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    Another laugh rippled through the gym. Harsher, less humorous. The title
Chief Executive Officer
, for most of that blue-collar crowd, vied in popularity and esteem with
Prince of Darkness
. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, rolled into one, wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and holding a pink slip in his hand.
    
Sorry. No room in the Ark for you. Nothing personal. You’re just useless in today’s wonderful global economy.
    Mike built on that anger and drove on. “His whole approach is upside down and ass-backwards. ’Seal off the town?’
And then what?
” He swept his hand in a circle. “You all heard what Greg said earlier. He estimates the disaster—the Ring of Fire—yanked an area about six, maybe seven miles in diameter with us. You know this countryside, people. We’re talking hills, mostly. How much food do you think we can grow here?
Enough for three thousand people?
”
    He let that question settle for a moment. Simpson started to say something, angrily pushing toward the microphone. Mike simply planted a large hand on the man’s chest and pushed him back. Simpson stumbled, as much from the shock of being “manhandled” as the actual shove itself.
    “Don’t even think about taking this microphone from
me
, big shot,” growled Mike. He hadn’t intended the statement to be public, but the microphone amplified his words through the gymnasium. Another laugh came from the crowd. Almost a cheer, actually—as if they were applauding a dramatic slam dunk by the high school’s favorite player.
    Mike’s next words were spoken softly, but firmly. “Folks, we’ve got to face the truth. We’re here, and we’re here to stay.
Forever
.” He paused. “Forever,” he repeated. “We can’t think in terms of tomorrow, or the day after. Or even next year. We’ve got to think in terms of decades. Centuries.”
    Simpson was gobbling something. Mike ignored him.
Drive on. Drive it home.
    “We can’t pretend those people out there don’t exist. We can’t drive them away—and, even if we could, we can’t drive away the ones who’ll come next.” He pointed a finger at Melissa Mailey, the high school’s history teacher. “You heard what Ms. Mailey told us earlier. We’re smack in the middle of one of the worst wars in history. The Thirty Years War, it’s called. Not halfway into it, from what she said. By the time this war is over, Germany will be half-destroyed. A fourth of its population—
that includes us, now, ’cause we’re here in the middle of it
—dead and buried. There are gigantic armies out there, roaming the countryside. Plundering everything, killing everybody. We’ve seen it with our own eyes. Our police chief’s lying in his bed with half his shoulder blown off.” He glanced at Lefferts, up in the stands. The young miner was easy to spot, because of his bandages. “If Harry had any sense, he’d be lying in bed, too.”
    Another laugh rang through the gym. Lefferts was a popular young man, as much for his boundless energy as anything else. Mike turned and pointed to Rebecca. “She and her father were almost massacred. Robbery, rape and murder—that’s standard operating procedure for the armies roaming this countryside.
    “You don’t believe me?” he demanded. He gestured angrily at the door leading out of the gym. “Ask the farmer and his wife we barely kept alive. They’re not thirty yards from here, in the makeshift hospital we set up in the school. Go ahead, ask them!”
    Simpson was still gobbling. Mike turned to him, snarling. “I guess this clown thinks we can keep those armies off by blowing hot air on them.”
    Another roar of laughter. Most of the crowd was with him now, Mike could sense it. Rooting for the home team, if nothing else.
    “Sure, we can fight them off for a while. We’ve got modern weapons, and with all the gun nuts living around here”—another mass laugh—“we’ve got the equipment and supplies to reload for months.
So what?
There’s still only a few hundred men who can fight. Less than that, once you figure out how much work’s got to be done.”
    Now he pointed to Bill Porter, the power plant’s manager. “You heard what Bill had to say. We’ve got enough coal stockpiled to keep the power plant running for six months. Then—” He shrugged. “Without power, we lose most of our technological edge. That means we’ve got to get the abandoned coal mine up and running. With damn few men to do it, and half the equipment missing. That means we have to make spare parts and jury-rigged gear.”
    He scanned the crowd. When he spotted the figure he was looking for, he pointed to him.
    “Hey, Nat! How much of a stockpile do you keep in your shop? Of steel, I mean.”
    Hesitantly, the owner of the town’s largest machine shop rose to his feet. He was standing about half a dozen tiers up in the crowd.
    “Not much, Mike,” he called out. “We’re a job shop, you know. The customer usually supplies the material.” Nat Davis glanced around, looking for the other two machine shop proprietors. “You could ask Ollie and Dave. Don’t see ’em. But I doubt they’re in any better position than I am. I’ve got the machine tools, and the men who can use them, but if we aren’t supplied with metal—” He shrugged.
    A voice came from across the gym, shouting. That was Ollie Reardon, one of the men Davis had been looking for. “He’s right, Mike! I’m in no better shape than Nat. There’s a lot of scrap metal lying around, of course.”
    Mike shook his head. “Not enough.” He chuckled. “And most of it’s in the form of abandoned cars in the junkyard or somebody’s back yard. Have to melt them down.” He emphasized his next words by speaking slowly. “And
that
means we have to build a smelter.
With what? And who’s going to do the work?
”
    He paused, allowing the words to sink in. Simpson threw up his hands and stalked angrily back to his seat. Mike waited until Simpson was seated before he resumed speaking.
    He suppressed a grin.
Kick ’em when they’re down, by God!
Mike gestured toward Simpson with his head. “Like I said, I disagree with everything about his approach. I say we’ve got to go at this the exact other way around. The hell with
downsizing
. Let’s build up, dammit!”
    Again, he swept his hand in a circle. “We’ve got to expand outward. The biggest asset we’ve got, as far as I’m concerned, is all those thousands of starving and frightened people out there. The countryside is flooded with them.
Bring them in
. Feed them, shelter them—and then give them work. Most of them are farmers. They know how to grow crops, if they don’t have armies plundering them.”
    His next words came out growling. “The UMWA will take care of
that
.” A chorus of cheers came up, mostly—but by no means entirely—from the throats of the several hundred coal miners in the gym.
    
