William Forstchen - The Final Day

“Bob Scales?” And with that, John sat bolt upright. It was Bob whom he had been speaking to at the Pentagon when the EMP hit. It was Bob who had been his mentor during his army career and who had arranged through the good ole boy network his teaching position at Montreat when John left the military to nurse Mary through her final months in the town where she had grown up. “Bob is alive?”

“He didn’t say that—just that he served with him.”

“Still, I got to talk with him,” John said excitedly. He looked back out the window; the storm was picking up. “Think we can make it now if we left today?”

“If it’s like this down here, I wouldn’t want to venture crossing over Craggy Gap and the Mount Mitchell range with night setting in. It was really blowing in as I came over this morning. Best let it settle down first.”

“Damn it.” John sighed. “This Quentin, think he’ll make it?”

“Can’t say, to be frank. Just had a gut sense I should come over and tell you. Anyhow, who is this Bob Scales?”

“I served with him years ago and thought he had died when things went down. If he is in charge of things up in Roanoke, my God, I got to find out.”

John’s worried thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Paul Hawkins running across the commons, head bowed low against the storm. Paul barged into the room, bringing with him a cold blast of air, Forrest cursing for him to close the damned door.

“John, you gotta come see something now!” Paul cried, features alight with a broad grin, made rather comical by the mantle of snow dripping from his broad-brimmed hat.

It was Paul and his wife, Becka, who had discovered the nineteenth-century journals of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, known as the IEEE, in the college library’s basement, the trade magazine for the new industry of electricity. Filled with discussions and debates about the new science of electrical engineering, complete with detailed patent applications by the likes of Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse, it was a discovery that ignited the plan to restore electricity, a “blueprint,” to bring their community back online.

“What is it, Paul? I’m kind of preoccupied at the moment with some news Forrest brought in.” He nodded to his friend sitting in the corner.

“Can’t explain it; you just got to see it now. You too, Forrest.”

John looked over at Forrest.

“You sure we can’t go back over the mountain today?” John asked anxiously.

Forrest shook his head. “Maybe first light tomorrow.”

John knew better than to second-guess Forrest, and he sighed. It would have to wait. He looked over at Paul, forced a smile, and nodded.

“Well, let’s go see what has you all fired up.”

If Paul thought there was something worth going out into a blizzard for, it had to at least be interesting.

The two pulled on jackets and, with heads tucked down, followed Paul out into the gale, Forrest cursing all the way as they followed Paul on the walkway that led up to the old library. The storm was of such intensity that John realized Forrest was right; to cross over the six-thousand-foot-high mountain range in this weather, no matter how urgent the mission, would be suicide.

The library, a building that architecturally had never fit into the classic native stone construction of most of the other buildings on campus, had always been a source of woe. It had leaky ceilings, and even before the Day, it had been sealed off for a semester because of the dampness and mold.

Once into the building and his hat and scarf removed, John took a deep breath and knew his allergies would soon nail him. The main part of the building was dark, the sound of dripping water echoing. A single light shone through the swinging doorway leading into the back office, where Paul and his young wife had taken up quarters, preferring to live there rather than in so many of the well-built and now-abandoned homes and cabins that surrounded the campus. At least this part of the cavernous building was warm and cheery, a large woodstove providing heat. Becka was there, balancing a newborn twin on each arm, and John smiled at the sight of them, going up to kiss Becka lightly on the forehead.

“How you doing, young lady?”

“Feeling better thanks to Makala’s attention and help.” As she spoke, one of the newborns stirred, whimpered slightly, and then nuzzled back in against her mother.

As is too often common with twins, they had been a month premature. There was a time when that was not much of a concern with nearly all hospitals providing intensive care neonatal centers. But now? The babies had come into the world in what was the community’s local hospital in the old hotel, the Assembly Inn, on the far side of campus. John’s wife, who was due herself in another two months, had taken charge, and rather than let them return to their makeshift home in the library, she had ordered the three to stay at their home, setting up a nursery in the sunroom and hovering over all three during the first crucial weeks.

It had been an emotional experience for John, his home again echoing with the late-night cries of newborns, the sight of a very pregnant Makala up with them every night, in the morning holding one of the girls while an exhausted Becka nursed the other.

The sunporch had been the final sickroom for his daughter, Jennifer, who died there. It was also where his mother-in-law, Jen, had slipped away. He had tried to balance all, death and new life in the same room, and in some small way, it had helped to ease his grief and heartrending memories.

John fought down the temptation to ask to hold one of the twins for a moment. Makala had repeatedly warned that in this now heavily germ-laden world, the less exposure they had to others over the next few months, the better. Paul, after a quick kiss to Becka’s forehead and a fond look at the girls, was already pointing the way to the basement door.

John and Forrest followed him down into the darkness, and at the bottom of the stairs, Paul flicked a switch and a single fluorescent light flickered to life. It was definitely something John and Forrest were still not really used to—a flick of a switch and a light comes on. The town’s electrical grid was still slowly expanding from its first base at Lake Susan, and half a dozen other hydro projects were under way across the State of Carolina, but electric was still strictly rationed to public facilities and even then only ran for half a dozen hours each day. Paul and Becka had a special exemption for the cavernous library basement, able to illuminate their work area by recharging old flashlights while the power was on and suspending them from the ceilings so they could continue what they called “mining the past,” and from the way Paul was acting, he must have hit pay dirt again.

John looked around the storage area in wonder. The air was heavy with the disquieting scent of mold, mildew, mouse droppings, and tens of thousands of slowly decaying magazines and books. He paused to look at one pile that Becka said she was sifting through, a vast stack of Life magazines going back to the 1930s. The sight of it triggered memories of when he was a boy down with a bad case of the flu when his mother would come home from the library every few days with magazines from the Second World War era and the ones from the Civil War centennial of the early 1960s, inspiring his lifelong interest in the subject.

Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek, Time, even a pile of Mad magazines created a nostalgic smile and also a sadness for the lost world—not just of his childhood but for everyone’s loss.

“It’s back here, you guys!” Paul cried, pointing the way, and John felt pulled away, resolving that someday, if there ever was a someday without all his worries and concerns, he’d come back down here and perhaps just spend that day with Mad and the zany artwork of Don Martin, or dig through the stack of Boys’ Life for short stories by Ray Bradbury, or just look at the cover art for Saturday Evening Post and the lost world of Norman Rockwell. He looked over at Forrest, who was smiling as he thumbed through an aged copy of Playboy . John wondered why anyone would ever donate that to the college library book sale.