The Final Day

by William R. Forstchen

  Kevin Malady, who had knelt down on the other side of Lee, chuckled. “Hey, that was a piece of cake.”

  “Kiss my butt,” Lee gasped before rolling on to his side and retching again.

  Maury finally climbed out of the cockpit, took off his helmet, and tossed it back inside, and then, to John’s surprise, he got sick to his stomach as well.

  John stood to one side, waiting for his friend to regain his composure, while aft, Forrest had climbed back inside to fetch another fire extinguisher to hand out to Danny, who continued to douse the engine. The smoke was subsiding, the aircraft’s metal ringing with metallic pings as it cooled down.

  “Here comes Bob Gillespie,” Danny announced, and he pointed to a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle turning out from the taxiway and onto the runway. Its driver, an elderly man, capless and baldheaded, was slowing down to a near stop a hundred feet out with shotgun at the ready.

  “Who the hell are you crazy bastards?” he shouted.

  Danny held his arms up, cursing back and identifying himself. The driver relaxed, set his shotgun down, and drove up, dismounting, reaching to the rear seat to pull out a heavy fire extinguisher, and dragging it up behind the chopper.

  “Danny McMullen, just what in hell are you doing out here?”

  “We just went for a little ride.” Turning, he introduced the rest of the group. John had heard about Gillespie, who until the Day owned the airport and spent his life fixing nearly anything that could fly. When contact was reestablished with Morganton back in the spring, Danny had tried to recruit Gillespie into moving to Black Mountain to help with the L-3 and Black Hawk. Gillespie had managed to survive by going hermit and lying low when the Posse had been rampaging through the area. With no family, his wife having passed away years earlier, the airport had become his family.

  The old man merely nodded a reply to the introductions because he was all eyes for the Black Hawk, and without a word, he slowly walked around it, taking a few minutes to look at the bullet-pocked turbine housing, poking his head into the cockpit, and clucking before finally going back to Danny.

  “So which one of you screwed up six million dollars’ worth of aircraft?”

  They all looked one to the other, and John started to step forward.

  “I’ve seen more than one crash in my career, and by God, ten minutes ago, I figured I was about to see a bunch of fools die. That was, without a doubt, one of the most God-awful landings I have ever witnessed. Whoever was flying this, do us a favor and stay on the ground. You bent a wheel strut, you idiot.”

  As he spoke, he pointed to the portside strut—which was indeed cantered out at an angle—and John now noticed the chopper was actually listing.

  “How about the engine?” Danny asked.

  “Don’t know until I strip it down. Most likely some cracked turbine blades, for starters. Let me guess—you kept them spinning after you got hit until things started to burn out.”

  Everyone looked over Maury, who was suddenly red-faced.

  “Damn it, like I told you six months ago, it’s been twenty years since I flew one of these things. At least we’re still alive.”

  It was Forrest who broke the tension, reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out a pack of Dunhills. Popping one out, he then held it up, offering it to the others.

  “Oh my God!” Gillespie cried, reaching out for one.

  “Can this guy maybe fix it?” John whispered, leaning over to Danny.

  “Don’t know until we strip the engine down.”

  “I think Forrest has something to trade for the work,” John replied.

  Danny nodded, and to John’s surprise, he went over to Forrest’s side and motioned for a cigarette. A minute later, all of them except for Lee and himself were smoking, Maury now shaking from adrenaline and fatigue, nervously inhaling and coughing as he exhaled but then continuing to smoke.

  Forrest looked over at John, again that seductive offer. He was standing downwind of his friends and of course breathing in the delicious scent.

  And then there was the memory of the photograph of Jennifer with her dying mother and the promise he made.

  While putting together the drop package, he had come upon the idea of including the photographs as proof of the validity of who he was if it was actually handed intact to Bob. Fishing around in the basement of what had once been Jen’s house, he found the photo albums. Going through them had caused deep stabs of pain, and Makala had found him thus, crying softly as he looked at the photos of Mary holding Elizabeth as a newborn, and then Jennifer. And as well, old photos going back to Mary’s childhood, the day they announced their engagement, the day they got married.

  She had not said a word about finding him thus, accepting without question his comment that he was looking for a couple of photographs to enclose in the message capsule as proof of who he was if the situation was too dangerous for them to land.

  Looking out across the snow-covered landscape, still smelling the burning cigarettes, his friends unwinding and laughing as men do after a close shave with disaster, he wondered where all of this was leading—and what his reception from Makala would be when they finally got into downtown Morganton, made the long-distance phone call to Black Mountain, and found a way to get the last forty miles back to home.

  I hope this was all worth it. His thoughts were more like a prayer. Bob, for God’s sake, I hope you are still alive, that whatever Quentin was raving about was just the memories of a dying man.

  He so wanted to believe it—that not only was Bob alive but that he was on the side of Bluemont, the mere thought of him being on their side a reassurance that in spite of the tragedy of the spring, it was a government he could still work with.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “It’s seven days now without a word from Roanoke or anywhere else.” John sighed, looking over at Maury Hurt, who, along with several of the ham radio operators in their community, had been monitoring 122.9 around the clock.

