“Death is rather blunt,” Kate shot back.
“It’s the harsh reality,” John said, his voice distant. “It is that simple. We have
“We have to do it,” Charlie said, his voice soft.
“Well, I’m not going along with it,” Kate said.
“Remember, Kate, this is not a democracy at the moment. If you wish not to go along with it and stop drawing rations, that is fine with me.”
“The rest of you here?” Kate shouted. “Now you do have
“Personally, I’m not going to draw extra rations,” Charlie said.
“Charlie,” Doc interjected, “you have to. I know your health; remember, I was your family doc. You have a touch of hypertension and acid reflux. You’re slowing down even now; everyone in this room can see it.”
“It’s just exhaustion,” Charlie replied sharply. “Let me get a good night’s sleep undisturbed.”
“Bullshit,” Doc snapped. “You’re doing the work of two men and eating the same as everyone else. You’ll burn out; you
“Well, it’d be one helluva note to announce we’re going to starve a lot of people around here and I’m walking around fat and happy. Screw that.”
John lowered his head.
“He’s right,” John whispered. “Though I disagree on one point. Not a word of this is to be discussed publicly.”
“You do sound like a commissar now!” Kate shouted. He glared at her.
“Think I like what I just said?” John replied sharply. “But Charlie, if you go outside and say that some are now going to get more rations it will be a riot within the hour. I’d suggest we quietly move some extra rations up to the college campus. What we’re talking about primarily applies to them anyhow. Those getting extra food get it there and there only. But as for Charlie’s personal example, that’s his decision and, I’ll have to say, the moral one.”
Charlie nodded and slowly sat down.
“Moving food in secret? Secret eating while others starve?” Kate shook her head. “I never dreamed we’d come to this point so fast, and agree to it, here, right here in our town.”
“The first that would get hit by the rioting are the outsiders,” John said. “There’s been a semblance of acceptance, some bonding, that would disintegrate, Kate, and I’m willing to bet would turn into murders and lynch- ings, a massive scream to throw everyone out who wasn’t living here the day of the event. Then our two communities will start glaring at each other. Frankly, Swannanoa has more food per person than we do, a lot more with their extra cattle and hogs. We’ll split and those here will start screaming about marching there to take their cattle.
“You hear that, Kate? It’s like something out of ancient history, the Bible; we’ll be raiding each other for cattle. Then it will be every man for himself and we’ll all die as a result if someone from the outside, with some organization and strength, then comes rolling in. There’s your choice, Kate. Go ahead. What should we do?”
She glared at him, unable to reply.
John looked over to Tom, who had remained silent throughout the debate, and Tom nodded in agreement.
“I know I couldn’t keep order. I’d have to call in the college militia, and even there, most of those kids would be defined as outsiders as well, and the mob ready to turn on them. It would be a helluva mess, Kate. John’s right, we have to do this, but we have to keep it quiet.”
“So in other words, horde some food for a selected few, do it in secret so that by the time the rest of the people figure it out, they’ll be too weak to act.
John stared at her. “Yes.”
“You bastards.”
“Kate, it’s been this way throughout history. America, though, hasn’t faced it since,” he paused, “maybe parts of the South in the Civil War. Even then that was just limited. We’ve never seen anything like this before, but in reality, it has to be done if any survive. We can’t keep social order, defend ourselves, and at the same time give out some kind of equal amounts of food to everyone else. If we try that, everyone will die.”
“I won’t accept extra food.”
“No one is forcing you to,” John said softly.
“Kate, you cannot discuss this outside this room,” Charlie said sharply.
She glared at him.
“Or what?”
“I’ll have you arrested.”
“Sieg heil, mein Fuhrer,” and she raised her hand in the fascist salute.
“Damn it, Kate,” Charlie snapped, his voice almost breaking. “I don’t want this any more than you, so don’t ride me on it.”
She lowered her head.
“It has to stay in this room,” John said sharply.
“Are you getting an extra?” Kate asked.
“Hell, no. We’re still getting by.”
“All right, Charlie. You don’t take extra rations, none of us here do, and I’ll go along with it.”
“Tom has to be on the list for extra rations,” Kellor said.
“Like hell.”
John looked at Tom. His rotund pre-war form had melted away quickly, belt drawn in now by several notches.
“All police, firefighters, the militia, those doing essential work,” John said, “and grave diggers.”
There was a long silence.
“And Doc, you, too,” John said.
Doc nodded.
“I won’t hide behind false heroics. I hate the thought, but I know my performance is degrading fast. I set a compound fracture yesterday, one of the Quincy boys, fell off a horse. I thought I was going to faint towards the end of it. If we don’t have doctors and nurses in this town who can function, well, we’re all dead anyhow then.”
“How many will we lose?” Charlie asked.
“When?”
“You said the curve is going to start going up again. How many do we lose in two or three months?” Doc looked around the room.
“One-third to one-half if we follow the plan just outlined.”
“And if we don’t?” Kate asked.
“We drag it out a little longer, Kate, by not much more than thirty days extra; then everyone will be dead by winter.” No one spoke.
“Malthus is finally being proven right,” Charlie said. “Our population here is three, four times higher than the carrying capacity. It was all about infrastructure. Out in Southern California right now I bet hundreds of thousands of tons of vegetables are rotting. The Midwest will be up to their eyeballs in unpicked corn in another six weeks. But there is no way to get that from there to here.”
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
