by Matt James
Days are like dog years now. Thirty-five days on our current calendar seems more like thirty-five months. That’s the main reason why I don’t push it. It hasn’t been a long enough grieving cycle. Plus—SPOILER ALERT—I’m not actually the girl’s dad! And Hope never has to call me that if she doesn’t want to.
In the end, it’s up to her.
I glance at her in the mirror again and catch her talking happily to Skylar. She catches me staring at her, blushes, and waves, smiling wide.
Would be nice, though.
10
I’m sorry to say that we don’t get to see the 441 doppelganger. We’re forced off 411 and onto a winding 72 to the southeast into the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. I hang a left onto Happy Valley Road. To our left, is a small body of water for drainage of some kind. To our right, is a steep, tree-covered embankment.
“Look!” Hope shouts, pointing an excited finger between Jill and me. “Snow!”
I smile when I the see the light flurry up ahead. Living in New York for over a decade, I’m used to it now, but back when I was a young Floridian, I used to react just like Hope is now.
“First time seeing it?” I ask.
Hope nods, bouncing in her seat. “Can we stop?”
I shake my head and laugh. “Not yet, kiddo. Besides, it’s not making it to the ground yet.”
“When will it?”
I lean forward and look up, steering around a fallen tree as I do. The snow seems to be getting heavier the deeper we travel into the Smokies.
“Soon.” The SUV is buffeted by a strong wind. “Real soon…”
The foliage around us is a beautiful collage of reds, oranges, and browns. The road is an awful combination of reds and greys. Black burn marks too. The Smokies, as a whole, seem to be the origin of the burner contagion, not one single city.
I slow and roll over a downed power pole. Luckily for us, its wood and the Yukon makes quick work of the short climb. A couple of miles up the road, I notice that a transformer blew. Nothing around here is going to have power.
Up ahead, I spot the first structure in more than half an hour—two actually. A pair of homes sit across the street from one another. Both seem extremely out of place considering that we've seen nothing but trees since turning onto Happy Valley Road. I’m about to stop but decide against it once I see that the owner’s car is on its side underneath the carport and is blackened. As far as the neighbor’s home, well, the entire thing is burnt to a crisp.
“Is it just me,” I say, “or are there more and more signs of burners now?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Jill replies.
“We’re getting closer to them?” Hope asks. “Why?”
My eyes find hers. “We don’t have a choice right now.” I motion to the road. “We have to take what the land is giving us.”
“And it’s telling us to go this way, sweetheart,” Jill adds.
“You’re fine, Hope,” Mom adds, patting her leg. “You’re safe…”
As we roll past, I increase the pressure on the gas pedal and pick up some speed. The road banks back and forth, exactly what you’d expect a rural country road to look like. It’s as tranquil as one as you’ll find in the United States.
There’s nothing for miles.
The only things we see are more homes, rarely though, and an occasional deer or two. A few are dead, gutted on the side of the road, but some aren’t, standing off to the side, and munching on grass.
Ten minutes later, one of those deer tries to run us off the road. Seriously, a deer. The bloodstained Unseen-Bambi is sprinting alongside us, mashing its hideous fangs, shoving its antlers into the right flank of our SUV. No real damage is done, however…until I veer into the animal and send it careening into the base of a wooden telephone pole.
The number of driveways has increased dramatically. Now, there’s one every half mile instead of one every mile-plus. Letting up on the gas, I use the slight decline to my advantage and rest my aching knee. I’m fortunate that this vehicle isn’t a stick. I’d really be hurting if I had to do a bunch of shifting while navigating the sloping terrain.
Now, there are homes everywhere. Each has a plot of land of around thirty to forty acres in size and compared to what we just drove through, this is a thriving, yet horribly overpopulated, metropolis.
Lots of people too.
A family of five waves to us as we pass their farm on our right. Then, another larger group on our left. From where I’m sitting, I can see that a few of the townspeople have rifles and shotguns. Then again, maybe they always carry them around here…
Do I hear banjoes?
I’m not even sure that reference makes any sense here. Are banjoes indicative of all country folk, or just those living in the Louisiana bayou? Are they even symbolic of them?
Man, I need to watch Deliverance again and get my ‘facts’ straight.
Mailbox after mailbox, dirt driveway after dirt driveway, there are survivors everywhere! My original hypothesis of the rural areas not being affected as hard seems to be accurate. Besides Bambi, I haven’t seen a single Unseen for miles.
And I see why just up around the next bend.
There’s a church off to our left. Its driveway is long and made of natural dirt and rock. On either side of it are fields, each around two acres in size.
They’re both covered in bodies.
I watch as the living walk around carrying torches, burning the carcasses left behind by the devilish event. I can see it now. The people here would’ve turned to the heavens for an explanation. While I do believe there’s evil in the world, I believe it’s in the hearts of men, not within the core of a meteor from deep space.
“Frank,” Jill says, “look…”
I had just turned away from the “Field of Screams” and had missed something far worse than the mass grave. There are large, charred poles in the grounds in front of the church. I slam on the brakes and slide us to a halt. There, in the middle of the road, I leap out of the SUV. These aren’t just any kind of poles. These have pyres blazing beneath them.
