He shifted the vehicle into gear and took point. Silently, the others followed, making their way along the rutted dirt lane that exited from the Hobbs property.
Before they made their way down the opposite face of the Smoky Mountains, however, there was one stop Levi wanted to make… one person he needed to see… before they put the state of Tennessee behind them for good.
Chapter 8
Three miles south, as Hobbs Ridge gradually rose to the higher elevation of Pea Ridge, wild with thick stands of tall pines and jagged outcroppings of limestone and shale, Levi parked his truck on the rutted track of a mountain road, holding his hand up from the open window. The others slowed and stopped as well.
Levi left the cab, taking the shotgun with him. “I’m going up by myself,” he told Nell as she looked at him from the passenger window of the Ram pickup. Jem had taken over the driving, while Avery crouched in the back, holding the AR-15, vigilant for movement in the surrounding woods. “She’s known me all my life. If anyone can talk some sense into her stubborn head, it’ll be me.”
His wife nodded. “Good luck. And be sure to tell her that we’d be happy to have her.”
Levi nodded and then started up the steep road. He looked for signs of Biters, be they human or critter. Since encountering the Macolmers’ hound and the gray squirrel, each transformed into the ravenous undead, he knew anything could turn, man or beast. But he found no recent sign, no droppings, and no distorted footprints of shuffling steps. The only tracks he discovered were tire tracks from an ATV that had traveled just so far and then had quickly turned back in the direction from which it had come. Fragments of clear glass from a headlight told him that something had reinforced that need to retreat, perhaps a well-placed gunshot.
Soon, he came within sight of an ancient log cabin—dove-tailed and chinked with clay mud—and topped with rusted sheet tin. On the porch sat a solitary figure, small and slump-shouldered, head bent over a worn Bible in her dark hands. The fingertip of her right index finger ran slowly along the print of the page as she read. Levi knew that was impossible, however. The old woman had pretty much been blind for years, the corneas of both eyes shielded by cataracts as thick and opaque as his thumbnails. If the scriptures came to her, they came by memory alone.
He halted in his tracks. “Auntie!” he called up to her. “Auntie Rose!”
The elderly black woman lifted her head. Her face was heavily lined with age and her wooly head of hair was as white as virgin snow. She peered down the hillside with both curiosity and suspicion. In an instant, she traded the Good Book for an old lever-action Winchester that leaned against the cabin wall behind her. “Who goes there?” she hollered out.
“Levi Hobbs, Auntie.”
“How’s I know you be Levi?” she asked gruffly. “Tell me something he would only know, or I’ll pierce your left ear.” She worked the lever and lifted the rifle to her shoulder. “And if’n I miss it and plug you a couple o’ inches to the right, well now, that would be a doggone shame, wouldn’t it?”
Levi swallowed nervously. Auntie Rose was nearly blind, but she didn’t need her eyes to fire that rifle and consistently place the bullet anywhere she wanted. Last summer he had been out hunting and had chased a jackrabbit across Pea Ridge, onto Auntie Rose’s property. Before he could bring it down, the old woman had beaten him to the shot. She had tracked its progress by sound alone and drilled it cleanly through the temples, just below its oversized ears.
“On my fifth birthday, you whittled me a toy,” he told her. “It was this little dancing man on two sticks. When you squeezed those sticks, that feller would flip and carry on something funny. Mama said you carved it from the branch of a white oak tree that’d been struck by lightning and that it was full of heavenly magic, that if I played with it enough, I’d grow up to be a special man someday. One who cherished family and hard work over hard drink and carousing, like my pa did.”
“And so you have,” grinned Auntie with toothless gums. She returned the rifle to its place against the wall. “Come on up to me, young Levi.”
He couldn’t help but grin as he trudged past the smokehouse, the ramshackle chicken coop, and the narrow structure of a single-seat outhouse. “Auntie, I’m over fifty years old now.”
“Still a babe compared to ol’ Rose,” she told him. “Emily Hobbs’ sweet little boy.”
