The Final Day (After, #3)(34)
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.