One Second After Read online

  John shifted the Glock to his left hand and, for the first time in years, made the sign of the cross; then he shifted the pistol back.

  Reverend Black stepped away from Bruce, who now struggled to make a show of standing up straight. John suddenly realized there should have been something, blindfolds, sacks over their heads.

  No, get it done; get it done quick.

  “Move closer,” Washington whispered. “Fire and I’ll fire with you.” John looked straight at Larry, who was now only ten feet away. “Go ahead; do it,” Larry said coldly.

  It all seemed to move so slowly. Without ceremony, flourish, John raised the pistol, centered it on the man’s chest. At the very last instant Larry started to move, to try to fall to one side.

  John squeezed the trigger.

  He saw the impact; Larry staggered backwards against the concrete wall. The roar of Washington’s .45 exploded next to him, startling him. He saw his second shot miss, striking above Larry’s head as he slid down against the wall, leaving a bloody streak.

  Two more quick shots from Washington’s .45.

  John fought to center his Glock, aimed at Larry’s midsection; he was kicking feebly. John could hear screams behind him. He fired again, again, and then again.

  A hand was on his shoulder. It was Washington.

  “The head,” Washington said softly.

  John walked up to Larry. Was he dead? Blood was pooling out under his body, the front of his pants wet, another stench added in, bladder and bowels having let go.

  There seemed to be a flicker of eye movement. John aimed at the center of Larry’s head, standing over him, and fired.

  A second later another explosion, the coup de grace being delivered to Bruce.

  Woodenly, John turned. All were now staring at him, all silent. Hands to mouths, a few were crying. The way they looked at him, it was different, different from anything he had ever seen before in the eyes of people gazing at him. Fear… awe… revulsion… from a few strange glazed eyes almost a look of envy and lust.

  He felt the vomit coming up. He had to control it. He held the Glock up, not sure if he had actually emptied it or not. His student Jeremiah was standing in the crowd, and John made eye contact. Jeremiah stepped forward and John handed him the gun.

  “Secure the gun and meet me at the car,” John whispered.

  He turned and walked away from the crowd, got behind the concrete wall, bent double, and vomited.

  Gasping, he remained doubled over.

  “It’s ok, sir.” It was Washington.

  John looked up at him, suddenly ashamed.

  “Puked my guts out the first time I killed a man. Sir, if you hadn’t I’d of been worried about you.”

  “Stop calling me ‘sir,’ god damn it,” John hissed between the continuing heaves.

  “You did the right thing, sir. You did it well.”

  “Well? How can you say killing a man like that was done well?”

  “No, sir. Not that. It’s always a stinking mess. I mean what you said. That’s why I call you ‘sir’ now. We used to joke about it before. Frankly, sir, you were a professor type, but I knew you were a colonel, so I played along. But today, sir, you led out there, you faced something horrible, and you led.”

  “Ok,” John sighed.

  “Come on; let’s get out of here.”

  John nodded. Wiping his mouth with the hack of his hand. He winced with pain. His finger was infected and the act of shooting the Glock had ripped the cut wound open.

  He came back around the wall and the crowd, mysteriously, was all but gone. Few had hung around. The bodies were gone, Bartlett’s van already driving off.

  John realized he must have been behind the wall for long minutes.

  He was glad no one was around to see him now.

  A bit wobbly, he headed for his car.

  “John?”

  It was Makala.

  He didn’t recognize her at first. Gone was the sexy business suit. She had on a pair of baggy jeans, a few sizes too big, and an old faded T-shirt from Purdue University.

  “Thank you, John.”

  “For what, damn it?”

  “What you said back there before you had to shoot those two.” He nodded.

  “It’s been getting a little tense between those who lived here before and people like me who have wandered in. What you said needed to be said. It reminded us we’re one in this.”

  “Ok.”

  He really did not want to talk and he slowly continued to the car. “Let me look at that hand.”

  She stepped around in front of him and he winced as she pulled the bandage off.

  “John, it’s getting infected, badly infected. I told you to go home, wash it, and keep it protected.”

  He thought of the nursing home, carrying his father-in-law, the filth there.

  “I need to clean that out for you, John; it really should be stitched up.”

  “It can wait,” he said woodenly. “I just want to go home now.”

  “Ok then, I’ll go with you.”

  He glared at her coldly, a sick thought crossing his mind that perhaps she was turned on to him because of what he had just done, that or as an “outsider” she was ingratiating herself with a man who now obviously had power in the town.

  She stepped back slightly.

  “John. First, you’re getting an infection; in this situation you could lose your hand, or maybe even your life. Second, I heard about your father-in-law and the nursing home. I volunteered to go up there to help clean and take care of the folks. After I’m done with you, it’s a far shorter walk. Third, John, your little girl—Jennifer, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Monitoring her diet now is going to be tough. She should be checked every couple of days by a nurse or doctor. So just take me home with you; I’ll get done what needs to be done and then go up to the nursing home for the night.”

  “Ok.” It was all he could say.

  He got to the car, Washington and the two boys standing by it. Jeremiah handed the Glock back to John.

