One Second After Read online

  “Go on.”

  “I’m sorry, folks, but I feel like I’m in an old movie, set in medieval or ancient times,” John said. “We’re like two kingdoms here negotiating.”

  “Well, I guess that’s the way it’s getting,” Doc Kellor said. “But Swan-nanoa does have an outreach clinic from Memorial Mission. We could use that as a medical center. They had some equipment there for minor surgeries, emergencies, and such. Also three or four doctors in your town, that would give us a total of nine doctors for the community.”

  Carl nodded.

  “We protected the clinic from Day One. Had the same problem you did with some druggies….” He paused. “We shot them when they were trying to escape.”

  John did not ask for any details on that.

  “Governance. We can’t be divided off if we agree to work together on this. Everyone is in the same boat. So, what will it be?” Charlie looked at Carl.

  “I’ve known you for years, Charlie Fuller. As long as you are not tied into Asheville, I’ll be willing to take orders from you. Damn, I’ll be glad not to have to make some of these decisions.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Then Carl sits on this council,” John said.

  “Who are you?” Carl asked, looking straight at John.

  “He’s a history professor at the college. Ex-military, a colonel with combat experience.”

  John looked at Charlie. “Combat experience,” that was stretching it. “He advises us on legal stuff, moral issues, a smart man to have around.”

  “So why is he here in this meeting?” Carl asked calmly.

  John bristled slightly. How he had evolved into being here, well, it had simply started with his barging in, but now, after but a week, he felt the need to be here, and a purpose.

  “He is the one who executed the drug thieves,” Tom said. “Let’s just say he’s our compass. Professor type but ok.”

  Carl continued to hold eye contact with John and he wondered if there was going to be trouble.

  “My friend Mike Vance here, then I want him on this council, too. We didn’t have a mayor like you, but he was town manager.”

  John could see that Vance was someone who did what Carl wanted.

  “We’re not a democracy here,” John said, “though I regret to say that. We are under martial law and Charlie Fuller is in charge. We just advise. If we are to work together, it has to be Charlie’s word that is the final say.

  “Nice friend you have, Charlie,” Mike said quietly.

  “Mike, Carl,” and now it was Tom speaking. “We’ve got to work together, and I agree with John. Either Charlie runs it for all of us or the deal is off.”

  The room was filled with silence and Carl finally nodded.

  Charlie came around the table and Carl stood up, shaking his hand.

  John said nothing. The formal ritual had been played out. The kings had shaken hands and the treaty been made. It was the smart move, though he wondered if all would feel the same a month, six months, from now.

  Charlie went back to his chair and sat down.

  “With the extra vehicles, I know the answer already, but gas supply?”

  “We just drain it out of all the stalled cars on the highway for starters,” Tom said.

  “I know that, but should we start rounding that up now?”

  “Wouldn’t do that,” Mike interjected. “Gas goes bad over time. You can’t get it out of the gas stations until we rig up some sort of pumps. Inside a car, though, the tank is sealed, it will stay good in there longer than if we pull it out.

  “I know; I own a wrecking shop.”

  Like him or not, John realized, this man’s knowledge, at this moment, might be more valuable than his own.

  “All right then,” Charlie said. “Back to Asheville. Carl, you and I both got the same demand from their new director of public safety, Roger Burns.”

  “Asshole,” Carl said quietly, and Tom nodded in agreement. “That we’re to take ten thousand refugees in.”

  “He can kiss our asses,” Carl snapped back. “Ten thousand of those yuppies and hippies? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  John noted the change the alliance had already created. Now it was “we,” against “them.” He hoped that would last.

  The debate flared for several minutes, Kate leaning towards accepting it, that these were neighbors as well, that some semblance of order had to be reestablished on a county level, Carl and Tom flatly refusing.

  John wondered what was going on at this moment down in Winston-Salem, Charlotte, or far bigger cities, Washington, Chicago, New York. Most likely, by now millions were pouring out, at best organized in some way but far more likely in just a chaotic exodus, like a horde of locusts eating their way across the suburban landscapes. At least here geography played to their advantage, the choke points in the roads.

  He had already seized on the idea last night. Brilliant in its simplicity but frightful for all that it implied but ten days into this crisis.

  He waited for a pause in the debate.

  “I have a simple answer,” John said, “that will defuse the crisis without a confrontation.”

  “I’m all ears, Professor,” Carl said sarcastically. “Water.”

  “Water?” Carl asked, but John could already see the flicker of a grin on Carl’s face.

  “Their reservoir is in our territory. The deal is simple. Lay off the pressure, send their refugees somewhere else, or we turn the water off.”

  Carl looked at him wide-eyed for several seconds, then threw his head back and laughed.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “I think we are damned if we turn off the water to Asheville,” Doc Kellor interjected, and Kate nodded in agreement.

  “So do I,” John said quietly. “I don’t know if I could actually bring myself to do it. There’s a hundred thousand innocent people there, but this Burns character is playing power politics on us. But we hold the trump card. Send a message back. They still have their water but send the refugees somewhere else, that simple, no problem for them. If not, we blow the main pipe and the hell with them.”

