The Rift (101 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

Messrs. Miner & Butler,

A very singular phenomenon took place near Angelica, in the country of Allegany, on Monday morning the 16th of December, which I will state, as related to me by one of the eye witnesses. Early in the morning, about sunrise as sitting at breakfast, he had a strange feeling, and supposed at first that he was fainting, but as his sight did not fail, he then concluded that he was going into a fit, and removed his chair back from the table.
—
He then had a sensation as though the house was swinging and observed clothes hanging on lines in the room were swinging, as also a large kettle hanging over the fire. He observed that his wife and family appeared to be greatly alarmed, and still supposing that it was in consequence of his apparently falling into a fit, but on enquiry found that all felt the same sensation. This continued as he supposed for at least 15 minutes. There was no noise or trembling, nor any wind, but only an appearance of swinging or rocking, as he supposed, equal to the house rocking two feet one way and the other.
—
One of his neighbors felt the same, and on the opposite side of the river, at the farmhouse and dwelling house of Phillip Church, the same motions and sensations were felt. Mrs. Church was in bed, and when she first felt the motion, and a strange sensation as if suffocating, she jumped out of bed, supposing the house was on fire. The motion was so considerable as to set all the bells in the several rooms a ringing, and an inside door was observed to swing open and shut.

The same motions were felt up the river, about eight miles above, at a house near a small brook; the people ran out of the house, and observed the water to have the same motion. Accounts state, that the same motions have been felt at sundry other places 30 miles distant.

I could relate many other similar motions felt and perceived at the same time, but leave it for the present. How to account for it I know not. If you think it worthy of notice, you may make it public, and if the same or similar motions have been felt at other places, doubtless it will be communicated. I should like to hear it accounted for on rational principles.

Christopher Hurlbut, Arkport, (N.Y.) Jan. 6

“God damn, not again!”

Jessica sat with Pat beneath the kitchen table and listened to the house bang around them. They had moved back into their house only hours before— Jessica, her head echoing with the President’s bizarre call, concluded that the emergency had ebbed to the point where she didn’t need to be physically present at headquarters every minute of the day— and the quake struck just as they were eating their first home-cooked meal since before the emergency. Jessica had prepared
tagliarini verdi ghiottona
, lovely green pasta noodles with a sauce of onions, tomatoes, carrots, chicken livers, veal, and ham— the recipe called for prosciutto, which was not precisely available, but one of the civilians she’d helped in the early days of Ml had given her a smoked Cajun ham, which proved an effective substitute.

When the P wave hit and the house gave a sudden leap, Jessica and Pat slid neatly beneath the table before the S waves had a chance to reach them. Each kept a firm grip on priorities, and therefore retained both plate and fork.

“Right in the middle of fucking dinner!” Jessica muttered as the moaning quake enveloped them. Platters bounced loudly over her head. Something went smash in the bedroom. She was beginning to miss her helmet.

“At least there aren’t any operations going on right now,” Pat commented. His voice was as conversational as the circumstances permitted, shouting over the banging furniture and moaning earth.

“I hope I don’t lose an eye,” Jessica said. Rayleigh waves rattled her teeth as she spoke.

“I was hoping to keep your mind off that.”

“That was good of you.”

A wineglass walked off the edge of the table. Jessica snatched for it in midair, but the earth took a lurch at that instant and robust red wine splattered over the dining room floor. The solid Baccarat crystal, the sort of glassware out of which a major general was expected to serve her guests, didn’t so much as chip.

She closed her right eye and peered out with her damaged left, tried to determine if she was losing any vision. But the earth was heaving and leaping too much for her to keep her eye focused on anything long enough.

The earth thrashed a few last times and then the vibrations died down. In the precarious silence, Jessica took a defiant bite of her dinner, handed the plate to Pat, and cautiously ventured into the front room to find her cellphone in the corner, having leaped from where she’d placed it on the coffee table.

It was already ringing.

