"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."

"Crazy must run in the family," Lee grumbled.

At last they came out to a paved road, and suddenly the land looked familiar, the exact same spot where Forrest and his community were camped when they had taken him prisoner back in the spring.

Smoke wafting up and streaming away from a stove rigged up inside the community firehouse promised warmth; the ragtag array of old RVs and camping trailers ringed in tightly around the firehouse, which was the community center.

Why these people still elected to stay here again filled John with wonder. Half a dozen miles away, there had once been a luxury resort of million-dollar vacation homes, complete with its own airstrip, all of it abandoned. He could see their side of it, though, for this, after all, was their land going back 150 years or more. Forrest and his friends had grown up in these valleys, knew every trail, and though game was all but completely hunted out along the south slopes of the mountains, over here a skillful hunter, especially when tracking in winter, could still find deer and bear, as clearly evident by the two bucks, gutted and skinned, hanging up outside the fire station.

Forrest pulled up in front of the fire station, a small crowd of well-wishers coming out to greet him. John recognized more than a few, former enemies who had joined their side in the confrontation with Fredericks. There were polite handshakes, a few inquiring as to his wife and her health, and thanks for the help she had extended when so many had been injured.

John peeled off his ice-covered ski mask, unable to conceal that he was still shaking, and someone immediately led him into the fire station, an elderly woman shouting for the crowd to let him warm up while she handed out hot mugs of—what else—yet more coffee, which, though scalding hot, John downed in several long gulps, sighing with relief, luxuriating in the warmth within the building.

"How's our guest doing?" Forrest asked.

His question was greeted with silence, and John felt a wave of dread. The old woman who had handed him coffee finally spoke up.

"He died during the night."

"Son of a bitch." Lee sighed, looking over at John, who sat down, shaking his head.

"We should have gotten him to the hospital," Forrest finally said, "but with the storm coming on…"

His voice trailed off into silence.

"Have you buried him yet?" John asked.

The old woman shook her head and nodded to a side room of the fire station. John stood up and followed her while unzipping his snowmobile suit; being inside felt stiflingly hot after so many freezing hours to get to this futile conclusion. He inwardly cursed. If Forrest only lived next to I-26, they could have easily transported him in a truck down to Asheville before the storm set in.

The old woman opened the door, and John felt a slight wave of nausea. How his wife ever handled the daily exposure to all the scents of a hospital ward was beyond him. It smelled like a sickroom, and he wondered if there was the first faint whiff of decay in the air. The body still rested on the bed the poor man had died in, covered by a sheet.

John drew the sheet back. No matter how many times he had seen the face of death, it still struck at him. It was said that pneumonia was "the old man's quiet friend," but it was obvious that the final hours must have been a terrible struggle; the man's face was contorted, eyes still open, features ashen gray.

"I'm sorry. I should have taken care of him, washed and laid him out proper before I let you in here," the elderly woman escorting him whispered, and she reached over with gentle fingers to close the dead man's eyes and tried to wipe away the grimace, though rigor mortis had already set in.

"I know this man." John sighed, gazing intently. "I remember him from the War College. I think he was on my friend's staff."

John pulled up a chair and sat down as Forrest and Lee came into the room.

"I knew him," John said again, "not well, just one of those staff types always standing a few feet behind and to the side of a general."

He struggled to dredge up more of a memory. The world before the Day was filled with so many memories, so many of them now hazy, distorted, washed over and replaced by the trauma of the last three years. The dead man before him was one of thousands of memories. Perhaps they had sat in on a conference together, maybe shared a drink with others. Wasn't there a military history conference at the War College where he had given a lecture?

If so, it wasn't noteworthy enough to remember right now, and that in itself struck him as tragic. Another life had disappeared; who and what he was John could barely remember. Did he have a family still alive that treasured him and would want to know his fate?

"Did he have any papers, military ID, anything like that on him?"

Forrest shook his head. "No wallet, nothing. The guy was pretty well beaten up when we found him, muttered something about getting jumped by marauders on the far side of the pass for Interstate 26."

"He had several busted ribs, a lot of bruises, cracked jaw, and nearly out of his head when Forrest brought him in," the old woman said, and as she spoke, she gently reached out to smooth the man's hair back from his forehead, a maternal gesture that touched John.

"Janet here was a nurse; you remember her sister Maggie, who took care of you when you first came to visit us?" Forrest said.

Visit. John smiled at that. When he was captured, with a busted rib as well, Maggie was the first person to show him sympathy. Maggie was gone, killed in the air strike back in the spring.

"Your sister was an angel," John said, "and thank you for seeing to this man. Did he say anything to you about how he got here and why?"

"Not much I could understand. He kept asking for you, sir. Said he had served with a friend of yours—Bob Scales."

There was a sudden leap of hope. On the Day, John had actually been talking to Bob, who had called because it was Jennifer's twelfth birthday. In the final seconds of that conversation, Bob began to cut the friendly chat short, his tone changing, saying, "Something is going on here," and then the connection went dead.

For nearly three years now, he'd wondered what had happened to his old friend. Was he still alive? Did the man lying on the cot know the answer, and perhaps even more important, why had he come here?

"Had served with Bob Scales"—and John hesitated—"or was now serving?"

"I'm sorry, sir; he kept drifting in and out."

"Janet, it's John, please. Now try to remember everything he said."

Forrest left the room and returned a moment later carrying a couple of folding chairs, deftly opening them.

"Could we leave the room?" Lee whispered. John looked back at his friend and could see that Lee, with a stomach even weaker than his, was getting queasy.

Janet nodded in agreement and drew the sheet back over the body, and Forrest motioned for them to head into another room. The three men stripped off their winter gear, Janet coming in a few minutes later bearing four cups of coffee, black.

"I'm sorry, but I gotta ask, and hope I'm not being impolite," Lee said. "You guys always have coffee. How?"

Janet looked over at Forrest, who, in spite of the gravity of the moment, actually chuckled.

"I always said don't ask, don't tell, but this time? Okay, I'll spill. We found an abandoned truck, gone off a ravine up near that rich folks' resort you keep wanting me to move into. The dang truck was loaded with cases of these K-Cups, cases of them. Sorry, I kind of forgot to tell you about it."

There was a tense moment of silence. There was an understanding among all that "finds" that could help the entire community should be shared. But it was not mandatory; the few who had tried to press the issue as an actual statute once the initial state of martial law was over with were denounced as thinking like commissars. Medical supplies, a truckload of preserved meat or canned fruit that children needed, and such were one thing, but tens of thousands of K-Cups?

"Finders keepers," John finally replied, and Forrest visibly relaxed.

"Sorry, John. There were half a hundred cartons of high-class cigarettes in there as well."

"Don't even mention those," John replied sharply, not even wishing to contemplate his struggle with that addiction that still haunted him, for like nearly all ex-smokers, years could pass and yet still the urge to try "just one" could hit. The only thing that kept him straight was his promise to Jennifer.

John looked over at Janet, who was sipping her coffee.

"Try to sort through it all, even the trivial, which might be really important."

"Like I said, he was brought in here badly beaten up, half-frozen to death, frostbite to fingers and toes; if he had survived, he might have lost those anyhow. Three ribs staved in—wonder that his lung wasn't punctured; that injury was certainly no help when it came to the pneumonia already setting in—cracked jaw as well, which made it even harder for him to talk and understand what he was saying. Fever was up over 102 when I got to him, no way to check blood oxygen level, but I could tell it was dropping. I was praying you'd get back with some antibiotics, but by last evening, I knew he was over the edge. He slipped into a coma and died at around midnight."

"What exactly did he say?" John asked, pressing for something, anything.

"He came somewhat clear for a brief period just before slipping into a coma; I've seen that happen before. Said to tell you that you've got to get to General Scales up in Roanoke and stop them." She hesitated, looking to the door as if to make sure no one else was listening. "He said, 'EMP might be on the table.'"

"What? Were those his exact words?"

"'EMP is on the table,'" Janet said.

"Whose table?" John interjected, leaning forward, eager for an answer.

"He never said who, what, or when. Was he remembering how the war started, talking about now or the future? I kept trying to gently prod him when he was conscious, but like I said, he was feverish and pretty well out of his head when he was brought in. I think if he had been out in the open even a few more hours he'd have died from exposure and would be lying under the snow rather than in the next room."

John wearily shook his head and sipped his coffee. "Anything else? Please try to remember his precise words, ma'am."

"Just that you, John, had to get to a General Scales."

"Was he talking like General Scales was a memory from the past? I think I recognize Quentin. We might have served together while at the War College. Was he talking like that, rambling about our past or that I had to see him now?"

There was far more to this for John than just the urgency of a question about a garbled message from a dying man. If Quentin was speaking in the present tense, that meant that Bob Scales, one of his closest friends from before the war, was still alive—a prospect that could profoundy impact his responsibilities as a leader of his community. It meant a respected and beloved friend had somehow survived the Day. He had heard about the reports on the BBC that Virginia had been "pacified" by forces of the regular army. Was Bob the general in command?

