The Final Day

CHAPTER THREE

“Still alive?” Forrest asked, looking over at John, who was shivering like the last leaf clinging to a tree in a hurricane, though John realized it might be that he was still scared witless.

Going up the mountain range wasn’t too bad, though the snow depth gradually increased. There was little wind; the sunlight was sparkling with such intensity that John cursed himself for not bringing along sunglasses. It was a journey through what he could only describe as a world out of the old tourist calendars that used to be sold in town of the splendor of the Black Mountains on a winter day. Pine and spruce branches were bent low under the weight of snow, forming tunnels along the old fire road as they crept up toward Craggy Gap.

But as they neared the summit, harsh reality suddenly closed in. The pass at Craggy was concealed by low-scudding clouds racing up the north slope of the mountain range. Gaining the Blue Ridge Parkway for a short run westward to the paved road that led down to Forrest’s community, they drove into a true whiteout, visibility barely beyond the front hood of the Polaris. The unrelenting wind had stripped the trees bare of snow, to be replaced with a thick coating of rim ice that actually stuck out horizontally from the bent-over branches.

The roadway itself was blown nearly bare of snow, but around the first bend they encountered a six-foot drift, created under the lee of a cliff. Forrest actually sped up, laughing as he plowed into it, John and Lee both cursing him, Forrest with but one hand clutching the steering wheel while shouting for John to shift the vehicle into four-wheel low drive. They nearly stalled out and then broke through, a few seconds later skidding sideways down the ice-covered road until they hit a patch of snow and thus gained traction again.

At least the parkway was two lanes wide with crash barriers to stop them from tumbling into a gorge, but once off the parkway and onto a paved road that led down the north side of the mountain, John felt his nerves beginning to snap. The road was a series of ice- and snow-covered switchbacks, the clouds lifting enough to reveal the terror ahead.

“We’d better think this one over!” John cried, but Forrest, laughing, just hit the gas.

It was a long, white-knuckled toboggan ride of several miles, speed building up, John convinced they were going to crash or flip, Lee cursing madly from the backseat, but just when death seemed inevitable, Forrest would shout for John to shift a gear, and the Polaris would skid around a curve, straighten out, and then descend toward the next switchback.

John realized that the twisted-up, battle-scarred veteran was one of those types that after coming so close to death had just simply lost his fear of it and even enjoyed challenging and taunting it, the adrenaline far more addictive than any drug or booze.

They finally reached level terrain, Forrest skidding to a stop and without comment getting out of the Polaris to relieve himself by the side of the road.

“You crazy bastard!” Lee shouted. “You could have killed us all back there, and for what?”

“Afraid of dying?” Forrest asked, looking back with a sardonic smile at Lee. “We’re alive; we had a hell of a rush. What more could you ask for?”

“I’m walking back,” Lee muttered, looking over at John, who was shaking so hard he could barely unzip his ice-coated snowmobile suit to relieve himself as well.

“Five more miles from here, we’ll take the fire lane over there; cuts the trip in half and saves on gas.”

At least the last few miles were somewhat more tranquil, except for one steep-pitched turn, John hanging on to the roll bar overhead to maintain balance while looking down at a ravine to his right that dropped fifty feet or more, where he saw poking up out of the snow at the bottom the wreck of a long-ago lost jeep.

“That one killed a cousin of mine five years back,” Forrest announced casually. “Freaked out that his fiancée had broken their engagement, he got liquored up and went out night hunting for deer, missed the turn, and went over the cliff. He always was a stupid bastard. Took two days to find him, and we just decided to leave the jeep there as kind of a memorial.”

“Crazy must run in the family,” Lee grumbled.

At last they came out to a paved road, and suddenly the land looked familiar, the exact same spot where Forrest and his community were camped when they had taken him prisoner back in the spring.

Smoke wafting up and streaming away from a stove rigged up inside the community firehouse promised warmth; the ragtag array of old RVs and camping trailers ringed in tightly around the firehouse, which was the community center.

Why these people still elected to stay here again filled John with wonder. Half a dozen miles away, there had once been a luxury resort of million-dollar vacation homes, complete with its own airstrip, all of it abandoned. He could see their side of it, though, for this, after all, was their land going back 150 years or more. Forrest and his friends had grown up in these valleys, knew every trail, and though game was all but completely hunted out along the south slopes of the mountains, over here a skillful hunter, especially when tracking in winter, could still find deer and bear, as clearly evident by the two bucks, gutted and skinned, hanging up outside the fire station.

Forrest pulled up in front of the fire station, a small crowd of well-wishers coming out to greet him. John recognized more than a few, former enemies who had joined their side in the confrontation with Fredericks. There were polite handshakes, a few inquiring as to his wife and her health, and thanks for the help she had extended when so many had been injured.

John peeled off his ice-covered ski mask, unable to conceal that he was still shaking, and someone immediately led him into the fire station, an elderly woman shouting for the crowd to let him warm up while she handed out hot mugs of—what else—yet more coffee, which, though scalding hot, John downed in several long gulps, sighing with relief, luxuriating in the warmth within the building.

“How’s our guest doing?” Forrest asked.

