Forrest came out of his room wearing heavy winter camo, left sleeve cut off and sewn closed. A hunting rifle was slung from one shoulder, and a military-grade M4, taken in the fight with the ANR, was slung around his neck and across his chest.
“Ma’am, thank you for your hospitality,” Forrest said, nodding politely to Makala, old mountain etiquette coming to the fore, extending his hand, giving her half a dozen K-Cups—which she tried to refuse, John watching the exchange and of course inwardly hoping that the game would play out with Makala reluctantly taking this incredible gift, which could mean coffee in the morning for nearly an entire week.
“Take care of my husband,” she finally replied, kissing Forrest on the cheek, and he actually blushed slightly. He had long ago come to accept that his scarred, twisted face with one eye missing gave him a deadly looking demeanor, and rare would be the woman who kissed him, even in a friendly gesture of politeness.
“He can take care of himself, ma’am; otherwise, I wouldn’t salute the son of a…”
“Bitch? Yeah, can be that at times,” she said with a laugh and then turned and looked John straight in the eyes. “I know you’ve got to go, your damn sense of duty and all that. But, John Matherson, if you get yourself killed and leave me seven months’ pregnant, I’ll never forgive you.”
He looked around the room. More than enough firewood was stacked by the stove, the fire within radiating a comfortable glowing heat, augmented by the brilliant sunlight streaming through the sunroom window. If all went well, he’d back by midday tomorrow … if all went well, something that in this world no one ever took for granted.
They went down to the basement garage, the place where there had once been a lovely blue Mustang convertible, destroyed in the fight with the Posse. The old, battered Edsel still ran but was rarely used now since it was such a gas guzzler. When time again permitted, he planned to go into Asheville and prowl the abandoned automotive shops, finding a set of tires to match up with a 1958 Edsel, the tires on his nearly bald. The engine as well needed a major overhaul, and trying to find new rings and valves would be another challenge.
They opened the garage door, and it took a minute for Forrest’s open-air vehicle to start and keep running. John put his gear in the back well, double-checked the two jerricans, making sure they were filled with gas, waited for Forrest to ease the vehicle out of the garage, closed the door behind him, and climbed into the open-air seat. Just sitting there made him doubt the wisdom of this trip. It was freezing cold; the old-fashioned thermometer next to the garage door, mounted to a faded tin frame advertising the “new” 1958 Edsel, registered fifteen degrees. His wife was right; chances were it would be below zero up over the pass. He tightened up his jacket, made sure no flesh was exposed, looked over at Forrest, and nodded.
“Let’s go get Lee Robinson and hit the road.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Still alive?” Forrest asked, looking over at John, who was shivering like the last leaf clinging to a tree in a hurricane, though John realized it might be that he was still scared witless.
Going up the mountain range wasn’t too bad, though the snow depth gradually increased. There was little wind; the sunlight was sparkling with such intensity that John cursed himself for not bringing along sunglasses. It was a journey through what he could only describe as a world out of the old tourist calendars that used to be sold in town of the splendor of the Black Mountains on a winter day. Pine and spruce branches were bent low under the weight of snow, forming tunnels along the old fire road as they crept up toward Craggy Gap.
But as they neared the summit, harsh reality suddenly closed in. The pass at Craggy was concealed by low-scudding clouds racing up the north slope of the mountain range. Gaining the Blue Ridge Parkway for a short run westward to the paved road that led down to Forrest’s community, they drove into a true whiteout, visibility barely beyond the front hood of the Polaris. The unrelenting wind had stripped the trees bare of snow, to be replaced with a thick coating of rim ice that actually stuck out horizontally from the bent-over branches.
The roadway itself was blown nearly bare of snow, but around the first bend they encountered a six-foot drift, created under the lee of a cliff. Forrest actually sped up, laughing as he plowed into it, John and Lee both cursing him, Forrest with but one hand clutching the steering wheel while shouting for John to shift the vehicle into four-wheel low drive. They nearly stalled out and then broke through, a few seconds later skidding sideways down the ice-covered road until they hit a patch of snow and thus gained traction again.
At least the parkway was two lanes wide with crash barriers to stop them from tumbling into a gorge, but once off the parkway and onto a paved road that led down the north side of the mountain, John felt his nerves beginning to snap. The road was a series of ice-and snow-covered switchbacks, the clouds lifting enough to reveal the terror ahead.
“We’d better think this one over!” John cried, but Forrest, laughing, just hit the gas.
It was a long, white-knuckled toboggan ride of several miles, speed building up, John convinced they were going to crash or flip, Lee cursing madly from the backseat, but just when death seemed inevitable, Forrest would shout for John to shift a gear, and the Polaris would skid around a curve, straighten out, and then descend toward the next switchback.
John realized that the twisted-up, battle-scarred veteran was one of those types that after coming so close to death had just simply lost his fear of it and even enjoyed challenging and taunting it, the adrenaline far more addictive than any drug or booze.
They finally reached level terrain, Forrest skidding to a stop and without comment getting out of the Polaris to relieve himself by the side of the road.
“You crazy bastard!” Lee shouted. “You could have killed us all back there, and for what?”
“Afraid of dying?” Forrest asked, looking back with a sardonic smile at Lee. “We’re alive; we had a hell of a rush. What more could you ask for?”
“I’m walking back,” Lee muttered, looking over at John, who was shaking so hard he could barely unzip his ice-coated snowmobile suit to relieve himself as well.
“Five more miles from here, we’ll take the fire lane over there; cuts the trip in half and saves on gas.”
At least the last few miles were somewhat more tranquil, except for one steep-pitched turn, John hanging on to the roll bar overhead to maintain balance while looking down at a ravine to his right that dropped fifty feet or more, where he saw poking up out of the snow at the bottom the wreck of a long-ago lost jeep.
“That one killed a cousin of mine five years back,” Forrest announced casually. “Freaked out that his fiancée had broken their engagement, he got liquored up and went out night hunting for deer, missed the turn, and went over the cliff. He always was a stupid bastard. Took two days to find him, and we just decided to leave the jeep there as kind of a memorial.”