Janet was silent for a moment, obviously carefully going over her memories. "Forgive me. I should have had a notepad with me and written it all down as he spoke. I'm sorry."

"Don't blame yourself, Janet," he replied, though inwardly he wished she had indeed done just that, for memory of a conversation with a dying man that one was trying to nurse at the same time could indeed become garbled.

"There was something." She sighed. "Again, I'm sorry; I should have written it down as he was whispering to me. He rambled about going to Roanoke. 'Find Bob there' or something like that."

John looked over at Forrest and Lee, who were taking it all in but wisely were remaining silent.

"I got to add—maybe call it a perspective—sometimes he was talking as if it was before the war, kept saying he had to get his wife and kids out. When he talked of them, he would cry. It was terrible to see him like that; poor man was such a tortured soul."

"Who isn't?" Lee said softly, gazing out the window.

"He said something about looking up H. G. Wells's epitaph, that the guy was right and will be right again."

Why would he mention H. G. Wells's epitaph? John wondered. He had read Wells as a kid, but all he could remember was The War of the Worlds and an old movie, Shape of Things to Come, Wells wrote the script for back in the 1930s predicting the coming of World War II.

"And you checked over everything he had on him?" John asked.

"Everything. Forrest and I stripped him down to check for injuries. He was in military fatigues but no winter overcoat, weapons—something about the marauders after taking him had stripped him down and joked they were going to sell him." She paused. "You know, there are still some hideaway groups out there that won't hesitate to take someone as food."

John nodded. Fragments of groups like the Posse were still out there in remote valleys and on mountaintops. They had learned to stay clear of his communities, but like jackals, they did linger on out on the fringes of a slowly reemerging civilized world.

"What he still had on was soaking wet. We stripped him down and found no paperwork or anything like that. All we could do then was to bundle him into warm blankets, give him aspirin and a few shots of moonshine, and hope for the best. I told Forrest to fetch you; the poor man kept saying you were the one he had to speak to. Sorry, but that is all that I can tell you. Whatever answers he had rest now with his soul."

John stood up and went back into the temporary morgue, respectfully pulling the blanket back to gaze at the battered corpse as if somehow an answer would emerge or, like Lazarus, he might rise up "to return and tell thee all."

He sat by the body for several minutes, the others not entering the room, as he gazed at the mortal remains of a major he could barely remember.

The dead offered him no answers, just silent wondering. He covered the body and returned to the room where his friends waited in silence.

"Forrest, can we get home before dark?"

Forrest sighed and nodded.


"So that's it," John said, leaning back in his chair after reciting the adventure of the previous day and the mystery it now presented.

The small office was crowded, representatives of the "Senate" for what they defined as the State of Carolina packed into the room. The body heat from so many people, along with the woodstove, made the room hot, the scent of the air all but overpowering with its warm, musky smell of unwashed men and women.

The long-ago paintings of the Founding Fathers gathered in debate made them always look all so clean. He now understood far better why old films would at times show an effete French or English nobleman daintily holding a scented handkerchief to his nose. With the onset of winter, even the weekly bath had become a laborious chore. Makala was one of the few who still insisted upon a Saturday-night bath for both of them, and during the summer a skinny-dipping jump into Flat Creek on a near daily basis, even though it was freezing cold throughout the year. But at least in the summer they could lie out in the backyard to sunbathe and wistfully talk about a day to come with electricity restored when they might even scavenge up an old Jacuzzi and somehow get it running again.

Most had reverted back to the nineteenth-century practice of putting on long johns when the cold weather set in and not taking them off until spring arrived.

John often wondered if the Founders had smelled as bad; hard to picture the brilliant Jefferson or Washington himself smelling like those gathered in the room, even when at Valley Forge.

He tried not to breathe deeply, but Makala, who was impervious to such things, noticed his discomfort and cracked a window open, letting a gust of frigid air into the room. A few shifted uncomfortably, but others nodded a thanks.

"I've reached a decision as to what I think we should do—or, to be more precise, what I should do," John said, "but we are no longer under martial law. It will require significant resources; therefore, it is up to you."

"It's precious little information to make any kind of decision on," Reverend Black said, starting off a debate that John feared might run for hours. "A stranger who you think you recognize wanders into our region, claims he wants to talk with you regarding something that involves an old army friend of yours."

"Yes, that's basically it."

Black sighed. "When a man's time is drawing to a close, he often drifts back years, decades. A good friend of mine, a colonel during the Second World War, climbed out of bed the night before he died and started to wander about the hospital corridor, yelling at the staff to put their helmets on and get ready because a banzai charge was coming in. The poor guy had to be restrained. He kept yelling and cussing at everyone, this from a man who until his final days you never heard a foul oath from." Black smiled wistfully. "It was good old soldier cussing at its best."

Forrest chuckled softly. "I can teach some new ones any time you want, Preacher."

Black gave him a bit of a baleful glance but then smiled.

"Even the way he was talking, the turns of phrases sounded like something from an old movie rather than the way we talk today. My point, he was back in 1944 up until the moment his last breath slipped out of him with me holding his hand and praying by his side. His last words, though…"

Black's voice faded to a whisper, and he was obviously struggling to hold back on his emotions. "His last words: 'Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.'"

That put a lump in John's throat. "Stonewall Jackson's last words," he said softly.

"Precisely my point," Black replied. "He was in a different time and place, perhaps remembering that quote from a class in West Point when he was still a plebe. I think it might be the same with this poor tragic Quentin. Therefore, John, I have serious doubts as to anything he said."

"Tell A. P. Hill he must come forward," Lee Robinson interjected.

John looked over at his friend and nodded with understanding.

"What?" Ernie asked.

"Some of the last words of both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson," John said. "They were back on the battlefield calling for a trusted general to bring his troops into the fight."

"So the whole thing could be a hallucination?" Ernie asked.

"It could be," John replied.

"Then take it as such, John. We' got way too many other things to worry about—that report that a new band of marauders is camped in what is left of Charlotte, the chatter we're picking up from BBC and other sources that the Bluemont government is officially ceding all territory west of the Mississippi to China and Mexico, the fact that we have to face the reality that as we incorporate more isolated communities into our state, food supplies through spring are coming up short. Let's stick with what we know."

There were nods of approval from several others gathered in the room, including Makala.

"Wish I could agree," John said, looking out the window, a light flurry of snow swirling down outside. First a blizzard and then this so early in the year. He hoped it was not a portent of a hard winter to come. Before the Day, such winters were a source of pleasure for a college professor, usually resulting in a relaxing day off to play with his daughters or just sit by the fireplace and read. Now it was a reinforcement why not too long in the past, hard winters were referred to with dread with names such as the freezing time or starving time.

"John, there's nothing new on the BBC," Ernie announced. "Actually, something of a shutdown with their reporters, all foreign reporters being expelled from Bluemont—or, for that matter, anywhere else within areas controlled by that government."

"Precisely why I am worried, really worried. After we beat the hell out of Fredericks and then the far-too-public announcement that we were forming a 'State of Carolina' until such time as the nation came back together, you remember the BBC report just a few days after we took Fredericks out, that this entire region was being declared as a 'Level Five,' meaning in control of terrorists and rebels? But then after that? I thought they were going to hit us hard and fast as an object lesson. Instead? Zero response from those who claim to be the central government."

There were some nods of agreement.

"I still want to believe the bastards simply gave up on us," Maury Hurt interjected. "Their failures with trying to make some sort of military force out of their ANR, the way they got the crap kicked out of them in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or whatever is left of other cities up there, knocked Bluemont on its heels, and they've backed down. And now with winter setting in, I want to believe that we have nothing to worry about, at least until spring."

"Want to believe? Or know for a fact?" John replied.

Maury sighed and shook his head.

John gestured to the faded map of the United States that adorned the wall to his left. Doing so triggered a memory of Fredericks doing the same to him just six months back with his grandiose talk about a reunited America. "These reports from the BBC are that Bluemont is in negotiations with China and Mexico. They've already conceded all territory west of the Continental Divide and south of the Red River."

"And word is as well that Texas and others are putting up a hell of a fight about that," Ernie interjected angrily. "What the BBC might say is one thing, but the reality on the ground?"

There was a breakdown of any semblance of an orderly meeting as others interjected that it would indeed be a very cold day in hell before those living in Texas or any other state along the Continental Divide would tamely submit to outside occupation.

"Food and security can often trump any argument about national identity," Reverend Black finally interjected. "Besides, how many actually survived out there? In the first summer after the attack, chances are more than 90 percent died in Tucson without air-conditioning or any source of water. Where does Denver get its water from? Again a major die-off. Sure, maybe some ranchers know what to do, but fifty raiders like the Posse show up at their ranch to steal cattle, what's left a day later? Forget about the old fantasies of life out west with everyone a self-reliant cowboy. Sadly, I'm willing to bet chances of survival out there were far less than in our secured valley here."

His grim pronouncement silenced the room.

"Let's stay focused on what John is talking about here and now," Black said softly. "I, for one, have to admit I'm changing my views somewhat and seeing his side of the argument."

