Milepost 291

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

As darkness fell, Franklin wanted to find a house in which he could hole up for the night, but he realized he was near the boundary of the national park where homes were scarce.

That was a welcome sign, even though he might have to catch some shut-eye on the ground. He was hungry, but exhaustion was a bigger problem at the moment. He’d refreshed himself from the cold, clear springs that oozed from between granite boulders, water driven by incredible pressure from the depths of the ancient earth. As he’d ascended in elevation, the trees had grown thinner and barer, already succumbing to winter.

Once, he’d heard two men talking in the distance, and he’d pressed himself into a mossy cleft behind a rotted stump until the voices faded, then waited an extra half an hour just to be sure. They were most likely members of Sarge’s platoon—although it was possible other survivors had headed for high ground in the wake of the solar storms and subsequent collapse. He wasn’t willing to take that chance.

Just before sunset, gunfire had erupted somewhere in the mountains around him. He couldn’t pinpoint the location due to the echoes across the valley, but it was miles away from him and lasted less than a minute. He followed a muddy animal path, keeping Grandfather Mountain’s dark profile to his left as he climbed. Soon the path widened, and by the time the sun’s light had all but diminished, he realized he was on one of the Blue Ridge Parkway’s hiking trails.

Night travel was safe enough, since the stars and moon offered just enough light to distinguish the deeper blackness of the forest from the open trail. He kept alert for any noise or sudden flash of light, although many creatures seemed to move through the treetops and scurry across the hidden carpet of fallen leaves. After perhaps an hour, he carefully felt his way a few feet into the forest and lay down in what felt like a grove of ferns. Removing his jacket, he rolled it into a pillow and rested. Even though he shivered, he was grateful that the October air was too cold for mosquitoes.

He must have dozed for some time, although he had no way of judging how long. The night had shifted into a deeper, more mysterious mode, a time that still belonged to nature and was hostile to man. The insects hissed louder and bolder, the night predators clawed bark and rattled branches, and the creeks gurgled with a liquid menace. Franklin slipped into his jacket and found his way back to the trail, some of the weariness banished despite the damp ache in his bones.

He came upon some deer, a buck and two white-tailed does, and the animals didn’t bolt at his scent. The buck’s antlers had five or six points, a testament to age and strength, and it stared at Franklin as if daring him to come closer. Its eyes may have been tainted with solar sickness, or it might have just been reflecting the moon. Either way, Franklin waited until the small herd moved on before he continued.

Once, he came to a bend in the trail that opened into a vast expanse of mountain and sky, the quarter moon wedged above the craggy face of Grandfather Mountain. Mist hung like the smoke of primeval fires, veiling the canopy and wrapping shrouds around the rocky, gray peaks. It was a world that seemed to have completely forgotten the existence of human beings—indeed, a world that had never even known of their presence. Even as a longtime outdoor enthusiast, Franklin was humbled by the vast magic and beauty that made him feel simultaneously insignificant yet unequivocally distinct.

He wasn’t a religious man, although he’d pursued various spiritual paths in his youth before cynicism had driven him to become a survivalist. Now, imagining he might be the only living soul in the universe, he wondered if God approved of him, and whether he deserved any special dispensation. He’d never considered whether building a survivalist compound was a selfish act—he’d always told himself he was protecting the future of his family. But like the ascetic whose life of meditation hidden away in a Himalayan cave did little to make the world a better place, maybe Franklin’s idealism amounted to little more than intellectual masturbation, a monument in service to his ego.

It disturbed him to consider his years of work to be so meaningless, yet he couldn’t deny the essential truth. If his heart seized and he fell dead that moment, the compound might sit idle until some future doomsday reduced it to volcanic slag or the march of decades wore it down to black dirt. But he diverted himself from self-pity. He’d long considered that the trait of fools.

“I’m doing it for Rachel,” he said to the silent sky. “She’s still alive.”

Satisfied that he’d reached some sort of accord with whatever higher power might be listening, he continued up the trail.