**The End of the World, Skeeter Davis**
It had been three PM by the time they pulled into Knoxville and Vince was beat. He hunched over his beer and the remains of a greasy rabbit stew and absorbed the conversations around him. The gravy was pretty bland but it was a nice change from the MREs they had been eating for the last three days. The former biker bar was dimly lit with candles, but it didn't look much different from the way it had the last time Vince was here, which had been some time in the early 80's. Beside him, Debbie Foster chatted up a haggard looking woman in her late 50s and across the room Peter was laughing with some guys who'd invited him to join in a game of pool.
"We just arrived from Nashville." The plump woman Debbie was talking with was saying. "We're trying to get to our hometown, up near Cincinnati."
Debbie frowned, her brow knit in concern. "Wouldn't it be easier to go north from Nashville? We've just come down from Blacksburg and all the passes between here and there are closed. Are we going to be able to get through from Nashville?" Vince groaned internally. They had already come farther south than they would have ordinarily in hopes that they could find a clear route through the Appalachians and into the Midwest. He pushed his stew away with a sigh.
"Oh yes, it's slow going but I-65 is clear going out of Nashville. But the President is coming through tomorrow and we didn't want to risk any trouble."
Debbie's brows shot up in surprise. "Trouble? You aren't afraid to get the cure, are you? Because I can assure you it is safe."
The woman nodded vigorously. "Oh yes. We got the contagious cure in Memphis, just before Christmas." Vince held his tongue. They'd run into a guy who claimed he had some kind of contagious cure back in Blacksburg. He wasn't sure he believed the guy, but he'd shook his hand anyways. He knew the risk he was accepting when they set off on this trip but he'd rather die doing something for Danny than hiding out on his boat.
"We started going north from Nashville, but when we saw all the trucks and stuff heading up the highway to meet the President, we thought there might be trouble so we changed our plans."
Vince's ears perked up at that. "Excuse me Ma'am." The woman looked between Debbie and Vince, blinking behind her thick glasses. "I'm Vince, Debbie's friend. Did you say tanks?"
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. Vince noticed she checked Debbie's face before replying. "Oh, I thought you were a right regular here? I'm Jeanne."
Vince put on a wide smile. Blending into a group was one of his most useful skills. Looking friendly wasn't quite as natural. "Nice to meet you Jeanne. It's like Debbie said. We're headed to St. Louis together. Anything you can tell us about the route would be very helpful."
"Well, we liketa go straight up 65, as you just said. My husband, Fred, he's the old one playing pool over there," She paused to give a wiggly finger wave to a heavyset man who stuck out like a sore thumb with his pressed oxford, khakies, and cable knit vest. "He wanted to see the President when he came through Nashville." She patted Debbie on the arm. "My husband's not so uh," she glanced over at Vince, "fit as yours. He saw all those trucks of Army guys heading up the highway and got worried. Decided that maybe we'll swing through St. Louis to see the new Whitehouse next time we go that way instead."
Debbie laughed, eyes darting to Vince's. "Oh Vince here is my ah..?"
"We're in laws." He supplied. Might as well call it what it was. No one had parented that boy more than he had over the years.
Debbie nodded. "Yes, that's right. My partner is that one over there. He's a softie too." She pointed out where Peter was playing pool with a group of guys. Vince wondered if she realized that Peter had just spent three games losing his pocket money on purpose. "He was afraid to make this trip alone. But so far it's been OK."
"But it sounds like we need to think about our route." Vince needed more info. "You sure they were Army guys and not just a bunch of guys wearing hunting gear?"
"I'm pretty sure. There must have been a few hundred o' them. They had 'em loaded on those trucks with canvas covers, headed up 65. And they had some big gun things they were towing and many of them were holding scary looking guns too. It was pretty un-nervung you know, seeing those guys on our soil, in the middle of our country. I mean, I know we have a giant military and all. But I always think of them being somewhere overseas, you know?"
"I know." Debbie patter her arm. "But I feel so proud whenever I see them following our flag. I know I'm safe then."
"These guys did not make me feel safe!" Jeanne exclaimed. "This wasn't like a parade with flags and a band. They were yelling at people to get out of the way and I even saw them wrestle a teenager out of a car nd hit him. I couldn't even figure out why."
"Green or brown camo?" Vince interjected. He had a feeling she wouldn't know enough to help, but he had to try."
"Brownish green?" She offered. She kept glancing over to check on her husband. "He would be able to tell you better. He's a retired policeman. Honestly, they all look the same to me."
"I know what you mean." Debbie sympathized even as a pained look crossed her face. "My first husband plus two kids in the armed forces and I could never tell a Desert Camo I from a Marpat II and so on."
They shared a laugh and Vince had a feeling that Debbie knew more than she was letting on. He was proven right when she asked "were the soldiers wearing brown or black boots?"
"I don't know that either." Jeanne pulled on a bit of her frizzy hair. If Vince had to guess, he'd say that she was probably the type to get a perfect dye job every 6 weeks like clockwork before the flu hit. "I guess I'd say..." She closed her eyes. "Probably brown."
"OK, so not Navy then." Debbie reassured her. "My daughter is a naval officer and I know her boots were black."
