One Second After (40 page)

“We can pray they're just a mob that overruns by numbers and surprise, but it looks like there are some ex-military with them. Worst case, they got a couple of recon types who know how to figure out the ground, the defenses, the approaches, and formulate the plan of attack.

“Their advance party is in Old Fort to secure the place for the rest of them later today. I'd bet by late afternoon their advance will start probing, and we've got to meet them forward of the potential line of battle. They see our setup, get a good judgment on our strength, we'll have even more problems holding. They'll laager in Old Fort tonight and tear the place apart, then hit us before dawn.”

“We'll be prepared,” Washington said sharply, and stood up.

“We feed the troops, then move them into position today. Washington, we've talked about this scenario, so we both know the plans. I want officers' briefing within the hour. Tom, start to evacuate all homes behind our fallback line beyond the old toll road as we've talked about before. Charlie, I want every citizen who can carry a gun as our reserve. Mr. Barber, I hope you can stay up in the air most of the day. Keep high, though, sir, real high; just keep an eye on their movements,” John said.

Washington looked around the room, a thin smile on his face. Charlie,
shriveled with emaciation, said nothing, but his gaze communicated volumes. John was now in charge.

“I think we should get to work, gentlemen,” John said.

Tom headed back to his car with Don by his side.

Washington looked over at John and Charlie.

“Gentlemen, I think it's important you join us in chapel and for our meal.”

Two hours later, after the officers' briefing and a map exercise, the 1:25,000 geological survey maps taken from the small map store in Black Mountain spread out on the table, John felt everyone understood their mission. Several of the platoon leaders were students, Jeremiah and Phil having been promoted to second lieutenants, in the first and second platoons of Company A. The others were vets from around the town, a good sprinkling of men from Desert Storm, a few from Nam.

John walked into the dining hall. Strange, it still looked basically the same. The counter where kids used to get their meal cards swiped with a laser scanner, circular tables, the twin doors leading into the food-serving area.

It was a room filled with a lot of happy memories and a few poignant ones. This school was unlike what he had expected when he had first come here. He feared that his old commandant, in his rush to get John a job where Mary once lived, had most likely hooked him into some fundamentalist camp meeting. Not that he had any particular objection on a philosophical level as an American, but still, he was a Catholic kid from Jersey. His fears could not be farther from the truth. It had turned into the warmest place he had ever worked in.

He had been greeted with open arms into a community where friendly intellectual debate was encouraged. Though a few might be a bit judgmental, most were actually very open-minded, saying that was the true spirit of what Christ tried to teach and not the nuttiness most outside the South believed of them, and all were guided by a desire to put their students first. The school was better than John ever imagined and now, at this moment, he realized yet again just how much he loved them all, especially “the kids” now sitting at the tables, decked out in camo gear, weapons stacked along the walls.

The tradition with faculty was not to eat segregated off but rather to join a table with their students, laugh, debate, argue, tease, stimulate.

Mary had attended this college her first year before transferring to far more competitive Duke, and coming here was coming home for her. Several of the professors had even taught her long ago.

Towards the end, she often came here to join John for lunch, and always kids would gather round their table and those who fully knew her condition would usually leave her with a kiss to the forehead, an embrace, and, “I'm praying for you every day, ma'am.”

And then she was gone.

But still, in the four years afterwards, so many happy days here, of shared meals, of the absolutely ridiculous but still touching dumb skits by the faculty for the Senior Breakfast the day before their graduation.

But now . . .

The cafeteria lines were closed, the food service off to the far side, tables set up near the back door, the grill outside smoking madly with the slabs of bear meat. Most of the students had already taken their plates, each proportion carefully cut, a slab of bear meat, some greens, a cup of herbal tea, that was it, but still a pound or more of meat, while downtown, at this moment, everyone else was getting thin soup with just a couple ounces of meat mixed in.

And yet in spite of their hunger, they remained restrained. None had yet to cut in; all sat around their tables, talking, but not touching the food.

John looked over at Charlie.

“You will eat,” John said sharply.

“John?”

“Charlie, you will eat.”

He pushed Charlie forward and they joined the back of the line. It only took a few seconds before they were handed the plate, the piece of meat already cut. John noticed that the cooking staff actually had a scale behind the carving table, each piece of meat thrown on it before being put on a plate. Maybe the measurement would be off by an ounce or two one way or the other, but still it was a message to stifle any arguments.

John followed Washington to a table set directly in front of the now-closed doors that had once opened onto the cafeteria line. As they reached their table the room fell silent, all eyes turned towards them.

Without prompting Reverend Abel stepped forward and offered the blessing and finished, John and a few others making the sign of the cross.

But Washington remained standing.

“I am proud of you,” Washington said.

The room was absolutely silent, no matter how longingly some looked at the feast before them, a largess of meat not seen in weeks.

“I am proud of all of you, everyone. Those who are bringing in food for us, especially our marksman Brett Huffman.”

Brett, who had dropped the bear, stood up, and there was a round of applause and cheering.

“But also for all the rest of you. Those of you gathering, those of you searching, those of you in jobs some might think unglamorous, the work in the refugee center, the isolation ward, the infirmary, the woodcutting crews.”

He looked around the room.

“Tonight or tomorrow we face battle.”

A murmur swept through the room.

“You've heard the rumors about a group called the Posse. We just received intelligence they are headed this way.”

No one spoke, but John could see the anxious looks back and forth.

“There will be battle by this time tomorrow and some of you will die. I have never lied to you; I never will. Some of you will die.”