"I might agree," Makala said, her voice controlled and cold. "But not John this time. Yeah, this is personal for me. We've got a baby coming in two months, and I want that child's father alive and here. Call me self-centered, but I claim the right for it after everything we went through back in the spring."

The others looked over at her, and John could not make eye contact with his wife, whose anger he knew was barely contained. When he had first talked with her about his thoughts after returning with Forrest the night before, it had triggered the first real shouting match of their marriage.

"Just let me go over the facts one more time," John replied, avoiding his wife's malevolent gaze. "Someone who apparently is what he claimed to be, a major who either is or was serving with General Bob Scales, tries to reach me with a message. He dies before reaching his goal. He says something about an EMP."

"And no one is sure if in his delirium he was talking about what happened," Forrest snapped. "John, I held a lot of buddies as they died." He looked off, his already twisted face contorted. "They usually babbled about a woman, a wife, a girlfriend, their children; more than a few younger ones cried for their mothers. Damn all war." Forrest sighed and then fell silent, withdrawing into memories too intense to show before others.

"Precisely the point," Makala snapped. "I've sat through many a deathwatch, and so have you, John."

He lifted his gaze to her and from deep within that gaze held a warning for her to go no further. Yes, he had done as she said, and a day, barely an hour, did not go by without memory of his daughter dying, whispering to take care of her beloved stuffed animal Rabs.

Makala fell silent and then silently mouthed, "I'm sorry."

Perhaps tragically, her action now firmed his resolve, the paradox of so many loving relationships where when one challenges the decision of another in public, they often become even more determined to see it through, while a quiet word whispered when alone could have so easily worked and swayed the decision in the other direction.

"I have to go to Roanoke," John said, and he looked over at her as if anticipating a response. But she was silent, though he could see tears clouding her eyes.

"Something is up, and we would be foolish not to assume after the way we wiped out Fredericks and his gang that there would not be some sort of response. Throughout the summer and up until this early advent of winter, I dreaded suddenly hearing helicopters coming in. That or just the flash of fuel-air bombs going off as a reprisal. If anything, the lack of response has made me even more anxious, as it should have for the rest of you gathered here."

He looked around the room at the representatives from the Asheville City Council and Hendersonville; the storm and need to conserve precious fuel had prevented the other members of the Senate from such outlying regions as Morganton, Weaverville, and Waynesville from attending. An old-fashioned handheld telephone lay on his desk, off its receiver, their definition of a conference call so that those representatives could at least listen in over a crackling phone line.

"There are only two ways of getting there," John continued. "The first by road. We have the captured Bradley to do that."

"And Lord knows how many landslides, fallen trees, downed bridges, marauders like the ones that poor Quentin ran into, and, for that matter, the government garrison that is reportedly still in Johnson City to block you," Ernie replied. "And we all know anything beyond Hickory is still a no-man's-land, so that way is out too."

"So the only other way is by air."

He looked first at Billy Tyndall, the pilot for their precious L-3, who firmly shook his head.

"It is 140 air miles to Roanoke. I already looked it up. And sure, give me any open field and I can land, but after this blizzard, who knows? But we'll have to haul our own gas to get back, and that all but maxes out the weight load. So my vote, no way in hell."

"I already figured that, Billy. The L-3 is too precious to risk, its duty tactical to keep an eye on the interstate approaches, and you are doing a magnificent job, my friend."

"And I for one am telling you—wait until spring."

John shifted his gaze to Maury Hurt, whom he had not apprised of the plan he was formulating and the reasons behind it.

Maury, who had been leaning against the far wall, stiffened. "You got to be kidding me," he snapped.

"Just hear me out, will you?"

"I already know what you are going to say next," Maury replied. "We've got a captured Black Hawk helicopter that we took from Fredericks, and you want to use it to go to Roanoke?"

John simply nodded.

"You're crazy."

"Like I asked, just hear me out."

"Oh, I'm all ears, John."

"As Billy already pointed out, it's 140 air miles to Roanoke. The Black Hawk has a combat radius of around 350 miles, a ferry range of over 1,000 if we keep the weight load down—which means we can fly up there, scope things out. If we get a clear indicator that my old friend General Scales is there and in command, I would venture a landing to meet with him. If not, we just turn around, haul out, and return without even landing."

"And who do you mean by 'we'?" Maury asked.

"You're the designated pilot now."

Maury shook his head, laughing nervously. "I had a couple of hundred hours as copilot in a Huey over twenty years ago." He did not add that his career in the National Guard as a chopper pilot had been cut short by a nasty crash, a few cracked vertebrae among other assorted broken bones, and a lifetime of swearing off flying since then, until this current situation when they snatched one of Fredericks's Black Hawks in the fight for Asheville.

"I've got a total of ten hours' flying time in that damn thing, and it scares the crap out of me. Sure, we captured a helicopter, one without any manuals, or servicing routine other than what Billy, Danny McMullen, and I can guess at. Damn it, John, a chopper isn't like that old plane of ours where you change the oil, do a compression test once a year, and that's it."

"It is a bit more complex than that," Billy interjected, "but yeah, Maury's right on this."

"Maury, yes or no, can you fly me to Roanoke and back?"

Maury hesitated.

"Yes or no."

"If I plan to see my grandchildren"—and he paused before the next jab—"or your child that's coming, all bets are off."

John sighed with exasperation. "Let's get down to the bottom of this and why I feel I have to go. I think this Quentin Reynolds was carrying some information way too important to ignore and to let disappear in the frozen ground with his dead body. He died for a reason, and that was to somehow get to me with a message. What, I don't know, but for him to set off over land to reach me means it must have been damn well important."

"Or the excuse of a deserter who got jumped on the way—then, delirious, had some made-up story to worm his way into our community." Ernie sniffed. "You yourself said you still aren't even sure if he is valid or not."

"Look, damn it. There is one fact that can't be disputed. I served under Bob Scales during Desert Storm One. Without his help, I would never have moved here." He hesitated, looking at Makala. "When my first wife was hit by cancer and wanted to be close to her family in her final months, it was my friend General Scales who networked me into a job at Montreat. If he is still alive, I owe him a hell of a lot. If he is still alive and sent this Quentin fella to find me, it must be important, damn important."

Makala offered a sad smile of understanding, and he nodded his thanks for that.

"Quentin Reynolds, I believe, just might have been sent by my friend to contact me. Just to know he is alive means the world to me."

"And you'll risk your ass and the only helicopter in our entire state to find out?" Ernie interjected.

John wanted to shout yes in reply but thought better of it. If he turned this personal, the council would vote him down, and frankly he could not blame them then if they did.

"The question of why has to be answered and answered now. If it is about an EMP, another one, we had damn well better find out and quick. It might have been the ravings of a dying man remembering the tragedy all of us endured. Or was it a warning that we might get hit again?"

The low murmuring in the room of those he could sense were about to tell him to just calm down, relax, go home with his wife, and take a few days off after the stress of his trip over the mountain now fell silent.

"Are we going to be hit again?" John asked.

"By who?" Again it was Ernie. "Why bother? America is finished as we know it. Sure, we flattened Iran and North Korea. India and Pakistan are turning each other into radioactive wastelands, the same in the Middle East. We still have the nuke boomers at sea. Why would anyone want to hit us again?"

John looked at Forrest, and though he felt the demonstration would be absurd, perhaps it was the only way to get his message across.

"Forrest, you got any of those K-Cups of coffee on you?"

Forrest, who had been listening intently to John, recoiled slightly. "What the hell is this, a shakedown?"

"Just yes or no—you got any on you?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Give me one."

"Why?"

"Okay, loan me one; I promise I'll give it back."

Forrest reached into the side pocket of his battered fatigue jacket and pulled one out and reluctantly tossed it over. John snatched it and looked at the lid.

"Hazelnut, my favorite," he whispered, and he put it on the desk in front of him. "Okay, my friends, who's gonna grab for it first?"

"Come on, John, what kind of game is this?" Reverend Black asked.

John could see the hungry gazes of those crammed into his office. His own indulgences with Forrest these last few days he had not discussed with anyone else in this room, Makala and Lee the only ones present who had enjoyed the largesse of Forrest's secret hoard.

"To my point. You all want it; I know you do. But let me just add this one caveat in."

"You and your professor's Latin." Ernie sniffed, his gaze locked on the small, white plastic cup.

"One chance in ten—no, make it one in a hundred that coffee in there is laced with cyanide poison. A one in a hundred chance it turns into you drinking the Kool-Aid—Jonestown kind of stuff. Some of you remember that insane day. Still want it?"

He could see the confused glances.

"Hell, you might risk it for yourself just for the taste of coffee again. But share it with your spouse, your kids? Who wants to try it?"

No one spoke.

He scooped up the white plastic cup and tossed it back to Forrest, who looked around a bit suspiciously, reminding John of Gollum the way he clutched at the One Ring, and quickly slipped it back into his pocket.

"Point made," John announced.

"What point, damn it?" Ernie snapped.