Drive it through.
“We’ll protect them. They can feed us. And those of them with any skills—or the willingness to learn them—can help us with all the other work that needs to be done.”
    He leaned back from the microphone, straightening his back. “That’s what I think, in a nutshell. Let’s go at this the way we built America in the first place. ’Send me your tired, your poor.’ ”
    Angrily, Simpson shouted at him from the sidelines.
“This isn’t America, you stupid idiot!”
    Mike felt fury flooding into him. He clamped down on the rage, controlling it. But the effort, perhaps, drove him farther than he’d ever consciously intended. He turned to face Simpson squarely. When he spoke, he did not shout. He simply let the microphone amplify the words into every corner of the gymnasium.
    “It will be, you gutless jackass. It will be.” Then, to the crowd: “According to Melissa Mailey, we now live in a world where kings and noblemen rule the roost. And they’ve turned all of central Europe—
our home, now, ours and our childrens’ to come
—into a raging inferno. We are surrounded by a Ring of Fire. Well, I’ve fought forest fires before. So have lots of other men in this room. The best way to fight a fire is to start a counterfire. So my position is simple. I say we start the American Revolution—
a hundred and fifty years ahead of schedule!
”
    Before Mike had taken more than three steps away from the podium, a large part of the crowd—a big majority, in fact—was on its feet applauding. Not just shouting and clapping, but stamping their feet. He almost laughed, seeing the look of consternation on Ed Piazza’s face. The principal was clearly worried that the stands might give way—but not so worried that he wasn’t clapping and shouting himself all the while.
    So much Mike had hoped for. Even expected, down deep. He knew his people—a lot damn better than some arrogant big shot like John Simpson.
    But what he hadn’t expected—certainly not hoped for!—was the immediate aftermath. He heard Melissa Mailey’s voice behind him, speaking into the microphone. Melissa was in her mid-fifties, and spoke with all the self-assuredness of a woman who had been teaching her whole adult life.
    “Mayor Dreeson, I’d like to nominate Michael Stearns as chairman of the emergency committee.”
    Mike stopped in his tracks and spun around, his jaw dropping. The crowd’s applause deepened, grew positively fierce. Through the din, he heard Ed Piazza quickly second the motion.
    Then, behind him—
et tu, Brute?
—he heard the stentorian voice of Frank Jackson: “Move the nominations for chairman be closed!”
    Frank’s motion drew more applause. Mike’s brain was whirling around like a top. He hadn’t expected—hadn’t so much as—
    “The nominations are closed!” announced the mayor firmly. “Call for a vote.”
    Mike gaped at him. Dreeson was grinning like an imp. “Under the circumstances—running unopposed and all—I think we can handle this with a voice vote.” He pulled out a gavel from the shelf underneath and smacked the podium once. Firmly.
“All in favor?”
    The shouts ringing through the gymnasium were like a deafening roar. In a daze, Mike found himself staring at John Simpson and his wife. He was relieved to see that they were scowling as fiercely as mastiffs.
    