  The response was silence.

  “Could it be a signal couldn’t carry that far?” John asked.

  “It used to be an open channel for uncontrolled air space,” one of the “hams” replied. “With a handheld unit, I sometimes picked up traffic sixty miles away. The antenna I’ve got set up now picks up some distant chatter—not sure from where, I suspect down toward Charleston—so we should have heard something.”

  “And we’re certain it was monitored 24-7, at fifteen minutes into each hour? No holes, no one asleep?”

  The small group looked at each other, shaking their heads.

  “John, we set up a regular rotation, at least two monitoring at any given time. Zero, zilch, nothing.”

  “Okay, thanks for coming over,” John sadly replied. The four left his home, Makala seeing them off and then coming back to sit next to John, who was gazing absently at the fire blazing inside the woodstove.

  “Feel it was all for naught?” she asked.

  He winced slightly as she took his left hand to examine it. He had lost a glove while leaning out of the chopper, and by the time he had finally arrived back home, his hand was completely numb with a touch of frostbite that was healing but still troublesome, along with the wrenched shoulder from getting slammed against the outside of the chopper.

  Makala had hovered over him ever since their return, muttering in stern nurse manner about busted ribs and other assorted injuries from the past with this new one now added in. The trip had drained him, again reminding him that he was no longer a young lieutenant or captain in the field; those days were more than half a lifetime ago. Once home, Makala held him in a fierce embrace, stifling back tears, whispering that when their return was long overdue, everyone had begun to fear the worst—that they had crashed, been shot down, or foolishly landed into a trap and taken prisoner.

  He was beyond grateful for her response, given the anger she was feeling when he left and the way she snuggled up close to him after feeding him some hot soup and then packing him off to bed for tw
elve blessed hours of sleep.

  A day later, another storm had rolled in, dropping an additional ten inches. Before the Day, such a storm, though significant for the South, was just part of life. Lifelong residents of the area were now saying it was beginning to look like the worst winter in decades, and given how precarious living now was, a long, snowy winter could indeed turn into a starving and freezing time. In the last three weeks, John calculated that he and Makala had gone through six to eight weeks’ worth of firewood. With a baby due in just about two months, it was becoming another source of worry. He dreaded the hours of work splitting and stacking an extra cord of firewood.

  The other source of worry was the apparent loss, at least for some time to come, of their Black Hawk. Bob Gillespie was stripping down the damaged engine; one of the turbine blades had indeed fractured. The wreckage of the three helicopters destroyed in the battle around Asheville Mall back in the spring had been dragged into the old Sears building to get it out of the weather and still rested there. John had agreed to allocate yet more precious gas reserves for Danny and Maury to go to Asheville to see if replacement parts could be salvaged from the wrecks and then transported all the way down to Morganton.

  This apparently failed venture to try to get a message to Bob Scales had cost the community several hundred gallons of precious fuel already, along with the possible permanent loss of their captured Black Hawk.

  He had long ago learned to compartmentalize the multitude of issues and anxieties that had become part of his daily life, and he had to do so now, forcing a smile as Makala gently massaged his still-tender hand and then checked his shoulder, which was still sore as well. The room was quiet, warm. John sighed and leaned up to kiss her on the lips as she stood beside him.

  “You know, this could kind of lead to something,” he whispered, and she hugged him. Several seconds later, he received a solid kick from their baby.

  “And that little devil is a mood killer if ever there was one, John Matherson.” She laughed. “Maybe come spring, we can get back to some fun.”

  He sighed, content to just hold her, both of them chuckling as the baby continued to squirm and kick.

  He finally looked down at his old-style wristwatch, hugged Makala tightly, and then reluctantly stood up. “I really should go up to the college. Ernie and the Hawkinses want to show me what they’re up to.”

  She helped to bundle him up, went into the kitchen, and came back with a quart mason jar of canned peaches, stuffing the bottle into his pocket. “That poor girl nursing twins needs these more than I do right now. Send her my love, and tell her once it’s safe to walk I’ll come up to check on her.”

  She watched as he went out the door, calling for him to stay in the middle of the road in case he fell. Maury had brought word to them this morning that one of the Wilson boys had been found dead the day before. Out hunting, he apparently slipped on some ice, fell, compound fractured his leg, and lay there helpless until he bled out and froze. In the few years prior to the Day, when cell phones had become a part of everyone’s daily lives, such an accident was all but unheard of. If in trouble while out in the woods, one simply called and cried out for help. Falling where no one could see or hear you replaced the worry last summer about the plague of copperheads and rattlesnakes that had erupted in the area, at least a dozen getting bitten and, with no antidote, two children dying.

  Warmly wrapped up, wearing a scarf, which he had always disdained before but was now grateful that Makala had wrapped one of hers around his neck, he trudged down to Montreat Road by the abandoned tennis courts and headed north for what used to be a short hike up to the campus. In a different time, he would have soaked in yet another beautiful morning after a snowstorm. No wind had followed the storm down here in the narrow valley, the trees canopying the road bent under the heavy weight of the wet snow forming a tunnellike vista ahead of him. A couple of heavy branches had snapped off, which he had to climb over, a barrier that road crews once took care of within minutes. To his right, Flat Creek was still roiling downstream through the park where he used to take his children to play. A couple of students were down there, enjoying the morning, laughing, the girl chasing the young man, tackling him, the two, not suspecting someone might be watching, rolling together, laughing, and then kissing passionately. He smiled as he surreptitiously watched for a moment, again aware of the desire he had felt for Makala just moments ago, and then seeing where their frolic might lead, he figured it best to quietly move along.

