William Forstchen - The Final Day

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.

They finally reached the exit where the remains of a burned-out McDonald’s marked the turnoff. For that matter, all the buildings lining this part of the highway were scorched ruins. The Posse’s taking of Old Fort had been an act of utmost wanton brutality, nearly all caught by surprise in the town before they could flee the onslaught, and most had been murdered. As he turned onto the main street, the same dreary sight greeted him, everything burned out and looted, charred ruins covered in a coating of snow and ice.

It was deeply depressing, the first time he had actually come here since before the Day. By the railroad tracks crossing through the center of town, there was an abandoned flatbed eighteen-wheeler. Obscene graffiti spray-painted on the cab indicated it had been a Posse truck, and an equally graffiti-covered Cadillac made John wonder if this was the vehicle of the Posse leader he had hung.

No one had expended the energy to move these and half a dozen other vehicles off the road, giving most of the downtown area a tragic postwar visage. It wasn’t until they crossed over the railroad tracks that John saw that the old train station by some twist of fate had been spared, along with several shops and the town office on old Highway 70 as it headed east.

Several dozen were gathered outside the station for the ceremony. The same with nearly all the citizens of his world, they were slender, wiry looking, wrapped in oversized stained and soiled jackets and parkas. He recognized Gene Bradley, the nominal head of the community, an old, retired postman for the town, who wore the gray uniform jacket of his profession as if it was a badge of office.

John let the Edsel drift into the parking area behind the train station where half a dozen all-terrain vehicles, a battered old VW bus, and even a horse-drawn wagon had parked. A heavy truck retrofitted to burn on waste oil was actually out on the railroad tracks. The old telephone and telegraph poles once used by the railroad had been the convenient way to string wire from the power dam up in Mill Creek Valley five miles away. Quite a few old-fashioned glass insulators had been found on the poles along the way, even long stretches of sagging copper wire that had not fallen prey to scavengers and boys armed with pellet guns who always felt the insulators made excellent targets long before the Day.

The truck had several spools of wire on the back, and sitting around it was the work crew who had accomplished the feat of running the wire into town over the last few weeks in spite of the weather. Paul got out to check with them, proudly shaking hands all around while John worked the crowd of citizens with Makala by his side, of course all the women asking how she was doing and when she was due.

“I think we’re ready to start,” old man Bradley announced, and he opened the door to the train station, letting the crowd in. The interior triggered a wave of nostalgia for John. When his girls were little, they had spent many an afternoon “train chasing,” following a heavy coal or freight train down from Black Mountain by taking Mill Creek road. They’d stop to watch it circle around the local attraction of what folks called “the Geyser” but was actually just an oversized fountain set in a small park and then race ahead to downtown Old Fort, get ice cream in a shop across the street, and then sit in front of this station to watch the train come thundering through before heading home.

They were warm memories, and he suddenly felt Makala’s hand slip into his as if she were sensing his thoughts.

There was the usual round of “speechifying” that good days were finally coming back with the arrival of electricity and offering thanks for all the help they had received from the citizens of Black Mountain and Montreat College in bringing a modern world back to them. There was even a joke, but it was half-serious as well, that the next step was to again see trains, powered by steam, pulling into the station.

It dragged on a bit long, and John waited patiently. This was an important day for these few of the town who had somehow managed to survive. John was asked to say “a few appropriate words,” and he did keep it to just a few, looking past the happy group to low scudding clouds that were starting to come in from the northwest, possibly the harbinger of another storm.

It was finally time to light things up. All eyes turned to Paul and Becka, each of them holding one of the twins, who were taking in their first journey to the outside world with wide-eyed wonder, both parents keeping back a bit protectively, for Becka was indeed paranoid about the prospect of the twins catching a cold or something worse from those gathered around.

A bit of a friendly argument ensued as to who would actually go up to the old-fashioned switch, which look liked it belonged in a Frankenstein movie, and snap it down. Finally, one of the children of the village was pushed forward, picked up by her mother, and did the honors. A string of lightbulbs and other strings of the ubiquitous Christmas lights brought in from somebody’s attic flashed to light. Again, there was that same look of wonder on all the upturned faces, cheers, and some even started to cry. Someone turned on a CD player, and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” hit John hard as it always did. Nearly everyone joined in at the chorus, and nearly all were in tears by the end.

Next was the usual country song, more than a few beginning to dance, while outside there was a shout that the food was on. John walked out of the now-stuffy room, Makala by his side, to where several women had lugged over kettles of what smelled like venison stew. He could never admit, even now after the starving times, that venison stew made him queasy. While he was a student at Duke long ago, one of his roommates had come back from a weekend hunt toting a four-point buck, hung it up in the backyard, and butchered it himself. Being students on a tight budget, the group had pretty well lived on venison for a couple of weeks. They had teased John as a wimpy Jersey boy for not enthusiastically joining in for their meals of venison steak and ground venison stew, always washed down with plenty of beer. He had of course partaken, but there was something about the smell that had bothered him ever since, even when hunger gnawed away and a student at the college had come in with an increasingly rare kill.

He politely took a bowl of the stew and struggled with it, Makala smiling at his discomfort and his white-lie responses to the elderly ladies about just how good it was to have fresh venison stew, though he wondered just how fresh the meat truly was.