"One chance in ten, maybe one chance in a hundred, that the message that Major Quentin Reynolds was carrying was a warning of things to come. Last time we got hit, no one here knew it was coming, and look at us now. Suppose someone somewhere is planning to do it again? Suppose my friend General Scales is still alive and wanted to get a warning to us?"

"Then why all the mystery?" Ernie retorted. "If your buddy is still alive out there and has this big secret he wants to warn you about, just fly in and tell us, or get on the radio and announce it. The whole thing is screwy, John, and you know it."

"I agree in part, Ernie. Yeah, it is strange, a lone guy claiming to have served with the general showing up half-dead. But we definitely live in a screwy world. Maybe my friend has reasons for not doing what you said. I can think of a dozen of them."

"Name one."

"He knows something he can't let anyone else know for whatever reason and wanted to get word to me. Send it out on a radio and the entire world can listen in. Fly here? That draws notice as well. I could go on, but there's a couple, for starters."

Ernie took that in. "Or the whole thing could be a trap to lure you out of this valley by claiming a friend is still alive with some sort of secret message. You take the bait, and Bluemont gets payback for Fredericks with you dangling from the end of a rope."

John could see Makala go tense over that one, nodding in agreement. It was exactly what she had said within minutes after he returned from trying to see Quentin. It was a setup to entrap him.

"Think about it," John pressed in, avoiding eye contact with his wife. "We are just starting to get back on our feet. We've got electricity back, a lab here on campus making antibiotics and anesthesia; they even think they'll get one of Doc Weiderman's old x-ray machines he had packed away down in the basement of his office on the day things hit back online soon. Think of what that would have meant after our fight with the Posse and with Fredericks. We've got water pumping again through the town water mains. We are starting to crawl back out of the darkness. But if we are hit by another EMP, again without warning, we might as well just bury the last two and a half years of struggle, dig a grave for the rest of us, and crawl into it."

"Who would be crazy enough to do that again?" Maury asked.

John shrugged. "Who was crazy enough the first time? After the fact, we finally figured out it was North Korea and Iran handing off nukes to terrorists who launched them from container ships in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. There are still terrorist cells out there, maybe wanting to this time provoke a full-scale global nuclear war. Could be China wanting to push us down even further but stand there looking innocent and then suggesting we need more aid east of the Mississippi. Ultimately, it doesn't matter who."

He paused for a moment.

"Did it ultimately matter who did it last time? The result was the same; it took us to the edge of extinction. If it might happen again, and there is a chance we can get a forewarning, I want that chance for all of us."

"There's one other reason now," Ernie said.

John looked over at him, ready to let fly with an angry burst for him to remain silent but then realized the secret would soon be out anyhow, and laying it on the table could help with his argument.

"Okay, this is classified, and I mean strictly classified; it has to stay in this room." John paused, looking at the telephone receiver on the table in front of him, tempted to hang it up. But those listening in were now part of the government as well. "Do we all understand each other? What I say next can go no further."

There were nods of approval, all now obviously filled with curiosity.

"We've managed to get a few computers back up and running."

"A few computers?" Billy said. "So what? Play Pac-Man, or some dumb-ass flight simulator on them? The Internet is gone forever, at least here, and unless linked up, they're useless."

"Didn't AB Tech in Asheville once offer a course on aircraft maintenance?" Ernie asked.

"Yes, why?"

"How did they teach it?"

"Computers, of course, and anything hooked into the net and plugged in for power got fried."

"Maybe the maintenance manuals for the L-3 and the Black Hawk were on CDs. I got another old PC up and running over in the library yesterday while our hero John and company were trying to kill themselves going over the mountain. Give me a computer, give me data stored on a CD, and I'll get the machine to run it. You want it?"

Billy could only nod.

"And fiber optics, my friends, were not cooked off. They're dark now, but give me enough machines and the juice to run them, and I'll get a network—at least local—up and running again."

"So we can play games and send those damn tweets," someone snapped.

"No, damn it. Data transfer was the lifeblood of what we were. Medical libraries, technical data beyond the magazines moldering in the school basement … find a way to hook me in, and we can even eavesdrop on Bluemont."

Though John was growing increasingly frustrated with Ernie taking the topic off the point he was trying to close in on and talking about more than he should, this did catch everyone's attention.

"After I left IBM back in the late '80s, that was the business my wife and I set up. We wrote the software and provided some of the hardware for those big array dishes. Not the crap units you all started to get with your televisions; I'm talking about the big stuff used by governments. Chances are the LEOs were most likely taken out in the war, but the geosynch stuff I bet is still definitely online."

"Translate, please?" the Asheville rep shouted from the back of the room.

"Oh, jeez. LEO, low-earth orbit. Companies like those direct television networks, their satellites were high up, twenty-three thousand miles up, what we called geosynch. The comm sats up there were heavily proofed against any kind of electromagnetic pulse. Had to be in order to survive solar storms, or coronal mass ejections, as we called them. Chances are Bluemont and other surviving governments are still using them for chatter and for encrypted stuff as well. You give me enough juice, some fairly recent computers that some rich kid tossed into his basement when Mommy and Daddy gave him an even faster unit for his damn stupid games, and I know how to start listening in."

"You mean hacking?" Maury asked.

"Yup. Hell, my wife is a pro at that. Some years back, we installed the tracking software for a Middle Eastern country to link into a geosynch satellite."

"Which Middle Eastern country?" John asked.

Ernie just smiled and replied, "Classified."

No one interrupted as Ernie smiled expansively, pleased that he had obviously taken over the meeting for at least a few minutes.

"Well, the bastards welched on the last half of a payment of around a million bucks. Figured they had the system we installed, so why bother to pay some Americans once they had it in place?" Ernie started to laugh.

"They hadn't counted on my wife, Linda. She sent them the usual notices and finally a warning, and they basically told us to screw off. Anyhow, they didn't reckon on her. She had a Trojan in the software, hacked into it on day 121 of overdue payment—after all due proper notice and warning, of course—and fried their entire system off. We lost a million bucks but laughed our butts off." Ernie chuckled at the memory of it.

"We have another resource as well," John chimed in. "This college was starting up a cybersecurity major just before we got hit. We have some kids here that were getting top-notch training in how to keep systems secured from hackers."

"Which means that in order to stop a hacker, you have to know how to hack," Ernie interjected. "Put those kids to work doing something useful rather than having them dig for roots and who knows what we might find out, not just about this rumor regarding an EMP but a lot of other stuff we haven't even considered. It's out there; it's time we started listening in, and if there is another EMP that hits without warning and the machines I've got up are running when the hit comes, we're back in the Stone Age, this time with no hope of return."

"What Ernie told us is another reason I have to go to Roanoke," John quickly announced. "We are coming back online. Ernie, if another EMP is popped today, or a few months from now, what happens to your work?"

Ernie looked at him and finally nodded. "I change my vote, John, even though it will eat up a hell of a lot of our reserve fuel for that chopper. I say go and get your answers."

John looked around at the others. "Let's say Ernie's statement is a motion. Those in favor?"

All but two raised their hands—the pilot who would have to take him … and Makala. And he knew there would be hell to pay once back home, but like it or not—and though the thought of a helicopter flight did turn his stomach over—it had to be done.


John finished packing in total silence. There had been no cross words between him and Makala after the meeting and the decision to go, and the silence was indeed deafening. He scanned through his checklist of extra clothing and winter survival gear one more time. He had added in old-fashioned auto maps once put out by Exxon covering Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, just in case they went down and had to hike back. The backup plan if such happened was to try to raise radio contact with Billy Tyndall, who would attempt to fly out and pick them up one at a time, but if that could not be done, it would be at least a two-week hike, in winter, to get back home.

He had carefully cleaned his Glock and was packing along four extra magazines. His shoulder weapon would be drawn from the community armory, an up-to-date M4 with half a dozen magazine loads.

He heard Maury's jeep, driven this time by Danny McMullen, pull into the driveway. Rather than come in, Danny wisely just tapped the horn a few times.

John shouldered his backpack and walked out to the sunroom, where Makala sat by the window. She was clutching Rabs, his daughter's much-battered and beloved stuffed rabbit, and the sight of her brought tears to his eyes.

She looked up at him. She was crying. He walked over and knelt by her side. She turned away from him and began to shudder with sobs.

"I've got a bad feeling about this one, John," she gasped. Then she turned, holding Rabs, and threw her arms around his shoulders.

"I have to," was all he could get out.

"We've all lost too much. Jennifer became like my daughter, poor old Jen like the mother I never really had. And now this. I never knew I could love a man with such intensity."

She broke completely, holding him tightly, and as she did so he could feel their baby quaking within her. He loosened her embrace, leaned down, kissed her distended stomach, and tried to force a laugh through his tears.

"Little bugger just kicked me in the face!"

"And if I didn't love you so much, I'd kick you too!" Makala cried. "Haven't you done enough? Everyone in town feels the same as I do, even Ernie. You damn near got killed more than once this spring. You've done enough. Forrest is eager to go; so is Ernie. You've already written out a letter to this Scales person, if he is even real and still alive. They can carry it and just drop it. Please, John."