  “Maybe that might provoke them to try and seize it by force,” Kate replied.

  John shook his head.

  “No way. Remember the hurricane in 2004. The main pipe out of the reservoir ruptured and it was one hell of a mess. Special parts had to be flown in from outside the state to repair it. Well, after that they know how vulnerable the water supply is. We make it clear that if they make a move we blow it and they’ll never get it back online.”

  “If we got that advantage, let’s press it,” Carl said. “I’ve heard they got dozens of railroad cars loaded with food and are hoarding it for themselves. We could demand some of that as well.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Tom said quietly. “You might be on to something there.”

  “I’m not reduced to that yet,” Kate snapped back. “Trading water for food. Not yet.”

  “Nor I; just keep it to the refugee problem. I think if we demand a cut of their supplies… they’ll fight, and remember, they do have the numbers we don’t have,” John quickly interjected, “and we’ll all wind up losers.

  “But regarding the refugees, let’s just say, we’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

  Charlie smiled.

  “That’s right; you’re from New Jersey originally.” John smiled.

  “They back off on the refugee issue and that water just keeps flowing.” Charlie looked around the table and all nodded.

  “Tom, send a courier back today. Use one of those mopeds we got running. I don’t want to risk a car the way we did the other day.”

  “A pleasure, Charlie. Wish I could see Burns’s face when he gets the note.”

  “Just remember this, though,” Charlie replied. “Our sewage runs to the treatment plant in Asheville. The filtration is most likely not running, chances are they’re dumping it straight into the French Broad, but still, if they close the pipe, it backs up cl
ear to our town here. They could shut that down in retaliation.”

  “Then we threaten to dump our raw sewage right into Swannanoa Creek, which runs downhill to Asheville,” Tom replied.

  “Jesus Christ,” Kellor sighed. “Are we getting reduced to this?”

  No one could reply.

  “All right,” Charlie said, “the big issue. Our roadblock on I-40 at the top of the gap.” He looked to Tom.

  “It’s getting bad there. Like we agreed to yesterday. I had someone take a note down to Old Fort at the bottom of the mountain asking them to post a sign that the road above was closed. Old Fort refused. They’ve got seven, maybe ten thousand refugees camped there, all of them trying to get up into these mountains. They want us to let the people pass; in fact, they’re encouraging them to hike up the interstate and, if need be, force their way through. The pressure is building. There’s refugees strung out all along the highway.

  “Last night one of my men shot and killed two of them.”

  “What?” Kate snapped. “I didn’t hear of this.”

  “Figured I’d bring it up this morning,” Tom said.

  “What happened?”

  “A crowd of about fifty just would not turn back. The men guarding the gap said they recognized several as folks who had been turned back earlier. They planned what they did and tried to rush us. Someone on their side started to shoot and my men fired back. Two dead on their side, about a dozen wounded.”

  Kate shook her head.

  “It’s going to get worse,” Tom said. “Remember what Mr. Barber said when he flew up here last week, the interstate clogged with refugees pouring out of Charlotte and Winston-Salem. Well, Charlotte is a hundred and ten miles from here, Winston-Salem about a hundred and forty. Give a family burdened down with stuff about ten to fifteen miles a day. That means the real wave is going to start hitting us today; I’m surprised it hasn’t been sooner. We might find twenty, thirty, maybe fifty thousand pushing up that road.”

  “Why I wanted this alliance,” Carl said. “You’re our back door. You let them in, we will be swamped. We’ll be caught between Asheville on the one side and those folks on the other. They’ll eat us clean in a day.”

  “Disease as well,” Kellor interjected.

  “I thought you said we have that already?” Carl asked.

  Kellor sighed and shook his head.

  “Salmonella, that’s lurking in any community. I’m talking about the exotics now. Large urban population. You’ll have carriers of hepatitis in every variant. What scares the hell out of me is a recent immigrant from overseas or someone stranded at the airport in Charlotte, which is a major hub. He might look well and feel well, but inside he might be carrying typhoid, cholera, you name it.

  “We got one of those in a crowd, given sanitation for those people walking here? Just simple hand contact or fecal to water supply or food distribution supply contact and that bacteria will jump. We give someone a plate of food, they haven’t washed their hands, we don’t clean that plate with boiling water, and within a week thousands will be sick and dying.

  “You ever seen cholera?” Kellor asked.

  No one spoke.

  “I did thirty years back. A mission trip to Africa. It makes salmonella look tame. People in those regions, most of them were exposed to it at some point in their lives and survived. We’re wide open to it. We are six, seven generations removed from it and we have no natural immunity. America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago.

  “We’re about to get reintroduced to life as it is now in Africa or most of the third world. Not counting the global flu outbreak of 1918, the last really big epidemic, one that killed off a fair percentage of a population in a matter of weeks, well, I think it was the Chicago typhoid epidemic back in the 1880s that killed tens of thousands. Water supply got polluted with typhoid and they died like flies. It made the famous fire pale in comparison when it came to body count.”

  “Inoculations?” Charlie asked.

