by Matt James
As fun as that sounds, I’m a hot tub kind of guy. I’m really ticklish, and enduring low-temperature water around my ribcage area isn’t fun for me. I’m the type that can’t get in cool water unless I say, “fuck it!” and jump in. If I were to take it easy and slowly lower myself into the water, I’d never make it in before I likewise say, “fuck it!” and get out and grab a beer instead.
Little River, the road and the tributary, bank back and forth as one. While I steer us along, I imagine an Unseen version of the Little River Band playing on the radio, screaming and hollering while picking on an accustic guitar.
Eventually, the street turns into Flying Creek Gap Road. Under Jill’s navigation, we continue along this one, happy to see another sign advertising that Gatlinburg is just two miles away. She even called it the “home stretch” of our trip.
“This is it,” she whispered to herself. “Any minute now.”
“You really know your way around here, huh?” Dad asks, sounding very impressed.
Jill shrugs. “Sometimes my uncle would come to stay with us and take me hiking around here. It’s close enough to the city, but just far enough into the trees that it doesn’t seem that way.” Her voice softens, sounding like she’s lost in thought. “It’s been a while since I’ve been out here, but as I’m sure you can imagine, it hasn’t changed much.”
An area called Sugarlands comes next, and so does the other 441 that I mentioned earlier. We ended up on it after all. As far as Sugarlands is concerned, not only is it a popular access point for the park, but it also shares a name with a famous distillery, Sugarlands Distilling Company. They make an incredible “sipping cream” that features a delicious butter pecan flavor.
Yum. My eyebrows raise. I wonder if there’s any lying around? Once we power through the case of Coors Light, I think I’m going to take a look around for some. And more beer for that matter. If the thickening snowfall is any indication, we’re in for a long, cold winter up here in the Smokies. That means a lot of downtime, which means we’re going to need a LOT of alcohol to keep us sane.
I shiver at my next thought.
Especially if we’re locked indoors with the D’Angelos the entire time and have little else to do to pass the time. I grin. We also have Cards Against Humanity. The game had just bec0me a thing the last time Jill and I had been to the cabin, and with our families around, it should be terribly awkward. Perfect!
We zip past the Sugarlands Welcome Center, and the handful of cars still parked there. All we can really see from the road is a lot of trees and the parking lot. Whatever the welcome center is, we can’t see it—which is fine with me. The last thing we need is another distraction now that we’re so close to the Gatlinburg city limits.
“441,” I say aloud, thinking of home.
“Again?” Hope asks, eyebrow raised.
“Not the same 441,” Jill explains. “Lots of places have roads with the same names.”
Hope laughs. “That’s so confusing!”
Jill and I smile.
“Yes, it is,” I reply, turning left onto the Tennessee 441.
As we start our next leg of the journey, we swing around and see the back of the welcome center. It’s just a few stone buildings and more parking lot, but I don’t pay it much attention. We are literally within reaching distance of our destination.
I can see more pull offs and hiking trails along 441, as well as movement on the paths themselves. The shadows beneath the trees make it hard to identify who the people are—Unseen or not. I got enough of a glimpse at one form and the body language made me automatically think of the Unseen. It was hunched and huddled together with other living things.
Goblins freezing to death?
I focus on the road, but not entirely. The creatures are more resourceful than I figured they’d be. Body heat is the easiest, and most readily available source of warmth in the wild. The fact that monsters, as mindless as the goblins, can understand that is mind-blowing to me.
Other than an occasional glimpse of something moving in the trees around us, the rest of the drive was pleasantly uneventful. The road has its share of obstacles but nothing I can’t successfully navigate. I only got out of the vehicle once to push an abandoned, bloodstained car out of our way. Dad helped, making the chore quick and painless.
The driver of the car, the part of the body which was still inside, was the only real complication. Luckily, he/she, it was hard to tell with its top-half missing, was still buckled in and out of the way. I did good by averting my eyes from the person's open waist. Dad stayed out of range, happily gluing himself to the rear of the victim’s car instead.