She was in communication with her headquarters immediately, and with Washington in a few minutes. Her staff were well practiced by now; they smoothly gathered information and fed it to her as it arrived. Jessica had time to scarf her dinner before Sergeant Zook arrived with her car. Pat stayed behind to get the house in order. On her way to headquarters in the Humvee, she hit the speed dialer number for Larry Hallock, but didn’t get an answer.

She tried three more times over the next hour, then tried some other numbers. She was unable to raise anyone at Poinsett Island. Then she got absorbed in her work, in the information flooding in and the deployments that needed to be made, and didn’t try calling again.

It was while looking at a hastily made printout of Prime Power deployments that she absently raised her hand to her right eye and looked at the list with her left.

A chill whispered up her spine as she realized that her left eye had gone blurry. She looked at the list for the length of three long, slow heartbeats, then reached for her cellphone and hit Pat’s speed dial number.

“Do you know the gentleman I saw this morning?” she said. “The gentleman in Jackson?”

“Yes.”

“I need to see him again,” Jessica said. “I need you to make the appointment.”

“Are you—”

“It’s not like it was last time,” Jessica said. “The situation has improved, but I still need to see the gentleman.”

“Jessica,” Pat said, “you are not keeping this job at the expense of your sight.”

“I hear you,” said Jessica, and rang off.

Her phone chirped again the instant she returned it to her pocket. Her caller was Helen Hallock, Larry’s wife, wondering if her husband had checked in. “When I last talked to him, he was about to call for his helicopter.”

Jessica checked and discovered that the helicopter hadn’t been called. She called her own chopper and took off into the waning light.

It was after the sun had already set that Jessica landed on Poinsett Island and made contact with the handful of people waiting there. They’d been cut off because their radio antenna had pitched into the river. It was then that Jessica discovered that part of Poinsett Island had slid into the river, that Larry Hallock was missing, and that a barge filled with murderously hot nuclear waste was drifting, untended, down the Mississippi.

*

The Mississippi Delta is filled with magnetic anomalies. Known as “plutons,” these objects are believed to be extrusions of magnetic ore created by volcanic activity during the distant geological past. These structures are enormously dense, and they straggle along the middle Mississippi like pebbles being washed along a ditch. Their immense weight creates stress on the surrounding subsoil— and since the Delta’s geology consists of little more than layers of muck, there is very little save inertia to prevent a pluton from doing exactly what it wants to do.

Plutons have been associated with earthquake activity, particularly in places where no fault lines have ever been detected. A large pluton discovered off Cape Ann, Massachusetts, has been blamed for the earthquakes that struck Boston in 1727 and 1755, quakes that inspired a famous sermon by the revivalist Reverend Thomas Prince, “The Works of God and Tokens of His Just Displeasure,” in which Prince demonstrated that the quakes were caused by the Lord’s opposition to the sinful behavior of Boston’s backsliding Puritans. Another pluton beneath Charleston, South Carolina, has been held responsible for the giant earthquake that shook the southeastern United States in 1886.

The first June earthquake, Jl, began at 5:54 p.m., Central Daylight Time, when a pluton, sitting atop gooey Delta subsoil beneath Jonesboro, Arkansas— subsoil destabilized by the series of quakes— dropped six meters through slumping ground. The shocks caused by the passage of the pluton set off a familiar chain reaction as stored tectonic force was discharged throughout the various New Madrid fault structures.

Jl registered at 8.3 on the Richter scale, one-sixth the strength of Ml and a third the power of M6, but still equivalent to the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Its destruction was mitigated only by the fact that so much of the affected area had already been destroyed. Anything that was likely to fall down had
already
fallen down, and much of the population had been evacuated. Those remaining in the area were wise to the ways of earthquakes. Deaths were later reckoned to be in the 100-plus range.

Jonesboro, already hard hit by Ml and M6, was shattered. Memphis— by this point a near-desert of broken stone, torn roadways, refugee camps, and collapsed homes— received another pounding. More land slid, more fountains geysered skyward, more damaged buildings collapsed. Precarious infrastructure repairs, to power and sewer lines, to bridges and railroad tracks, were wiped out. Efforts by the Coast Guard and the Corps of Engineers to mark a safe navigation channel in the Mississippi and other major rivers were brought to nothing as the topography of the river changed once again.

