One Second After [60]
"I'll say this for them. The world we knew, maybe it's finished, finished forever. Maybe not, but I doubt that. All that holds us together now are the things we believed in, the traditions of who we were, who we still want to be.
"Charlie, I guess you'll make the decision. Guide yourself with that thought, of what this country is supposed to be, even in these dark times. I know what you are thinking. I know what our neighbors outside are thinking. But whatever your decision, know it is a foundation point for what follows, but if we make a mistake here, Charlie, then we've lost that foundation...." He paused. "We are no longer Americans."
He stepped back to the corner of the room.
Charlie stood silent, head lowered. Bruce started to cry.
Charlie finally raised his head.
"I dread this," he said quietly. "I never thought I would ever do something like this. But I must think of the community."
He stepped to the center of the room, behind the chair Kate was sitting
in.
"Larry, Bruce—" he hesitated, "Randall and Wilson," Tom interjected.
"Larry Randall and Bruce Wilson," Charlie continued, "I sentence you to death by firing squad, for the crime of looting precious medical supplies, not only from this community, but from a facility where people were in desperate need of those supplies to ease their final pain. Execution to be carried out immediately."
"You bastard," Larry hissed.
"Son, you are about to go before God; I'm giving you ten minutes to make your peace. Someone go find a minister for them," Charlie said, and walked out.
John followed him as he went into his office and Charlie did not object as John closed the door. He pulled out the last cigarette in his pocket and lit it. Charlie looked at it longingly for a few seconds and John was ready to offer it over, but Charlie then shook his head.
"Did I do the right thing, John? Frankly, I'm so damn mad at those two animals, especially that Larry, that I'd do it myself without hesitation. But still, did I do the right thing?"
John sat down and didn't speak for a moment. He was torn as well. Again memory of his own temptation with Liz at the pharmacy, to snatch the medicine he needed for Jennifer.
"John, it's like we're back a hundred and fifty years. The Wild West. I kept thinking of that movie, Oxbow Incident. Remember they hang three guys in that movie but then find out they're innocent."
"Yeah, same thought here. It was just on TV last week. One of Henry Fonda's best."
"A week ago," Charlie sighed. "Just that short a time?"
"They are not innocent, though," John said.
"But still. A week ago we didn't kill screwed-up punks for stealing drugs. That Bruce kid, right guidance, he might have straightened out." John shook his head.
"Look, Charlie, might have beens are finished. Charlie, we got six thousand, maybe seven thousand people in this town now. How much food? How much medicine? Water still works for downtown, as long as the pipe to the reservoir holds, but up on the sides of the hills we're out. Charlie, we don't keep order, in a month people will be killing each other for a bag of chips."
John felt the heat of the cigarette burning his fingers and he looked around, then dropped it into an empty coffee cup. "Or a pack of smokes. I'm sorry for that one, boy, but you did the right thing.
"Just keep in mind what I said on their behalf back in there."
Charlie nodded.
There was a knock on the door; it was Tom and Kate. Charlie motioned them in.
"Reverend Black is in there with them. Time is just about up," Tom said. "Tom, you will not do the execution," John said. Tom looked over at him.
"You are the police authority in this town. If someone must do the execution, it cannot be you or any other officer or official of this town. That terrible task has always been kept separate from the hands of those out in the field who directly enforce the law. If not, well..." He thought of Stalin, of the Gestapo. "It has to be someone else."
Tom nodded, and John was glad to see that in spite