After my wife died, my son parked a concrete truck across the only road to my Tennessee home and said I could leave when I signed over the land / Chapter 30 / 53

Chapter 30 - The Consortium's Ultimatum

We lay gasping in the wet clover behind the crumbling stone walls of the abandoned lime kiln. The air was sweet with the scent of damp grass and autumn frost, a stark contrast to the sulfur and pulverized limestone we had just escaped.

A hundred yards down the dirt path stood the quiet white steeple of Cold Creek Baptist Church, and beyond it, the empty black asphalt of County Route 4.

"Is everyone in one piece?" I wheezed, sitting up and checking my limbs. Aside from bruised ribs and scraped palms, I was whole.

"I have the cylinder," Michael said, breathing heavily. He pulled the brass tube from his jacket. The oilcloth was torn and covered in soot, but the brass was intact, glowing faintly under the moonlight.

Director Vance leaned against the kiln wall, checking the magazine of her pistol. She had a deep graze across her left forearm where a bullet had torn through her coat, but her eyes were cold as slate. "We have forty minutes until the Blount County Courthouse closes its emergency registry for the fiscal month. If we aren't in front of the chancellor by 11:59 PM, Sterling’s lawyers will file a default abandonment claim predicated on the collapse of the hollow."

"We don't have a car," Michael pointed out, looking toward the dark highway. "My truck is blocked behind the concrete rig back home. Your SUV is disabled at the gate."

Suddenly, the pair of yellow headlights swept over the crest of the hill on Route 4.

An old, beat-up Ford F-250 with a rusted cattle rack rattled down the asphalt, slowing as it approached the entrance to the church parking lot. Behind the wheel was a face I had known since grade school—old Caleb Higgins, the blacksmith and Margaret’s second cousin.

The truck pulled up to the kiln with a screech of worn brake pads. Caleb leaned out the driver's side window, a battered Winchester resting on the passenger seat beside him.

"Arthur!" Caleb barked, spitting tobacco into the weeds. "Every police scanner between Maryville and Knoxville is screaming about explosions up at your holler. Sheriff Hawkins got locked out of his own dispatch office by state troopers with out-of-county badges. I figured if you were still breathing, you'd come out through Margaret’s kiln."

"Caleb," I said, my voice cracking with gratitude. "We need to get to the courthouse in Maryville before midnight. And there are people who will kill anyone in this truck to stop us."

Caleb unlocked the passenger door with an iron grin. "Arthur, I've hated developers since they put the interstate through my daddy’s cornfield in '74. Get your boy and the federal lady inside. If anybody tries to run this old Ford off the road, they’re going to find out what forty weight iron feels like."

We scrambled into the cab, packing three wide across the cracked vinyl bench seat. Caleb slammed the shifter into second gear, dumped the clutch, and the Ford roared onto Route 4, its tires kicking up gravel as we accelerated south toward Maryville.