And now he had their attention like never before.

“You are now soldiers. Every one of you. Those of you who trained for it, and those who have not. Every student of this college is now mobilized as we previously discussed. Those who are not assigned to our two combat companies will fall in as medics, messengers, and in the other jobs you have been trained for. I expect all of you to do your duty as soldiers.”

Washington turned and started to sit down. Before John even quite realized what he was doing, he stood up.

A few had started to cut into their meal, but as he stood they stopped, looking towards him.

“Tonight, tomorrow, you will fight. It is, tragically, the day you grow up and will never be able to turn back from. You are the defenders of thousands of people in this town who are now too weak to defend themselves. And now I will be blunt. I will fall silent for a moment and I want you to look at the meal before you. That food is food sacrificed by others to give you strength to defend them . . . and yourselves.”

He did fall silent and no one spoke, nearly all looking down at their plates.

“Think of,” and he actually chuckled sadly, “think of how two months back we complained about the food here, filled our plates, then tossed half of it out, and now, tonight, you will face men and women who will kill you and everyone else for that piece of meat on your plate you would have thrown out but two months back.”

He hesitated but knew it had to be said.

“Or even your own flesh if they win, because not forty miles from here this evil band is slaughtering human beings for food.”

There was an uncomfortable stirring.

“So for everything you eat now know that but two miles from here, down in the town of Black Mountain, half a dozen died of starvation this morning. Died so you can eat, and have strength to survive and defend.”

He sighed, started to sit down, and then stopped.

“Some of you were in my classes on military history. You know how we so casually talked of wars past, the suffering remote. You remember some of the speakers I've brought in, veterans of that generation we now call the Greatest Generation.”

He braced himself, looking around the room, and now there were tears in his eyes.

“Tonight, tomorrow, in years to come, you will, you must be, the greatest generation. You must win this fight; then remembering all that America was, you must rebuild her and never forget . . .”

He sighed, lowering his head.

“Never forget. . . .”

He sat down and for a moment there was silence.

Laura, the girl in the choir, stood up and raised her voice.

 

“
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light
. . .”

 

Instantly all were standing, singing as well, and never had he heard it sung thus.

He looked at them and tried to sing, unable to do so, overcome by emotion.

The last stanza finished, a cheer erupted and all sat down, except for Laura. She smiled at John, and half a dozen of the choir came to join her.

And together they started to sing again, even as their comrades ate.

 

“
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

From glen to glen, and down the mountainside
. . . .”

 

John lowered his head, gazing at his meal. Perhaps half, maybe a quarter for myself, he thought, the rest for Jen, the kids, and Ginger.

The meal done, there was a procession, led by the American flag, the school banner, and their fifer playing, over to the Chapel of the Prodigal with its famous fresco painted by Ben Long. The service had to be short and to the point, for John had warned Reverend Abel that time was pressing.

They had opened with the Lord's Prayer, and just as they finished the back doors of the chapel opened and in hobbled President Hunt, leaning on the arm of a student for strength. All stood, many with tears in their eyes. President Hunt took the front, standing beneath the painting, and then slowly drew a Bible out of his pocket.

“I carried this Bible in Nam,” he said, his voice husky, weak. “I held it close the night I was wounded and lost my leg. There is a psalm I read every night I was there and I wish to share it with you. . . . We call it the soldier's psalm, the Ninety-first.”

He half-opened the Bible, but it was obvious he knew the prayer by heart.

“ ‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. . . . ' ” As he spoke, his voice gained strength.

“ ‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.

“ ‘Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.' ”

 

It
was midafternoon when John at last returned home. The entire town was astir, at least those still with the strength to move. Don had flown a second mission and returned with word that the Posse was indeed moving, already past Marion. The first skirmish had erupted halfway down the mountain in Swannanoa Gap, ironically not far from where, over 140 years earlier, in perhaps the last battle in the East during the Civil War,
Confederate militia had fought to turn back Yankee raiders. The half dozen advancing up the abandoned paved road had been wiped out near where the old overlook and hot dog stand had been.

Another skirmish erupted along the dirt road farther to the north, long-distance sniping, one student soon dead from it and another missing.

In town, those men still with any strength were forming up, deploying into a secondary line.

Charlie was in the town hall, and fuming with rage. He had called in the report to Asheville, begging for support. And they had written Black Mountain off. They claimed a group was approaching them from the south and had already torched Hendersonville and there was no defensive bottleneck to keep them back. Everything they had was committed to that direction.

Tom reported though that Asheville's barrier, just short of Exit 53, the narrow bottleneck of the interstate, and I-40, was now heavily manned by Asheville militia, but they were not coming forward to help pitch in.

Black Mountain and Swannanoa were on their own, Asheville most likely figuring they could take the blow and if the invaders were repulsed, that would be great; if the defenders were overrun, the opposition would be so weakened that they would not have the strength for a final push. Payback perhaps for the defiance over the refugees, even though Charlie had warned that if the town fell the last thing he would do would be blow the water main and Asheville be damned.

At three in the afternoon the militia, like something out of long ago, had marched through the town, fifer in the lead wearing his Union kepi and blue jacket, playing “Yankee Doodle” over and over, complete as well to a drummer from the high school and a flag bearer forming a tableau like the old painting. The street was lined with starving civilians who cheered them and wept as they passed.

A few could remember such parades from sixty years past and could not help but wonder at this, the sight in their own hometown, of kids marching off as from long ago, to fight others who but two months back were part of the same country.