The Rift (59 page)

The boat’s nose rose as it gained speed. Nick could still hear Jason’s shouts over the roar of the engine. He dodged debris as he roared upriver at top speed, smiling as he pictured the bass boat playing crack-the-whip on the end of its line. Run it into a few trees, he thought, serve Jason right.

Then he sighed. Who, he wondered, was he trying to kid? There was no way he could catch the towboat with its head start.

He pulled back on the throttle, then switched off the ignition. There was a rush of water as the speedboat fell off its bow wave.

“I’m sorry!” Jason called in the sudden silence. “I didn’t think you’d be mad!”

“You didn’t think at all,” Nick said. Anger beat a slow throb in his temples. He stood, turned to face Jason as the boat lost momentum. “What am I going to do with you?” he said.

“Take me with you? Come on, Nick— I won’t be any trouble.”

That bright grin, Nick thought, must have got a lot of goodies out of Jason’s old man. Rage burst like a firework in Nick’s brain.

“
I’m not your father
!”
he shouted. And then added, half to himself, “And your daddy’s gonna kill me.”

“Tell him it’s all my fault,” Jason said. “He’ll believe that. He’s used to blaming me for things.”

Nick glared at the boy. “I suppose he’s got his reasons!” he said. He collapsed into his seat, shook his head. “I don’t know what I should do.”

Jason crawled onto the bass boat’s foredeck, then began pulling on the tow rope, drawing himself closer to the speedboat. “It’ll be okay, Nick, really.”

“Bullshit.”

Jason clambered aboard the
American Dream
, dropped into the seat next to Nick. “Listen. You can say you didn’t have a choice.”

Nick looked at him. Fury simmered in his veins. “First town we come to— first landing, first boat, first inhabited damn building— I’m putting you off. I don’t care if you have to live on somebody’s
roof
for the next two weeks.”

Jason opened his mouth, closed it.

“And another thing,” Nick said, and he heard the echo of his father in his voice, General Ruford chewing out some subordinate, and he was pleased by the sound, “you better mind me from this point, boy, because if you don’t, I’m going to kick your lily ass all over this boat.”

Jason stared, swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said.

Nick hit the starter, felt the Evinrude growl, like one of his father’s tanks. “Now,” he said, “there’s something weird going on downstream, so I want you to keep an eye out, right?”

“Umm. Shall I get my telescope?”

“You’ve got it with you? Okay. Yes.”

Jason set up the telescope on the foredeck, peered into it, fiddled with the focus knob. Nick motored cautiously downstream, standing behind the wheel so that he could see to avoid debris. Sweat prickled on his forehead as the rising sun began to burn down on the flooded country.

Over the murmuring engine he could hear the rushing sound, and the southern horizon seemed indistinct and misty. He called to Jason. “What do you see?”

Jason looked up from the eyepiece, shook his head. “I can’t tell. It’s all weird.”

“Is it rapids?”

Jason shook his head again. “I don’t know. It looks like there might be white water.”

Nick clenched his teeth. This didn’t make any sense.

He motored closer. Puffs of wind gusted from different parts of the compass. Nick put the Evinrude in neutral and throttled down so that he could hear better. Jason’s eye was glued to the eyepiece of the Astroscan.

“It’s an island,” Jason said. “I think. It looks like water’s breaking around something. And I see lots of driftwood piled up.”

If it was an island, Nick thought, he could go around it. “Okay,” he said.

“It’s a big island,” Jason said. He panned the scope back and forth, muttered something as he inadvertently shoved the inverted image the wrong way, then regained his view. Finally he sat up, looked at Nick.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “It looks like the island is right across the whole river.”

Nick gnawed his lip. “Let me see,” he decided finally.

He made his way onto the foredeck, knelt next to Jason, put his eye to the scope. The upside-down image bobbed uneasily with the motion of the boat. He saw tree roots, white water, mist.

Carefully he nudged the scope left and right, panning across the horizon. He could hear the roar of white water. The island looked huge.

He straightened. Rushing water dinned at his ears. His brain whirled, and then his mouth went dry as comprehension dawned. “Oh shit,” he said.

“What?” Jason asked. “What is it?”

“It’s not an island,” Nick said. “It’s a dam.” He rose, the boat swaying under him, and made his way back to the cockpit.

Jason looked after him. “A dam? How can it be a dam?”

“Dam’s made of driftwood,” Nick said. “All that debris going downriver— a lot of it got hung up here. Maybe there was an island, or some rocks, or just a mud bar. But once the driftwood and other rubbish started collecting, it just kept stacking up. That’s why the river’s rising so fast. It’s been dammed.”

Nick bit his lip as he thought about the water piled up behind the dam. Millions of tons, all pressing on the haphazard accretion of rubbish that was holding them back. He knew how much power water could exert, how it would push through every crevice, prod at every weak point. Even well-built levees and breakwaters failed under the constant pressure of water: the driftwood dam, he suspected, wouldn’t last long, not with the weight of the flooded Mississippi behind it.

