The Final Day

by William R. Forstchen

  The baby was due in little more than a month. Protective like any expectant father, he had first vetoed the idea of her riding down the mountain in the old Edsel. Then one of the citizens of Swannanoa had shown up toting an old-fashioned set of tire chains that would fit the car. It was something folks in the South had rarely seen, but as a boy growing up in the North, he well remembered the struggle of fitting them to the tires of his father’s car before a major storm, and he always associated the sound of them with when he was six, a blizzard on Christmas Eve, believing they were Santa’s sleigh bells. Driving to Old Fort and back would consume two gallons of gas, but the council insisted they go for the ceremony as a demonstration of the bond between the mountain communities and those down in the piedmont below.

  He felt a little more justified when Paul and Becka, along with the twins, were crammed into the backseat, for after all, they were the architects of the entire electrical system that was gradually spreading out. He had debated with Paul the wisdom of risking his family out in the open by traveling with a man who most likely had a price on his head, but Paul had insisted they go along.

  The drive down the old interstate was more than a little white knuckled. Several had attempted the run after the last storm, but it was the Bradley that had gone up and down several days earlier that had packed down a pathway that was now melted clear in places. Unlike in areas in north where the effects of several heavy snows coming nearly weekly could linger on the ground for months, this far south, a stretch of days up in the forties in December with clear skies could trigger a lot of melt off even in the mountains of North Carolina.

  Still, he took the downhill run at little more than ten miles an hour, carefully staying in the middle lane. Other than the journey back from Morganton after the adventure in the Black Hawk, this was only his second foray down the long interstate climb through the mountains since the Day.

  Evidence of the wreckage left from the Posse attack littered the road. For the folks of Black Mountain, the road had a certain taboo quality to it. At the top of the pass was where the town had established its barricade against the tens of thousands of refugees seeking entrance in the weeks following the Day. The barrier was still there but for the moment no longer manned with a passageway cut through it on the eastbound side.

  Right at the crest of the mountain, at the truck safety stop where heavy vehicles used to pull off to examine a large map and safety information before beginning their descent, was the place where John had personally supervised the executions of Posse prisoners, including their ringleader. Several frayed ropes still swung in the breeze from the stoplight overhang. He knew the bodies that had once dangled there as a warning had long ago rotted off, what was left consumed by buzzards and coyotes, but as he drove past, he could still imagine them there as they kicked out the last minutes of their lives. The cliff just beyond had become the dumping ground for hundreds of Posse dead, and even after two years, some claimed a stench still wafted up on damp mornings. Seven bodies had been added to that pile, but he made no mention of that fact to those traveling with him.

  Abandoned vehicles still littered both sides of the road on the way down. Most had been picked over in the months after the fight but with little enthusiasm or careful checking, for some still contained skeletal remains. It was a foreboding place, and all in the vehicle were silent as John negotiated his way around the wrecks until finally halfway down the mountain the wastage of war was pretty well left behind. The driving became a bit easier as well, for it was not uncommon that while a foot of snow was coming down atop the mountains, down in the piedmont it would be rain. Long stretches of the road, especially where the highway weaved about facing to the south and east, the pavement was melted nearly clean and just covered in slush.

  Nevertheless, he made a mental note that once the ceremony was completed and he had performed some ritualistic handshaking and small talk, he would turn back and head for the home that he and Makala now occupied across the street from the campus. There was the feeling in the air that another front was starting to come through, and the prospect of driving the Edsel back up the mountain with the slush turning to ice and snow again falling was of concern.

  They finally reached the exit where the remains of a burned-out McDonald’s marked the turnoff. For that matter, all the buildings lining this part of the highway were scorched ruins. The Posse’s taking of Old Fort had been an act of utmost wanton brutality, nearly all caught by surprise in the town before they could flee the onslaught, and most had been murdered. As he turned onto the main street, the same dreary sight greeted him, everything burned out and looted, charred ruins covered in a coating of snow and ice.

  It was deeply depressing, the first time he had actually come here since before the Day. By the railroad tracks crossing through the center of town, there was an abandoned flatbed eighteen-wheeler. Obscene graffiti spray-painted on the cab indicated it had been a Posse truck, and an equally graffiti-covered Cadillac made John wonder if this was the vehicle of the Posse leader he had hung.

  No one had expended the energy to move these and half a dozen other vehicles off the road, giving most of the downtown area a tragic postwar visage. It wasn’t until they crossed over the railroad tracks that John saw that the old train station by some twist of fate had been spared, along with several shops and the town office on old Highway 70 as it headed east.

  Several dozen were gathered outside the station for the ceremony. The same with nearly all the citizens of his world, they were slender, wiry looking, wrapped in oversized stained and soiled jackets and parkas. He recognized Gene Bradley, the nominal head of the community, an old, retired postman for the town, who wore the gray uniform jacket of his profession as if it was a badge of office.

