The mayor plowed on. "We need to figure out a proper structure to govern ourselves by. We can't just stick with a mayor and a town council. So what we want to propose is that we elect an emergency committee to draw up a plan—kind of a constitutional convention. The same committee should oversee things in the interim. And we need to elect somebody as the committee's chairman. He—or she—can make whatever immediate decisions are needed."
Someone in the crowd shouted out the mayor's own name. Dreeson shook his head vehemently. "Not me! The town council raised that idea already, and I turned 'em down. I'm sixty-six years old, folks. I'm a small-town mayor, that's it." The elderly man at the podium stood a little straighter. "Been pretty good at it, if I say so myself, and I'll be glad to stay on in that capacity. But there's no way I'm the right man to—" He waved his hand. The gesture was neither feeble, nor hopeless. But it conveyed the sense of impending catastrophe nonetheless.
A motion at the edge of the crowd drew Mike's attention. John Simpson, his sister's new father-in-law, was stepping forward to the microphone. The well-dressed man moved with the same self-confidence with which he had addressed numerous stockholders' meetings. He did not push the mayor aside so much as he forced him to yield the microphone by sheer authoritativeness.
"I agree with Mayor Dreeson," he said forcefully. "We are in an emergency. That calls for emergency management."
Another, less self-confident, man would have cleared his throat before proceeding. Not John Chandler Simpson. "I propose myself as the chairman of the emergency committee. I realize that I'm not well-known to most of you. But since I'm certain that I am better qualified than anyone here, I have no choice but to put myself forward for the position. I've been the chief executive officer of a major corporation for many years now. And before that I was an officer in the United States Navy. Served in the Pentagon."
Next to him, Mike heard Frank Jackson mutter: "Gee, what a self-sacrificing gesture."
Mike repressed his own snort of derision. Yeah, like Napoleon volunteering to take the throne. For the good of the nation, of course.
Quickly, he scanned the faces in the crowd. Mike could detect some signs of resentment at a stranger's instant readiness to take command. But not much. In truth, Simpson's decisiveness was obviously hitting a responsive chord. People floating in the water after a shipwreck are not inclined to question the origin of a lifeboat. Or the quality of its captain, as long as the man seems to know what he's doing and has a loud voice.
He brought his attention back to Simpson. "—first thing is to seal off the town," Simpson was saying. "Our resources are going to be stretched tight as it is. Very tight. We're going to have to cut back on everything, people. Down to the bone. We certainly aren't going to have anything to spare for the refugees who seem to be flooding the area."
Mike saw Simpson cast a quick glance toward him and his little cluster of coal miners. Simpson's face was tight with disapproval. Over the past three days, Mike and his coal miners had made no effort to drive away the small army of refugees who were beginning to fill the surrounding woods. Once he was satisfied that a new group was unarmed, Mike had tried to coax them out of hiding. With no success, so far, except for one family which had taken shelter in the town's outlying Methodist church.
"I say it again," Simpson drove on. "We must seal the border. There's a tremendous danger of disease, if nothing else." Simpson pointed an accusing finger at the south wall of the gymnasium. The banners hanging there, proudly announcing North Central High School's statewide football championships—1980, 1981, and again in l997—seemed to be surrogates for his damnation. "Those people—" He paused. The pause, as much as the tone, indicated Simpson's questioning of the term "people." "Those creatures are plague-carriers. They'll strip us of everything we own, like locusts. It will be a toss-up, whether we all die of starvation or disease. So—"
Mike found himself marching toward the podium. He felt a little light-headed, as he always had climbing into the ring. Old habit forced him to ignore the sensation, drive it out, bring his mind into focus.
The light-headed sensation was not nervousness so much as sheer nervous energy. And anger, he realized. That too he drove aside. This was no time to lose his temper. The effort of doing so brought home to him just how deeply furious he was. Simpson's last few sentences had scraped his soul raw.
First thing we do, we put the lawyers and the suits in charge. Then we hang all the poor white trash. As he approached the podium, he caught sight of James Nichols standing next to his daughter. Oh, yeah. String up the niggers too, while we're at it. The image of a beautiful face came to him. And fry the kikes, of course.