“We’re all good. Francine didn’t make it, but everyone else is fine.”
Dad stuck his head in the tent. “Hey, Arturo!” He drew the name out like a game show announcer.
“Hey David,” Arturo relaxed, seeing his new but trusted friend alive and well. “What’s up?”
Dad grinned with a single laugh that caught in his throat.
“Oh, man. Long story... What’s up with you?”
“Well, I’m truly stuck in this sleeping bag, and it’s hot as... heck in here,” Arturo replied.
“Bill, how you coming on that zipper?” Dad asked.
“Working on it... Almost there, Dad.”
The zipper popped loose from the tightly pinched fabric. I backed it up and pushed the material out of the way as I finally got the bag open. Arturo immediately tried to sit up and winced with sharp pain.
“Easy there, friend,” Dad said. “Let me help you.” He pulled Arturo up and sent me to get water.
I waited on the bottom platform of the treehouse while Juannie shot by on her way up the ladder. She was on a ballistic trajectory for her dumb Mexican. Moments later, Dad came down the second story ladder, gave me a look I didn’t understand, and said, “The water can wait a bit.”
***
An armored truck pulled up in the parking lot of Hermitage landing. It looked twice as deadly as the one they had driven to Murfreesboro, but then, there was no question of its purpose. If they wanted to go stealthy, they were out of luck. This thing was designed to intimidate.
“Must be designed by cops,” Bill remarked to Terry.
“Impressive,” Terry said in return.
They got to their feet in time for the second truck to arrive. This one looked like any typical old pickup, with battered white paint and a hand stenciled state logo on the door. Three men got out of this truck and walked by with respectful nods as they shook Shaun’s hand and boarded the boat. A grizzled old man got out of the armored truck and walked over to Bill.
“You Carter?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Bill Carter,” Bill responded in the same clipped tone, but extended his hand in greeting.
“Ned Pierce. I’m leading you in. Don’t expect me to get too close, though.” Ned reached out and gripped the proffered hand, giving it one quick pump.
“You could just give us directions, Ned.” This appeared to be the key to Ned’s heart.
The old man cracked a stained tooth grin and spit tobacco juice over his shoulder. “Nah, I wish, but you need someone who knows the ground. Stuff changes too much down on the river.”
“Ok, then. It’s good to meet you, Ned. What’s the plan?”
“You boys will load up in the Big Bertha here, and I’ll take Whitey. You’ll follow me into town. We can take the interstate fairly close to the State Salvage Yard, but the big interchange bridges have been down since the nuke. We’ll have to run the surface streets on the opposite side of the river. There’s only one bridge still standing on that stretch. We’ll cross that bridge about a half mile from the target. That’s where I’ll bid you fine folks good day and run like hell.” Ned looked like he was uncomfortable with all the talk, and spit another puddle of juice next to the first one.
“Anything I need to know about, uh, Bertha?”
“Nothing special. She’s armored with gun ports all over, built on a reinforced 4500 chassis. You can load her up with almost anything, drive her over a bomb, bash through barriers, you know... anything you’re crazy enough to try. Just don’t drive her into the river,” Ned said with an evil smile. “That wouldn’t work out too well.”
“Sounds good. How much fuel does she carry?” Bill asked.
“A metric ton. If fuel is a problem, you got no problems. You could probably drive to Chicago on that tank.”
“Aye, aye, Ned. You ready?”
“Soon’s you boys load up.”
Bill nodded at John, who took charge of the loading and positioning of the men. Bill turned to see Shaun and his new crew preparing to shove off. “Hey Shaun.” Bill called. “Your boat have a name?”
“Yeah, Bill. I call her Wild Lucille,” Shaun answered as he chunked the boat into reverse.
“Good name... And, good luck. Thanks for the ride.”
“All in a day’s work, Bill. Good luck to you. You’ll need it.” Shaun threw Bill a casual salute as he spun the boat and accelerated away.