People are being burned at the stake.
Fire has always been seen as the great cleanser throughout history and the world, but this is maddening. Jill joins me and puts a shaky hand on my shoulder. We need to do something.
“Come on, Frank,” Jill says, coaxing me back to the car. “We need to keep moving.”
No!” I shout, tears streaming down my face. “This isn’t right.”
“Don’t you think I know that!” she yells back, grabbing my shirt sleeve.
I pull out of her grip. “There has to be something we can do!”
Jill’s head drops. “Like what? Do you really think the people here are the only ones who have lost their minds?”
I turn back toward the field and sigh. “No, I don’t.”
“I’m sorry, Frank, but you said it yourself—”
I know what she’s about to say and say it myself instead. “I can’t save them all.”
“No,” she says, sounding somber, “you can’t.”
Dad is the next one out of the SUV.
“Son?” I face him. “The people back there—the ones tending to their property.”
“What about them?”
“They’re alive.” He points to the hundreds of burnt bodies littering the grass. “They aren’t a part of this.”
“But some are.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t know that. For all we know, the people here were dead before the fires.”
Jill steps in. “Maybe they think the mutations are some sort of disease and not from the radiation.” Hmm… Could be. “They could be treating it like the plague.” My shoulders and neck muscles loosen a little. What they’re saying doesn’t sound too farfetched.
“And the stakes?” I ask, still concerned.
He looks unsure. “For the Unseen?”
Right. Are they really capturing the creatures, tying them up, and burning them at the
stake? No, that doesn’t feel right.
I know they’re both trying to talk me down from my mental ledge. It’s working too. Just the conversation alone is calming me a little. This proves that I’d be a wreck, and most likely dead, without my family by my side. I’m strong-willed and have a tough mind, but if I had to do all of this by myself, it wouldn’t have turned out well.
Jill and Dad talk amongst themselves for a few, while I stare off into the scenery. Closing my eyes, I take them off of the sloping drive for thirty seconds. It’s long enough not to notice the horde of people marching their way towards us. It reminds me of the mob of hunters going after Frankenstein’s monster, or even the ones that went after Beauty’s beast.
The echo of a rifle going off spurs us into motion, and instead of firing back, Jill, Dad, and I hightail it back to the awaiting Yukon. I throw it into drive just as another round pings off the door frame above my head. Luckily, the police-issue SUV is tough. The bullet sails into who-knows-where—but I do know where we’re going.
Anywhere but here!
“I…” Dad starts to say, but he’s thrown back into his seat, with a grunt, “I take back everything I said.” He sticks a thumb out over his shoulder. “Those are some crazy SOBs.”
* * *
We happily put the Happy Valley psycho squad behind us and with every mile further down the road we get, I relax more and more. I’m not thrilled about leaving the innocent people back there to die, but I have to assume that they aren’t just blindly killing anyone they come across.
Doesn’t explain why they fired on us, though.
My internal feud is lessened some by a sign that reads, “Happy Valley Gap.” My already widening grin turns into a full-on smile when Dad cups his hands around his mouth and says, “Mind the gap.”
The road twists and turns revealing a collection of burned-out homes and small businesses. I think I see another church too. It’s likewise charred and in pieces. Something terrible happened to all the structures in this quaint neighborhood. We’re definitely getting deeper into burner territory. We’re also getting closer to Gatlinburg.
Not good.
I curse under my breath when Happy Valley Road turns a hard right and starts taking us dead east.
“Stop here,” Jill says, and I do so.
Foot on the brake, I have us sitting at the foot of a sideways “Y” juncture. If we go right, we’ll continue onto the not-so-Happy-Valley Road. The look on Jill’s face is one of deep thought. I can tell she’s second-guessing what do to or we wouldn’t have stopped at all.
“Flats Road,” I say, hoping the words will help jog Jill’s incredibly detailed memory. It’s one of the reasons she was such a good trial lawyer.
A professional at arguing.
“I think I got lost here once.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
Mom shares my worry. “Is that a good thing?”
Jill smiles. “It is.” She turns around and faces my mother. “I’m pretty sure Happy Valley isn’t the right way. I think it keeps going east whereas we want to go north.”
“Flats Road it is,” I say, veering left—to the north.
At this point, I would’ve been fine with eenie, meenie, miney, mo. I’m completely turned around right now. Everything here looks the same and good luck figuring out which way is actually north, south, east, or west. The sun is hidden behind the mountains and trees, forever casting the road in an infinite shadow.
Like Happy Valley Road, Flats Road is nothing but banking turns, vegetation, and cliffs. The houses here are just as sparse too. The major difference is the roadway itself. It’s tight as shit. I can’t imagine two big pickups being able to fit next to each other without one of them having to pull over first.
We approach the second home since merging onto Flats Road. It seems that the homeowner was backing out of his, or her, driveway when they were attacked. The car, a beat-up station wagon, is sideways across the narrow street, blocking us from continuing any further.
“Damn,” I mumble, banging the steering wheel.