Well, thank God. At least it’s not unanimous.

    Moments later, Mike found himself shepherded up to the podium by Melissa Mailey, greeted cheerfully by Ed Piazza, and having the gavel thrust into his hand by Henry Dreeson. Before he knew it, he was chairing the town meeting.

 

    That task, in itself, posed no particular difficulty. Mike had chaired plenty of UMWA meetings. Coal miners were as famous for their knowledge of the arcane forms of Robert’s Rules of Order as they were for the often-raucous content with which they filled those forms.

 

    No, the problem was simply that he hadn’t caught up with the reality of his new position. So, after a time, he stopped worrying about what he was going to
do
, and simply concentrated on who he was going to do it
with.

 

    “This isn’t going to work, folks,” he said forcefully at one point. “You’ve already nominated a hundred people for the committee, and I don’t doubt half of them will get elected. I’ve got no problem with that—but I’m still going to need a
working
committee to actually help me out. Fifty people can’t get anything done. I need a—a—”

 

    He groped for the right term. Melissa Mailey provided it: “You need a
cabinet.
”

 

    He gave her a sour glance, but she responded with nothing but a cheerful smile. “Yeah, Melissa. Uh, right. A cabinet.” He decided not to argue the point at the moment.
Remember, Mike—it’s just a
temporary
committee.

 

    Mike scanned the crowd. “I’m willing to pick the—uh, cabinet—out of the people elected to the committee.” Half-desperately: “But there are some people I’ve just
got
to have.”

 

    A loud male voice came from the stands: “Who, Mike? Hell, just name them now! We can vote in your cabinet right here!”

 

    Mike decided to accept that proposal as a motion. And the crowd’s roar of approval as a second.
All in favor? The ayes have it.

 

    The gymnasium, for the first time, became silent. Mike’s eyes scanned the crowd.

 

    His first selections came automatically, almost without thought.

 

    “Frank Jackson.” Several dozen coal miners whistled.

 

    “Ed Piazza.” Hundreds of voices applauded—many of them teenagers from the high school. Mike felt a moment’s whimsical humor.
Not too many principals in this world would get that kind of applause. Most would have gotten nothing but raspberries.

 

    His eyes fell on the teachers sitting next to Piazza. Mike’s face broke into a grin. “Melissa Mailey.” The history teacher’s prim, middle-aged face broke into a moue of surprise.
Ah, sweet revenge.
“And Greg Ferrara.” The younger science teacher simply nodded in acknowledgment.

 

    “Henry Dreeson.” The mayor started to protest. “Shut up, Henry! You’re not weaseling out of this!” A laugh rippled through the gym. “And Dan Frost, of course, when he’s up and about.”

 

    Mike’s mind was settling into the groove. O
kay. We need production people, too. Start with the power plant. That’s the key to everything.

 

    “Bill Porter.” The power-plant manager’s face creased into a worried frown, but he made no other protest.
Machine shops. Critical. I’d rather work with Ollie, but his shop’s the smallest.
“Nat Davis.”

 

    
Need a farmer. The best one around is—
Mike spotted the short, elderly figure he was looking for. “Willie Ray Hudson.”

 

    His eyes moved on, scanning the sea of faces. Mike was relaxed, now. He was accustomed to thinking on his feet, under public scrutiny.

 

    
Need some diversity, too. Nip that in-group crap right in the bud. Out-of-town and—
He spotted the face he was looking for. Which was not hard, since the face stood out in the crowd. “Dr. James Nichols.”

 

    
Okay. Who else?
Like all union officials, Mike was no stranger to politicking. It would be a mistake if his cabinet appeared too cozy and cliquish.
I need an enemy. In appearance, at least.

 

    His gaze fell on John Simpson, still glaring at him. The gaze slid by without a halt.
No appearance there. I