One Second After

“I’m keeping it. Go explain to your boss how you lost it.”

“You damn nig—” He didn’t get the rest of the word out, Washington delivering a butt stroke to his stomach, knocking him back over. Bill said nothing.

“Good luck, Bill,” John said, extending his hand, shaking Bill’s. John reached into his pocket, pulled out the rest of his pack. Two cigarettes left, he handed the one to Bill.

Again, a flash thought of the Second World War. A GI with a pack of cigarettes was a wealthy man, to share one with another man, or even a captured or wounded enemy, a significant gesture.

“We’re out of here,” Charlie said, coming up to the car, gasping for air.

Phil turned the engine over, got out from behind the wheel, and John piled in.

“I’ll take shotgun,” Washington said, getting into the passenger seat. Charlie nodded and climbed into the back with the two boys.

John went into reverse, swung around, then drove back down the on-ramp, feeling strange driving on the wrong side of the highway, moving fast.

Washington took the two pistols he now had, the .45 and the Glock, and placed the Glock by John’s side. He kept the AR-15 at the ready. “What happened back there?” Charlie asked. “Oh, we made peace,” John said, “and you?”

“Jesus Christ, it’s a madhouse in the county office. Ed Torrell is dead.”

“What?”

“Collapsed about four hours ago, dead in a couple of minutes. That really got people panicked. Ed was a good man, tough, but fair.”

“Fair like with our car?”

“I’m doing the same thing.”

John looked up in the rearview mirror.

“Like with me?”

Charlie hesitated, then shook his head.

“Course not, John. As long as you help out like this. I know I can count on you when we need it.”

John relaxed.

“OK, what’s happening?”

“That Black Hawk was from Fort Bragg.”

“Yeah, we heard about that from one of the cops.”

“Well, it’s bad, real bad. There is no communication anywhere yet. They say they had some radios stored away that were in hardened sites and will start getting them out, but nothing prepositioned. Plans as well to see if any ham radio operators have old tube sets, maybe Morse code.”

“Sounds like that movie Independence Day,” Jeremiah interjected.

“You’re right, and almost as desperate.”

“But news, I mean news from the outside?” John asked.

“State government’s moving to Bragg. Some assets there did survive. Plus it’s damn secure.”

“Are we at war?”

“Nobody knows for sure with who. At least at this level. Rumors that we nuked Tehran yesterday and half a dozen cities in Iran and just blew the shit out of North Korea.”

“So they did it?” Jeremiah asked.

“Like I said, rumors.”

“How can we do that?” Phil asked.

“What?”

“I mean hit them when we can’t get anything moving here.”

“It must have been an event limited to the continental United States. Our assets overseas are still intact, at least for the moment. “Oh yeah, there’s a rumor the president is dead.”

“What?” John exclaimed.

“Someone said the White House got word about fifteen minutes before the blast. Got the president airborne on Air Force One… and the goddamn plane wasn’t hardened sufficiently, and went down.”

“I can’t believe they didn’t harden Air Force One,” Washington interjected.

“Yeah, we can’t be that dumb,” Charlie interjected, his voice bitter with irony.

“Here. Right now. What is going on?” John asked.

Even as he asked, it felt strange. At any other time in the nation’s history, the word that the president might be dead froze the nation in place. John could still remember the day Reagan was shot, the incredible gaffe by Alexander Haig at the press conference when he said, “I’m in charge here.” That mere misstatement had nearly set off panic with some about an attempted coup.

Air Force One went down? Horrible as the realization was, John felt at that moment it didn’t matter to him. It was survival, survival here, at this moment, his family that counted, and he drove on, weaving around a stalled 18-wheeler, a truck that had been hauling junk food, potato chips, corn chips, and it was picked over like a carcass lying in the desert, hundreds of smashed-open cardboard shipping boxes littering the side of the road, bags of chips smashed and torn open lying along the side of the road. An old woman was carefully picking over the torn bags, emptying their meager contents into a plastic trash bag.

“They did get lucky with some vehicles in Asheville,” Charlie said. “A scattering of cars parked in underground garages. Their big problem is water. At least we’re gravity fed, but part of their downtown has to have the water pumped over Beaucatcher, though down by Biltmore, and on the east side of the mountain they’re still getting supplied from the reservoir. They’re badly screwed in that department; that’s why there’s so many fires.”

He hesitated.

“Therefore Asheville is trying to organize an evacuation.”

“To where?” Washington asked.