"Oh wow! Is she on the Nathan James then?"
"She was. She's expecting now so she has to stay ashore. That's why we're headed to St. Louis. I want to be with her when the baby comes." Debbie caught Vince's eye. "You remembered more than you thought you could. How about the camo? Most camo these days is a pattern of squares. Can you remember if this one was blocks of squares together or all individual squares?"
The woman shook her head. "No, no. It wasn't like that at all. It was rounded blobs of all different colors."
Vince sucked in a breath. "Shit!" At Debbie and Jeanne's shocked faces he apologized. "Sorry ladies. Those weren't our uniforms then."
He stood to slide off the barstool, and Jeanne shrank back. He wished women would stop doing that. Sure, he was still pretty damn fit for a man his age, but he was a nice guy. Just ask his last three wives! "We'd better get Peter. We'll want to make some new plans tonight I think." Vince nodded to Jeanne. "Nice to have met you Ma'am and good luck on your trip."
"And you too. I hope you meet up with your son and daughter in law in time." She smiled at him before turning to say goodbye with Debbie.
Vince sidled up to the pool table, giving Peter a nod to indicate that he needed to wrap it up soon. Peter was certainly in his element. Vince watched as he very skillfully made it look like he was just barely making his shots as he nearly cleaned up the table. "Well would you look at that. My beginner's luck finally sank in!" He laughed as he handed off the cue. "If you hadn't already saved me the gas money it would cost to have to turn around on I-65 and come back, I'd be mighty cranky I've only just now broken even."
The other man just chuckled as he just barely made a relatively easy shot. Peter threw two more shots before they reached the end of the game and he accepted a twenty from Fred.
"Give you another chance to win?" Jeanne's husband offered.
"Na, my friends and I have to get an early start tomorrow. But thanks for going easy on me." Peter shook hands with the other guys before turning to hang his cue on the wall.
"Hey, if you're still here tomorrow, come back and let us take more of your money!" Jeanne's husband joked.
Peter smiled and waved them off as he quietly said to Vince. "We've got problems."
They gathered in a dingy hotel room to share what they had found out. Debbie bustled around, clucking over the grayish towels and exclaiming in alarm over the sign on the bathroom mirror instructing occupants not to clean truck parts in their room. "So, we need to backtrack?" Peter asked. "I'm not interested in messing with Sam Houston's finest, that's for sure."
Vince looked surprised. "Is that what that guy Fred said? How did he know?"
Peter sat up from where he had been sprawled out on the faded yellow and red flowered coverlet. "Yeah, said one of the guys had on a hat with a crossed knife and gun on it that he recognized. He also got this flyer." Peter dug in his pocket and produced a folded up bit of paper. "I knicked it hoping it would be helpful."
Vince was impressed. He'd expected Peter to come running for help at the first sign of trouble. But despite their reluctance to undertake the trip to St. Louis alone, both Debbie and Peter had turned out to be pretty resourceful. "Let's have a look at that." They unfolded it. It was a map of the US with an Eagle drawn over it. One talon was grasping Washington D.C. and the other St. Louis. Underneath it said "Todos y mas."
The flyer had a date on it from three days ago and a number of shields and seals across the bottom. "What the heck are those symbols for?" Peter asked.
Shit on a shingle. "They are militia groups, aren't they?" Debbie looked expectantly at Vince. He recognized a few of the symbols as legitimate groups but most he did not know, which was not a good sign. His stomach sank. He was retired. He'd promised himself he wouldn't get sucked back in if he survived. But shit, shit, shit! That was the President out there, headed right for this, this, whatever it was and Danny would be right inthe middle of it.
"We need to get eyes on this." He told them.
Peter sat up, his back rigid and tense. "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"I mean, we need to get up to where they are, find out what they are doing, and put a stop to it. I don't think they hauled heavy artillery all the way out there just to give the President a parade into Nashville, do you?"
Peter stood up and began pacing. "Who us? What the heck are we going to do? We need to warn the President and then stay out of the way."
"We'll decide what to do once we know what we're dealing with." Vince caught Debbie's eye. She was running the ends of her scarf through her hands over and over.
"But Peter, what if Kara or Danny is with the President? We need to do what we can." Vince watched as Peter weighed her words. He studied her face, his eyes looking into hers. Vince could see the conviction in hers. And he wasn't surprised. Her child, her only remaining child, might be at stake here.
Finally Peter threw up his hands. "OK! But we choose the least violent way whenever possible." He aimed his words at Vince.
"That's always the best choice Peter." Vince assured him. He pushed himself to his feet, mind churning with possible strategies. As he began throwing his kit back into his duffle bag he questioned Peter on what he'd found out.
Peter repeated back some of his conversation with Jeanne's husband. Fred had heard that the President had already left Columbus the night before. Vince growled and grabbed the phone book off a small desk. Flipping the greasy yellow pages he found the map in the front and tore the page out with a resounding rip. "We need to get the rest of the way over the mountains and see if we have enough phone service to call and warn them. If we can't reach them, we'll try to cut them off at Lexington." Vince began packing back up. "Come on. Let's load the car and make some coffee. It's going to be a long night."
