One Second After

Silence, and John knew all were dwelling on food, the standard thoughts of someone going into starving and malnutrition. He could picture the hundreds of thousands of head of cattle out in Texas and Oklahoma. For that matter, just two hundred miles east of here, the hog farms. They were contemptible, usually rammed into poorer communities, five to ten thousand hogs raised at a clip in sheds where they could barely move from birth until slaughter, the stench and pollution killing property value for miles around… and to have one of them here now would be greeted with people falling on their knees and thanking God.

But even then, John realized, it wouldn’t work. The farms were dependent on hundreds of tons of feed being shipped in each week. If those farms had not already been looted, the waste going on was most likely beyond imagining. The animals starving to death, people who almost thought meat was grown inside a pink foam package now trying to chase a hog down, kill it, and dress it. No, they’d cut off what they could, others would join in like vultures, and half of it would then just rot in the sun. If the hogs escaped, they would be into the woods now, wild boar in short order and damn dangerous.

Charlie finally stirred.

“Anything else?”

Silence.

“Minor point, but it’s starting to get dangerous. Dogs.” John looked over at him.

“A lot of dogs are starting to run loose now. They’re starving and they’re going wild. We had an incident up on Fifth Street last night; two children got cornered by a pack of dogs. Fortunately, the father had a shotgun and dropped several of them; the rest took off.”

After the grimness of the previous conversation John knew he shouldn’t be reacting so hard, but he suddenly felt a tightness in his throat. The two fools Zach and Ginger were indeed getting hungry, begging ferociously at every meal, and yet still the family would share a few scraps. Most of the squirrels John had dropped over the last week had been tossed to the dogs raw.

“I think we have to order the shooting of all dogs in the town,” Charlie said.

“No, damn it, no,” Tom snapped. “I’ll burn in hell before I’d go home and in front of my kids take Rags outside and blow his brains out. No way. If they’re running loose and proving to be a danger, sure, but not that.”

“What did the father do with the bodies of the dogs he shot?” Kellor asked quietly.

“Jesus, I never thought of that,” Charlie replied.

“How many dogs in this town?” Kellor asked. “At least a couple of thousand. That’s enough meat for full rations for three or four days at least, half rations for a week and a half.”

“You can go straight to hell, Doc!” Tom shouted, and John was surprised to see tears in Tom’s eyes. For the first time since this crisis had started, from the initial panic, the executions, the fight at the gap, it was now Tom who was breaking into tears.

“We got Rags the week my youngest was born. He’s been with us ten years, as much a part of the family as any person. He’d die to defend us, and frankly, I’d do the same for him. I’m not giving him up and that’s final.”

“Tom, what I was talking about earlier,” Kellor said, “that’s only the first starve-off. I didn’t even have the heart to talk about the second starve-off. Those that survive into the fall, chances are by the end of the winter most will be dead anyhow. Do you think any dogs will still be alive by then? And if so, they’ll be feral, reverting back to packs of wolves, killing people to survive.”

“Help will be here long before then!” Tom shouted. “It’s starting already; you heard what John said.

“Charlie, I don’t care what the hell you order, I will not do it to Rags or any other dog that the owners are still taking care of.”

Tom was red faced, in John’s eyes almost like a boy in a sentimental movie about a dog or other beloved pet, the obligatory scene when the kid is about to lose the dog, but we all know that at the end of the film, except in Old Yeller and The Yearling, things will be ok. And as for those two films, John had seen both as a kid and refused to ever see them again.

He was in tears now thinking of Zach and Ginger. How would Jennifer react? Ginger was her buddy, the two inseparable. It was terrifying enough trying to avoid the fate looming for Jennifer, but to do that to her, to kill Ginger? No, John would refuse as well. And he knew, as well, that in his heart, even without Jennifer, he would reach the same conclusion.

“I’m siding with Tom,” John said.

“John, we have to leave sentiment behind,” Kellor said.

“It’s more than that,” John snapped back. “It’s yet another step backwards in who we are.”

“John, ten minutes ago you agreed to letting some people starve faster than others. What in hell do you mean about stepping backwards?”