One Second After

“All the time we were walking I was afraid she’d be taken or ruined. But sure enough, she was still in the hangar. Nothing fancy in her. Restored to original condition, maybe that’s what saved her. No electronics whatsoever, could never find a period radio, so all I used was a small handheld GPS when I took her up. Of course that piece of equipment was fried, but the plane was ok.”

He paused.

“In the old days, you worked your throttle, primed the cylinders by pumping, magneto switch on, and got someone to grab the propeller, and she started right up.”

“So you flew here?” John asked.

“Sure did. Got airborne about four hours ago and circled over Charlotte.”

He paused and lowered his head.

“I saw some bad things in Korea. I was there the second time the commies took Seoul. I never thought I’d see the likes of it here, in America.”

“What did you see?” Kate asked quietly.

“Nine-eleven for example. The way people in New York and Washington acted that day and pulled together. No panic really when you think back on it. Guiliani on television, then the president, it pulled us together.

“But it’s a vacuum now and in the cities especially it went out of control like I said. Downtown Charlotte was burning. I could see there was no firefighting equipment out. The water pressure was already failing by the time I decided to walk home, and at my house it was already dry.

“Looting, people running crazy.” He paused. “I saw dead people lying in the streets. National Guard ringing a shopping plaza, thousands swarming around trying to break through to get at the food inside, and you could see the guardsmen falling back, shooting into the crowd.

“It looked, it looked like the old newsreels from the Second World War, or like Saigon when it fell, like what happened over there in Somalia. I never dreamed I’d see it here, never here.”

He fell silent for a moment, gazing out the window.

“We flew along 1-85, then up through Hickory Nut Gorge. My first thought was to land in Asheville, but then what? We’d still be thirty miles from home.”

“Did you see anything moving?” Charlie asked. “Especially over in Asheville.”

“It looked like a couple of cars, but nothing else. A lot of burning, some houses, several forest fires, I could see the one up on Craggy from fifty miles away. Passed over the wreck of a commuter plane just short of Asheville that was still burning.”

“Why this talk about so many planes down?” Kate asked.

“Because nearly every commercial liner out there is so loaded with electronics now,” Don replied. “Hell, the stick isn’t even connected to a wire anymore like in the old days; it’s computer links for the control surfaces. Pop that and most likely every last plane in America nosed in.”

“Jesus,” Tom sighed. “On nine-eleven we only lost four.”

“Figure around three thousand planes falling out of the sky, which is the typical number airborne around that time of day,” Don said coldly. “Two hundred passengers on average per plane… do the math.”

He sighed again, looking off as if a great distance into a dark land.

“The mall was burning, big fire there. That convinced me to set down as close to home as possible. If I had landed at the airport, I’d never have gotten here. There was a couple of hundred yards on I-40 just west of town that was wide open and that little baby of mine just squeezed right in.”

Tom grinned.

“Damnedest sight I’ve ever seen. A plane taxiing down the exit ramp, then parking in the Ingram’s lot. Painted just like the old army planes, complete with D-day invasion stripes, hell, it made my heart leap at the sight of it.”

“You’ve got it guarded?” Charlie asked.

“Of course I do. It’s an asset for us.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barber,” Charlie said. “I’m glad you made it home.”

“Look, we’re kind of bushed. Is there any way we can find a ride up to our place?”

“I think we can arrange something special for you,” Charlie said, “for a swap.”

“And that is?”

“We can use your plane.”

“As long as I’m flying it you can,” he said defensively. “I put five years into restoring her, so no one else touches her but me. A little work and I can retro fit her to burn automobile gas. But wherever you want me to go, I’ll do it.”

“A deal.”

Charlie stood up and went to the door, opening it.

“One last thing,” Don said. “On the interstates. They’re swarming with people. Thousands of them. Like an exodus… and they’re coming this way.”

He left the room and Charlie closed the door.

“What I figured,” Charlie said softly. “We talked about it in some of the disaster exercises, the ones centered on a conventional nuclear strike, one or more weapons hitting urban centers. If the crap hits the fan, first there’ll be rioting, people snatching what they think they need to survive; then like a homing instinct people will flee the city and literally ‘head for the hills.’ The same concern with a biological outbreak. Panic, then trying to head for the hills.”

“Why?” Kate asked.

“Why are we here?” John interjected.

“What do you mean?”