One Second After [43]
"Elizabeth honey. Your Pop-pop is a proud man," Jen said, her features serious. "I don't think he'd want his granddaughter helping with this."
Jen looked at John.
"And you, John, have the weakest stomach in the world. Why don't you two go outside?"
"I'll stay," Ben said quietly.
All three looked at him with surprise.
"Heck, I diapered my kid brother a hundred times. I'll help Miss Jen." "Good man, Ben."
"Actually, I better go into town," John said. "I'll see if we can get some help up there."
"That's good, John."
He hesitated and looked at Elizabeth.
"Maybe you should come along."
"You sure, Dad?"
"It's OK."
She looked at him with relief and the two went to the car and got in. "Sorry, Dad, I don't think I could have handled that. I'd of tried, though."
"Listen, kid, I barely handled it myself. Buckle up." She laughed softly, though still shaken. "This is a '59 Edsel, Dad, no seat belts."
They drove into town and he immediately felt as if he was now coming into an entirely different world.
Pete's free barbecue was shut down, the small-town feel of an outdoor fair atmosphere gone. Two police officers, both armed with shotguns, stood outside the elementary school, a large crowd standing in line. An open fire was burning, a kettle hung over it.
There were half a dozen more cops and an equal number of firemen in a loose cordon around the town hall, police station, and firehouse. Several men were at the back of Jim Bartlett's Volkswagen Bus, off-loading boxes. There was an assortment of bicycles, a few motorbikes, an old Harley motorcycle, a Jeep from the garage, the antique World War Two jeep, and a few old farm pickup trucks parked there as well, the doors into the firehouse open, the engines rolled out. Boxes, crates, containers filling up inside.
There was another line formed, an old military-style water tank on wheels, a guard by the side of it, the line of people carrying plastic jugs. John rolled to a stop and got out with Elizabeth.
"One gallon per person," the guard was saying, repeating himself over and over, as John pulled Elizabeth closer in to his side and headed towards the mayor's office.
Though the downtown area had water, those living upslope were out and now having to do the long walk just to get a single gallon. One of the guards saw John and nodded. "Hi, Professor."
It was one of his old students, graduated several years back, now a teacher in the middle school, and he was embarrassed that he couldn't remember his name.
"What's going on?"
"Well, Charlie declared martial law. We're moving all medical supplies here to the firehouse and any food that can still be retrieved from the supermarkets, but most of that got cleaned out."
"I saw Food Lion, but all of the markets?"
"Well, sir, I guess you could say it was a riot. Folks just started storming into the markets taking what they wanted and then getting out. It got pretty ugly there for a while. Mostly the outsiders."
"Outsiders?"
"You know, the folks from the highway."
The way he said "outsiders" hit a nerve with John. It didn't feel right.
"We had a lot of people coming down the road from Asheville, a lot of them people who live here who got stranded, but a lot of people just getting out of the city as well. A thousand or more flooded in here last night. Word is it's pretty bad up there.
"The folks coming in from Asheville said a mob, mostly kids, started busting up the Asheville Mall, vandals, and part of it burned. Somebody said over fifty people were killed, hundreds of people rampaging through the stores along Tunnel Road."
He took it in.
"Quite a few dead on the road they say as well. People collapsing, bad hearts, elderly. Somebody said he counted at least twenty dead between here and Exit 53."
It was hard to believe.
"Thanks. Is the mayor in?"
"She sure is. They're having some sort of conference in there."
He didn't ask for permission; he just headed in and parked Elizabeth by the door, telling her not to move. As he walked in, his eye caught the commemorative plaque: "9.11.01