I stay right, buzzing by the sign for the Gatlinburg Bypass. Circumventing Gatlinburg would’ve been a very bad thing. A small river appears on our left, and so do a pair of cars that seemed to have jumped the small stone curb, landing upside-down in its frigid waters.
A motorcycle is smashed up against the cliff face to our right, but its rider is nowhere to be seen. Interesting that the bike looks like it may have been gently parked. At first glance, it looks like the bike has crashed, but after getting a closer look, I realize that the more likely story is that the rider got off under his own power and may not have been thrown.
Nevertheless, there’s no one around, and we move on.
“Almost there,” Jill says, legs bouncing.
I reach a hand over and grip her thigh. “Hey.” She looks at me. “We’ll get there.”
She nods. “It’s not us I’m worried about, Frank.”
Right, I think, duh… It’s her parents.
We approach a sign, but it's facing the other way, and I have to look in my drivers-side mirror to see what it says.
“Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” I say.
“Wait,” Hope says, leaning forward. “We’ve been in the park the whole time?”
I shrug. “I guess so—at least, on the outskirts. Probably missed the sign that said we had entered them.”
Jill shakes her head. “Not all access roads are created equal. Only the main roads, like this, have them.”
“That’s lame…” Hope mumbles, sitting back and crossing her arms.
Lame?
I laugh a little. The more we’re around her, the more and more she reveals herself to us. Yet, Hope is still getting over losing her family. I have to remember that it’s only been a month since her parents died saving her.
I can’t believe it’s only been three-plus weeks since we found her in the Winnebago.
Jill must see my stunned expression because she questions me about it.
“What?”
I glance at her and softly shake my head. “Nothing… Still trying to take it all in, you know?”
Jill nods. “Unfortunately, I do.”
Minutes later, we stop at an intersection—the first real one we’ve seen in a long time. It even comes complete with a blinking traffic signal and a crosswalk. But it's not the roadway that has our attention, it’s the sign to the right of it.
Gatlinburg. I relax a little. We’re finally here.
“My god…” Jill says, looking further into the city.
My eyes have been on the sign the entire time, not the city itself. What’s there is deflating, to say the least.
Gatlinburg is on fire.
* * *
Now, when I say that everything is on fire, I really do mean that everything is on fire. Even with the steady, though still-light snowfall, every significant structure I can see is alight. A couple of buildings are just charred husks of their former selves, like the Crockett’s Breakfast Camp and Texas Roadhouse restaurants.
The Clarion Hotel appears to have sustained multiple explosions within the different rooms. I count at least nine or ten missing road-facing balconies, all of which are now just blackened holes. I seriously doubt it was a terrorist attack either. From what I can gather, as we’ve been moving closer and closer to Gatlinburg, we may have been moving closer and closer to the origins of the bur
ner virus.
Almost all of the burnt buildings have evidence of some sort of explosion. The ones that don’t probably caught fire because of a neighbor structure. I can picture flaming debris traveling across the road and igniting wooden roofs pre-snowfall. Smoke billows into the air all around us. Stupid, Frank… I should’ve been able to spot it from a distance but decide to give myself a little credit and relax. We were nestled deep into the mountains for quite a long time.
“Are those Christmas lights?”
I see what Hope sees. There are a couple of places that do, indeed, have Christmas decorations—lights included—up.
“Winterfest,” Jill explains. “Some places look like they started decorating early.” She looks up through the windshield. “I bet they wanted to beat the early flurry.”
Even a few of the hotel’s surviving balconies have lights. The people staying in the hotel room decorated for the holiday. We’ve done the same in Disney World when I was younger. My family decked-out our Fort Wilderness trailer once. It was awesome, but took forever to do.