Her tears were coming so hot and fiercely she couldn't talk for a moment.

He did not reply. He had stated he was going, what was now defined as the Senate for their so-called state had reluctantly voted in agreement, and there was no backing out now.

Chances were she was right; he was acting on an assumption, and though he had not articulated all of it openly, he fostered a deep-seated fear that Quentin had come as a warning, that something terrible was about to unfold, and he might be the only person who could find out what it was and act.

He had argued with himself in the hours after the meeting that he was simply being paranoid and taking too much upon himself, but his decision had been made, and long years of training and experience still told him that so often a first hunch, a gut feeling, carried with it the need to act.

He could only pray that Makala's gut feeling came from emotion and was wrong. At least he could hope that was the case.

Danny tapped the horn again. John reluctantly stood up, easing out of Makala's embrace. She stood up and threw her arms around him.

"Damn it, John Matherson, if anything happens to you, I think I'll kill you!" She began to laugh through her tears. "God go with you and bring you back safely to us."


"Clear rotors!" Maury shouted, leaning out the window. It had been agreed that Billy Tyndall would stay behind in case he was needed with the L-3. Danny McMullen was therefore in the copilot seat. He had zero flying time in a chopper; his military experience in the air force was working on the big stuff—B-52s, KC-135s—but at least he had a sense regarding the Black Hawk's power plant, and it was better than no one.

A security team of three was going with John, led by Forrest and accompanied by Kevin Malady and Lee Robinson. They could have taken half a dozen more, but each additional man was another two hundred pounds of weight, which equaled more fuel being needed. Besides, Maury's few hours of flight experience were with an empty load, and Danny in the other seat would have to learn on the job, so the less weight the better.

Side doors were opened for liftoff at Maury's insistence in case something went wrong and they had to get out quickly. The twin turbine engines above and behind John were whining up, rotor picking up speed, icy-cold air whipping in around him. He looked over at Forrest and Malady, sitting opposite him. John had of course endured many a chopper flight while in the army and never liked them; more often than not he had his puke bag out within minutes. Those two, though, were grinning, Malady shouting it felt like old times; Forrest, M4 slung across his chest, raising his one hand in a thumbs-up.

They are actually enjoying this, John thought, struggling to maintain a calm outward appearance. Several hundred from the town had turned out to see them off, for this, after all, was a major event for the community, with their police chief, Ed, struggling to keep the crowd back a hundred yards. Maury might have some idea about flying, but John knew that getting a helicopter up and away safely was a hell of a lot more difficult than taking off in the L-3.

They lifted off, nose pitching high, rolling as well to starboard. He could see Danny frantically pointing at something on the dash. The chopper then lurched forward, almost nosing in, Danny cursing so loudly that John could hear it even over the roar of the engines. And throughout it all, Forrest and Malady seemed unfazed. Lee Robinson, for whom this was the very first flight, had a nervous deathlike grip on John's shoulder and was cursing as well. Glancing out the open side door, John could see the horizon tilting at what must have been a thirty-degree angle. In a light plane at takeoff, it would surely be a stall, but Maury nosed back over and gradually like a yo-yo, going up and down, they started to gain altitude, lose it, pitch back up again, and finally, nose tilted down slightly, began to move forward, still rising up, clearing the Ingrams' parking lot.

Maury finally managed to gain some directional control, nose pitched forward a bit more, speed relative to the ground picking up, and he spared a quick glance over his shoulder, motioning for the side doors to be closed, blocking out the frigid blast.

The flight path was shaky at first, nose oscillating back and forth as Maury gingerly worked the controls but at least was putting more distance between them and the ground.

He nudged the chopper into a northeasterly direction, dipping the nose a bit more to gain bite with the rotors and forward speed. They crossed over the Swannanoa Gap, now up five hundred feet above ground level. It was the place where the great battle with the Posse had been fought out. Looking out the portside window in the door, John could see the steep slopes around what had been the Ridgecrest Conference Center, the woods still evidently flame-scorched from the battle. They hit a burble of turbulence as they cleared the gap, while still picking up speed. Down below were the twisting turns and tunnels of the Norfolk Southern railroad, an engineering marvel of the nineteenth century, the longest and toughest mountain grade east of the Rockies that had taken half a decade of labor by thousands to traverse those eleven miles to the top of the pass. He caught a glimpse of the Meltons' sawmill, in spite of the cold the water still flowing with enough energy to turn the wheel and the saws within, while a mile farther down was the clearing where the power dam for Old Fort and beyond was being installed, work stopped for now.

They continued to climb. Danny had handed him an old FAA aviation sectional map of their route. It would skirt along the northeast flank of the Appalachian Mountains to just south of Roanoke and then cross over the range to sweep down on the Virginia city located in the southwestern corner of the state.

With a stiff northwesterly wind still coming down into the South in the wake of the blizzard, both Maury and Billy had warned them it would be a bumpy ride, but at least on the way up, by gaining altitude up to eight thousand feet or so, the wind quartering on their tail would help whisk them to their goal and save on fuel. For the return flight, if they did not land, the flight plan was to get down low into the valley to avoid the stiff upper winds.

As they reached their cruising speed of 140 miles an hour, a mile and a half up, they were soon sweeping past the majestic sight of Linville Gorge, formerly known as "the Grand Canyon of North Carolina." It was a flash of memory for John, who had taken Jennifer and Elizabeth on a hike all the way up to the top of Table Rock. It had been an exhausting trek, made even more memorable because of the fright all of them had due to an encounter with a rattlesnake on the way back down. Jennifer had been terrified to the point where John had to carry her the last half mile down to the car, while more adventuresome Elizabeth wanted to go poking around in the brush with a long stick to find another one.

Snakes were definitely one of the major negatives in his life, and during the previous summer, perhaps because of the radical decline in human population and snakes' natural predators—such as possums, which some residents trapped as food—they had become a plague in the Montreat Valley. Regardless of his city-bred fears, some of the kids at the college had taken to eating them, a thought that turned John's stomach.

As they soared over the gorge and Table Rock, he hoped all the snakes down there would freeze to death with this early winter.

They shot over Brown Mountain, that mysterious place with strange glowing lights that locals claimed were lanterns carried by long-departed native spirits, and then past the once popular tourist attraction of Grandfather Mountain, abandoned, carpeted in a deep blanket of snow.

More turbulence and then the stomach-churning scent and sound of Lee getting sick, heaving into a plastic bag, spilling some as he cursed and fumbled to try to seal it shut. Forrest and Malady, sitting across from them, chuckled at Lee's distress, Forrest fishing into the pocket of his winter fatigue jacket, pulling out some salted beef jerky and offering it over, shouting for him to chew on it. John could not help but smile at Lee's scatological response even though he was fighting down nausea himself. In spite of their disagreement, Makala had set out some ginger tea for John to drink before leaving, a tonic she claimed actually did work with motion sickness, and perhaps it did so at this moment.

They soon crossed over Interstate 77 up near Mount Airy, the highway twin ribbons of white, the snow-covered humps of long-abandoned cars still cluttering the road. As they passed over villages and small towns, here and there he could see a plume of smoke from a chimney. Mount Airy, which had claimed to be the role model for Andy Griffith's Mayberry, actually showed signs of life; a cluster of homes in the center of town had smoke pouring from chimneys, and a few farmhouses on the outskirts of town showed signs of life as well, with even what looked to be several horses out in a snow-covered field.

But so much of the landscape was empty, barren, devoid of life. No roads were cleared, of course, the landscape below, once teeming with life, now a vast dead world that was once bustling with the activities of man. Near the interstate, except for Mount Airy, village after village appeared to have been burned out and abandoned.

John unbuckled from his seat and, crouching low, went up forward to squat between Maury and Danny.

Maury looked over his shoulder after struggling for a moment with the controls, nose pitching down slightly.

"Damn it, John, you moving around throws off the center of gravity on this thing."

"Sorry, just wanted to check on how we are doing."

"Fine, but just don't move around now."

"We on course?"

Maury had yet to figure out what must have been the built-in navigation screen during the few hours he had practiced with this chopper and decided not to waste battery and fuel to figure it all out, so they were navigating by dead reckoning and an FAA sectional spread out on Danny's lap.

"That's Interstate 81 off to our left on the other side of the mountains. We're crossing into what was once the state of Virginia."

The way Danny had said what was once struck him.

"About twenty minutes out, I'd reckon; the wind up here is giving us a good fifty-mile-per-hour boost."

After Mary died, John had taken the girls on several trips up to the War College at Carlisle to visit Bob Scales when he was commandant there and then would bore Elizabeth to death spending a few days visiting and hiking around Gettysburg and Antietam. Jennifer, however, loved the trips because of the Boyds Bears shop just south of Gettysburg. He pushed that memory aside; it was far too poignant. The drive up and back was a long one—it usually took four hours or so to pass Roanoke—and here they were approaching it in little more than fifty minutes.

"Anything on the radio?" John shouted.

Maury shook his head. He had barely mastered that system as well, knowing enough to have it tuned to 122.9, the old frequency for general air traffic in what had once been defined as uncontrolled airspace, and alternating it with the frequency for what had been the civil airport at Roanoke as listed on the FAA map.