Levi thought of his mother, who had died of cancer twenty-two years past, and the lasting friendship she had shared with the old black lady in the rocking chair. They had grown up together in a time when Negroes and white folks distanced themselves from one another, afraid of what might be said or thought by others. Emily and Rose had been an exception, enjoying each other’s company on the sly, even when the threat of reprisal from men with white hoods, liquor on their breath, and a wicked fondness for fire and braided leather that split air and flesh was a genuine possibility. If there were ever twin daughters born of different mothers of separate colors, they were truly that pair of young’uns.
“Not as sweet as I once was,” he said as he reached the porch and sat on a riser midway up the rickety steps. “I’ve done some godawful things, Auntie. Sinful things that sickened me down deep in my belly.”
“If’n you’re talking about those confounded Biters,” she told him, “rest easy in your mind, Levi. They ain’t the ones you knew before summer took hold. Their souls have flown the coop long before you split their skull or put a bullet betwixt their eyes.”
“I’m hoping you’re right, Auntie. I truly am.” He spotted a wire cage sitting next to her chair. Inside were three laying hens. “What’re the chickens for?”
Auntie laughed. “Whenever a Biter wanders up here, hankering for some dark meat, I fling one of these birds out into the yard. They go after it and forget all about me. Probably for the best. I’d be a lot more gamey and harder to stomach than them there pullets.”
The two were silent for a long moment. Then the elderly woman spoke again. “You didn’t come all the way up here on Pea Ridge to unburden yourself and talk about chickens, did you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You’re leaving, ain’t you? Leaving the Smokies behind.”
“That’s right.” he admitted. He glanced up into the sky. The three clouds of buzzards had thinned. Some still soared overhead, but most had taken to ground, likely feasting off the bits and pieces of Biters that scattered Hobbs Ridge for the better part of a quarter mile. “We had us some trouble over our way. Got overrun… had to resort to something I’d never dreamt of doing several months ago.”
Auntie Rose nodded solemnly. “I heard it rolling over the ridge like thunder. A sad thing to be forced to erase one’s past in a flash of gunpowder and flame, ain’t it?”
Levi felt an aching in his chest, like a fist closing in around his heart. “It surely is.”
“But that ain’t why you came, is it?”
“No.” He gathered his nerve and came right out and said it. “We’re heading down the far side of the mountain into North Carolina, Auntie… and we want you to come with us.”
The elderly woman chuckled and spat tobacco juice off the porch to the side. “Now why would you want a shriveled-up, old husk like me getting in the way and slowing you down?”
“You wouldn’t be,” he told her. “You’d be invaluable, Auntie. You’ve got more knowledge about surviving in the wilderness and living off the land in your pinky finger than the whole of us put together.”
Auntie Rose grinned. “You’re probably right about that, Levi. But I’m still not a-going.”
He had expected such a response from her, but it still pained him to hear it straight from her lips. “How come?”
“Here I was born and here I’ll die,” she explained. She bent down and laid a bony, black hand upon his shoulder. He reached up and squeezed it gently. “As fond as am of you and of the cherished memory of your mother, God rest her blessed soul, I love this old place of log and mud and tin even more. It’s as much
a part of me as the blood in my veins or the breath in my lungs. Separate us… take me away from here… and I’d be dead within a week’s passing. Having my feets upon these here floorboards is what keeps me anchored to this ol’ world, as ugly and twisted as it has become.”
“I understand,” Levi replied. “I thought the same, but after it was gone in splinters and ash, I’m still here. My heart’s still pumping and alive, even though it’s broken clean in half.”
“Maybe you’re a stronger soul than ol’ Auntie is,” she mused, her jaw working the chaw in her cheek like a cow chewing its cud.
Levi couldn’t help but chuckle. “I doubt that very much. You’re like an iron horseshoe… it’d take some doing to bend or break what you’re made of.”
It was Auntie Rose’s turn to laugh. “I’m in my eighth decade now. My bones are brittle and my skin as thin as cobweb. Both can be torn asunder by bullet or hungry teeth.” She shook her wrinkled head. “Horseshoe, my ass.”