Ober Gatlinburg is on fire as well. It houses a tram that takes you three miles west, deeper into the Smokies. There you’ll find all kinds of stuff to do. It’s a touristy ski resort and a place I’ve been to twice in my life—once with Jill and once with my own family as a kid. The black bear habitat is what I’m most worried about, as well as the other animals in the area. Otters, bobcats, raccoons…
Carlos.
The memory of the mutated bear is all-too fresh. If there’s one Carlos, there’s bound to be more like him. Rocket Raccoon might not be the oddest of his kind anymore either.
“Frank,” Jill says, pointing to our left, “look.”
I do, and I dread what’s there. One of the trams is still half-attached to its cable, burnt and busted open like a tin can. Looks like a burner was aboard and blew up.
Damn. Those people didn’t stand a chance. Had nowhere to go. I close my eyes and breathe, recalling the horrors from September 11th. Thankfully, I wasn’t in New York yet when it happened, but the scenes of people leaping from the burning towers could be seen all over the news.
That's what they probably did here too.
Like a gunshot, the cable snaps as we pass, returning the tram back to Earth. We’re only fifty feet away from where it smashes into the roof of someone’s home. The steel cable whips by us, barely missing our windshield by inches. As a result, everyone reflexively ducks as it passes overhead. The only damage we sustain is to our vehicle. The Yukon gets its tip nipped, losing the useless roof-mounted radio antenna.
It’s not like anyone is broadcasting anything worth listening to. The only thing we’ve picked up on recently is White Noise’s greatest hits.
Shrieks resonate all around us. The commotion has stirred up a hornet’s nest of Unseen—burners, most likely. Then again, it would be foolhardy to think that they’re the only kind of creature here.
Dad grabs the back of my seat. “How do we have this kind of luck?”
I hit the gas and bump-bump over the cable which is now stretched across the road. I know my father’s question is rhetorical and not meant to be answered, but I answer him.
“If we didn’t, we’d probably be dead.”
I see him sit back and look out his window. Then, he shrugs as if my reply is the gospel on all things luck. It’s not either. If anything, we’ve had exceptional luck so far. I can literally think of a hundred situations in which one, or all, of us, should’ve died, and yet, here we are, not pushing up daisies.
We’re forced to turn left onto Leconte Street instead of continuing along 441/Parkway. The latter is the easiest route to the D’Angelo cabin.
Oh, well, I think, turning the wheel.
Turning, we head right onto River Road, where most of the block to my right is nothing but a crater. The only thing that’s left is a listing sign for the Ole Smoky Distillery. Looks like something exploded within the highly flammable building, turning the place into a bomb.
The next intersection is also a disaster, and we’re “guided” right onto Maples Lane by a gaggle of goblins. The spirited bunch comes flying out of the Christ in the Smokies Museum and Gardens. I’ve been there once, and it was actually pretty impressive considering it’s mostly educational.
“Is that a church?” Hope asks.
“No,” Jill replies, “it’s an attraction based on the Bible.”
“Beautiful garden,” Mom says. Her longing is evident in her voice. Mom doesn’t want to go there now, but she is remembering when we were there at a time when the world was a better place. Weird, but better.
Man, I’d give anything for “weird” right about now.
On the corner of Maples and Parkway are the famed Sugarlands distillery and everyone’s favorite odditorium, Ripley’s Believe It or Not. And just down the street from Ripley’s is—the sound of the world coming apart around us shakes loose one of my fillings and it’s plain to see what’s causing all the kerfuffle.
“Ummm,” Dad says, wide-eyed, pointing a finger forward between Jill and me.
“Yes, Dad,” I reply equally as shocked, seeing what's got him anxious, “the Gatlinburg Space Needle is falling toward us.”
15
A flash of light and a plume of smoke ignite as the enormous structure continues to fall toward us. A burner has met its demise somewhere near one of the observation tower’s supports. The 407-foot-tall needle is just big enough, and we’re just close enough, that it’ll turn us to paste in a matter of seconds.
