get some sort of pay, as well.”

  “Like I said, Ernie, I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Why not volunteer? You get to be a major general, the draft for our town is cut in half, and the other half gets a safe assignment with you. It strikes me as a darn good deal, John, for you and for us.”

  There was a loud muttering of agreement from the crowd.

  “I have to look at all the factors, Ernie, and ultimately, it’s a personal decision.”

  “Personal? This is about more than a hundred families here. I don’t see that as a personal decision just for you to make.”

  Maury Hurt, arm still in a sling, came to his feet. “Who the hell are you, Ernie, to tell him what to do? Frankly, I think the offer stinks, putting John in a position of damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. The way it was offered, putting John on the spot like this, tells me something isn’t kosher with this deal. I think we should have a vote that regardless of John’s decision, either we go along with the full draft or say no to the whole damn thing.”

  “Easy for you to say, Hurt,” Ernie retorted. “Your kids aren’t being called up.”

  That triggered an explosion of arguments and accusations. Reverend Black and Ed stood up by John’s side, shouting for order.

  Ed finally seized the bullhorn, yelling that if folks didn’t shut the hell up, the meeting was over and he’d clear the town square by force if need be. The crowd finally settled down, and Ed handed the bullhorn back to John.

  “I’m not comfortable with this offer of cutting the draft in half. Fredericks threw in the caveat that the cut was ‘for now.’”

  “Then get the statement in writing,” Ernie interjected. “John, it’s about whose ox is getting gored today, at this moment. I’ve lost one grandson in this already in the fight against the Posse; I’m not about to see others getting shipped off, and your decision can be a difference for all of us.”