The Living Will Envy The Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

law-abiding town, most of the time, although I think the real reason was because people were scared of fallout.  The panic would start tomorrow.  I was morbidly certain of it.
     
    The ground shook faintly.  I was pretty sure that that was a nuke.  I’d gone to the roof of the library and peered east, but all I’d seen had been a handful of flashes of light in the distance.  The sky had been glowing, as if the world beyond the horizon was a burning wall of flame, but the Geiger counters had barely buzzed.  There wasn't time for the fallout to make its way to Ingalls.  Not yet.  I took one final look at the dead communications set, wondering if it would ever work again, and walked up the stairs into the lobby.  It would not have been out of place in Buckingham Palace.  Mac’s family have many virtues, but good taste is not one of them.
     
    My deputies snapped to attention as I entered.  It’s hard to keep good people in a small town like Ingalls.  Most of them serve with us for a short period, and then head off to the big city, where promotion comes faster.  I might have stepped into the shoes of the last sheriff, who had been caught with his hand in the till, but I’d already decided that Ingalls was my home.  They wanted to see the lights and excitement of the bigger cities.  Personally, I thought they were mad, but what did I know.
     
    “All right, we’re in serious shit,” I said, without preamble.  It had been too long since we’d held any kind of real drill…and the last one we’d held had been thoroughly fucked up by FEMA.  Not intentionally, I think, but once again…they forgot the emergency.  “The Mayor is dead” – I saw their faces slump and winced internally – “and we have no communication with the Feds.  We’re on our own.”
     
    Their faces were a study in contrasts.  Deputy Rose Wilder, my second in command, looked pale.  She’d only stayed as long as she had in Ingalls because I had requested it and she felt bound to me.  It wasn't a sexual thing, but something between two people who had shared danger together.  Deputy Jason Robertson and Deputy Andrew McClellan, both young men who had been intending to move on in the fall, looked excited.  They hadn’t grasped the truth yet.  Deputy Jackson King, a massive black man with a surprisingly gentle touch, looked ghastly.  He’d grown up in Atlanta, and Atlanta was on the list of cities that had been confirmed destroyed.  And Deputy Deborah Ivey…
     
    She looked as she always looked, a woman old enough to be a grandmother and yet always calm and composed.  She’d been a Deputy for over fifteen years, and had yet never sought the position of sheriff.  I hadn’t understood why at first – in my experience, someone will always be promoted unless there is something seriously wrong with them – but Deborah simply liked to help people.  She was a surprisingly fearsome opponent as well.  There were few people in the town who would seriously consider crossing her.  Everyone pretty much worshipped her.
     
    “We have a lot to do and not much time to do it in,” I continued.  I unrolled the map and laid it out on the ground.  “Jackson, Jason and Andrew, I’m going to need you to take command of the Jail Posse, once its formed.  You will each take a section and take them here, here and here.”
     
    I pointed down to three locations on the map.  Ingalls sits inside a fertile hollow – well, I thought of it as a valley, but the locals insisted - and there were only three points that would allow easy access to the town.  There was nothing stopping someone walking through the fields, or slipping through at night, but I had other ways to deal with that.  Most refugees would come up the road, the path of least resistance, and they would have to be stopped.  Ingalls might be able to survive if we guarded it properly, but if we took in all of the refugees, they’d eat us out of house and home.
     
    “I’m