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.
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.