Free One Year After: A Novel by William R. Forstchen

with a filling, and we’re done.”
    There was no argument; John couldn’t very well walk out with a hole in his tooth on top of the other one that was throbbing away.
    Richard opened a drawer in the old-fashioned, white-enamel-topped table behind him, drew out a tissue-thin sheet of gold, clipped off a small piece, gingerly rolled it up, and then worked it with a miniature-sized jeweler’s hammer, turning it over and over. He finally picked it up with a pair of tweezers and dropped it into a petri dish filled with moonshine that served as an antiseptic wash.
    “Now rinse good. Make sure the stuff gets into that tooth, and it’s okay to swallow.”
    Richard handed him a mason jar of clear white lightning, and John did as ordered, nearly yelping with pain as the high-test moonshine swirled around his aching tooth as well as the one that Richard had drilled. He so wanted to swallow, but thoughts of the town meeting to come caused him to spit it out into the bucket, though Richard was not above a quick swig for himself before getting back to work, fishing the gold filling out of its antiseptic wash. After another agonizing minute, he had it firmly worked into the drilled-out hole.
    “There. All done,” Richard announced proudly. “Don’t chew on that for a few days. If it starts to get infected, get in here, and I definitely expect you back in here in another day so I can get that rotting tooth out of you before it really goes bad. We can’t fool around with those things the way we used to. Remember old man Parker died last month from a tooth infection.”
    John could only nod. Now both sides of his mouth hurt.
    “How much do I owe you?” he muttered, standing up.
    “Let’s see, one drilling, one filling with gold foil … make that a buck in silver; that covers the cost of the gold more than anything else. We’ll say a buck in silver or twenty rounds of ammo—prefer .22.”
    John fished into his pocket and pulled out a well-worn Barber quarter and two Mercury dimes. Over the previous year, silver money, hoarded by more than a few before the Day, had started to slip back into circulation as money that was accepted by nearly all.
    “All I got on me. Can I pay you the rest tomorrow?”
    “Yup, but that tooth pull, that’ll be an extra fifty cents,” Richard said with a smile. “Only twenty-five cents if you want to skip the ether.”
    “Yeah, right.” John sighed. “I’ll be back tomorrow and pay you the rest then, along with the extra two bits for ether when you pull the tooth out. Okay?”
    Richard smiled and nodded. “You’d definitely better be back in, John. It’s no joking matter, and you know that better than most. Stupid to die because of a lousy tooth after all you’ve been through.”
    John all but fled the office and then turned to walk up Cherry Street, pausing to look in nostalgically at the used bookstore, a favorite haunt before the Day. The owner had died in the battle with the Posse. It had been turned into a borrowing library by his friend’s widow—bring a book in to trade for one taken out—and it thus continued to flourish, but he missed his old friend, the games of chess over coffee, a world where he did not face the situation waiting just around the corner. A sign hung on the door: “Closed for the town meeting. Chess tournament later tonight.”
    Nearly half a thousand had shown up in the town square for the hastily called gathering to find out the news about John’s visit to the new federal administrator. The pig roast lent a slightly festive air to the occasion; it wasn’t every day—or even week or month—when an open meal was offered to the town without requirement of ration cards, and more than a few showed for the roasted pork and then wandered off if their families were not directly affected by the draft.
    Phil, a favorite in the town where everyone still spoke nostalgically of his legendary barbecue restaurant, had presided over the roasting. He complained that