His question was greeted with silence, and John felt a wave of dread. The old woman who had handed him coffee finally spoke up.

“He died during the night.”

“Son of a bitch.” Lee sighed, looking over at John, who sat down, shaking his head.

“We should have gotten him to the hospital,” Forrest finally said, “but with the storm coming on…”

His voice trailed off into silence.

“Have you buried him yet?” John asked.

The old woman shook her head and nodded to a side room of the fire station. John stood up and followed her while unzipping his snowmobile suit; being inside felt stiflingly hot after so many freezing hours to get to this futile conclusion. He inwardly cursed. If Forrest only lived next to I-26, they could have easily transported him in a truck down to Asheville before the storm set in.

The old woman opened the door, and John felt a slight wave of nausea. How his wife ever handled the daily exposure to all the scents of a hospital ward was beyond him. It smelled like a sickroom, and he wondered if there was the first faint whiff of decay in the air. The body still rested on the bed the poor man had died in, covered by a sheet.

John drew the sheet back. No matter how many times he had seen the face of death, it still struck at him. It was said that pneumonia was “the old man’s quiet friend,” but it was obvious that the final hours must have been a terrible struggle; the man’s face was contorted, eyes still open, features ashen gray.

“I’m sorry. I should have taken care of him, washed and laid him out proper before I let you in here,” the elderly woman escorting him whispered, and she reached over with gentle fingers to close the dead man’s eyes and tried to wipe away the grimace, though rigor mortis had already set in.

“I know this man.” John sighed, gazing intently. “I remember him from the War College. I think he was on my friend’s staff.”

John pulled up a chair and sat down as Forrest and Lee came into the room.

“I knew him,” John said again, “not well, just one of those staff types always standing a few feet behind and to the side of a general.”

He struggled to dredge up more of a memory. The world before the Day was filled with so many memories, so many of them now hazy, distorted, washed over and replaced by the trauma of the last three years. The dead man before him was one of thousands of memories. Perhaps they had sat in on a conference together, maybe shared a drink with others. Wasn’t there a military history conference at the War College where he had given a lecture?

If so, it wasn’t noteworthy enough to remember right now, and that in itself struck him as tragic. Another life had disappeared; who and what he was John could barely remember. Did he have a family still alive that treasured him and would want to know his fate?

“Did he have any papers, military ID, anything like that on him?”

Forrest shook his head. “No wallet, nothing. The guy was pretty well beaten up when we found him, muttered something about getting jumped by marauders on the far side of the pass for Interstate 26.”

“He had several busted ribs, a lot of bruises, cracked jaw, and nearly out of his head when Forrest brought him in,” the old woman said, and as she spoke, she gently reached out to smooth the man’s hair back from his forehead, a maternal gesture that touched John.

“Janet here was a nurse; you remember her sister Maggie, who took care of you when you first came to visit us?” Forrest said.

Visit. John smiled at that. When he was captured, with a busted rib as well, Maggie was the first person to show him sympathy. Maggie was gone, killed in the air strike back in the spring.

“Your sister was an angel,” John said, “and thank you for seeing to this man. Did he say anything to you about how he got here and why?”

“Not much I could understand. He kept asking for you, sir. Said he had served with a friend of yours—Bob Scales.”

There was a sudden leap of hope. On the Day, John had actually been talking to Bob, who had called because it was Jennifer’s twelfth birthday. In the final seconds of that conversation, Bob began to cut the friendly chat short, his tone changing, saying, “Something is going on here,” and then the connection went dead.

For nearly three years now, he’d wondered what had happened to his old friend. Was he still alive? Did the man lying on the cot know the answer, and perhaps even more important, why had he come here?

“Had served with Bob Scales”—and John hesitated—“or was now serving?”

“I’m sorry, sir; he kept drifting in and out.”

“Janet, it’s John, please. Now try to remember everything he said.”

Forrest left the room and returned a moment later carrying a couple of folding chairs, deftly opening them.

“Could we leave the room?” Lee whispered. John looked back at his friend and could see that Lee, with a stomach even weaker than his, was getting queasy.

Janet nodded in agreement and drew the sheet back over the body, and Forrest motioned for them to head into another room. The three men stripped off their winter gear, Janet coming in a few minutes later bearing four cups of coffee, black.

“I’m sorry, but I gotta ask, and hope I’m not being impolite,” Lee said. “You guys always have coffee. How?”

Janet looked over at Forrest, who, in spite of the gravity of the moment, actually chuckled.

“I always said don’t ask, don’t tell, but this time? Okay, I’ll spill. We found an abandoned truck, gone off a ravine up near that rich folks’ resort you keep wanting me to move into. The dang truck was loaded with cases of these K-Cups, cases of them. Sorry, I kind of forgot to tell you about it.”

There was a tense moment of silence. There was an understanding among all that “finds” that could help the entire community should be shared. But it was not mandatory; the few who had tried to press the issue as an actual statute once the initial state of martial law was over with were denounced as thinking like commissars. Medical supplies, a truckload of preserved meat or canned fruit that children needed, and such were one thing, but tens of thousands of K-Cups?