  “It’s cleared and empty, sir. Tom gave me a fresh clip; you’ll find it in your glove compartment.”

  Washington took the AR-15 and the two shotguns out of the vehicle.

  “We’ll walk back to campus, sir. Why don’t you just go home?”

  Phil stepped around and opened the door for Makala, who got in.

  John looked back to the blood-splattered wall and then, almost ironically, fifty yards beyond it, the flagpole and the flag floating atop it. The sky beyond it was darkening. A late afternoon thunderstorm building.

  He thought of Jeremiah’s question and wondered. Can we still keep this as America? Are we still America?

  * * *

  As he drove home he did not say a word.

  “Vomited, didn’t you?” she finally said, breaking the silence.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought you were a soldier.”

  “I am.… I mean I was. Not many soldiers, though, are trigger pullers. I was in Desert Storm, exec for a battalion with the First Cav. Saw fighting from a distance, but never actually pulled a trigger. Most of the time I was just hunched over a computer screen trying to direct the action.”

  “Sorry, that came out wrong,” Makala replied. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s just the way you handled that guy in the drugstore the other day. You struck me as someone who had seen combat before.”

  “No.”

  “It’s all right. I still get queasy at times during an operation. I damn near died when I walked into that nursing home last evening.”

  “Thanks for doing that.”

  “My job now, I guess.” The conversation died away.

  They pulled into the driveway. The two fools Ginger and Zach came running up, and at the sight of a stranger they showed typical golden retriever loyalty and went running straight to her, ignoring John.

  She laughed, scratching their ears as they jumped up to lick her,
both starting to bark as they danced around her. John headed for the door where Jen stood.

  “Thank God you’re home,” Jen said. “What happened? I’ve been worried sick all day about you.”

  “Went to Asheville like I told you.”

  She looked past John to Makala, who was coming up, the dogs trailing beside her. Jen’s eyes widened slightly and John could sense she was not pleased, that this woman was an invader in her territory.

  “Mom, I’d like you to meet Makala Turner. Makala, this is my mother-in-law, Jennifer Dobson.”

  The two nodded and shook hands.

  “Mom, you might recall Makala; she was the woman on the road the first evening.”

  “Oh, oh yes. My dear, I didn’t recognize you, given how you are dressed now.”

  “She’s a nurse, Mom. Head RN with a surgical unit, actually. She came here to check on Tyler, Jennifer, and this.” He held up his hand. Jen’s talons retracted and there was a smile. “Oh, come on in, dear.”

  “How is Tyler?” John asked.

  “Resting comfortably,” she said quietly.

  “The girls?”

  “Jennifer’s taking a nap. Her sugar level was up and she just took a shot. Elizabeth is out for a walk with Ben.”

  “Fine.”

  John walked into his office and left the two women, who went straight to what was now Tyler’s sickroom.

  John took the Glock out from his belt, looked at it, then laid it on his desk. He noticed now that the smell of cordite hung heavy on it, and on him.

  Reaching around to the back corner of the desk, he pulled out a dust-covered bottle. There had been several times in his life when drinking had damn near won out, the last time for several weeks after Mary died. The dust on the bottle was a reassurance. He poured a double scotch out into an empty coffee cup and drained it down in two gulps.

  The thunderstorm that had been on the western horizon rolled in, rain slashing against the window… a soothing sound.

  When Makala came into the room a half hour later to check his hand, he was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DAY 10

  “John, you look like crap warmed over.”

  He nodded, walking into the conference room for what had now become their daily meeting.

  “Thanks, Tom. I needed that.”

  In spite of Makala’s attention, John’s hand was still infected and he was running a fever of just over a hundred and a half.

  He settled into what was now his chair at the middle of the table. Interesting how quickly habits form regarding a meeting: sit in a chair once and the following day that’s where you sit again, symbolism of who sits at the foot and head of the table the same. Kate still held that symbolic position at the head, but it was actually Charlie now, sitting to her right, who ran the morning briefing, Tom at the foot of the table. Doc Kellor had become part of the team as well, sitting across from John. Two more were present, he didn’t recognize either, one dressed in a police uniform, a Swannanoa Police Department patch stitched on his sleeve, the second man in jeans and T-shirt, both in their midforties.

  John picked up the cup of coffee that was waiting for him with his left hand.

  “Let me look at that,” Kellor said, getting out of his chair and coming around the table.

  He eased back the surgical gauze that Makala had redressed the wound with the evening before.

  “Good stitching job, couldn’t have done better myself.”

  John said nothing. The dozen stitches Makala had sewed had been done without any painkiller other than a swig of a scotch, and he had sweated that out silently, though he had cursed a bit when she had dosed the wound with alcohol.

  Kellor leaned over and sniffed the bandage and shook his head. “How did it get infected like this?”

  “I think when I was carrying my father-in-law, at the nursing home.”

  “Treatment?”

  “Makala Turner, the nurse who volunteered to help run the nursing home, she put me on Cipro. Got some from the nursing home.”

  “Most likely fecal contact,” Kellor said, nodding and looking at the wound. “But you can also get some pretty tough strains of bacteria and viruses growing even in the cleanest hospital or home, strep or staph.