They started over the mountains, turbulence picking up again, Danny shouting off waypoints he had marked on the map with a grease pencil, while working an old-fashioned circular slide rule, once the standard tool of all pilots, to check on relative ground speed and rate of drift from the quartering tailwind, giving course corrections to Maury.

John looked over at his friend and could see that he was relaxing a bit. If anything, this first cross-country flight was instilling some confidence in his friend, who had only practiced locally since the capture of the chopper, carefully conserving their limited supply of jet fuel with each practice flight. John scanned the gauges, figured out which one was fuel, and was pleased to see they had consumed little more than one-eighth of their load.

More buffeting as they dropped through three thousand feet, airspeed up to 170 miles an hour, a whiff of an unpleasant scent produced by Lee mingled in with the exhaust from the turbines.

"That's Roanoke," Danny announced, pointing ten degrees or so off to their port side.

In the cold winter air, it stood out clearly just beyond the low range of hills surrounding it, larger than Asheville. Plumes of smoke were rising up, not for heat but rather buildings that were burning.

"Think it's hot down there; something's going on," Danny announced, looking over at John, who nodded.

The airport was located just north of the city. To reach it, they'd have to fly directly over the city and whatever was going on down there.

"Swing us west, Maury," John said. "Circle us out a half dozen miles or so; don't go directly over the city, and we'll approach the airport from the other direction."

It came up quickly with a ground speed of well over three miles a minute, John scanning the air around them. There was a flash of light from a building at least ten stories or so high, smoke rising up an instant later.

"Damn it, there's fighting down there!" Danny shouted.

John felt a hand on his shoulder, looked up, and saw that Forrest was leaning on him for support, joining them to look forward.

"Looks like a hot LZ to me!" Forrest shouted. "Where's the airport?"

Danny pointed to the right and forward. John picked up the binoculars resting in a flight bag between Maury and Danny, knelt up, trying to keep his balance, and finally got a close-up glimpse of the airport on the far side of the city.

It was packed with aircraft, nearly all military. Half a dozen helicopters, a mix of Black Hawks and Apaches, and two old C-130s. Friend or foe? Like the choppers Fredericks had brought with him back in the spring, nearly all the aircraft lined up below were painted in faded desert camo scheme, military equipment brought back to the United States after the Day.

"Someone's calling us," Maury announced, slipping one headphone back and looking at John. "Demanding we identify ourselves. What should I do?"

This was not exactly what John expected. But then again, what did he expect? A deserted city? A destroyed city? A war going on that they were blundering into? But certainly not a welcome mat with a big sign scraped out of the snow: "Welcome, John! We were expecting you."

"John, what do we do?"

"Just state we're from Carolina and if General Scales is available to put him on the line."

Maury did as requested, waited, and then shook his head.

"They're ordering us to land immediately."

Maury gazed intently at John, who mulled that over for a few seconds while looking toward the city that was now off their starboard side half a dozen miles away. There was definitely a fight going on in the downtown area. It looked similar to Asheville, a cluster of taller office buildings downtown, suburban sprawl stretching out for several miles in every direction.

"Tell him we'll comply."

"What?" Forrest shouted. "Are you flipping crazy, John? There's a fight going on down there. We land and Lord knows what we'll be getting into. Whoever is down there will keep this bird, and if we're lucky and not shot on the spot, we might just be allowed to walk home."

"Just tell him we'll comply," John shouted again, "and then be ready for a low-level pass so I can drop a message pod and then get us the hell out of here!"

He looked back up at Maury, who now had approximately eleven hours of stick time on this chopper. He was asking for a maneuver that nearly all pilots loved to do, legally or when no one was looking, illegally. Before the Day, the mountains around Asheville served as a practice range for pilots preparing to deploy to Afghanistan or wherever there was mountainous terrain, and he always got a kick out of watching their high-speed passes, sweeping in low through the Swannanoa Gap, skimming up over his house, at times nearly at rooftop level, and weaving in and out across the mountain passes. And all of them most likely had hundreds of hours of airtime before trying such maneuvers.

Maury grimaced, Danny looking over at the pilot and forcing a smile.

"John, get aft, make sure everyone is strapped in, and open the door!" Danny shouted.

John staggered back the few feet to the aft compartment, sparing a quick glance at Lee, who truly fit the definition of green faced, shouting for him to tighten his belting. Forrest strapped in across from John and then shouted instructions as to how to open the side door, which John had to struggle with as the helicopter pitched back and forth, the door at last sliding open, the cold blast of winter air whipping by at 140 miles per hour stunning him.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out the message pod, a plastic torpedo-shaped container with a thirty-foot red streamer attached to it, snapping off the rubber band that held the streamer in a tight ball, letting several feet unravel.

He glanced up and through the forward windshield and saw that Maury was banking in toward the airport but was now caught in a strong crosswind, struggling to crab the chopper so they could fly down the length of the main runway. There was a hell of a bounce as Maury nosed over, Lee looking at John wide-eyed and a second later disgorging what was left of his breakfast and dinner from the night before onto John's lap.

"They're threatening to shoot if we don't land!" Maury shouted, barely heard above the roar of the slipstream racing past the open door.

"Tell them to screw themselves," John shouted, "after we get the hell out!"

They crossed the threshold of the runway, going flat out, Maury, nervous at running so low, bobbing up and down, tail rotor assembly swinging back and forth as he fought to keep control at such low altitude, with a variable crosswind sweeping across the open runway. John glanced up again. They were a hundred or so feet up, crossing over the paved runway, a large white number 12 flashing by underneath. To their right, he could see the airport terminal, the building burned out, collapsed, a couple of dozen private aircraft, long ago abandoned, pushed off to one side of the tarmac and jumbled together. Next to it, the control tower was still intact. He wanted to shout for Maury to try to get closer to the control tower, fearful that the dropped message might not be noticed.

He waited a few more seconds.

"They want us down now!" Maury shouted.

John ignored him, leaning out the open door, message cylinder and red tail ribbon bunched up in his hand, anxious at the thought that it just might get wiped aft and tangled into the tail rotor.

They swept over a grounded Apache, several personnel on the ground craning to look up—or were they pointing something—and in answer to the thought, he caught the flash of a tracer round snapping past the open door.

He threw the message cylinder out, arm getting whipped back by the slipstream, slamming it against the outside of the chopper, the wind sucking the glove off his left hand, shoulder feeling as if it were about to break.

More tracers, a metallic crackling sound behind him, like someone punching a hole through aluminum or titanium, which was exactly what was happening as several rounds slammed into their Black Hawk.

The impacts startled Maury, who instinctively pulled the chopper into a steep banking turn, and if not for the safety harness, John would have been pitched out. Gasping for breath in the violent crosswind, he caught a glimpse of the message cylinder already down on the ground, the red tape attached to the tail still spiraling down, someone running toward it, while at least two others with weapons raised were continuing to fire at them.

"You damn fools!" John screamed, making a universal rude gesture as Forrest, one-handed, stretched out and grabbed the back of John's harness to help pull him back in. Even as he did so, Maury pitched the chopper hard to starboard, causing John to tumble back in, landing hard on the floor, which was splattered with Lee's vomit.

Kevin Malady unbuckled himself from his safety harness, half crawled over Forrest, and slammed the portside door shut.

"We okay?" John shouted.

"Sons of bitches!" Forrest yelled and pointed to the side of his helmet. It was dented in, a bullet having creased it.

John looked at it, a bit shaken. A couple of inches farther down and his friend would be dead, and he realized that for the bullet to have entered thus, it must have snapped past him by a margin of only a few inches as well.

"We okay?" John shouted again, Danny looking back at him.

They were past the perimeter of the airport, heading east. Danny returned his attention forward and was obviously saying something to Maury, pointing toward the instrument panel. John unclipped the safety harness and crawled up between the two.

"Problems?"

"Yeah!" Maury shouted. "I think we've been hit. And look off to your right. An Apache that was up in the air is peeling off toward us."

He looked to where Maury was pointing and caught the flash of rotors. The narrow profile of the Apache was hard to see, but he could discern it was headed their way.

"They're ordering us to come back, land, or we'll be shot down."

"Can they?"

Maury was silent for a moment, attention focused to where Danny was pointing at one of the gauges.

"One of the turbines might have taken a hit; it's heating up a bit, RPM dropping. They're designed to take punishment; let's just hope it holds together. Supposedly, you can fly this thing on one engine, but I wouldn't want to try it right now."

Maury banked again to port, taking them on a direct easterly heading, away from the Apache.

"Can he catch up to us?" John asked.

"Don't know!" Maury shouted. "I remember the Black Hawk is a bit faster than the Apache—at least it was when I was flying these things. Wait a second."

Maury pulled his headphone down over his left ear, listened intently, spoke, and then pushed it back up so he could talk to John.

"Told them we want to come back but call off that Apache first. Telling them that might buy us some time."