But relief workers were already in place. Supplies and funds had already been allocated. In spite of the quake’s great size, remarkably little disruption took place, if only because everything had been disrupted long since.

Most of the survivors considered themselves lucky.

*

One Mississippi, two Mississippi. . .
Nick, without a watch, counted the seconds slowly to himself.

This was bound to disrupt the whole parish, Nick thought. Which would make things easier for him. The more emergencies the sheriff had to deal with at once, the better.

The world ceased its moaning after three minutes. Nick could hear the S-waves receding toward the south, the freight train moving away. Nick looked up, saw others cautiously lifting their heads. Children screamed as their parents tried to comfort them. Nick carefully raised himself to his feet.

“Everyone into a car!” he said. “Let’s get ready to move out!”

He made sure that Cudjo was in the lead car. He kissed Arlette and Manon. He hugged Jason and rubbed the red casing of the telescope for luck, then made sure they were all three on a truck rolling south.

When the last of the Home Guard, the women, and the children were gone into the growing darkness, Nick waved the shotgun over his head and shouted for the Warriors to get on the road.

Bringing the war to the sheriff, Nick thought. To the capital of the enemy’s kingdom.

*

Micah Knox lay half-submerged in the ditch. His heart pounded louder than the shots that still rang out over the fields. His men were being killed. Run down and killed by niggers. It was like every nightmare he’d ever had. He should help his friends, he knew.

But he didn’t help. He didn’t even move.

It was the snake that saved his life. As he and the others approached the gate, Knox saw a snake whipping through the grass just ahead of his boots, and his heart lurched and his steps faltered, and the others swept on through the gate while he pointed at the snake and stammered at them to be careful. He’d been ten paces behind when the bombs went off, and suddenly the air was filled with shrieking, screaming bits of sharp metal. He felt it tug at his clothing and flesh.

And then he saw the niggers coming, a howling black wave with weapons held high, and Knox let his shotgun fall and took to his heels. He ran back through the gate, through the parking lot, and across the road. He flung himself into the half-flooded bar ditch on the far side of the highway and wormed his way along it, sloshing through the warm water without daring to lift his head above the level of the ditch.

He stayed there. He stayed in the ditch, his nose barely above water, while cars raced past his hiding place and shots rang out. The shots died away. Cars ran back and forth. People shouted and cheered.

Knox didn’t move. There were cuts on his hands, tears in his clothing. From the mines. He ignored them.

The earthquake came and Knox didn’t move. He didn’t move until the earthquake was over, until dozens of cars drove past, until he heard other cars drive off in the other direction, toward Shelburne City. And even then he didn’t move. He stayed in the ditch, alone with his heartbeat and his terror and his breath. He didn’t move until he heard birdsong in the trees, until he heard wind fluttering the grass on the shoulder of the highway. Until he heard nothing made by the hand of man.

He raised his head carefully, put his eyes at the level of the road, and looked for three seconds. Then he ducked down, crawled twenty feet along the ditch, then looked again.

The fields on either side of the road were empty. The camp sat abandoned. The setting sun reflected in shimmering rose color on the fence. A few cars sat forlorn in the parking lot, or stretched along the road.

Vultures circled overhead, uncertain whether or not to land.

Knox rose cautiously, then ran in a crouch to the nearest car. Then to the next. The only cars that remained near the camp were those that wouldn’t start, or those whose owners were dead.

And the car that Knox had come in. The Escort belonged to David Paxton, and Knox had been driving it for several days. The back window had been caved in by gunshots or by the mines’ terrifying ammunition. No one had driven it away, because Knox had the keys.

Knox ran to the car, opened the door, scrabbled in the back for his duffel. He opened the duffel and brought out his overnight kit with his drugs. He opened the big aspirin bottle and shook out the contents. His hands trembled. He moistened a finger, and dabbed out the last of the crystal meth from the baggie. He rubbed the crystal on his gums, then shook out a pair of black mollies and dry-swallowed them.