One Second After

“You’re talking triaging the dying off, aren’t you, Doc?” John said quietly.

Kellor looked at him and then slowly nodded his head. “I’m not ready for that decision,” Charlie sighed. “Most of the folks in question still have some meds in their homes. We’ll cross that one later.”

“But we’ll have to cross it,” Kellor replied, head half-lowered. No one spoke for a moment.

“Accidents, you would not believe how many we got,” Tom finally said, breaking the silence. “Cars are no longer killers, but chain saws still working, axes, shovels. Joe Peterson damn near cut his own leg off with a chain saw last night trying to cut firewood. We had three accidental gunshot wounds yesterday, one of them fatal, by idiots now walking around armed.”

“It’s food, though, that I think we got to start getting serious about,” Kellor said.

“So what in hell do you suggest that we do different?” Charlie replied sharply, and John could sense the tension, as if this had been argued about before the meeting.

“By your estimate,” Kellor replied, “we have enough food on hand to feed everyone for another seven to ten days. That means using meat any health inspector two weeks ago would have condemned.

“Charlie, after that… then what?”

Charlie sighed and wearily shook his head.

In spite of the fever and chills, John found himself focusing intently on this man, who after ten days of crisis, ten days most likely with not more than three or four hours’ sleep a night, was approaching collapse.

“Half rations,” John said quietly.

Charlie looked at him and then nodded.

“I don’t know if that will work with some things,” Kellor replied. “Meat that is beginning to spoil, for example, dairy products.”

“Then pass that out now, use it up, if need be have a gorge feast tonight with the remaining meat that might be going bad. Just make sure it is cooked until it’s damn near like leather. Then anything preserved goes to half rations.”

“What about those holed up in their houses with food?” Kellor asked. “Charlie. There’s at least half a dozen houses with electricity, old generators that were unplugged and survived. Enough juice to run a freezer. The Franklin clan, for example, up on the North Fork. I bet they’re sitting on a quarter ton of meat in their basement freezer.”

“And you want that I should go get it?”

Kellor nodded.

Charlie looked at Tom.

“I doubt that will work with the Franklins,” Tom said, shaking his head. “At least with them and all my men being alive once we got the meat. Up in these hills we have more than a few of the old survivalist types, the kind that were real disappointed that the world didn’t go to hell with Y2K. They’re just waiting for us to come up and try.”

“Let it go for now,” John said. “If we start turning into Stalinist commissars hunting out every stalk of grain and ounce of meat for the collective, you know the fragile balance we have right now will break down and it will be every man for himself.

“And like any collectivization, whether true or not the rumors will explode that we took the food, but now some animals are more equal than others.”

“What?” Tom asked.

“You slept through Mr. Quincy’s ninth-grade English class, Tom,” Kate said. “Orwell, Animal Farm, read it some time.”

“Besides,” John continued, “even if we looted the Franklins clean, that would be enough food to maybe give six hundred people one meal. It isn’t worth the blowback, and in my opinion is a dangerous political and legal precedent. We don’t want to be turning on each other at a time like this. Hell, if anything we want people like that Franklin clan working alongside of us. If they’re survivalists like you say and we don’t threaten them, maybe they got skills they’ll teach to us.”

Tom breathed a sigh of relief.

“I think it’s fair that food we salvaged from the stores now belongs to the community. But what people have in their homes, whether it’s one day left or six months’ worth, that’s theirs.”

John looked around the table and there were nods of agreement.

He only wished that Charlie had acted faster, or for that matter that he had thought about it and pushed him to seize control of all food in the town on Day One. If they had done so and it was rationed out correctly, it might have been enough to stretch at half rations for two months or more. But that was too late now.

“What about farms, though?” Kate said.

“I can tell you right now, Kate,” Tom said, “and you grew up here, too, and should realize it, the old farms are nearly all gone. When something like this hits, everyone seems to think people living in rural areas are up to their ears in food ready to be given away. But even the farmers now are dependent on the supermarkets at least until harvesttime. Up in the North Fork we have half a dozen small farms, one with about sixty head of cattle on it. Maybe a couple of hundred pigs. The usual mix of chickens, turkeys, some geese.”

“Still,” Kate said. “Stretched, that could be another month or so of food.”