John looked to the glint of rotors from the Apache; it was still on course toward them. It was hard to judge distance, but he appeared to be at least several miles off.

"If he's got an air-to-air, we're screwed!" Danny shouted.

Maury looked back at John, raising a quizzical eyebrow, passing the decision on to him.

Air-to-air? He mulled that over for a few seconds. The Apache was doing ground support. Besides, air-to-air was not usual armament for a helicopter unless one was expecting to tangle with enemy air assets. Fredericks didn't have anything like that; otherwise, the L-3 would have been toast.

"Just keep going straight east for now," John replied.

"And pray both engines keep turning," Danny added.

"Can we outrun him?" John asked.

"So far so good," was all Danny said before focusing back on scanning the instrument panel.

John fell silent, letting them do their job, looking back over his shoulder to see that Forrest had his helmet off, had passed it over to Kevin to examine, the two of them talking away as if this were just another typical day.

"We got any kind of warning if something is coming up our tail?" John shouted.

Danny pointed at the blank computer screen. "It's all in there," he replied, "but I'll be damned if I know how to run it. Besides, what the hell can we do if they have an air-to-air? We're toast."

"Thanks for the reassurance," John replied, and he backward crawled to his seat, trying to avoid the mess that Lee Robinson had splashed onto the floor and to which he had added in the last few minutes.

John strapped himself back in and settled down, trying to block out the smell. He knew there was an old saying with pilots that no matter how good an engine you have, when flying at night or over water with no place for an emergency landing your engine always starts to sound rough. It had been years since he'd last been up in a helicopter, and he tried to compare what he was hearing now versus back then. Something did sound "rough." And looking forward, he could see that Danny was focused on the instrument panel and saying something to Maury, who just kept nodding in reply.

Maury was all but flying nap of the earth, at least as far as his skills allowed. John figured they were at least ten, maybe fifteen miles out from Roanoke, and if anything was going to come up their tail, they would be scattered wreckage by now. He was about to say something when Maury banked sharply, turning southwest, Danny craning to look back over his shoulder and shouting that if the Apache was still following he could no longer see him.

Maury began to gently nose up, trading off a bit of speed for some altitude. They had gone over the flight plan before taking off, figuring from the weather pattern that higher up the prevailing winds would be west to northwest. Gone were the days of clicking on a computer for flight service info, at least for the one helicopter of the State of Carolina. So it had been decided that for the return flight they would stay at a thousand feet or lower to avoid a strong headwind. When in a small plane, John always felt safer the higher up they climbed. If the engine quit, the plane just turned into a glider, and the higher up one was, the farther they could glide to an open field or nearby airport for a safe landing.

In a helicopter, he always felt the exact opposite, having witnessed during a training maneuver in Germany a helicopter having a full engine failure while more than half a mile up. According to the book, the chopper should have easily autorotated down to a landing one could at least crawl away from. Halfway down, the rotor seized up completely, and it dropped like a rock, killing the crew and the six troopers on board.

"Know where we are?" Lee said, looking over at John.

"Heading home."

"Thank God," Lee gasped. At least this time he managed to use a baggie and seal it up. Groaning, he just leaned over while Forrest and Kevin looked at him with at least some pity, even as they traded a joking comment.

John settled in, suddenly realizing that his left hand was absolutely numb from the cold. He unzipped his jacket and slid it in under his armpit and closed his eyes, trying not to listen too closely to the engine, for there was something definitely wrong. Maury shouted he was throttling back to put less strain on it, dropping their airspeed down to a hundred miles an hour. John mentally clicked off the miles; with each passing minute in the air they were subtracting an hour of laboriously walking through the winter snow to get home.

Was this trip really necessary, he wondered, or just a folly on his part? He had harbored a fantasy that perhaps, just perhaps, he would hear Bob Scales's familiar voice on the radio, inviting him to come in, land, and talk things over. Tucked into his vest pocket, he had even brought along a photograph taken of Jennifer and Elizabeth the year before the Day.

What did happen over these last few minutes, he was prepared for as well, confident of the decision not to land but still disconcerted that they had been fired upon.

He closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted, the adrenaline rush over with, now just trying to look calm as they clicked off the passing minutes for what should, he hoped, be the hour-and-a-half flight back home.

At least the message pod had been dropped, and he saw someone running over to pick it up. He had thought it out carefully the night before, writing the message on his old Underwood typewriter:

 TO: General Robert E. Scales

 FROM: Colonel John Hastings Matherson

 RE: Contact

 Several days ago, a man claiming to have served with you, initials Q. R., arrived in the outskirts of my community. He had been badly beaten by marauders on his journey and died from the results of injury and exposure before I could personally speak to him. His message, whatever it was, never reached me. I do not have, as well, any means of verification to his claim of having served or to be currently serving with you. My flight to Roanoke is an attempt to establish contact with you. If you are reading this message rather than speaking to me personally, the reasons for my decision not to land should be apparent to you. Sir, I pray that you are indeed still alive and contact between us can be established. I will maintain round-the-clock monitoring of aviation frequency 122.9 for the next seven days, fifteen minutes after the top of any hour, day or night, if you should wish to speak with me. Please attempt to reach me first by radio rather than flying to my location. You are most likely aware of the confrontation that happened in Asheville this spring, and I regret to say any air intrusion without prior notification will be considered to be hostile and reacted to accordingly. I regret such a response, but prudence after the aggression endured by my community is necessary.

 As verification of who I am, you will recognize the two photographs enclosed. Also, sir, I regret to inform you that our beloved J. died shortly after the start of the war.

 Respectfully,

 Colonel John Matherson

 State of Carolina

He had written it out half a dozen times. If Bob was not alive, he had not given away any crucial details. He had also implied that his community now possessed air-defense capability if the message should fall into hostile hands. For that matter, he was not even sure now if Bob was indeed still a comrade on the same side or if that the tragic events of the last few years now placed them potentially on opposing sides. He had made no mention of Quentin's ramblings about an EMP, whatever that might now mean. The proof of who he was Bob would know. One photo was from a visit Bob and his wife had made to Black Mountain, a poignant trip after he passed the word that Mary was in her final weeks. It was a photograph of all of them together, Mary, still clinging to life and smiling for the photo, six-year-old Jennifer and ten-year-old Elizabeth to either side of her, John and Bob standing behind them, trying to smile as well. The second was a photo of just the two of them in the field during Desert Storm, leaning against a Humvee, begrimed, grinning, for the cease-fire—at least for the next few years—had just been announced, their brief taste of America's first open war in the Middle East at an end.

Thinking about it now caused a rush of memories. Were they still friends, or were they now enemies? Bob had been his mentor, taking a liking to John, who, fresh out of ROTC, had been assigned to Bob's staff. As Bob went from colonel to general, John had followed the more intellectual route of a military career, going on to graduate work in military history, their paths crossing again at Carlisle, where John had the pleasure of teaching for a year after Desert Storm.

If enemies, it made him think of the life of Robert E. Lee, who was somewhat of a namesake for his friend. Lee had served as superintendent at West Point in the early 1850s. Ten years later, more than one of his young cadets from West Point faced him across the other side in the fields of Antietam and Gettysburg, the burning woods of the Wilderness, and the nightmare slaughter in front of Cold Harbor. After such blood-drenched fights, Lee would read in captured newspapers accounts of yet another of those young cadets' deaths and knew deep within that the cause he fought for with such tenacity had resulted in those deaths.

Is Bob my enemy or my friend? John now wondered. If my enemy, would he kill me, or at least try to warn me at first, and was that the reason Quentin had been sent? Or, for that matter, is this all some sort of cruel existentialist joke?

A vibration running through the chopper snapped him out of his musing.

"What was that?"

He could see a look of concern now in Forrest's eyes and those of Malady as well.

"Might be one of the turbines is starting to break up," Forrest said calmly.

"I think I dozed off. Where are we?"

"We passed Statesville on our left about five minutes ago," Forrest said. "My God, it's all gone, John. Burned out, looted, looks like a wasteland. Those rumors that the Posse and other gangs like it just tore it apart are true. Sick bastards."

Another vibration, this one more pronounced.

"We're shutting one engine down!" Danny shouted, looking back at John.

"We gonna crash?" Lee asked.

"It can fly on one," Forrest replied. "Not fast, but at least keep us going."

John wondered if Maury even knew the proper procedure for shutdown while in flight or whether this was a learn-on-the-job situation. For that matter, how would the helicopter's flight characteristics change, and could Maury handle it?

Seconds later, he began to find out when it felt like, the chopper falling out beneath them and Maury then pitching the nose forward. At least he had a thousand feet of altitude to figure it out, but at their speed, that meant a matter of seconds. He could hear the difference in engine and rotor pitch and then the additional strain on the one remaining engine as Maury pushed it to the max, finally leveling out just a few hundred feet above Interstate 40.

Going against safety procedures, John unclipped from his harness and crawled forward. He didn't say a word to Maury, who was completely focused on keeping them aloft, Danny talking to him on the intercom, offering either some advice or just encouragement.

John could see the airspeed indicator. They were down to seventy—he was not sure if it was miles per hour or knots.