John walked up and told Bill the men were ready. Terry was once again stuck in the toddler seat in the middle of the cab. John leaped up into the shotgun seat, and Bill walked around to the driver’s side. The rest were clearly visible in the steel box behind the cab. They had already figured out how to open all the ventilation and gun ports to avoid being roasted alive. They had a metal bench down the center of the truck bed, and wasted no time piling the gear against the cab wall, and sitting down for the ride. Jeffry and Nick were facing the left side, Rob and Seth the right.
Bill opened the sliding metal ports in the lower section of the windshield, and took a minute to check out the truck. The windows were already open, but each door held a second, larger crank, which was revealed to crank up a quarter inch steel plate outside of the glass, complete with a small slot for viewing and shooting.
“Slick,” he said.
A crank directly over Terry’s head slid the slotted metal plate down from the roof to cover the windshield. If they needed it, Bill would be driving almost blind.
“Terry, if we need the armor, crank that thing like your life depends on it,” Bill said.
“No problem, Bill. I expect it will.”
Bill turned the key and waited for the engine to settle into a dull throb. Then, he threw his hand out the window to wave Ned by in the second truck. Ned eased by on the left and circled the parking lot slowly. Bill pushed the gas pedal and Big Bertha roared up through first gear.
“No sneaking around in this thing. She’s a showoff,” Bill said, getting a feel for the huge steering wheel and a truck with an automatic transmission. Bertha dropped into second, and caught up with Ned, who was not wasting any time.
Bill was focused on driving the big truck, and John was canning continuously for threats. Terry decided his best bet would be to memorize the route, in case they came back the same way. His first sign of the big city was the fact that they passed another motor vehicle in the first mile.
Bill watched Ned ignore it, and realized that not every motorized machine was a threat in this area, which made sense, as the lake itself was full of people in motor boats. Maybe some semblance of life was returning to Nashville. As the little red station wagon passed, he channeled one of his father’s favorite sayings. “Volkswagen TDI. Don’t see those every day.”
They dropped onto I-40 from Old Hickory Boulevard, and Bill revised his initial theory. The highway was empty, other than their two trucks. By the time they passed the remains of the airport, it was clear that Percy Priest was as close as people approached the city, if they had a choice. The high points on the road told the story. It was easy to see the burn patterns across the landscape. It was an inverse play of light and shadow. The light areas, still reasonably intact in the shadows of nuclear fire. The dark areas, unshielded by anything between the burn and ground zero, represented the light -- in this case, the light of destruction. Some places broke the clear pattern, but Bill assumed those were the regular fires, set in the panic of the Breakdown.
The overview was chilling, more so because they were traveling ever closer to the site of the nuclear strike. They followed the highway onto I-24 as they approached the remains of Downtown Nashville. There was a brief minute or two, cresting the last rise before the city proper, when they whole arena of disaster was laid out like a map. The burn pattern was a blackened flower upon the blocky landscape. Even low rises created blurry islands of remains, where the black areas were mostly stripped to the earth. Even roadways were erased in waves of heat. The former skyscrapers were jagged broken teeth and patterns of melted debris made it look strangely like the dead buildings were racing to the southwest. Following these imaginary paths off into the distance, Terry could see that there was absolutely nothing left in a wobbly circle of eradicated city, beyond the hill on which the Capitol once stood.
More importantly to their immediate purpose, an elevated section of the highway ahead was collapsed over a half mile stretch. Beyond that pile of rubble, another mile-long piece of highway was still standing like a monument to the once-massive trucking industry. Even further out, the elevated interstate had fallen again, traced by chunks of concrete and steel until it curved out of sight in the distance. It was almost more than Terry could take in, first the sheer scale of everything he saw, and then the extra stretch to understand what it would take to break all of the city it into non-functioning bits. He was distracted from the overwhelming view when Ned peeled off on the last exit before the highway’s ragged edge. Bill wheeled the big truck down the ramp and followed Ned around to the left. They passed under the freeway less than a hundred feet from the scorched rubble of the collapse. They turned in a seemingly random pattern that nonetheless was leading them westward. From the map, Terry knew they would have to pass under another elevated highway section that once formed the major loop around the city.