I’m about to throw the Yukon into reverse and head back down Maples, but I’m stopped by what I see in my mirror. Dozens of Unseen are rushing our position. They’re no doubt still following us from the Christ museum.
“Jesus Christ…” I say, frustrated.
“What?” Dad asks.
He hates blasphemous talk, and usually so do I, but my mind isn’t firing on all cylinders right now. At this moment, I’m trying to figure out where we’re going, and my brain is on an extended lunch break.
So, my instincts take over, and I keep the SUV in drive and stomp my foot on the gas pedal. Everyone inside the vehicle protests my decision to move us closer to the falling tower, but I don’t listen. I just drive—and pray that I chose wisely.
Another support snaps, and this time, the needle doesn’t wait for an invitation. It drops like, well, what I’m hoping it’ll act like, a bomb. I eye the oncoming horde behind us and am happy that they’re focused on our attempt at escape and not the forty-story-tall object about to flatten them.
And us!
I give the Yukon more gas and sideswipe a mini-van in the process. We fishtail a bit after hitting a slick of roadblood and careen onto the sidewalk, taking out six sets of tables and chairs. I’m not sure what eatery they belong to but—a goblin leaps atop our windshield from out of nowhere, quickly loses his balance when he grabs ahold of the passenger side windshield wiper. As he tips backward, I run him over without a second thought.
Our rear tires leave the road, and my hands depart from the steering wheel. Luckily for us, we were pointed back out onto the street when my grip was jarred loose.
I slide us to a stop, spinning us around just as the tower slams into the town of Gatlinburg, flattening everything in its path. Ripley’s disintegrates under the immense weight of the observatory, and so does the Sugarlands distillery. The last thing to disappear is the twenty-plus Unseen. They vanish into thin air amongst the ball of fire and smoke.
Multiple explosions rock the wreckage, all coming from within the mangled metal of the space needle’s corpse. My mind returns to the burners. It’s possible that a few of the Unseen running toward us were burners, or maybe there were a couple of them in the needle? Either way, when it hit, they went kaboom!
White-knuckling the steering wheel, I just sit and stare. That was one of the most insane experiences of my life. I know I’ve been through a lot lately, but I have yet to have a building fall on me.
Oh, wait, never mind.
Jill and I were crushed beneath a building in Manhattan… Yadda, yadda, yadda…
It would’ve been the first observation tower to fall on me. That’s for damn sure!
“This…” I say, breathing hard, “is definitely ground zero for the burner virus.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jill says, mockingly, “what made you think that?”
“Agreed,” Dad says.
Mom nods, staying silent. She’s holding her chest in shock, but I don't think we need to worry about her having a heart attack.
For now.
“I blame Dolly,” I say, turning us around.
“Who’s Dolly?” Hope asks.
“Ms. Wood,” I reply. “You’ve never heard of her?”
Hope shakes her head.
“Frank,” Dad says, “that’s not her last name.”
“What is it?” Hope asks.
I look at my father in my mirror just as he realizes that he stepped in the mud puddle.
“Oh, no,” he says, giving her a fake smile, “my mistake. Her name really is Dolly Wood.” He glances at me. “I was thinking of someone else.”
Hope leans forward, eyebrows knit in anger. “We need to find Dolly Wood and stop her!”
Everyone in the car erupts in laughter. Everyone except Hope that is. She’s horribly confused, and unsure what to say next. Being the smart girl that she is, Hope keeps her mouth shut and sits back. She’s with it enough to know when someone is having fun at her expense.
It takes me some time to find another clear road. I’m forced to weave in and out, back and forth from one street to the next. I even leave the road a few times altogether and plow through people’s backyards, and once we smash through a privacy fence, we find ourselves on something called Baskins Creek Bypass. It’s a small, two-lane road that rewinds its way to the north. We even pass underneath a gondola, which is still occupied.