“That’s why you should come with us. So we can take care of you… prevent such a thing from happening.”
“You’re a stubborn cuss, ain’t you?”
He eyed her with both admiration and regret. “Reminds me of that old saying about the pot calling the kettle black, you know.”
“Well, you’ve got the black part right.”
They laughed together for a while, then grew silent.
“So, I reckon this is it,” he said.
“I reckon so, Levi Hobbs,” she replied softly.
He stood on the warped risers of the old steps, leaned forward, and embraced her. The two remained that way for a long moment before parting. He pressed something into the leathery palm of her hand—a box of ammunition. “For that ol’ rifle of yours. Use it sparingly and shoot straight.”
She accepted the gift graciously. “You know I will. Much obliged.”
Levi took up his shotgun, canted it over his shoulder, and started back down the hill toward the dirt road. Halfway there, he turned around. “Auntie… I saw tracks in the dirt down yonder. A four-wheeler from the looks of ’em.”
Auntie Rose nodded. “Lonnie Pendergast and his boys. But they weren’t looking for me. It was the Biters they were after.” Her face grew grim. “They used to torment us niggers—beat us, lynch us… rape us.” Pain, deep and bitter, shown in her cloudy eyes. “But now they got themselves something new to hate. And if that takes the pressure off me and my kind, then the better I’ll be for it.”
Levi stared at her for a long moment, knowing that it was for the last time. “I love you, Auntie.”
“Love you, too, boy. God be with you in your travels, wherever it might lead.”
Silently, Levi walked back down the rutted road to the line of vehicles that sat there waiting. As he passed the red pickup truck, Nell eyed him warily. “So she wouldn’t… “
“No. I told you that she wouldn’t, didn’t I?”
His wife shrugged. “Never hurts to try, though, does it?”
Levi turned reddened eyes toward her. “Nowadays, everything seems to hurt… right down to the quick.”
Nell could do nothing but agree. She knew by looking at Levi that, at that moment, he was hurting to no end.
He climbed back into the Ford flatbed, cranked the engine, and, taking the lead, headed over the crest of Pea Ridge and set out for parts previously unknown.
Chapter 9
They took a steep mountain road down the eastern face of Pea Ridge, winding through dense stands of timber and natural outcroppings of wind-scrubbed stone. As they drove, they were aware of the absence of wildlife. The buzzards continued to circle tirelessly a few miles behind them, but other than that, they saw no birds or small animals, like squirrels or rabbits. The woods seemed unnaturally empty.
An hour later, they left the rutted dirt track and began to travel eastward along the park roads toward the North Carolina border. As they drove, they saw several cars abandoned by the side of the road. On most of them, the doors had been wrenched open and the upholstery of the seats was torn and dyed a nasty brownish-red with dried blood. One vehicle, a Ford Mustang, had been flipped onto its roof at the edge of the forest. The driver’s side had been battered and caved in, as though rammed by something of incredible force. Levi figured it had been hit by another vehicle, but traces of thick black fur told him that the Mustang and its occupants had been attacked by a thing of flesh and blood, rather than something mechanical.
Levi found his eyes roaming from the two-lane road toward the thick stands of pine, cedar, and oak on either side. He saw nothing amid the shadows between the trees, but he felt watched. This is a dangerous place, he thought to himself. Damn dangerous.
Once they spotted half-a-dozen buzzards circling above the trees up ahead and slowed, preparing for a confrontation. But it was only a couple of Biters—a tall, thin man in a park ranger’s uniform and a dark-haired woman dressed in hiking gear, still wearing a backpack across her emaciated shoulders. Levi sped around them and the others in the caravan followed. The two zombies lurched after them, but soon lost ground and stood in the center of the road, hollering hoarsely with frustration, their dark teeth gnashing.
