One Second After

That broke his heart every time he drove past it. The diner had been his usual stop on many a morning long ago. Mary would have freaked on his breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hash browns, but he so loved the place, the owner a man he truly respected, hardworking, starting from a hole in the wall a block away to create a diner that was “the” place in Black Mountain for breakfast. Truckers, construction workers, shop owners, and at least one professor type. How many mornings had John spent there, after dropping the kids off at school, for a great meal, a cigarette, the usual banter, playing one of the games the owner carved out of wood, trick puzzles, and then going on to his late morning lecture?

“What a world we once had,” he sighed.

The parking lot of the bank at the next corner was becoming weed choked, though that was being held back a bit by children from the refugee center plucking out any dandelions they saw and eating them. The bank had been one of the last of an old but dead breed, locally owned, the owner’s Land Rover still parked out front, covered in dust and dried mud.

John turned past Hamid’s store. A few cars out front, a VW Bug and a rust bucket of a ’65 Chevy, a couple of mopeds. Hamid had traded some smokes for an old generator, traded some cigarettes to someone else to get it fixed, and now he actually had some juice. It had been quite the thing when he fired it up, and the lights flickered on dimly. He had diverted the juice into two things: a fridge and one of the pumps for his gas tanks. John had instantly thought of asking Hamid to take the vials of insulin he still had, but Makala had vetoed it. The generator-driven power was variable, shutting down, fired back up again. Better to keep it at a steady fifty-five than at forty degrees that might suddenly climb to sixty or seventy before plunging back down below freezing.

But still his old friend had come through for him, a debt he could never repay, and he felt like a beggar every time he wandered in.

“For my favorite little girl,” Hamid would say as he pressed a small package into John’s hands, a piece of newspaper with a pound or two of ice inside. Ice, a precious pound or two of ice to try to keep the temperature of the remaining vials down a few degrees.

“I still owe you twenty bucks,” John would always say, and Hamid would just smile, for he had little girls, too, and he knew, and he was proud to be an American helping a friend.

Makala. Funny, John hadn’t thought of her these last few days. My own starvation, he thought. The unessentials of the body shut down first and after four years of celibacy after the death of Mary he had grown used to it. He knew Makala was interested in him; in a vastly different world they would definitely have been dating, but not now. Besides, he did not want to upset the delicate balance of his family. Jen had been Mary’s mother; how would she react? The girls? They might like Makala as a friend, but as something more? For Jennifer, her mom was already becoming remote, but for Elizabeth, the death had hit at twelve, a most vulnerable of times, and her room still had half a dozen pictures of the two of them together and one that still touched John’s heart, a beautifully framed portrait from Mary’s high school graduation, the color fading but Mary very much the girl he had met in college.

He pulled up to the town hall complex. The rumble of a generator outside varied up and down in pitch as more power or less was being used.

One of the fire trucks was being washed down. The mechanics had finally bypassed all the electronics, done some retrofitting, and the engine had finally kicked back to life ten days ago.

He walked in. Charlie was in his office, cot in the corner unmade, looking up as John came in.

Charlie had lost at least thirty pounds or more, face pinched. He had a cup of what looked to be some herbal tea.

“Two dead up at my house, shot them this morning,” John said matter-of-factly.

“That’s eight reported now just this morning,” Charlie replied, his voice hoarse.

John sat down, looked at his pack of cigarettes, fourteen left, and offered one to Charlie, who did not hesitate to take it.

“Damn it, Charlie. You got to get at least one extra meal in you.”

He shook his head.

“Might not matter soon anyhow.”

“Why’s that?”

“We think the Posse is coming this way.”

“What?”

“Don Barber flew his recon plane out a couple hours ago to take a look for us along Interstate 40 heading towards Hickory; he’s yet to get back. Four days ago we didn’t have a single refugee at the barrier, two days ago nearly a hundred, yesterday more than two hundred; it’s as if something is pressuring them from behind. Rumors running with them that Morgan-ton was just looted clean, a damn medieval pillage. Also, we had a shooting last night on the interstate.”

“So, that’s becoming almost a daily routine,” John said coolly.

“This one was different. One of the few heading east. Big guy, looked fairly well fed.”

“So what did he do?”