  John let the Edsel drift into the parking area behind the train station where half a dozen all-terrain vehicles, a battered old VW bus, and even a horse-drawn wagon had parked. A heavy truck retrofitted to burn on waste oil was actually out on the railroad tracks. The old telephone and telegraph poles once used by the railroad had been the convenient way to string wire from the power dam up in Mill Creek Valley five miles away. Quite a few old-fashioned glass insulators had been found on the poles along the way, even long stretches of sagging copper wire that had not fallen prey to scavengers and boys armed with pellet guns who always felt the insulators made excellent targets long before the Day.

  The truck had several spools of wire on the back, and sitting around it was the work crew who had accomplished the feat of running the wire into town over the last few weeks in spite of the weather. Paul got out to check with them, proudly shaking hands all around while John worked the crowd of citizens with Makala by his side, of course all the women asking how she was doing and when she was due.

  “I think we’re ready to start,” old man Bradley announced, and he opened the door to the train station, letting the crowd in. The interior triggered a wave of nostalgia for John. When his girls were little, they had spent many an afternoon “train chasing,” following a heavy coal or freight train down from Black Mountain by taking Mill Creek road. They’d stop to watch it circle around the local attraction of what folks called “the Geyser” but was actually just an oversized fountain set in a small park and then race ahead to downtown Old Fort, get ice cream in a shop across the street, and then sit in front of this station to watch the train come thundering through before heading home.

  They were warm memories, and he suddenly felt Makala’s hand slip into his as if she were sensing his thoughts.

  There was the usual round of “speechifying” that good days were finally coming back with the arrival of electricity and offering thanks for all the help they had received from the citizens of Black Mountain and Montreat College in bringing a modern world back to them. There was even a joke, but it was half-serious as well, that the next step was to again see trains, powered by steam, pulling into the station.

  It dragged on a bit long, and John waited patiently. This was an im
portant day for these few of the town who had somehow managed to survive. John was asked to say “a few appropriate words,” and he did keep it to just a few, looking past the happy group to low scudding clouds that were starting to come in from the northwest, possibly the harbinger of another storm.

  It was finally time to light things up. All eyes turned to Paul and Becka, each of them holding one of the twins, who were taking in their first journey to the outside world with wide-eyed wonder, both parents keeping back a bit protectively, for Becka was indeed paranoid about the prospect of the twins catching a cold or something worse from those gathered around.

  A bit of a friendly argument ensued as to who would actually go up to the old-fashioned switch, which look liked it belonged in a Frankenstein movie, and snap it down. Finally, one of the children of the village was pushed forward, picked up by her mother, and did the honors. A string of lightbulbs and other strings of the ubiquitous Christmas lights brought in from somebody’s attic flashed to light. Again, there was that same look of wonder on all the upturned faces, cheers, and some even started to cry. Someone turned on a CD player, and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” hit John hard as it always did. Nearly everyone joined in at the chorus, and nearly all were in tears by the end.

  Next was the usual country song, more than a few beginning to dance, while outside there was a shout that the food was on. John walked out of the now-stuffy room, Makala by his side, to where several women had lugged over kettles of what smelled like venison stew. He could never admit, even now after the starving times, that venison stew made him queasy. While he was a student at Duke long ago, one of his roommates had come back from a weekend hunt toting a four-point buck, hung it up in the backyard, and butchered it himself. Being students on a tight budget, the group had pretty well lived on venison for a couple of weeks. They had teased John as a wimpy Jersey boy for not enthusiastically joining in for their meals of venison steak and ground venison stew, always washed down with plenty of beer. He had of course partaken, but there was something about the smell that had bothered him ever since, even when hunger gnawed away and a student at the college had come in with an increasingly rare kill.

  He politely took a bowl of the stew and struggled with it, Makala smiling at his discomfort and his white-lie responses to the elderly ladies about just how good it was to have fresh venison stew, though he wondered just how fresh the meat truly was.

  There was a side to John that only those close to him really knew how to read; at heart, he was an introvert. If given the preference for an ideal day, it would be to just spend it with family, maybe a friend or two dropping over, and then plenty of time in the evening to curl up with a good book about history. During his years as an officer, when in direct command of a platoon and then a company, he’d had to force himself to be out there, to be patient and listen, to learn how to work with others rather than just be the type to issue orders and expect others to instantly obey, even when he knew he was right.

  He had walked backward into his entire role as leader of his community, never wishing it. It was why friends like Lee Robinson, Maury, and others said that he was actually highly efficient, because at heart he did not want a role that others would have greedily grabbed on to and never want to relinquish.

  He had to play the role now, enduring more than one handshake that turned into an embrace of gratitude from someone who had not bathed since winter set in.

  Paul and Becka had already placed the twins in the back of the Edsel, Becka claiming they were tired and that it was nap time. It finally served as an excuse for John to disenthrall from the enthusiastic crowd. He did not want them to think he was rude or standoffish—he definitely was not—but now he doubted the wisdom of agreeing to get Makala out of the house for a while in her eighth month of pregnancy with a potentially icy drive back up the mountain.

