Finest Hour (11 page)

Two motorcycles pulled away from the pack, one going left and the other right as they raced toward the F150. Mason swung the Browning around and pressed the triggers. The gun bucked back and forth as a thunderous string of 706-grain slugs shot from its forty-five-inch barrel. The first motorcycle exploded as bullets ripped it apart, handlebars, wheels, and frame all scattering across the roadway. He pivoted right, walking the automatic fire across the convoy as he chased the second motorcyclist. The driver slowed, hoping to drop back behind the armored cars, but it was already too late. Bullets tore the motorcycle in half, the engine dropping to the road and the driver flipping over the handlebars.

A passenger in one of the closest cars leaned out an open window and cut loose with an Uzi submachine gun. Bullets pinged all around the truck bed, and Mason instinctively pulled Bowie against him.

“Lie down,” he said, patting the dog.

Bowie reluctantly flopped down, leaning over to rest his chin on his master’s lap.

Mason turned back to the task at hand. The other motorcyclists had fallen back and were now weaving across the road in hopes of avoiding the same fate as their fellow two-wheeled comrades. The cars and trucks, however, barreled ahead with guns blazing.

He turned the M2 on Willie’s car. The steel plating offered some protection, but Mason doubted that it would be enough. He held the triggers down for nearly ten full seconds, letting the machine gun spit a hundred rounds at the car. The slugs punched through the plating, peppering the engine compartment and windshield with dozens of jagged holes. The car swerved to the right, bounced over a gully, and smashed into a large oak tree. An explosion of bright red blood splashed across the inside of the windshield.

Several of the cars began to fall back, forcing the motorcycles to slow even further. But Mason was determined not to make the same mistake twice. He was going to finish the fight once and for all.

An M2 was capable of hitting targets at more than two thousand yards, and he used the weapon to its full capacity. Round after round of heavy slugs punched through cars, blasted apart motorcycles, and ripped through flesh. By the time he stopped firing, the convoy of Ravagers had been completely decimated. The few that remained had braked, dismounted from their vehicles, and scattered into the forest.

Mason offered them a quick salute.

“Vaya con Dios.”

Bowie lifted his head and stared up at him.

Mason reached down and scrubbed the dog’s neck.

“It means go with God.” He turned to look out across the debris-laden highway. “And given what we just did to those poor bastards, I’d say it fits the bill.”

Chapter 7  

After leaving Hillsville, Tanner and Samantha traveled northeast along small county roads that paralleled I-81. The interstate remained an apocalyptic graveyard for cars, not to mention a hunting ground for all sorts of vermin. It seemed well worth the slower pace of secondary roads to avoid potentially violent encounters.

They skirted around Roanoke and passed through Troutville and Buchanan. By midday, both were shifting about in their seats, desperately in need of a pit stop that would allow them to stretch their legs. The gas gauge, too, was warning that they would either need to refill or swap vehicles, as Tanner had promised earlier.

“What’s that?” Samantha asked, pointing to a sign up ahead. It read
The Natural Bridge
and showed a colorful painting of a stone arch with water flowing beneath.

“Some kind of bridge, I guess.”

She shook her head, never failing to be amazed by his insightful answers.

“Do you think it’s worth seeing?”

He shrugged. “Might as well. I gotta pee anyway.”

She turned to look at him. “Not from the bridge. Promise me.”

“We’ll see.”

They followed Highway 11 for another mile until they came upon a sprawling three-story brick building on their left. The top half was built with portico columns and an ornate roofline, and the lower half had intricate brick arches over a long series of windows and doors. The parking lot was full of cars, but there was no one coming or going. Before Samantha could ask what it was, she saw a sign that read, “Natural Bridge Historic Hotel and Conference Center.”

She turned and studied the other side of the street. It, too, featured a large brick building, but the lot out front was nearly empty.

“I don’t see the bridge. Do you?”

Tanner pulled the Hummer into the empty parking lot and came to a stop in front of a yellow and brown sign:
Bridge Entrance through Gift Shop
.

“That answer your question?”

With full brick chimneys, painted white columns, and doors framed with ornate lintel molding, the gift shop was a beautiful structure. There were three doors, a double-door and two smaller ones to each side, as well as two windows on the lower level and five on the upper. There was also an ATM machine built into the corner of the building, a reminder that it was more than a fancy architectural showpiece—it was a place where money was expected to change hands.

The main door had been broken in, and a bloated corpse lay in an undignified lump across its threshold.

“I don’t know,” she said, eyeing the body. “Maybe we should skip it.”

Tanner shrugged. “It’s easy to skip things.”

She looked over at him.

“You’re saying that if we skip things, we’ll miss out on experiencing the world. Is that it?” Before he could answer, she pulled on her door handle. “Fine. We’ll go.”

Tanner didn’t bother telling her that she was reading more into his words than he had intended. Warranted or not, fatherly wisdom should be taken whenever the opportunity arose.

“Should we take our packs?”

“Let’s leave them. We won’t be gone long, and I can bring a little lunch for the two of us.” He grabbed a few snacks from the back seat and began stuffing them into his pockets.

Samantha turned and studied the gift shop. No one came out carrying sacks of trinkets or sucking on crystalline rock candy. While the world still had beauty to offer, there were apparently few people still interested in witnessing it.

Once he was ready, Tanner started toward the building. Samantha followed closely behind, clutching her rifle with both hands. When they arrived at the main entrance, they stopped and eyed the puffy body blocking the doorway. The top of the man’s scalp was completely missing, either sliced away by a vicious trophy hunter or, more likely, eaten by a scavenger with a taste for his shampoo. The body hadn’t yet ruptured, but it looked a pinprick away from spraying bile and waste into the air like organic confetti.

