39 pages • 1 hour read
William ForstchenOne Second After
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Day 4”
On the fourth day after the blackout, John notices a Blackhawk helicopter flying overhead. He feels briefly hopeful, but it continues its journey without landing.
John and Grandma Jen go to the nursing home to check on her husband, Tyler. They are unprepared for the horrific state of the patients. Most of the staff have fled; there is no food, water, or medicine; and many of the residents are dead or dying. One remaining nurse says robbers made off with all the opiates the night before, so many of the remaining patients are in severe pain. John thinks, “It would be hard, even for locals, just five or ten miles away. How to get a sick, demented, or dying parent or grandparent moved” (98). Trying to avoid breathing the awful stench, John and Jen take Tyler home with them.
When John goes to town for supplies later in the day, he finds the local grocery store has been looted. The manager tells him, “‘Well, sir, I guess you could say it was a riot. Folks just started storming into the markets and taking what they wanted and then getting out. It got pretty ugly there for a while’” (103).
Charlie declares martial law, and the police are doing what they can to distribute water and food to waiting lines of people. John goes to the mayor’s office, where she is holding a meeting with the town leaders and an elderly couple that flew in from Charlotte on their private plane.
The pilot, Don Barber, reports that helicopters landed in Charlotte, and a military official declared that America was hit by an EMP burst and is now at war. After this abrupt announcement, the military official flew off. Barber says:
‘I got down to the street, and rumor was building on rumor; you could hear it. People talking about nukes, someone starts shouting about fallout killing them all, and that was it. Within an hour downtown was in chaos’ (105-06).
The residents of Black Mountain fear an invasion of city people who may mistakenly believe that country folk have plenty of supplies. Someone suggests a trip to Asheville, which is only 11 miles away, because the city government there has a better handle on things than Charlotte officials. John volunteers to drive.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Day 5”
A delegation consisting of John, Charlie, campus security officer Washington, and two college football players sets off for Asheville. All the men are carrying weapons. As John drives, he notices various unnerving sights along the way: “A trickle of people were walking along the side of the road, and for all the world they reminded him of an old film clip of French refugees fleeing the German advance in 1940” (120).
A cop at an overpass tries to commandeer the Edsel at gunpoint, but the delegation disarms him and ties him up. Charlie walks over to the administrative offices to see Ed Torrell, the county director of emergency preparedness. He returns shortly afterward, reporting that Ed died of a heart attack, and the city government is a madhouse. Word has spread that the EMP has affected the entire continental United States. The president died when Airforce One fell out of the sky, and the state government has been moved to Fort Bragg, where some tech-hardened assets survived the blast.
On the drive back home, Charlie continues his report:
“The new guy in charge, I don’t even know him, he told me we’re supposed to take five thousand refugees from the city. Didn’t ask, no discussion. Giving me an order like he was now the dictator of the mountains” (131).
Charlie is worried that Black Mountain will not have enough food for the influx of refugees.
When the group returns to the police station in town, they learn that the two bandits who robbed the nursing home were captured. A long debate ensues about how to deal with them; martial law dictates they ought to be executed for looting. After an agonizing discussion about due process, the city leaders decide on a public execution. The firing squad will have to consist of people not affiliated with the police to avoid fears of a military dictatorship. John agrees to kill one of the bandits, but the other is a former student, so Washington volunteers to execute him. John feels temporary trepidation about the executions:
John wondered now just how legal, how close to law in the tradition of Western civilization, his act and his words truly were, but he felt they were right, right for here, this moment, if the people of Black Mountain were to survive as a community (145).
He makes a speech to the assembled crowd about the need to maintain order and apply the law equally to everyone. Then, he and Washington execute the thieves. Afterward, John wonders if the America he has always known even exists anymore.
Makala comes up to him and offers support for his actions. She comments that his hand wound from the pharmacy brawl is infected, and she agrees to go to his home to dress the wound and check on Jennifer. After the traumatic incidents of the day, John pours himself a double scotch, and “[w]hen Makala came into the room a half hour later to check his hand, he was fast asleep” (152).
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
These chapters focus intensely on the fragile nature of civilization and the immediate erosion of conventional behavior once people realize the extent of the crisis. Families have begun wandering the highways, looking for safe places to stay; John likens this to evacuations in French towns during World War II. Stores are looted by residents who no longer feel honor-bound to pay for their purchases; they become a mob that surges into shops and takes whatever it needs.
The most despicable example of looting is the robbery of vital medication from in the local nursing home. The robbers have no excuse for their actions. They simply want the drugs for recreational purposes, and the breakdown of law and order provided a convenient opportunity to take whatever they want. Town officials decide the only way to punish the thieves is by execution. John debates the morality of capital punishment but concludes that a public show of force may be the only way to keep any semblance of order.
The novel suggests that chaos offers the perfect opportunity for corruption to assert itself. Petty tyrants emerge and exploit the situation. Asheville’s emergency director orders his police force to commandeer all operational vehicles and exploits the crisis by trying to offload refugees to Black Mountain and hording more supplies for himself and his inner circle.