  Paul and Becka were already in the backseat, huddled over their precious cargo as John helped Makala into the old Edsel after passing the word to Bradley to give a call up to the town hall at the campus to let them know they were leaving. It was a safety gesture that if they did not get back within the hour, it meant they were stuck, and it was also a holdover from not all that long ago whenever venturing out of Black Mountain, because there were still the occasional marauders lurking along the roads, ever ready to jump on a lone traveler in a highly prized functional car.

  He did not add that if they were still singled out as a target there was little that could be done, and now that worry was hitting him hard. Going out on his own in a different car was one thing. Doing it this way in light of what happened was a show of courage that he had to do, but he was putting those whom he loved at risk and now just wanted to get back home.

  He absolutely refused Kevin and Lee’s demand that he travel with a well-armed escort. Long before the Day, he had come to disdain the near-absurd lengths that security teams went to around even the most minor of officials after 9/11, and he refused to bow to that level.

  Strange world, he thought as he reached the interstate and swung onto the opposite side of the road since on the way down it appeared to be clearer. Strange as well that though he had an extremely pregnant wife in the front seat and parents in the back with twins nestled between them, all four adults were armed, Paul and Becka each carrying sawed-off shotguns and Makala, like him, armed with a .45 Glock.

  A couple of times up the long climbing slope, the Edsel fishtailed a bit. John was glad that they had left while the sun was still high in the sky for this time of year; the temperature was beginning to drop, and a breeze was picking up, with a thickening spread of clouds drifting in from the west. At such moments, the four did what people nearly always do: speculated about the approaching weather.

  “John, look up to your right!” Paul suddenly cried, breaking the relaxed and friendly conversation.

  John leaned forward at the wheel and saw a Black Hawk crossing up high over the ridgeline to their right, swinging about in an arcing turn, and then diving back down and disappearing from view up toward the top of the crest.

  John hit the gas as much as he dared, the Edsel fishtailing even more until the chained tires dug into the slush and propelled them forward, blue exhaust swirling out behind them.

  “Are they after us?” Makala asked nervously.

  “Doubt it,” he said, trying to reassure her.

  “If they wanted to arrest you, John, this would be the convenient place to do it, away from the town.” She didn’t add that killing them would be all so easy now.

  If that was indeed the intent, he thought, then he truly was a fool for leaving the security of the campus and partially trusting Bob’s words.

  Coming around the last bend in the road, he saw that the Black Hawk was going into a hover at the top of the pass at the long-abandoned truck stop, the place of a major battle and executions.

  “Back it around!” Paul shouted. “Head back down to Old Fort.”

  John wearily shook his head. “Whatever is about to happen, they have us.” He sighed. “Keep your weapons down and out of sight.”

  John slowed the Edsel and stopped fifty yards out, turning the Edsel sideways by the exit ramp of the truck stop.

  “If it goes bad,” he said, looking over at Makala, “take the wheel and try to make a run for it.”

  Her arms were around him, hugging him fiercely.

  He forced a reassuring smile. “The baby comes first, lover. Don’t worry—if they wanted us dead, it already would have happened.”

  He carefully got out of the Edsel, made a show of holding up his Glock by the grip and then placing it back into the vehicle, and walked toward the Black Hawk with hands out to his sides and clearly showing he was unarmed. The chopper’s rotors slowed to a stop as he approached, the side door sliding open, and Bob Scales got out, doing the same as John, arms extended out, showing he was unarmed.

  The two approached each other cautiously. Behind Bob, John could see that there was a door gunner at the ready
, weapon not pointed directly at him but ready to be swung around.

  “Hell of a way to meet, General!” John shouted over the whine of the Black Hawk’s turbines, which had not been shut down.

  “Yeah, hell of a world, John,” Bob replied as he slowed and came to a relaxed attitude of attention.

  John did the same and finally raised his right hand in a salute, which Bob returned.

  “We have to talk,” Bob announced.

  “I was hoping that was all. Just as long as you leave my family and friends out of it.”

  Bob looked past John to the wreckage scattered about the truck stop, the horizontal pole where frayed ropes swung slowly back and forth in the increasing breeze from what appeared to be an approaching storm.

  “So this is where you held the Posse off?”

  “Yes.”

  “Exceptional choice of ground. I heard how they nearly succeeded in flanking you from over there to the north.” As he spoke, he pointed to the deep ravine of Mill Creek.

  “Something like that.”

  “I just took a look over there and saw something interesting, John.”

  He did not reply.

  “You should tell whoever is over there that the white camouflage netting was fine right after the snow fell, but those antennas kind of stick out clearly now.”

  Again John did not reply.

  “It was spotted yesterday, John. Actually, I don’t mind, but I am curious as to who you are eavesdropping on over there.”

  “Why don’t you go ask yourself?”

  “I was thinking just that, but didn’t want some sort of misunderstanding if I or some of my people just showed up unannounced.”

  “Is that the reason you flew all the way over here?” John asked.

  “One of several,” he replied, and John sensed the tension in Bob’s voice.