“Finders keepers,” John finally replied, and Forrest visibly relaxed.

“Sorry, John. There were half a hundred cartons of high-class cigarettes in there as well.”

“Don’t even mention those,” John replied sharply, not even wishing to contemplate his struggle with that addiction that still haunted him, for like nearly all ex-smokers, years could pass and yet still the urge to try “just one” could hit. The only thing that kept him straight was his promise to Jennifer.

John looked over at Janet, who was sipping her coffee.

“Try to sort through it all, even the trivial, which might be really important.”

“Like I said, he was brought in here badly beaten up, half-frozen to death, frostbite to fingers and toes; if he had survived, he might have lost those anyhow. Three ribs staved in—wonder that his lung wasn’t punctured; that injury was certainly no help when it came to the pneumonia already setting in—cracked jaw as well, which made it even harder for him to talk and understand what he was saying. Fever was up over 102 when I got to him, no way to check blood oxygen level, but I could tell it was dropping. I was praying you’d get back with some antibiotics, but by last evening, I knew he was over the edge. He slipped into a coma and died at around midnight.”

“What exactly did he say?” John asked, pressing for something, anything.

“He came somewhat clear for a brief period just before slipping into a coma; I’ve seen that happen before. Said to tell you that you’ve got to get to General Scales up in Roanoke and stop them.” She hesitated, looking to the door as if to make sure no one else was listening. “He said, ‘EMP might be on the table.’”

“What? Were those his exact words?”

“‘EMP is on the table,’” Janet said.

“Whose table?” John interjected, leaning forward, eager for an answer.

“He never said who, what, or when. Was he remembering how the war started, talking about now or the future? I kept trying to gently prod him when he was conscious, but like I said, he was feverish and pretty well out of his head when he was brought in. I think if he had been out in the open even a few more hours he’d have died from exposure and would be lying under the snow rather than in the next room.”

John wearily shook his head and sipped his coffee. “Anything else? Please try to remember his precise words, ma’am.”

“Just that you, John, had to get to a General Scales.”

“Was he talking like General Scales was a memory from the past? I think I recognize Quentin. We might have served together while at the War College. Was he talking like that, rambling about our past or that I had to see him now?”

There was far more to this for John than just the urgency of a question about a garbled message from a dying man. If Quentin was speaking in the present tense, that meant that Bob Scales, one of his closest friends from before the war, was still alive—a prospect that could profoundy impact his responsibilities as a leader of his community. It meant a respected and beloved friend had somehow survived the Day. He had heard about the reports on the BBC that Virginia had been “pacified” by forces of the regular army. Was Bob the general in command?

Janet was silent for a moment, obviously carefully going over her memories. “Forgive me. I should have had a notepad with me and written it all down as he spoke. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Janet,” he replied, though inwardly he wished she had indeed done just that, for memory of a conversation with a dying man that one was trying to nurse at the same time could indeed become garbled.

“There was something.” She sighed. “Again, I’m sorry; I should have written it down as he was whispering to me. He rambled about going to Roanoke. ‘Find Bob there’ or something like that.”

John looked over at Forrest and Lee, who were taking it all in but wisely were remaining silent.

“I got to add—maybe call it a perspective—sometimes he was talking as if it was before the war, kept saying he had to get his wife and kids out. When he talked of them, he would cry. It was terrible to see him like that; poor man was such a tortured soul.”

“Who isn’t?” Lee said softly, gazing out the window.

“He said something about looking up H. G. Wells’s epitaph, that the guy was right and will be right again.”

Why would he mention H. G. Wells’s epitaph? John wondered. He had read Wells as a kid, but all he could remember was The War of the Worlds and an old movie, Shape of Things to Come, Wells wrote the script for back in the 1930s predicting the coming of World War II.

“And you checked over everything he had on him?” John asked.

“Everything. Forrest and I stripped him down to check for injuries. He was in military fatigues but no winter overcoat, weapons—something about the marauders after taking him had stripped him down and joked they were going to sell him.” She paused. “You know, there are still some hideaway groups out there that won’t hesitate to take someone as food.”

John nodded. Fragments of groups like the Posse were still out there in remote valleys and on mountaintops. They had learned to stay clear of his communities, but like jackals, they did linger on out on the fringes of a slowly reemerging civilized world.

“What he still had on was soaking wet. We stripped him down and found no paperwork or anything like that. All we could do then was to bundle him into warm blankets, give him aspirin and a few shots of moonshine, and hope for the best. I told Forrest to fetch you; the poor man kept saying you were the one he had to speak to. Sorry, but that is all that I can tell you. Whatever answers he had rest now with his soul.”

John stood up and went back into the temporary morgue, respectfully pulling the blanket back to gaze at the battered corpse as if somehow an answer would emerge or, like Lazarus, he might rise up “to return and tell thee all.”

He sat by the body for several minutes, the others not entering the room, as he gazed at the mortal remains of a major he could barely remember.

The dead offered him no answers, just silent wondering. He covered the body and returned to the room where his friends waited in silence.

“Forrest, can we get home before dark?”

Forrest sighed and nodded.