“Let’s find another way in,” she said, cringing.

“Agreed.” He walked over to one of the side doors and gave it a tug. It didn’t budge. He could see through the window that the gift shop was strewn with garbage as well as human remains. Having to navigate through a maze of dried intestines wasn’t going to help either of their appetites. “What do you say we skip the gift shop and head straight for the bridge?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking in, “good idea.”

They turned left and walked along the face of the building. As they passed the ATM, they discovered a man-sized statue of a cowboy riding on a small dinosaur. The cowboy was decked out in boots, blue jeans, a leather vest, a bandana, and a large white hat. A sign next to the exhibit read, “Escape from Dinosaur Kingdom.”

“I don’t get it,” she said. “When did cowboys ride dinosaurs?”

“I think it was during the Stetsonoic era.”

She looked up and studied his face. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a smile.

She pursed her lips. “Hmph, I honestly didn’t know that.”

They continued on, Tanner biting down on his lip to keep from chuckling. A four-foot brick wall extended past the building to block entry into a large roundabout. Beyond that was a driveway and a paved trail that led down into the trees.

“There,” he said, pointing to the trail. “That’s got to be the way in.”

“How do you know that doesn’t go to an old barn or something?”

He shrugged. “If it does, we’ll have lunch in a barn. Either way, it’s a break from the drudgery of the road.”

Tanner cupped his hands together and gave her a boost over the wall. Once she was on the other side, he threw a leg up and did a quick belly roll over the top.

The roundabout butted up against the back of a tan-colored sheet-metal building. The adjacent driveway was piled high with arms, legs, and heads, strewn about like napkins at a barbeque. What was missing was the blood. The grass on which they lay remained lush and green.

“Are those people’s limbs?” she asked, straining to see.

“Not sure.” Tanner started toward the back of the building.

She grabbed his arm. “You’re going to see?”

“Of course. I’m curious.”

“But—”

“But what?”

“What if Jack the Ripper lives there?”

“Jack the Ripper?”

“Yeah. We studied him in school. He cut people up with a barber’s razor and left them lying all over the streets of London.”

“Then we’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said, continuing ahead.

She hurried after him. “Why not?”

“We aren’t in London.”

As they drew closer, they saw that the body parts were not human remains. Rather, they were a collection of colorless clay heads, hollow plaster limbs, and life-like mannequins. The heads were particularly interesting because they had implanted hair, hand-painted eyes, and real facial expressions. Some of the statues were naked, but many had been dressed in elaborate costumes.

“They’re wax figures,” he said, nudging one of the mannequins with his boot. It was dressed in a garish white jumpsuit and a gold cape. Sunglasses sat cockeyed on its head, straddling long bushy sideburns.

Samantha knelt down next to the mannequin and touched its face.

“It does feel kind of like a candle. Who’s this one supposed to be?”

“Are you kidding me? That’s The King.”

She stood back up. “What king?”

“
The
King.”

She stared at him, her face blank.

“You know…” Tanner strummed his sawed-off shotgun like a guitar. “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time.”

She shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t know that one.”

Tanner was beside himself. “You’ve never heard of Elvis Presley?”

She wrinkled her brow for a moment, thinking.

“Was he friends with John Wayne?”

“What? I don’t know. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It’s just that I’ve heard of John Wayne. I thought that since Elvis must have lived a long time ago, they were probably friends. Maybe roommates in college.”

“Roommates in college?”

“Yeah,” she said with a nod, “that’s what I figured.”

She turned and looked back at the trailhead.

“Should we get going?”

Tanner shook his head, hoping to clear the spell of confusion she had cast over him.

“Please, by all means.”

They crossed the roundabout, heading toward the asphalt-covered trail. A ticket booth sat to their right, but not surprisingly, it was unmanned. A sign welcomed them to Cedar Creek Trail, promising that it led to a place once listed as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. The trail was wide and clean, covered only by leaves and a scattering of freshly dropped acorns. The sides were buttressed by a two-foot-high stone wall that wound its way down a gentle slope, finally disappearing into the canopy of trees. A small stream, presumably Cedar Creek, paralleled the trail. The soft rush of water made a comforting white noise that even the worst insomniac would have found soporific.

“You don’t think there’s a zoo around here, do you?” Samantha asked, obviously thinking back to the exotic animals they had encountered when passing through a park in Washington, D.C.

“Nah, it’s a small tourist town. The worst thing we might see is a Queen Snake.”

“Snakes?” she said, her voice rising.

He chuckled. “They’re harmless little fellows that eat crayfish, frogs, and such. Nothing for us to worry about.”

She turned back to study the trail.

“How far do you think it is to the bridge?”

“Not far. If it were more than a ten-minute walk, they would have installed a moving sidewalk.”

She laughed. “Because Americans are lazy?”

“Lazy and fat.”

Samantha looked down at Tanner’s thick chest and stomach.

Following her gaze, he patted his gut and said, “This isn’t fat, darlin’. It’s muscle.”

She grinned. “Of course it is.”

He growled. “Come on.”

They walked down a short flight of stone stairs. At the bottom, the trail turned sharply to the right, and in the bend were the burned remains of a restaurant. The entire stone structure had been thoroughly gutted by flame, and little remained beyond scorched timbers, stone columns, and mounds of melted shingles. A garden sat on one side of the restaurant, okra, squash, and green beans all growing in long straight rows. Surprisingly, the soil looked recently tilled.

Samantha walked over and examined a few of the plants. They were healthy and green, and a bucket of water sat beside the bed.