Soon enough, he saw the highway in question, a series of sections that fell to the streets below mixed with sections that still stood incongruously against the overcast sky. Ned knew exactly which streets were clear. He turned southwest for a few blocks and crossed under one of the pristine sections of freeway. Broken buildings of larger size surrounded them as they turned back towards the Cumberland River and zigzagged along the clearest roads. How Ned knew them all was a mystery. On the other hand, the man was old enough to have been a taxi driver before Nashville fell. Seemed like a good answer at the time.
Ned turned right into a section of stunted trees. Terry could see old rusting machinery scattered haphazardly in the woods, and assumed correctly that this had once been a work yard of sorts. At the end of the narrow road, the white truck stopped and Ned slid out. Bill shut down Big Bertha and joined him for a few words. He waved John and Terry out of the cockpit. John told the other men to open the doors, but to stay with the trucks. Ned led the three of them along a worn path into some thicker woods. Terry fought down a surge of paranoia that this could be a trap. They crossed a rail siding, and rails that still saw some use, judging by the shiny metallic strip down the crown of the rails. Back into the for a short distance, Terry saw the river water reflecting the dull light of the cloudy late afternoon. He stopped short, following a lifetime of trying to stay out of open view. Bill and John stepped off the path, and used the cover of heavy undergrowth to hide themselves on the river’s edge. Ned simply slid up near Bill and began pointing out details. Now that he understood, Terry hunched down and paralleled the water until he was well hidden and eased to a standing position near John.
The Cumberland appeared about four or five hundred feet wide from their hiding place. They were directly across the river from some kind of broad work yard scattered with piles of various debris. The yard had its own pier, set on heavy pilings that trailed foaming swirls of water downstream. At the pier, several large vessels were parked. Two of them looked like tugboats, one a sort of mutilated cruiser, and partially obscured among the other boats, Terry could see glimpses of what must be a river barge, although it looked smaller than he had imagined, among the sheltering boats. To the northwest, less than a thousand feet away, a once-impressive bridge had collapsed into the river. Only jagged pieces of steel and the crumbled approaches gave it away. Most of the bridge was sitting on the bottom of the river. Another thousand feet presented another bridge, smaller than the first but still intact, which meant it was their likely means of getting across.
Twenty minutes later, Terry held an internal dance over his correct guess, as they drove across the Shelby Street Bridge, and turned left at the first major road. His sense of direction sounded the alarm, and he looked over his shoulder in the direction he was sure the target was located. Bill noticed his confusion, and explained.
“They, whoever they may be, could have easily seen us crossing the bridge. We’re heading in the opposite direction to make them think we are going somewhere else.”
It turned out that they only went a half mile and pulled into the broken shadow of the Titans old stadium. They turned off the trucks and John slid open the rear cab window to announce, “Piss break! Shake ‘em if you got ‘em.”
Terry was slightly shocked at the rare show of humor from “Serious John.” The rear guard piled out of the truck and Terry, very much in need of a break, tried to wait patiently for all the map folding bullshit to end, until Bill finally found his pipe tobacco and slid from the cab. Terry catapulted himself out the door with the steering wheel, nearly taking Bill’s hat off as he flew by, and leaving John to watch in mild amazement. Terry felt thankful to clear the area and to get his buttons open before he pissed himself, which he missed doing by less than a second. He groaned loudly as his bladder began to relax.
As Terry buttoned his fly, Jeffry sidled up and offered some handy advice. “Listen, man. You don’t have to wait until my brother says it’s ok. Let someone know if you need to take a leak. We don’t hang you for that.”
Terry laughed quietly, and said, “This has been the craziest day of my life. I honestly didn’t even notice until your brother actually said the word ‘piss’.”
After a few minutes of discussion among Bill, Ned, and John, Bill climbed up and started the truck. He backed it slowly into the deep shade of the stadium, and set his men to unloading the gear. They had a brief scavenger hunt for any materials that could be used to hide the truck from casual observers and stacked them around Big Bertha. They were on the north side of the crumbling building, which helped Bill feel confident that the truck would sit in the shadows until they came to retrieve it. He decided that this was close enough, with a loud, modified diesel to announce their arrival.