The Final Day (After, #3)(75)
He looked over at Linda, his decision made. “I’m with you. Put half your kids on it. Focus in on any communication that looks personal and has some sort of reference to R. I think you are onto something.”
“Oh, hell, I knew you’d agree with her,” Ernie growled.
“That’s because he’s smart,” Linda said with a smile. “Now I saw the way you were looking at a half-eaten sandwich, John. I still have some burger meat left over. Let me cook one up for you two visitors and enough left over to take home to your wives and kids.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At last the weather had broken, with a stretch of over a week in the upper forties, so that there were actual bare patches of pavement visible on the roads again.
He had heard no more from Bob other than a terse daily phone exchange with each telling the other that there was nothing new to report. No further reference, especially over an open phone line, about the assassination attempt or what might be unfolding regarding Bob’s plans regarding his stated position that he would go in on Atlanta within days.
Work on the mill dam and generator to provide power to Old Fort and even on to Marion was completed, and with a ceremony to be held in downtown Old Fort at the train station, John felt it would be good for Makala to end her week of being in hiding. He found that he had to take something of a fatalistic view regarding the threat. If they, whoever they were, intended to try again, it would come, and nothing he could do would prevent it. He could either cower in hiding with his wife or live life.
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.