“Hang on, Frank,” Jill says, peering deeper into the property. I was focused on the wreck. “I think they have a double driveway. You might be able to sneak past the wagon and get back onto Flats that way.”
I shrug. “Worth a shot.” I turn the wheel. “Just be ready, okay?”
“For what?” Hope asks.
“For anything.”
Our Yukon is big, but we fit into the driveway just fine. We’ve got more than a few inches on either side of us, and from here, I don’t see anything in the way of us getting back onto Flats Road. Jill’s plan is gonna work unless—
Even from inside the tank-like vehicle we hear the shriek of what I know to be a burner. It’s the same thing I heard outside of the Chattanooga Zoo before the creature detonated. We’re halfway home, and right in front of this residence’s door. Suddenly, a man crashes through the front window, running from something that has him scared. He doesn’t look any different than any of us, so I don’t think it's him that spooked us. Plus, the ear-piercing shrieks are still resonating around us.
In the split second that I decide to help him, the house explodes. A wave of heat washes over us, but luckily, the heavy-duty vehicle keeps us from being harmed. The guy, well, he isn’t so lucky. The temperature must be intense because he literally bursts into flames as he’s thrown across our hood. Everyone inside the Yukon screams in fright, including yours truly.
The timing of our escape is perfect, except that I slam into the charred man harder when I reflexively stomped on the pedal. I would’ve hit him one way or the other, so I can’t really blame myself for that.
The front half of the house is gone. The rest is nothing more than a fireball. I once more recall seeing the flash and hearing the shriek and boom back in Chattanooga, but this was my first experience with a burner up close and personal.
More or less, but I still haven’t actually seen one.
Our tires find dusty pavement, and we take off before anything notices us. I seriously doubt anyone could’ve survived that blast, but I ain’t stickin’ around to find out. I’ve got places to be—hopefully not exploded places—and people to meet—also, hopefully not exploded.
The dust on the road is actually a light layer of snow, and it’s starting to come down pretty heavy. Now that we’re back on the road, where it looks semi-normal, it’s a beautiful sight to behold. It’s not every day that you get to witness snow falling in the woods. It’s peaceful even.
Peaceful. Yeah…right.
11
A few miles up ahead is another community of some kind. Roads of all shapes and sizes, paved and unpaved, break off of Flats and disappear, winding themselves into the trees. Each has a handmade, makeshift sign stating which path you’re about to turn onto if you so choose to. Jill hasn’t told me to do so, so I’m staying put.
“Deer Trot Trail?” I ask rhetorically. The street sign is wood and features a small family of deer mid-trot.
“Cute,” Mom replies, speaking up for only the second time in a while.
She’s been awfully quiet back there, Dad too, but I also remember that she doesn’t do very well in the backseat. The swerving mountain roads aren’t helping either. I know my stomach would be in knots right now if our roles were reversed.
“Top of the World?” This time, it’s Jill who is unsure of the name.
“Is that another road?” Dad asks, chuckling.
“No,” Jill replies, “it’s a town…”
“Any of this look familiar?” I ask, worried.
She shakes her head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been through here. I don’t recognize any of it—just a couple of vague memories really. Plus, a lot of this is relatively new as people try to escape the busier resort areas.”
Busy, right. The busiest this area gets is when a community bonfire is put together. And, if you haven’t noticed, I have no clue what people in places like this do.
> “Great,” I mumble. Jill’s eyes dart toward me, and I deflate her anger before it can erupt. “Still better than I could’ve done.”
The corner of her mouth curls into a smirk. She knows that I just dodged one hell of a bullet. She’s frustrated, and she wants to take it out on someone or something. I know the feeling all too well.
I feel it every fucking day.
Less than a mile later, I roll to a stop at a unique five-way intersection. I’d love to see a combo of super-seniors and teenagers navigate this one without hitting one another. It’d be a show for the ages—literally!
“Any ideas?” I ask. No one answers. “Okay, then… Flats it is.”
I keep the speed slow. The street is narrow like the rest, but the amount of homes is what has me going easy. More people—and every adult I see is armed—men and women alike.
No bonfires.
It’s not a joke, and I know it isn’t fair for me to lump these people in with the crazies we've already met along the way, but that’s where my mind automatically went. For all I know, the township of Top of the World, Tennessee, is a polite one. We try to keep it that way and wave to everyone we make eye-contact with. No one smiles back, but they do at least acknowledge us with a courtesy wave of their own, albeit it an uncomfortable one.
I pull off the road a minute or two later and park the Yukon in front of a sign that reads, “Blount County Fire Department – Station 8.” I can’t imagine there isn’t anyone there that won’t give a guy some directions to a main road, especially one that carries around a badge.
Everyone exits the vehicle, but I’m the only one that makes his way toward what I believe is the garage. It’s a large, tan building with a pair of dark green, vertical rising doors. One of them is rolled down, but the other is up, and I think I can just make out a smallish fire truck inside. It’s not the same size as the classic version you see everywhere else. It’s shorter in length and sports a set of tires that can handle the local terrain.