  “Where?” Kellor said with a cynical laugh. “For typhoid or cholera? Those are inoculations administered by the county-level health departmerit for travelers overseas, and even then they have to be special ordered. I bet there’s not one person in a thousand in this valley protected against cholera, unless they’ve traveled to Africa or southern Asia, and damn few against typhoid.

  “Thank God our elevation is high enough, our climate cool enough, that I’m not worrying about mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, West Nile, and others. And don’t even get me started on how we better start looking out for parasitic worms, lice…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “We’ll see infections running rampant that won’t kill but will weaken, leaving the victim open for the next round. Kate, most guys don’t even think of it, but do you have a good supply of what we euphemistically call feminine hygiene products?”

  She blushed slightly.

  “For this month.”

  “Right there, gentlemen, though I bet a lot of women are thinking about it now or finding out real quick. They’re back to Great-grandma’s days, and that combined with no bathing, poor diet, we’ll see a soaring infection rate, and that’s just one of a dozen situations we never thought about before last week.

  “Johnnie steps on a rusty nail, get a tetanus shot. We might have a hundred of those left in the whole community. We might be staring at lockjaw come fall. Shall I go on?”

  No one spoke.

  John looked into his old friend’s eyes and could see that this doctor, more than perhaps anyone else in the room, was haunted by just how medieval this nightmare might get.

  As a historian John knew the horror. For every person who died in the westward migration prior to the Civil War from Native Americans attacking, the stuff of American legends, thousands, maybe tens of thousands died from water holes polluted by cholera and typhoid… but that doesn’t make for a good movie.

  “One thing we’ve neglected I want taken care of right now,” Kellor said. “And I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. Get the veterinarians organized.”

  “Vets?” Carl asked.

  “Hell, yes. They have anesthesia and antibiotics and, frankly, in a pinch can do emergency surgery as well. Inside a dog isn’t all that different from a human. Same with dentists, podiatrists as well. Get the meds they still have, move them to the clinic we’ve agreed to set up in Swannanoa, and guard it twenty-four hours a day.”

  Charlie noted it down.

  “Back to the refugees, what do we do?” Charlie asked. “Seal it off,” Carl said.

  “We continue to seal it off,” Tom replied, “and I tell you, there’ll be fifty thousand piled up on that road by the end of the week and sooner or later they’ll storm us, casualties be damned.”

  “A safety valve then,” Kate interjected.

  “How’s that?” Charlie asked.

  “We got a pressure cooker ready to blow on the interstate at the gap. Either we have it blow in our faces or we create a safety valve.”

  “Like I said, how?” Charlie said, a touch of exasperation in his voice. “Let people through.”

  “God damn,” Carl snapped. “I thought this alliance was so we can guard each other’s backs and now you’re talking about letting them in? If so, we pull out of the deal.”

  “You are already in the deal,” Charlie said coldly, “and once in, you can’t leave.”

  “Jesus, you’re starting to sound like a damn Yankee and I’m a Rebel. If we want to secede out of this union, we’ll do so.”

  “Kate has it right,” John said.

  “Oh, great, the professor speaks,” Carl replied, voice filled with sarcasm.

  “Damn you, listen to some reasoning!” John shouted.

  The outburst made him feel light-headed, his hand throbbing.

  It caught Carl off guard, though.

&n
bsp; “She’s right. We let people through a hundred at a time with the understanding that they don’t stop until past the barrier on the far side of Exit 59. Then they can keep on going.

  “They check their weapons in with us, just like when cowboys rode into town and the sheriff met them. We give the weapons back once they’re on the far side of our territory. No food give outs, but for decency sake at least set up a watering spot, say by Exit 64. There should be enough water pressure to run a temporary pipe up there. A privy as well, with lots of lime thrown in and safe drainage.” Charlie nodded.

  “We hold them back, like Tom said, and the pressure will build until they just overrun us.”

  “What about the threat of disease that Doc Kellor was talking about?” Tom asked.

  “I think when comparing one threat to another what Kate and John are saying is ‘the lesser of two evils.’

  “If someone is visibly sick, we don’t let them through. Quarantine like the old days. Everyone else, they can walk on through but no stopping; armed guards keep their distance while escorting them.”

  “We have hazmat suits,” Charlie announced.

  “What?”

  “Twenty of them stockpiled in the storage area of this building. They were issued out by Homeland Security a couple of years back. Never thought we’d be using them like this, but would that serve?”

  “Damn good,” Kellor replied. “Anyone interacting at the barricades with those on the other side wears a hazmat.”

  “Good psychological impact as well,” John interjected. “Conveys authority, and frankly, though I hate to say it, those on the other side will feel inferior and thus more compliant about being marched through without stopping.”

  He was inwardly angry for even mentioning that. Uniforms, and the white hazmat suits were like uniforms, had always been one of the means throughout history to control crowds, including those being herded to death camps.

  “Water only like I said, sharp watch that no one relieves themselves other than at the designated privy. Armed guards in hazmats escorting them. They’re allowed through and that’s it.”

  “What about Asheville?” Kate said. “They might block the road as well.”