“That’s Dan,” John said quietly. “And maybe he’s right. These kids have to be in good shape. We can’t have them staggering like weak kittens if this Posse shows up.”
“Are they ready?” Charlie asked.
Washington shook his head.
“Not very reassuring, damn it,” Charlie replied sharply.
“Look, Charlie. I love these kids. Have known them for years. Down deep they’re mostly small-town kids with good hearts, and remember, as a Christian college here, we were drawing kids with particular values and views as well. Or at least their parents saw it that way even if the kids didn’t.
“But if you want the harsh reality, I can pick out a couple of the young men for you. Kids who grew up in the projects in Charlotte or Greensboro or Atlanta. And they’ll tell you a different story about reality. Kids at twelve cappin’ each other and boasting about being gangbangers. Kids at sixteen already with time in jail, maybe fathers already, cold-eyed as dead snakes, and most of them dead at twenty-five.”
“The old sick joke,” John sighed. “You won’t find a drug dealer with a four-oh-one (k) plan.”
“Exactly,” Washington snapped. “These kids here, up until two months ago were thinking grades, fooling around, getting married after college, the more mature ones exactly that, their four-oh-one (k) plans. What they face, if we face it, will not just be gangbangers from cities. What will have gravitated to this Posse will be every lowlife scum with a will to do anything to survive. Mix into that the psychos that Doc Kellor was talking about. What happened to guys in prisons when this hit? Where are they now? Remember, our proud country had more people in prison per populace than damn near anywhere else in the world.
“Let them starve? Execute all of them? Maybe in some of the maximum-security houses the warden might have just done that. The food runs out and he lines them all up and shoots them rather than let them escape. But the minimum places, I bet those people were over the little chain-link fences by the third day. Most of the kids with a stupid-ass drug charge went home, but you already had some bad hombres in those places and they would gravitate together and now the world is a paradise, wide open, whatever they want if they have the balls to take it.” Washington shook his head.
“The food’s run out here in the East,” Washington continued. “If we were in the Midwest, the corn belt, cattle belt, I’d be more optimistic, but here? Density of population versus on-hand food, it’s out, it’s gone.
“And those barbarians, for they are barbarians, know only one thing now. Find food and gorge and take and inflict pain as they never dreamed possible before this happened. They’re thinking that even as we sit around this table, talking about rations, the nobility of our college president, the debate whether to shoot and eat our dogs.”
John winced at that. Of course Washington didn’t know about this morning, nor did he notice John’s reaction.
The phone rang.
The sound of it when it did happen was still rather startling. The three looked at one another and John stood up, went over to the president’s desk, and picked up the receiver. It was an old rotary phone from the forties or fifties, receiver heavy, wire not even the coiled type yet, just jet-black and hanging down.
“Matherson here.”
“John, is that you? It’s Tom here.”
“Go ahead, Tom.”
“I’m here with Don Barber. I just picked him up and brought him to the town hall.”
“What did he see?”
“Damn, John, he’s pretty shaken.”
“Can you bring him up?”
“Sure, John. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Over here.”
The line continued to hum for several seconds until Judy, the switchboard operator at the town hall, pulled the connect and the line went dead. John hung up.
“I think we got problems. Barber will be here in a few minutes with his report.”
They just made small talk as they waited, John standing, looking out the window, smoking what was now his seventh cigarette of the day. A group of students was coming down from behind the upper men’s dorm. Half a dozen girls and a couple of guys. The granola crew, they were called, and though they were mildly disdained before “the Day,” no one mocked them now. Most of them were outdoor ed or bio majors and had become highly proficient at food gathering, knowing which roots to dig, which plants could be brewed into teas, which had some medicinal value. One of the girls had a copy of Peterson’s guide to plants, dirty and worn, in her jeans pocket. Another girl was carrying a basket filled with mushrooms. So far there had been no mistakes on that score. Another was being helped by a boy, the woven basket between them piled high with greens. The boy and girl looked like some Rousseau ideal, a fantasy of the way the world was supposed to be if civilization went away.
The antique World War II jeep, which Tom had designated his official squad car, turned the corner and pulled up to Gaither. Barber got out along with Tom and they came straight in.
Barber saw the cigarette in John’s hand and sighed.
“Damn, I haven’t had one of those in years…,” he said softly. “John, could I?”
John hesitated, nodded, and handed one over. He was now down to eleven.
Don took a deep drag, sighed, went over to the table, and sat down. “They’re coming,” he said. No one spoke.
“Old Fort is a wreck. I flew down there first. At least fifty vehicles loaded with,” he paused, took another drag, and then waved his hand in a gesture of disgust, “I can’t even find a word to describe the scum. They were in the center of the town, most of it burning. There’s fighting going on, even now, but that town is finished.”
He sighed and looked out the window.
“Shit, it was like Korea in ’51. If only I had a battery of 105s up here, we could have annihilated their advance guard with one salvo.”
“Advance guard?” Washington asked.
Barber nodded.
“Give me a minute, Washington; my brain’s a bit slower now. Let me tell it in order.” No one spoke.
“Like I said, about fifty vehicles. Most in the center of the town, those barbarians just running amok. I could see them gunning people down, right in the middle of the street, flushing them out of buildings they were setting on fire. Out on the interstate about ten more vehicles. They took a couple of potshots at me; you’ll see a dozen or so holes in my plane by the way.
“So I figured to check up the road, fly up along Route 70, then come back down along the interstate. There wasn’t much on 70, though it was obvious they had passed along it. Buildings burning, but a couple hundred yards back from the road I could see people out, still alive. It looked like they just were driving straight through. Marion wasn’t hit hard. Just off the interstate enough, I guess, to be bypassed, plus they had well-manned roadblocks on the access ways in. Some evidence of fighting but looks like the scum backed off.”
“Think they’ll back off here?” Tom asked.
“No,” John said forcefully. “First off, their spies have scoped us out; they know we still do have some resources. Second, to get into Asheville, a sweet big city to loot, they first have to go through us. Third, they are heading this way and there is now no backing off. Marion they might mark for later, but I think it’s here first.”
Washington nodded his agreement.
“What happened next, Don?” John asked.
“I pushed on to Morganton, down to Exit 103 on the interstate.”
He lowered his head.
“I thought Charlotte was bad when I flew around it back when things started. That was different, though. In Charlotte there was rioting, yes, but people were mostly just trying snatch and grab, or just getting the hell out. This was different.”
“How so, sir?” John asked.
“You know the mental hospital grounds there?”
All nodded. Broughan, the state mental hospital, was set back from the interstate about half a mile. Beautiful open lawn, surrounded by the old sedate southern town of Morganton, complete with some antebellum homes on the main street.