"I think I smell something burning!" Forrest shouted, and John picked up the scent as well. What the hell was it?

"That's Hickory up ahead!" Danny shouted. "Still Indian country in places. We're trying for the Morganton airport, which is ten miles farther on."

"If it holds together," Forrest replied.

"The airport in Morganton is ours. Can we make it?"

"My thoughts!" Danny shouted. "Hangar's still intact. Old Bob Gillespie still lives there, used to work on choppers."

Passing the outskirts of Hickory, flying low, they passed within easy landing distance of that far larger airport, but it was still an area not really secured. And as if in answer, there was a sharp rattling beneath them.

"Some bastard down there just hit us!" Forrest announced. "Thank God this isn't a Huey with no armor; I might have caught one in the ass!"

John crawled back to his seat and strapped back in, Danny shouting they were just minutes out if things held together.

Crossing over narrow Lake Rhodhiss, John could clearly see the Morganton airport straight ahead—one long runway up on a slight bluff. Maury aimed straight for the middle of it, approaching the runway at a right angle, not bothering to swing out the few extra miles for a standard runway approach.

He began to ease off the throttle, pulling in the collective, the nose flaring up, view forward changing to nothing but sky for John.

He looked over at Lee, trying to offer a reassuring smile. His old friend and neighbor, a man with six generations of family history in their valley, a man he would want more than anyone else by his side in a fight, was definitely having a hard time with his first flight. In spite of the cold, sweat was beading down his face and his eyes were closed, his lips moving in silent prayer.

"Almost there!" John shouted, putting a reassuring hand on his friend's shoulder. Lee simply nodded and then leaned forward to retch again.

"Brace yourselves!" Danny shouted.

Forrest leaned over to unlatch the side door and slide it open. The cold blast of air swirling in a refreshing shock washed out the stench of vomit and whatever it was that was burning.

The landscape outside was tilted at a crazy angle. With a lurch, the helicopter banked sharply to port, and John was now looking nearly straight down at a runway fifty feet below. Maury straightened the wounded bird out, throttled back more, the ground coming up fast. There was a final blast from the rotor, slowing their rate of descent, and with nose high, he slammed down hard on the runway while still going forward. They bounced and came down again for another bounce, and then he cut power back so that with the third bounce the wheels stayed on the ground. They were still rolling forward at a fair clip, Maury or Danny working the brakes, and they finally rolled to a stop.

"Out! Everyone out!" Maury shouted.

John was definitely not going to hesitate with that order. He reached over to help Lee, who was fumbling with his safety harness, the buckles slick with frozen vomit, so that John could not help but gag as he helped his friend to his feet and pushed him out the door. Command instinct told John that he should be the last one out. Forrest and Kevin, still acting if the day were routine, were already unbuckled and out the door, while up forward, Maury and Danny fumbled at switches to shut the Black Hawk down.

Maury looked back at John and motioned for him to get out. John needed no further urging, reaching over to pat Maury on the shoulder before exiting. Overhead, the rotor was still slowly spinning but winding down.

As he stepped out, he was greeted by the smell of burned metal. Old training reminded him not to breathe deeply. Burning aluminum and titanium were toxic.

"Son of a bitch!" Forrest cried, pointing at the portside turbine mounting. "Either damn lucky bastards or damn good shots."

The housing was scored with half a dozen deep dents standing out clearly, the paint having been blown off. Black smoke was trailing out from the exhaust pipe, the northwesterly breeze whipping it around them.

John covered his mouth to go up and look closer with Forrest by his side.

"None of the rounds penetrated?" he asked. "So what happened?"

"Supposed to be proof even against 20mm rounds as long as they're not armor piercing, but still, it dings the metal and bends it in; sometimes fragments of bent metal pop off inside the engine housing and get whipped into the turbine. We most likely cracked a turbine blade. If we had shut down immediately, it wouldn't have been so bad. Now I'm not sure how much damage it did."

The rotor came to a stop, Danny exiting the aircraft, coming aft to join them, fire extinguisher in hand, reaching up high to hose down the intake and then exhaust ports.

John stepped away from the Black Hawk, knees feeling rubbery. Lee was just lying in the snow, breathing deeply, looking up at the sky. John went up to his side and knelt down.

"John, we've been friends for Lord knows how many years," Lee gasped, "but I'll be damned if I ever go flying with you again. For that matter, I'll be damned if I ever go flying again, period."

Kevin Malady, who had knelt down on the other side of Lee, chuckled. "Hey, that was a piece of cake."

"Kiss my butt," Lee gasped before rolling on to his side and retching again.

Maury finally climbed out of the cockpit, took off his helmet, and tossed it back inside, and then, to John's surprise, he got sick to his stomach as well.

John stood to one side, waiting for his friend to regain his composure, while aft, Forrest had climbed back inside to fetch another fire extinguisher to hand out to Danny, who continued to douse the engine. The smoke was subsiding, the aircraft's metal ringing with metallic pings as it cooled down.

"Here comes Bob Gillespie," Danny announced, and he pointed to a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle turning out from the taxiway and onto the runway. Its driver, an elderly man, capless and baldheaded, was slowing down to a near stop a hundred feet out with shotgun at the ready.

"Who the hell are you crazy bastards?" he shouted.

Danny held his arms up, cursing back and identifying himself. The driver relaxed, set his shotgun down, and drove up, dismounting, reaching to the rear seat to pull out a heavy fire extinguisher, and dragging it up behind the chopper.

"Danny McMullen, just what in hell are you doing out here?"

"We just went for a little ride." Turning, he introduced the rest of the group. John had heard about Gillespie, who until the Day owned the airport and spent his life fixing nearly anything that could fly. When contact was reestablished with Morganton back in the spring, Danny had tried to recruit Gillespie into moving to Black Mountain to help with the L-3 and Black Hawk. Gillespie had managed to survive by going hermit and lying low when the Posse had been rampaging through the area. With no family, his wife having passed away years earlier, the airport had become his family.

The old man merely nodded a reply to the introductions because he was all eyes for the Black Hawk, and without a word, he slowly walked around it, taking a few minutes to look at the bullet-pocked turbine housing, poking his head into the cockpit, and clucking before finally going back to Danny.

"So which one of you screwed up six million dollars' worth of aircraft?"

They all looked one to the other, and John started to step forward.

"I've seen more than one crash in my career, and by God, ten minutes ago, I figured I was about to see a bunch of fools die. That was, without a doubt, one of the most God-awful landings I have ever witnessed. Whoever was flying this, do us a favor and stay on the ground. You bent a wheel strut, you idiot."

As he spoke, he pointed to the portside strut—which was indeed cantered out at an angle—and John now noticed the chopper was actually listing.

"How about the engine?" Danny asked.

"Don't know until I strip it down. Most likely some cracked turbine blades, for starters. Let me guess—you kept them spinning after you got hit until things started to burn out."

Everyone looked over Maury, who was suddenly red-faced.

"Damn it, like I told you six months ago, it's been twenty years since I flew one of these things. At least we're still alive."

It was Forrest who broke the tension, reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out a pack of Dunhills. Popping one out, he then held it up, offering it to the others.

"Oh my God!" Gillespie cried, reaching out for one.

"Can this guy maybe fix it?" John whispered, leaning over to Danny.

"Don't know until we strip the engine down."

"I think Forrest has something to trade for the work," John replied.

Danny nodded, and to John's surprise, he went over to Forrest's side and motioned for a cigarette. A minute later, all of them except for Lee and himself were smoking, Maury now shaking from adrenaline and fatigue, nervously inhaling and coughing as he exhaled but then continuing to smoke.

Forrest looked over at John, again that seductive offer. He was standing downwind of his friends and of course breathing in the delicious scent.

And then there was the memory of the photograph of Jennifer with her dying mother and the promise he made.

While putting together the drop package, he had come upon the idea of including the photographs as proof of the validity of who he was if it was actually handed intact to Bob. Fishing around in the basement of what had once been Jen's house, he found the photo albums. Going through them had caused deep stabs of pain, and Makala had found him thus, crying softly as he looked at the photos of Mary holding Elizabeth as a newborn, and then Jennifer. And as well, old photos going back to Mary's childhood, the day they announced their engagement, the day they got married.

She had not said a word about finding him thus, accepting without question his comment that he was looking for a couple of photographs to enclose in the message capsule as proof of who he was if the situation was too dangerous for them to land.

Looking out across the snow-covered landscape, still smelling the burning cigarettes, his friends unwinding and laughing as men do after a close shave with disaster, he wondered where all of this was leading—and what his reception from Makala would be when they finally got into downtown Morganton, made the long-distance phone call to Black Mountain, and found a way to get the last forty miles back to home.

I hope this was all worth it. His thoughts were more like a prayer. Bob, for God's sake, I hope you are still alive, that whatever Quentin was raving about was just the memories of a dying man.

He so wanted to believe it—that not only was Bob alive but that he was on the side of Bluemont, the mere thought of him being on their side a reassurance that in spite of the tragedy of the spring, it was a government he could still work with.