The Buzzard Zone

The sky darkened, black and oily; swirling, turbulent, impregnated with vigilance. It was not a bad turn of the weather promising rain or storm or tornado. It was keenly alive. Silent, yet ever moving, ever alert for what was commonplace in those dark and dangerous days. Always with its ravenous eye upon death. When the buzzards took flight, Levi Hobbs knew his family's only hope of survival was to escape. They were coming, the Biters, the dead, risen as zombies, infested by parasites and transformed into shambling, ravenous monsters. As the family flees their home in the Smoky Mountains, they head eastward to the Carolinas in search of refuge. As the buzzards on their trail grow thicker, the Zone widens, and the Biters become hungrier and more hostile. The Hobbs family realizes there is only one place left to go, one place to make a final stand... and time is running out.

The Southern Nantahala Wilderness and the Buzzard Knob and Southern Nantahala Roadless Areas are near one another and near the North Carolina-Georgia State line in Rabun and Towns Counties, Ga., and Clay and Macon Counties, N.C. The areas collectively span a region of polydeformed and metamorphosed rocks assigned to three major thrust sheets, from east to west the Tallulah Falls, Helen, and Richard Russell thrust sheets. Outcrop patterns and minor structures in the older sillimanite- grade Richard Russell rocks in the western part of the study area outline an earlier phase of isoclinal folding not apparent in the outcrop pattern of younger kyanite- and staurolite-grade Coweeta Group rocks immediately to the east across the Shope Fork fault in the east-central parts of the study area. Major movement on the Shope Fork fault postdates isoclinal F1 folding but preceded F2 isoclinal folding, because F1 fold traces are covered by rocks above the fault and the fault is folded by F2 folds. Later shearing along the fault occurred during F3 cross-folding. Geologic considerations and geochemical sampling and analysis suggest low potential for all mineral resources except common building stone. The potential for some other nonmetallic resources, including corundum, feldspar, sheet mica, and vermiculite, is moderate to low. These are present in limited amounts but are currently of little economic value. The small deposits of soapstone present in the areas are too impure to be considered a resource. Late Archaic-Early Woodland Indian bowl-carving sites in soapstone are an archeological heritage that might deserve conservation. Oil and gas resource potential is unknown but believed to be small. Resource potential for gold is low; for massive sulfide deposits containing some copper and zinc, it is low to moderate. There is little to no resource potential for other metals.

Down below the Mason-Dixon Line, deep in the shadowy hills and hollows of Tennessee, lives a teller of terrifying tales and a spinner of dark yarns unlike any you have ever heard before. Stories to chill your bones and pepper your flesh with goose bumps. What his true name may be, no one knows for sure. But, if you listen closely, you can hear his voice ringing through the dead of night! Pull up a tombstone and join your host, The Old Storyteller, as he shares nine tales of ghostly horror that will run a shiver down your spine! Tour a backwoods graveyard, neglected and forgotten…a cemetery haunted by restless spirits and wayward souls. Some are earthbound by sorrow and remorse…others by an unearthly hunger for vengeance! Now enter…the Haunt of Southern-Fried Fear!