Free Renewal 4 - Down on the River by Jf Perkins Page B

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