A week after Hurricane Helene roared through, the smell of death overpowers the cool mountain air over the isolated twisting roads of devastated rural western North Carolina.

Hurricane Helene has left a wake of death and destruction across Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee after it made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26. Despite being downgraded to a tropical depression, hundreds were killed by the storm, millions are still without power, and the damage is estimated in the billions of dollars.