William Forstchen - The Final Day

“Yeah, same here,” Forrest said, gaze drifting off as he absently reached over with his one hand to scratch the stump of his missing arm.

“Feeling it again?” John asked.

“Ghost limb, they call it,” Forrest said with a chuckle. “Yeah, it feels like it’s still there and itchy as hell. Memories of snow for me get all screwed up by this.” He motioned toward the missing limb with his good hand and then up to the eye patch.

“I loved to hunt as a kid; we always got a lot more snow over on the north side of Mount Mitchell than you did here. Easy to track deer, fox, bear. Friends and I would even camp out in it, get a deer, and then just stay out in the woods for days living off the venison and some potatoes and corn we packed along.” He smiled wistfully. “And more than a few mason jars of shine and a bit of homegrown weed as well. A lot better than sitting in a damn boring history class in school, and given the way the world is now, a better education for our futures as well.”

“For someone who apparently hated history classes, you sure know a lot about it,” John said with a smile.

“Oh yeah, you were once a history professor. What good did that do you when it came to surviving in this mess?”

“It helps at times, Forrest.”

“Okay, I guess it did when it came to running things and getting that ‘Declaration,’ as you folks call it, written. Lot of good that will do, though, if the BBC reports are true.”

“Gave me the idea for how to face off against the Posse.”

“You mean you used Hannibal’s plan for the Battle of Cannae?”

John smiled at that and nodded. “Seems you know more history than you let on, Forrest. Often the mark of a good leader, which you sure as hell were and still are.”

“And it should have told me not to volunteer for that extra tour of duty in Afghanistan. The way it was being fought by the time I shipped there, it had turned into another Vietnam. Build laagers, hunker down, can’t shoot even when shot at, and the bad guys own the rest of the countryside while we wandered around like fools trying to win ‘hearts and minds.’”

Forrest shifted his gaze to the storm outside as he took one final drag clear down to the filter and let the cigarette burn out. He stood up and went to the window, pulled the flimsy curtain back, looked out, and sighed.

“When I copped all of this in Afghanistan it was a day like this one.” He motioned again to the eye patch and the missing arm. “It was a freeze-your-ass-off day. Still haunted by the memory of all that pink frozen slush where the rest of my squad lay, blown apart, the crunching sound of footfalls on snow as the bastards who ambushed us came in to make sure we were all dead and loot our weapons and gear. That’s my memory of snow now.”

John was silent. It was the most detail his friend, who but six months back had been an enemy who had damn near killed him, had yet said about the day he was torn apart in a war all but forgotten now.

Several minutes passed as they silently sipped their contraband coffee, a gift Forrest would show up with occasionally with a clear “don’t ask, don’t tell” understanding between them. Forrest lit another Dunhill, smoked it halfway down, and then pinched the flame out, sticking what was left into his breast pocket.

“To what do I owe the honor of your visit today?” John finally asked, for it was a very long trek over the mountains, requiring several gallons of precious gas for Forrest’s Polaris six-wheeler.

“You’ve heard the BBC reports about Roanoke being pulled in with the government up in Bluemont?”

“Yeah, I was about to suggest the state council getting together here this weekend to talk it over. It is only prudent to expect we might be next on their list.”

“I expected an immediate response after the way we trashed their ANR unit back in the spring, and then nothing. But I think something has got to be stirring by this point.”

“Why I said, ‘Best of times, worst of times,’” John replied, watching as the last wisps of smoke from Forrest’s cigarette coiled toward the ceiling and then disappeared.

“‘Best of times, worst of times,’” and this time it was Forrest. “I was hoping for a winter of peace after so much crap these last few years.”

“You think it will go bad?”

“If you expect shit to happen, John, you’ll never be surprised when it does.”

“Thanks for that cogent piece of advice.”

“The price of a good cup of coffee and the offer of a cigarette. Anyhow, beyond bearing potential bad news, I thought I’d hang around here for a few days. With the storm, it’d be a good time to teach some of your kids winter survival stuff.”

“Good idea. What made you think of it?”

“Because before it’s done, I think they’ll be fighting a winter campaign, my friend. Up in the mountains of Afghanistan, it was colder than Valley Forge, the Bulge, even the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. The Afghans understood it; more than a few out there with me did not. I don’t want to see that again.”

“You think it will come to that?”

“Don’t you?”

John did not reply. There were far too many other worries at the moment. The harvest was barely adequate to see his rapidly expanding community through the winter, especially with this early onset of autumn snow when there should have still been time to gather in additional forage. Two years ago, his worries extended only as far as Montreat, Black Mountain, and Swannanoa, but in the exuberant days after the defeat of the forces from the government at Bluemont, dozens of other communities had allied in, as far south as Flat Rock and Saluda, north to the Tennessee border, east to the outskirts of Hickory, nearly sixty thousand people in all. A tragic number when it was realized that more than a half million had once lived in the same region.

The city dwellers who had survived in the ruins of Asheville were of course welcomed, but few came in with any kind of resources, having lived hand to mouth on what could be scavenged from that once upscale new age–oriented community. It was the backwoods communities like Marion, even Morganton, with groups surviving like the one led by Forrest who joined with a quid pro quo of skills and even access to food that really counted in what all were now calling “the State of Carolina.”

Forrest was usually not the talkative type, and John remained silent. Something else was up with this man, and John waited him out.

“Someone came into my camp yesterday,” Forrest finally offered. “I think you should come back with me and meet him.”

“Who is he, and why?”

“Some of my people found him wandering on Interstate 26. Poor bastard is pretty far gone—several ribs broken, bad frostbite, and coming down with pneumonia. He got jumped by some marauders on the road and took a severe beating. Chances are he’ll be dead in a few days, so we decided he should stay put and you come to him.”

John did not reply. Forrest was not given to extreme reactions; months earlier, he had come into Black Mountain, leading nearly fifty of his community, after they were hit by an air attack from Fredericks’s Apaches. The man had been gut shot and kept refusing treatment until those with him were treated first. If he judged their refugee to be too sick to travel, John wouldn’t question the decision.

“Who is he?”

“Says he’s a major with the regular army. Claimed he served alongside you years ago. Name of Quentin Reynolds. That he was with the army that took Roanoke.”

“Quentin?” John whispered. The name struck somewhere, but if they had served together, that was close on to a couple of decades ago.

“Claims he was an adjutant to a General Bob Scales who’s in charge up there.”