One Second After (After #1)

by William R. Forstchen

“Peace through superior firepower,” he said calmly, then went inside and poured himself one large vodka

Bit underhanded maybe, but you settled it.” “If you must fight, fight to win,” John said quietly.

“You forget how fragile we really are, the most pampered generations in the history of humanity. Heart attacks, quite a few just damn stupid accidents, at least eight murders, and several suicides. To put it coldly, my friends, all the ones who should have died years ago, would have died years ago without beta-blockers, stents, angioplasties, pacemakers, exotic medications, well, now they’re dying all at once.”

Eleven miles, across unknown territory, it seemed like a journey filled with peril. My God, in just four days have we already become so agoraphobic, so drawn in on ourselves?

“They don’t get it yet. If this is as bad as I think it is … they’ll be the first to die. They don’t know how to survive without a society that supports them even as they curse it or rebel against it.” He sighed. “Once they run out of food, then the reality will set in, but by that point, anyone with a gun will tell them to kiss off if they come begging. And those poor kids, if they have food, the ones with guns will take it. They’re used to free clinics, homeless shelters when they need ’em, former hippie types smiling and giving them a few bucks. That’s all finished. They’ll die like flies, poor kids. No idea whatsoever how vicious the world can really be when it’s scared and hungry.

“Gandhi and Stalin.” “What?” John asked. “I used to tell Monica that when we’d get into politics. She’d always talk about how great Gandhi was. I’d tell her the only reason Gandhi survived after his first protest was that he was dealing with the Brits. If Stalin had been running India, he’d have been dead in a second, his name forgotten.”

Scale of social order, he thought. The larger the group, the more likely it was that it would fragment under stress, with a few in power looking out for themselves first.

It struck him once more how movies had defined so much of the country’s image of self. Now the screens were blank. A movie about us fifty years from now, if there are movies, what will it show?

America is like an exotic hothouse plant. It can only live now in the artificial environment of vaccinations, sterilization, and antibiotics we started creating a hundred or more years ago.

“People are hungry, scared. We were spoiled unlike any generation in history, and we forgot completely just how dependent we were on the juice flowing through the wires, the buttons doing something when we pushed them. If

“You’re the historian; you know that of all the revolutions in history, only a handful have truly succeeded, have kept their soul, their original intent.”

Suppose the old America, so wonderful, the country we so loved, suppose at four fifty p.m. eighteen days ago, it died. It died from complacency, from blindness, from not being willing to face the harsh realities of the world. Died from smug self-centeredness. Suppose America died that day.”

“We’ll need higher rations for the police force, those doing hard labor, and the militia,” Kellor said. “I don’t like this,” Kate interjected. “It’s like the old line from Animal Farm that said some animals are more equal than others.”

The web of our society, John thought, was like the beautiful spiderwebs he’d find as a boy in the back lot after dawn on summer days, dew making them visible. Vast, beautiful, intricate things. And at the single touch of a match the web just collapsed and all that was left for the spider to do, if it survived that day, was to rebuild the web entirely from scratch. And our enemies knew that and planned for it … and succeeded.

It was so damn strange, John thought, how sometimes the most unlikely people, an ugly little man like this one, could hold such power. He had a tremendous command presence, his voice sweet, rich, carrying power. So strange how some had that, and could spout utter insanity that others would follow blindly.

An officer was standing in front of the lead vehicle, surrounded by nearly a dozen of his own troops who should have been back at the gap, the First Battalion of the Black Mountain Rangers, talking with soldiers decked out as John remembered soldiers, with Kevlar helmets, a mix of uniforms, some desert camo, some standard camo green, a few in urban camo. And yet it was his kids, his soldiers, who looked to be the tougher of the two groups, lean, hawk faced, eyes dark and hollow, weapons slung casually, the regular infantry obviously a bit in awe of them, especially the girls, who seemed as tough as the guys they were with. Nation Makers, he thought. He could see it now. His former students, like the soldiers in the Howard Pyle painting, ragged, half-starved, and yet filled with a grim determination unlike anything seen in America in over two hundred years.

“Is this for real?” “What?” “I mean this. Today. Or is it nothing more than a flash in the pan? You’ll stay awhile, but things will continue to break down, collapsing in, and then it’s just the end. The old line, ‘This is the way the world will end, not with a bang, but a whimper.’

The moment of a fall from greatness often comes just when a people and a nation feel most secure. The cry “the barbarians are at the gates” too often comes as a terrifying bolt out of the blue, which is often the last cry ever heard. There are those in this world today who do wish this upon us and will strive to achieve it. As was said by Thomas Jefferson, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” I pray that years from now, as time winds down for me, critics will say this was nothing more than a work of folly … and I will be content … for the vigil was kept and thus my daughter and those I love will never know this world I write of.