One Second After

He looked at her, realizing how random fate had played out in her life. If she had not come to Asheville for a meeting that day, she’d have been in Charlotte when everything shut down. Maybe she’d be secure, given her job at a hospital. Then again, she could have been one of the refugees storming the barrier, desperate for a piece of bread, half a bowl of the soup he and she were now eating.

“I could have been on the other side,” she said quietly. She looked up at him and for a moment there was rage in her eyes, as if they actually were from opposing camps, two enemies sharing a meal under a temporary truce before the killing started again.

“You weren’t, though. You’re here and you’re safe.”

“For how long, John? Some might say I’m still an ‘outsider.’”

“Damn it, Makala, don’t say that word again.”

“Well, you should have heard some of the people talking after that fight. Twenty-seven locals were killed in it, a couple of them police officers, and there were more than one standing around the town offices yesterday talking about kicking out anyone who didn’t belong.”

“That’s bullshit. Scared talk by scared people.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” she said, shaking her head. “Three weeks ago we were all Americans. Hell, if somebody said an offensive word, made a racial or sexist slur, my God, everyone would be up in arms and it’d be front-page news. Turn off the electricity and bang, we’re at each other’s throats in a matter of days. Outsiders, locals, is the whole country now like this, ten thousand little fiefdoms ready to kill each other, and everyone on the road part of some barbarian horde on the march?”

He couldn’t reply. He feared that it just might be true, but still, he couldn’t believe it, in spite of what had just happened.

“We’re still Americans,” he sighed. “I need to believe that. We’ve turned on each other in the past. Remember, we once fought a war against ourselves with six hundred thousand dead. As a kid I remember the riots in Newark, the hatred that created between us, how that still lingered years afterwards. And yet, when it really counted, we did band together as one.”

“But now?”

“People are hungry, scared. We were spoiled unlike any generation in history, and we forgot completely just how dependent we were on the juice flowing through the wires, the buttons doing something when we pushed them. If only we had some communication. If only we knew the government still worked, a voice that we trusted being heard, that would make all the difference.

“My grandfather used to tell me how back during the Depression the banks started to collapse; there was panic, even the scent of revolution in the air. And then FDR got on the radio, just one radio talk, reminding us we were all neighbors, to cooperate and help each other, and though the Depression went on for seven more years, the panic ended.

“Same thing on nine-eleven. I think it’s the silence that is driving people crazy now. No one knows what is going on, what is being done, if we are indeed at war, and if so, who we are fighting and whether we are winning or losing. We are as isolated now as someone in Europe seven hundred years ago and there is a rumor, just a rumor, that the Tartars are coming or there is plague in the next village.”

He sighed, motioning for another bowl. She refilled his and hers.

“In the past, any disaster, it was always local, or regional at worst. The hurricanes in 2004. It slammed us pretty hard here. Most of the news focused on Florida, but I tell you we got some of the worst of it right here, with two of those hurricanes literally crisscrossing over the top of us only days apart. But all along we knew help was out there. The guys who hooked my electric back up after four days were a crew from Birmingham, Alabama. The truck that brought in thousands of gallon jugs of water came from Charlotte actually, and always there were still battery-powered radios.

“If only we could get a link back up, I think that would calm a lot of nerves. Has there been any contact at all from the outside?”

She sipped a spoonful of soup, then shook her head.

“Not a word. A helicopter flew over two days ago. You should have seen people. It was like some god was passing by in a floating chariot, everyone with hands raised up, shouting. No, not a word other than rumors from those passing through. Global war, Chinese invading, help coming from Europe, plague in Washington, a military coup. A lot of talk now about some religious crazies forming into gangs, claiming it’s the apocalypse and either join them or die. It’s all crazy and they know about as much as you or me.”