CHAPTER TWO
“You sure you don’t mind driving?” John asked.
Makala Turner Matherson smiled and shook her head, a smile that always captivated him. She was petite, of slender build even before the starving times, and still had striking blond hair—and unlike most women now, she had kept it long. They had met literally on the Day. She lived in Charlotte and had been heading to Mission Hospital in Asheville to attend a conference for nurses specializing in cardiovascular surgery when her car stalled out, like nearly every other car on the roads that day… fortunately for her, and for him, she became stuck at the Black Mountain exit. He had spoken briefly to her that first evening, as she stood by the side of the road. Even then, it was her eyes that had first captivated him. That first instant of eye contact—her unique eye color, sometimes near golden, other times more brownish green—had caught the evening light and actually seemed to sparkle. He had not let it register then; on that evening he was an anxious father looking for one of his daughters along with trying to figure out what had happened.
A day later they crossed paths again and in the weeks that followed she gradually became part of his life, literally saving his life when he was hit with a staph infection, and then stepped far deeper into his family, and his heart, as she helped to nurse his youngest daughter, Jennifer, as her life slipped away due to diabetes. Prior to the the Day, he never believed anyone could replace his first wife, Mary, who had been taken by cancer years earlier, but during the initial months of crisis, and then the long winter afterward, he came to realize that not only did he depend upon her as a friend and ally, but that they had fallen in love as well. He could no longer imagine life without her… her emotional strength, her empathy, and a strong moral compass that he completely trusted and relied upon.
Since they were heading to Asheville, she decided to dress a bit more formally, wearing a light-blue knee-length skirt and gray blouse. Hardly anyone wore white anymore. What little bleach remained was for water purification and manufacturing a couple of different medications. Hearing of the mission he was setting out on, she had even disappeared into the woods a bit downstream from their house for a very chilly dip to clean up, and thus she exuded a fresh, scrubbed, nearly cheery glow that he always found so appealing.
When heading out of town, he preferred that she did the driving; it freed both of his hands if a weapon was needed.
“Just wish I was driving my old Bimmer rather than this beast,” she announced. “My God, to have that BMW and something like the parkway with a good radar detector… now that was driving! It was one of the reasons I loved it up here and wanted to move here out of Charlotte after the divorce. So now I am here, and no Bimmer—just your beat-up Edsel, John Matherson.”
She reached out to take his left hand. His other hand rested on the Glock holstered on his right hip.
If not for the nature of the trip and always the slight sense of danger when heading outside the confines of Black Mountain, he actually was enjoying this ride on the open road.
It was a delight to be on an absolutely empty Interstate 40. The tires of the old Edsel were starting to bald—new tires for such a car were of course impossible to find—so for safety, they kept it at a stately thirty-five miles per hour.
The road had always been a favorite of his. A long, sloping climb a couple of miles west of the entry ramp at Exit 64 revealed a magnificent view of the Mount Mitchell range to his right, the highest mountains east of the Rockies at over 6,600 feet. At this time of year, the lower slopes were a lush green, but the peaks even in mid-May could still be dusted with snow, which was indeed the case this morning. The lower range of mountains to the left of the highway, rising up only four thousand feet, was awash with the spring coloration of pale brilliant green.
The interstate was beginning to show the effects of two years without maintenance other than work crews pushing the hundreds of abandoned cars aside. The first year, the grass had not been cut, and now in the second year, spring saplings were beginning to sprout along the shoulders.
Houses out along the fringe of town had long been abandoned, with folks moving into vacated homes in town for security. Many of the abandoned homes had broken windows, vines creeping up along the outside walls, overgrown walkways, and abandoned cars with flattened tires beginning to rust in driveways. In one sense, it could be a depressing sight, but in another way, John saw it as nature reclaiming the lushness of this land, working to erase some of the monuments of man.
The flat, rich farmland flanked the road; nearly all of it was under cultivation. Precious gas was rationed out for the tractors, and that had been a deeply troubling concern for John and the town council. Gasoline might hold out for another two years or so, if rationed wisely and treated to maintain its volatility, but then what? He still harbored fantasies of trying to build steam-powered tractors, machines he had always been fascinated with as a historian.
Several such tractors had actually been located in the barns of remote farms, rusted solid and forgotten. It was hoped that parts from the machines might be cobbled together by the time of autumn harvest into one tractor that could actually run on wood rather than gasoline. Again, his wish was that the community had more old-fashioned machinists and tool and die makers who could build such things from scratch.
They drove past several well-guarded pastures along the highway, where the few precious horses that had not been killed for food in the first year were kept. He caught sight of a newborn colt frolicking about, and he smiled at the sight. It was not just the beauty of new life; it might be their main source of energy for farming in a few more years if the technological infrastructure of their world—at least to an early- to mid-twentieth-century level—was not restored.
The scent of an apple orchard wafted through the car, and he breathed deeply. The last of the petals of spring were still falling and swirling about on the late-morning breeze.
It had been a beautiful land when he had arrived there over a decade earlier, and it still was. In spite of human folly, the land was breathtakingly beautiful, whether cloaked in the glory of spring or covered with the mantle of winter snows. He had to keep reminding himself to look past the crisis, the terror and fear, that today was a good day to be alive up in the mountains of western North Carolina.
Ahead was the barrier his community had set up just beyond the Exit 59 turnoff. The sight of it refocused him on the reason for a noonday drive along an empty interstate highway.
He had called the new federal administrator in Asheville, Dale Fredericks, as he had promised Ernie and the gathering in front of the post office, and when told that the administrator was busy but could see him later in the week, John had offered a few choice words to the unidentified assistant and said he would arrive at noon and hung up. The game of bureaucrats, a game he knew well from his time serving in the Pentagon, had attuned him to how power was played—and to wait hat in hand for a callback was an admission of subservience. Beyond that, he had promised the community he would have some answers by evening, and to tell everyone to wait would definitely not play well at all.