They were ten miles from Cherokee when Levi rounded a sharp curve on a downhill slope and suddenly found a tree halfway down in the road. He steered sharply and attempted to dodge the outermost branches, but a jagged limb impaled the right front tire of the logging truck, flattening it with a bang. Levi cussed as the truck limped a few yards farther down the road. He brought it to a halt and engaged the parking brake, then hopped out of the cab.
The Dodge Ram stopped a few feet behind him. Avery and Jem got out. “You hit that stob good, Papa,” Avery told him. “Tore that tire plumb to hell.”
They smelled something dead, but saw no carcasses in the roadway. Perhaps something had crawled off into the woods and given up the ghost.
“Tell your mama to stay in the truck,” he told them. “There’s things in the woods. You saw those cars back yonder.”
The twins nodded. Their eyes surveyed the close-grown trees around them, their guns unslung and unholstered. “Want us to change it for you?”
Levi took a heavy-duty jack from the tool chest behind the Ford’s cab, as well as a cross-bar lug wrench. “I’ll do the changing. You stand guard. Hopefully, I can get this done in a few minutes and we’ll be on our way.” He looked upward, hoping to see past the treetops, but the forest formed a thick canopy across the two-lane road. From the sparse light filtering from in between, he determined that it was already late in the afternoon, maybe three-thirty or four o’clock. It would be getting dark soon and he didn’t cotton to the idea of spending the night out there in the wilderness. God only knew what would be on the prowl after twilight.
He dropped the spare from the cradle beneath the truck’s bed and went to work jacking the front end up. When the damaged tire was off the pavement, he went to work with the lug wrench. He had all the nuts loosened except one, when he heard a deep growl coming from the woods behind him, perhaps twenty yards away.
“Hear that?” he asked his sons. Nervously, he shucked the Blackhawk from its holster and laid it on the ground next to him.
“We did,” admitted Jem. “What do you think it was?”
Levi shook his head as he fumbled with the nuts and then pulled the heavy tire from the rotor of the wheel. “No earthly idea… but it was big, that’s for sure.”
Another growl sounded, different from the other one, on the opposite side of the road. Avery absently thumbed his AR-15 from single shot to full automatic. “We’ve got more than one.”
Levi wrestled with the spare and aligned the rotor bolts with the wheel holes, then slid it into place. “If something comes out of the woods, shoot it. In the head.”
“Sure enough.” Jem lifted the 1100 shotgun and warily swept the muzzle along the tree line behind his father. A twig snapped as something shifted in the thicket. Jem’s finger caressed the Remington’s trigger lightl
y, itching to fire.
Levi was screwing on the first lug nut, when something screamed a few yards behind the Yukon. At first he thought it was a woman, but it was wilder, more feline in nature. “A bobcat,” he said as he worked.
“Levi?” called Nell from the cab of the Dodge.
“It’s okay,” he told her, not feeling that way at all. “Stay put… and roll up your window.”
A rustle and crunch of dry leaves broke the silence as they heard motion on both sides. The stench of decay grew heavier, nearly unbearable. If there were buzzards above the treetops, they couldn’t be seen.
“We’re surrounded,” said Jem in a low voice, not wanting his mother to overhear.
“You got that right,” Avery told them from the far side of the truck. “Look.”
Levi and Jem turned their attention to the eastern end of the park road. A large buck with a twelve-point rack stood on the center line. Its dark eyes were moist and hollow and its hide was filthy and sunken in, with bone showing from the ribs, legs, and skull. They could not see its teeth, but its antlers were teaming with swarming, black parasites.
They watched as it snorted wetly, then lowered its head and pawed at the blacktop.
“It’s going to charge,” said Avery, facing the animal.
“Watch those antlers,” Levi warned. “If they gore you, or even wound you, you’re one of them.”
The deer’s decaying muscles quivered with strain and then it galloped toward them. The animal seemed shaky and off-kilter at first, but it soon stretched and sprang, as though a memory of its former life had kicked in. Its hooves drummed hollowly against the pavement, gaining speed.
Avery raised the butt of the AR-15 to his shoulder and began firing.
The Buzzard Zone Page 5