“So why don’t you just finish the job publicly? Will win a lot of prestige points with some.”
Burnett took back the empty coffee mug and plate, setting them on the floor. “Response that I kind of assumed from you, Colonel. You ain’t the whining type. Whether that is really you or just a game you’re playing, it does work to a certain extent. Though the big drawback to shooting or hanging you is it will set off the biggest feud these mountains have seen since the Civil War. Your people won’t rest until a lot of dead have been piled up. So, Colonel, that’s an argument in your favor.”
“Can we cut the colonel-and-sergeant routine?” John said, and at that moment, he thought of his lost friend Washington, the security guard at the college who had taken a frightened group of kids and whipped them into a potent military force able to defeat the Posse, dying in that fight. Washington had never dropped the colonel-and-sergeant routine, and it had always rankled John and would for the rest of his life. It haunted him, because between himself and his lost friend, he felt Washington was indeed the better man.
“All right, Mr. Matherson—or is it Doc or Professor?”
“Cut the shit. Just John. Hell, I walked into your ambush. So what do I call you?”
Burnett leaned back and laughed. “There’s a crazy coot up over the mountains in Tennessee who insists he be called Your Holiness. Down in Haywood County, an ex-preacher is saying he is Christ reborn in this time of troubles. I bet there are a thousand nutcases with a thousand names.”
He smiled, and John could not help but smile as well in reply. The coffee and food had settled down in his stomach, and he was beginning to feel somewhat better. He also sensed that if Burnett was talking like this, the prospect of an unpleasant ending had diminished.
“I actually rather liked the stories I read about that Mongol guy, Genghis, after seeing a movie about him and a weird high school teacher who went over to where the guy lived and kept talking about riding with the Mongols and drinking fermented horse milk. But if I named myself after him, people would think I was into Star Trek movies. Thought as well about using Napoleon, but everyone who ever called themselves Napoleon is definitely a nut job.”
“So Forrest then?” John asked.
“Yeah, for the moment, that’s okay with me, but out there, it’s sir, if you get my drift.”
“Okay.”
“I assume you want the third alternative—that I let you go or trade you for something.”
“Who wouldn’t? I want to live the same as you.”
“So then, damn you, why do you and others like you keep hunting us?” There was a flash of anger from Burnett as he spoke.
John looked at him quizzically, shook his head, and then regretted the action since the dizziness set back in. “What the hell do you mean?”
“You sent a punitive expedition over Mount Mitchell last fall before the snow set in—killed three of my people in an ambush.”
“Now wait a minute,” John replied, his temper rising up. “You and yours have been harassing us all along the north slope of the mountains ever since the shit hit the fan two years ago. Folks killed, food stolen. What am I supposed to do? Just sit back and let you rob us?”
“Half the time, it was most likely someone else doing that. We picked off a couple of dozen of that Posse gang that fled up this way after you kicked their asses. Whoever is killing each other, do you know how barren it is up here? Over on your side of the mountains, you got good crop and grazing lands. After everything went to hell, you had barriers up on the road, and unless someone was a damn doctor or you took a liking to them—like that hot nurse I heard you married—it was move along and get the hell out of town.”
He had nothing to say for a moment to that. It was mostly true. Makala, though, an “outsider,” had at least been in the town when the EMP hit. But the way Burnett spoke of her as “that hot nurse” ticked him off.
“Insult me, but don’t insult my wife,” John snapped. “She was in the town that day it happened—a nurse from a cardiology unit—and she saved a helluva lot of lives afterwards, me being one of them. So back off on that, Forrest.”
Burnett nodded. “Okay. My apologies.”
That was something about the culture of this region that John always admired coming from New Jersey. Contrary to stereotypes, there were aspects of Southern culture that nearly all observed. One was respect for women, something that too many called sexist but John saw as just basic, decent politeness. Burnett had crossed a line regarding another man’s wife and had immediately pulled back. It raised his opinion of him a few notches.
“It was survival, Forrest. If we took in everyone who came up through the pass after everything went to hell—and yes, over the mountains too—we’d have been feeding ten times as many, and everyone would have died within two months. I got forced into the position. I didn’t like it, but I had to make decisions that were tough, and if I didn’t, no one would have lived. And I’ll bet you would have done the same and most likely did and are still making those decisions.”
“Yeah, well, the same with us here.”
“Didn’t give you the right to raid us as you do.”
“That granny woman who looked at your head used to be a nurse at Memorial Mission in Asheville,” Burnett replied as if shifting the subject to safer ground. “I got people up here with me, the same as you, before everything went sour. Mostly working folks born in these mountains, unlike the rich bastards that started to flood into Asheville, too many of them trust-fund brats playing at being hippies and jacking the price of a few acres of land through the roof because they liked the view. Then they turn around and wanted taxes raised for their pet projects and pushed us out. Oh, we were good enough to do the hard labor when things were good, but the day after the power died, it was get the hell out and stay out.
“George, who damn near killed you… his family has lived up here for near on to two hundred years. A damn good carpenter. Most of his family starved to death by the first winter, then one of your trigger-happy shooters killed his older brother in that ambush last fall. You’re lucky he didn’t blow your head off.”
“Maybe he wants to castrate me in front of everybody,” John retorted angrily.
“Don’t joke. You ain’t far from the truth. He sees it as payback.”
John fell silent.
“Point is, we are trying to survive, same as you. We might look like a ragged lot, no fancy civility like you got down in Black Mountain and that college where I heard you were a professor before all of this. Difference was that a lot of those up here were of tougher stuff and refused to conveniently die off. Up here, folks still had a handle on a lot of the old ways. Oh, we were quaint for the tourists from Atlanta driving through along the parkway or coming up here once a year to buy Christmas trees. That was actually our biggest cash crop back then, other than weed. Ever think how many folks are buying Christmas trees now or making a living on farmland that was played out generations ago?”
John did not reply, sensing the wisdom to not interrupt.
“So how do we survive, when every town like yours sealed itself off? Too many folks for too little good land, and within several months, the forests hunted out so completely I ain’t had a taste of venison in over a year, and someone bringing in a greasy possum was a reason to celebrate.”