  “Let’s talk about this later,” Kellor said, and went back to his seat.

  Kate cleared her throat.

  “Ok, let’s get started. We got a new problem. Dr. Kellor, would you lead off?”

  The old “town doc” nodded.

  “We’ve got an outbreak of salmonella at the refugee center in the elementary school. It was bound to happen. I’ve got at least a hundred sick over there this morning. A mess, a damn mess.”

  “How did it get started?” Kate asked.

  Kellor looked at her with surprise.

  “Hell, Kate. People are used to running water, hundreds of gallons a day. Food with dates stamped on it; one day over the limit and we used to throw it out. There’s six hundred people camped there. At least we still have enough water pressure for the toilets to flush, but no hot water and, to be blunt, no toilet paper or paper towels as well. It’s getting nasty.

  “Come on, people. Think about it. Most of us haven’t bathed in ten days, toilet paper’s getting scarce, soup line meals twice a day at the refugee center, food now of real questionable safety, I’ll bet that damn near every person in there will be crapping their guts out and puking by the end of the day.”

  He sighed.

  “Seven dead this morning. I checked before coming over here. Two of them infants, the rest elderly. Dehydrated out and couldn’t get electrolytes into them fast enough. I’ll need more volunteers to go down there to help out, because it will be full-blown by the end of the day.”

  No one spoke. The thought of a school building full of people in that condition… it left the rest in the room silent.

  “Remember Katrina and that god-awful Superdome?” Charlie sighed. “Is that what we got?”

  “Worse,” Kellor replied. “Screwed up as their administration was, ultimately help was on the way, even though a lot of people started to panic with insane reports of murder and rape. We don’t have that here at all, but on the other side, the cavalry is not going to come rushing in with helicopters loaded with supplies. We are on our own.

  “We need to get some clean vats for sterile water; we can mix up an electrolyte batch like what is used in emergency relief in third-world countries.

  “We are a frigging third-world country now,” the police officer from Swannanoa said softly.

  “It’s simple enough. Just pure water, we still have that, don’t we, Charlie?”

  “What is coming out, gravity fed, from the reservoir is still clean, at least as of the last time our water department people tested it yesterday.”

  “I worry about that. All you need are some folks camping around the reservoir, one of them has a bug and relieves himself by the lake, and all of us are sick.”

  Charlie looked over at Tom.

  “We better get a few men up there patrolling the lake. No campers.”

  The fishing in the lake was one of the more poorly guarded secrets of the community across the years. The reservoir, shared with Asheville, was supposedly strictly off-limits to everyone, even before all this had started. But many were the kids who would sneak in there with a rod and pull out a trophy brown trout of ten pounds or more. Until an activist type in Asheville had blown the whistle on it half a dozen years back, there was even a private fishing cabin in the woods just above the lake, a secret retreat for the higher-ups in Asheville and Black Mountain. A good-ole-boys club for a weekend of drinking and catching damn big trout on what they saw as their private lake.

  Chances now were that people were already looking to that lake as a source of food, and it would have to be stopped.

  “We need to mix up a batch of several hundred gallons of clean water, mixture of salt and sugar; it’ll keep the electrolyte balance. Then start pouring it down the t
hroats of those poor people. In nine out of ten cases they’ll just be damn sick for a few days and then pull through.”

  “And the tenth case?” Charlie asked.

  Kellor sighed.

  “Without IVs, the elderly, children under a year, people already weak from other diseases.” He paused and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “I’ll estimate thirty dead, maybe fifty by tomorrow night.”

  Charlie folded and unfolded his hands.

  “Who will organize the volunteers?” Charlie asked.

  John sighed.

  “I’ll go up to the campus. See if we can roust out some kids.”

  “Promise them a damn good meal at the end of it,” Charlie said. “One of my men got a deer last night. I got it hidden. Venison steak dinner in exchange for a day’s work.”

  “I doubt if they’ll be hungry after what we’re throwing them into, but I’ll see,” John said.

  Kellor nodded.

  “Have them report to me by noon, right here. I’ll have to brief them on their own safety before they go over there.” John nodded.

  “Ok, that brings me to something we might not want to talk about,” Charlie said, “but I think we should. Burying the dead.”

  “We bury them as we always have, don’t we?” Kate asked.

  “There’s no cemetery within town limits. The nearest one is over two miles away. I’m starting to think long term here, people. Not just this case with the salmonella but across the next several months.”

  No one replied.

  “I’m thinking the town golf course across the street from the park.”

  “What?” Tom replied. “That’s crazy. You’re talking about the golf course?”

  “Exactly. It’s within an easy walk of the center of town. There was a lot of grading done when it was built, all of it soil, easy to dig. The approach up to the sixth green, that’s all graded soil half a dozen feet deep or more. Remember, there’s no more backhoes to dig graves, it’s back to shovels, and I want graves dug deep and quick.”

  “Damn it, Charlie, that’s the town golf course,” Tom interjected.

  “As if anyone is going out today to do eighteen holes?” Charlie replied sharply. “Hell, even you only play with an electric cart. I think we need a cemetery and close by, not out on the other side of Allen Mountain.