  Even in the midst of death, there was still life, and young life. He recalled a favorite science fiction series, Battlestar Galactica, when after the near annihilation of the human race, survivors aboard a few remaining ships fled their home worlds. A fierce debate ensued with one character demanding that they make a final fight while the newly appointed president declared they should flee and that if there was a priority now, it was to have children, lots of children.

  In the midst of death, life was again trying to reassert itself. The historian in him knew such was true; after every brutal annihilating war, the primal instinct was to repopulate, to replace with a new generation all those who had been lost. It made him think of Jennifer. She’d be fourteen and a half now, no longer his little girl, on the cusp of becoming a young woman. The baby would be Makala’s first child, but for him? In a symbolic way, was the baby about to be born a replacement for the one he had lost?

  He glanced back at the couple in the snow, definitely behaving like a young couple in love, ignoring the coldness of the snow for a moment, this next glance telling him it was definitely time to move along.

  A wisp of a sad, understanding smile creased his features as he pushed on, leaving the secluded park behind, reaching the road bridge over Flat Creek, walking up the steep slope past what was now the community’s source of electricity. To his right was Anderson Auditorium, converted into the town factory for turning out turbines, generators, and wire, the fundamental building blocks of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century technology.

  He felt he should drop in to at least say hello, but he realized those working away inside the factory might see it as some sort of inspection tour and be thrown off their routine, and he therefore pressed on.

  The road steepened for fifty yards or so, memories flooding in of one icy day when classes were dismissed early and he wound up driving down it sideways, laughing students helping to push him out of the ditch where he had finally come to a stop. It was distressing to realize now that this short walk, up a slope, trudging through nearly two feet of snow, left him so winded that he had to stop for a moment to catch his breath.

  As he rested, he turned to look around at his valley. After a snowstorm, all sound was all so muffled. When still living near Ridgecrest, he delighted in the fact that the distant rumble on Interstate 40 ceased for a day or so during and after a storm. From childhood, there were memories of the sound of the few cars still on the road, tires wrapped in chains for traction, rattling by, and, blessing of blessings, days off from school. Now, except for the distant sound of hammering from Anderson Auditorium, all was silent. Whoever had penned “Silent Night” knew and understood it, as did Robert Frost when he wrote about stopping in the woods on a snowy evening.

  It used to be his favorite time of year. It no longer was with all the worries about survival to spring for his family and community. The worry was compounded by the unanswered questions. Was Bob Scales still alive? Had Bob indeed sent one man on a desperate journey to reach him, and if so, why? And overarching all were Quentin’s dying words about EMPs. The obsessive question haunting him. Were they ramblings of a delirious man slipping into death or a dire warning?

  The thoughts of that terminated his moment of peaceful contemplation, and with breath somewhat back to normal, he turned to climb the last few hundred yards to the library.

  Rounding the corner of the road by the chapel and the library, he was amused to see some of the students out sledding. Beyond their work schedule and ro
tation periods as community guards with the militia companies, the fact that they still had energy to enjoy such a beautiful winter day was, to him, a testament to the resilience of youth.

  Going through the darkened entryway to the library, he was greeted by the musty scent of tens of thousands of books that for the last couple of years had been exposed to no temperature control and runaway moisture. The Hawkinses’ living quarters in the back corner were blocked off with several layers of plastic sheets, and once through the swinging doors to the rear office, he was greeted with cheery warmth. Becka looked up at him, smiled, and put a finger to her lips. He looked over to the cribs where the twins were tucked in, fast asleep.

  She smiled and offered him a chair by the woodstove that they had installed, which was giving off a cheery warmth. “Just got the little ones down at the same time for once,” she announced, and without asking, she scooped a ladle of soup from a kettle on the fire, dipped it into a bowl, and offered it to John, who politely took it. Old Southern customs of greeting a guest with food still held, even now. The soup was watery thin; there was a hint of some kind of meat in it, wild onions, and he wasn’t really sure what else.

  They chatted for a few minutes about the babies, who were thriving, John remembering to pull from his jacket the canned peaches, which she clutched with gratitude. Finished with the soup, he asked about “the guys,” and laughing, she pointed to the staircase to the basement.

  “Those computers and all the other stuff have nearly turned me into a widow. Do me a favor and order Ernie to get the heck out of here at day’s end and for Paul to remember he has a wife.”

  “Will do,” John replied with a smile, and he headed for the basement, which had been renamed “the Wizard’s Workshop.” A joke that few caught was that long ago it was the name for Tom Edison’s lab in Menlo Park, where he developed the incandescent lightbulb and helped trigger the electrical revolution of the nineteenth century that they were struggling to restore.