When the Devil Dances

“Kitteket, find out where the main concentrations are and an estimate of where the leading forces will be in… oh, ten minutes,” Mitchell said. “And find out why it seems we’re the only ones fighting for this pass!”

* * *

The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of those American icons, like Route 66 or the Appalachian Trail. It runs along the crest of the Blue Ridge, which is really a series of smaller mountain ranges, from the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Along the way it passes through some of the prettiest, and most rugged, country in Eastern North America. Running, as it does, along the spine of various ridges, it is not easily accessed. Nor is it usually the quickest way to get from Point A to Point B.

But it was as good as it got for Thomas.

He’d gotten up on the parkway near Woodfin Creek, using a little known track that connected to the old parkway, and then up the hill onto the new one, and now was closing in on the Gap. But his target wasn’t actually in the Gap. From what the babe in the SheVa was saying, half the overpass was up. While it sounded sort of fun to climb out on it and fire down on the horses, it made more sense for him to get where he could fire under the overpass. There was a ridge running out from the parkway, the one that made the last bend in 23 necessary, that could be accessed from the road. From the end of it, if he could find a good hide, he thought he would be able to fire right under the bridge and take some of the pressure off the troops caught in the Gap.

He noticed the tops of trees gone as he rounded a curve then slowed down when he saw some of them in the road. Towards the end of the curve the parkway was littered with them and many of them were already beginning to wither and yellow from intense heat.

All things considered, it was good that those harbingers were present because as he rounded the curve, still doing nearly twenty miles per hour, he slammed into the first of thousands of fallen poplars blocking the road.

“Oh, shit!”

* * *

“Sir, I’ve got a message from Eastern Command,” Kittekut said. “More good news.”

“Go ahead,” Colonel Mitchell said, pointing to a spot on the map for Pruitt.

“There’s a reason we’re the only ones fighting for the pass, sir: Our nuke caused a rockslide on the road up to the pass on the Asheville side. The brigade that was supposed to be up there by now is blocked off. They’re clearing the road, but it will take at least another hour. There’s some light infantry trying to climb past it, but they’re going to be a while too.”

“Fine,” Mitchell replied, tapping in his secondary release codes. “Tell them we’re just about to clear the Scott Creek Valley of Posleen.”

Pruitt finished setting the firing commands and turned to look at the SheVa commander. “All three rounds, sir?”

“You were perhaps saving them for a more festive occasion, Pruitt?” the colonel asked. “All three rounds. One on the crossroads, one on the head of the Posleen and one on the mass backed up on the other side of the river. If that doesn’t slow them down, nothing will.”

“Yes, sir,” the gunner said, keying in the last command and hitting the firing sequence.

* * *

Between them, the BIA and the United States Congress may have come up with some really silly regulations, one of which Thomas was now limpingly in violation of, but they did spring for the militia’s equipment. Especially once it was pointed out that with the casino closed “for the duration,” the Nation didn’t have much in the way of income. And, being a government agency, they didn’t stint. Which was why he used to have a nice, camoflage painted Honda ATV.

But he’d survived the wreck and so had his rifle in its case, and his binoculars and his ammunition. So he was ahead of the game. Sort of. Getting to the ridge where he could fire down on the Posleen was going to be tougher than he’d expected; that nuke had really torn the place up.

The whole area around the intersection was a tangled mass of fallen timber. It looked like some of the pictures from Mount St. Helens. He’d done a paper on that disaster back when he was in the eighth grade and he still remembered the pictures of the elk picking their way through the fallen trees. Well, now he knew how they felt: pissed.

He pulled his right leg over another log and swore. He’d wrenched his knee in the wreck and clambering over this pile of twisted sticks wasn’t helping one bit. Especially in this nearly pitch black dark; the sun was fully down and the moon was running in and out among the clouds. But he was pretty sure he knew where he was: the gully down below should be one of the headwaters of Scotts Creek and that meant the ridge he was on should overlook the intersection.