One Second After

“So I figured to check up the road, fly up along Route 70, then come back down along the interstate. There wasn’t much on 70, though it was obvious they had passed along it. Buildings burning, but a couple hundred yards back from the road I could see people out, still alive. It looked like they just were driving straight through. Marion wasn’t hit hard. Just off the interstate enough, I guess, to be bypassed, plus they had well-manned roadblocks on the access ways in. Some evidence of fighting but looks like the scum backed off.”

“Think they’ll back off here?” Tom asked.

“No,” John said forcefully. “First off, their spies have scoped us out; they know we still do have some resources. Second, to get into Asheville, a sweet big city to loot, they first have to go through us. Third, they are heading this way and there is now no backing off. Marion they might mark for later, but I think it’s here first.”

Washington nodded his agreement.

“What happened next, Don?” John asked.

“I pushed on to Morganton, down to Exit 103 on the interstate.”

He lowered his head.

“I thought Charlotte was bad when I flew around it back when things started. That was different, though. In Charlotte there was rioting, yes, but people were mostly just trying snatch and grab, or just getting the hell out. This was different.”

“How so, sir?” John asked.

“You know the mental hospital grounds there?”

All nodded. Broughan, the state mental hospital, was set back from the interstate about half a mile. Beautiful open lawn, surrounded by the old sedate southern town of Morganton, complete with some antebellum homes on the main street.

“A fucking nightmare.”

John was shocked by Don’s language. He was a devout church-going man.

“How bad?” Washington asked.

“My God, I think they’re killing people and eating them,” he whispered.

No one spoke for a moment, Don just staring off, puffing on his cigarette right down to the filter.

“You’re kidding,” Charlie whispered. Don looked over at him fiercely.

“Would I joke about that?” he snapped. “There were a couple of hundred vehicles parked on the grounds of the hospital in a big circle, like they were circling the wagons. Old cars, Jeeps, trucks, even a couple of tractor trailers. Inside that circle the ground was blackened from a huge fire that was still smoldering. It was early when I flew over there; you could see them just sprawled out, sleeping it off. The hospital was burning, dead scattered all around it, most of the downtown burning as well, dead carpeting the streets. But it was what was inside that circle of old cars, trucks, motorcycles.”

He finished the cigarette, stubbed it out in an empty coffee cup, and looked, appealing, at John. John handed him another and pulled one out for himself; it was down to nine now.

“They had something like a gallows set up. Bodies were hanging from it….” Don shook and started to cry.

“They were cut open, some without legs and arms. Ten or more like that. Like hogs hung up to be butchered. My God…”

He fought for composure.

“You could see other people who were prisoners. As I flew over they were looking up at me, started to jump up and down, waving like poor bastards stranded in a nightmare. I sideslipped to get down lower for a closer look. One of those scum, I could see him looking up at me, and as I flew over he cut a woman’s throat, cut it so I could see it.

“That’s when I almost got shot down. They have an automatic and it opened up. Stitched my starboard wing. I dived down low, skimmed over not a dozen feet high, weaved and dodged.”

He smiled.

“Like the old days. Damn, I was good then, could put my spotter between two trees not thirty feet apart with telephone wires waiting on the other side.”

And then he seemed to unfocus again.

“I don’t want to believe what I saw.”

John sighed, sat back, lost in thought. Cannibalism. Leningrad, Stalingrad, with those cases it was civilians driven mad by hunger. Reports as well in China and, frightfully, documentation of Japanese soldiers doing it either out of desperation when cut off by the island hopping campaign, or ritualistically against American POWs.

“Not here,” Charlie sighed, “not here. This is America, for heaven’s sake.”

“Yes, here,” John said softly. “Why should we be any different?”

“Damn it all, we’re Americans; it just doesn’t happen here.”

“Donner Pass, the Essex… Jeffrey Dahmer? Our sick fascination with films about that Lecter character. Sixty days with little or no food just because the electric suddenly shut off. Hell, yes,” John said coldly.

“Most likely some damn cult down there. Like Doc said, psychotics running loose.”