And when the end came for the dam, he thought,
my God.
All the water pouring out in a flood and carrying the debris with it. A huge wave heading downstream, churning with tons of battering wreckage.

He was going to have to wait for the dam to burst, he thought. And then wait a long time after that, so as not to get caught in the flood or the wreckage the flood would carry with it.

Impatience twitched along his nerves. He wanted to get south, get to Arlette. Maybe he could find a way around the dam, find a chute of water he could ride south, or some way through the trees where the water flowed more normally.

But no. Even if there was a chute, even if he could get down the chute without mishap, that would just put him in the way of that deadly wall of water when it finally broke free.

Stay alive, he told himself. Stay alive for Arlette.

He turned the boat around, pushed the throttle forward. They might as well head for the treeline to the east, where they could tie up in the shade and wait.

Jason looked at him questioningly.

“Breakfast,” he said.

*

The debris dam cracked around noon. There were a series of concussions, like bombs exploding. Flocks of birds flapped skyward in surprise. Jason and Nick both straightened, looked toward the sound.

Another boom sounded over the still water. And then they both heard the roaring, building over the trees, as water began to flow.

Jason turned to Nick. “Do we go now?”

“Too dangerous. Wait for the water to go down.”

It dropped fast. Six inches in the first hour, judging by the high-flood marks left on the boles of trees. Every so often another blast from the dam echoed through the trees, as well as prolonged grinding noises, as if pieces of driftwood were being torn away from the dam with incredible violence.

By two o’clock the water was falling so slowly that Nick couldn’t track its progress, debris was moving on the river at what seemed to be a normal pace, and the roaring sound had faded, replaced by the calls of birds in the trees. Nick decided that he may as well investigate.

The water was moving fast in the center of the river, and as Nick approached he began to hear the roaring sound again. Parts of the southern horizon were misty, presumably where the driftwood dam was still intact, but other parts were clear. Nick steered for the widest of the gaps, the Evinrude throttled down so far it barely kept headway. The roaring sound grew, and apprehension tingled along Nick’s tautened nerves.

Go or no-go? He stood behind the wheel, peered anxiously ahead. Half-submerged debris ground against the boat’s side and set his teeth on edge. Suddenly he realized, from the strong breeze in his face, that the current was carrying the boat along at high speed.

Go or no-go? The decision might well be taken out of his hands at any second.

The boat dropped into a kind of watery chuckhole, bounced up again. Nick swayed on his feet, felt spray on his face. The Evinrude whined in protest. Ahead the water looked choppy.

“Can you see .. . ?” he asked Jason.

Jason shrugged. “Looks clear.”

“Right.” He pushed the throttle forward. He didn’t want to barrel through at high speed, but he wanted enough momentum to get himself out of any trouble he might run into.

The river jostled the boat, slapping at its chine. Nick blinked spray from his eyes, then opened them wide as the river yawned before him and flashed its teeth of white.

The boat pitched down, and Nick dropped abruptly into his seat. The propeller shrieked as the stern flew up into the air. Nick could feel himself flying. Ahead he could see nothing but a wall of foaming water. By his side, he heard Jason give a surprised yelp.

The boat smashed into the water, and the impact threw Nick forward onto the wheel. The boat buried its foredeck in the Mississippi, then surged sluggishly upward as water poured aft. A wave climbed the windscreen and hit Nick full in the face. The propeller dropped into water, caught, and threw the boat forward as water sloshed toward the stern.

Something smashed against the stern of the boat, and without even looking Nick knew what it was. “Untie the bass boat!” he shouted. He didn’t want it climbing in the cockpit with him.

Nick caught a glimpse of a tangled thorn-hedge of foaming tree roots ahead, and calmer water to the right: he spun the wheel, threw the throttle forward. The boat slewed, banged on hard water as if it were a brick wall, then surged past the slashing roots with room to spare. Something bright and metallic loomed ahead— it might have been a grain silo that had lost its roof, or a gasoline storage tank— and Nick cranked the wheel in the other direction.

“Bass boat’s untied!” Jason yelled.

American Dream
smashed into the metal obstruction broadside, and then the propeller dug in and the speedboat leaped ahead. The sound of rushing water was loud, but not as loud as the pulse that beat in Nick’s ears. Through the gleaming diamonds of spray on the windscreen, Nick saw another obstruction ahead— he cranked the wheel, felt the boat respond. A tree-root tangle swept past, then another. Then Nick was weightless again as the boat launched itself over a waterfall before pancaking onto the water with a hollow boom.

The timber dam hadn’t just broken open, it had scattered bits of itself downstream, obstacles like tiger teeth waiting to impale the unwary. The water didn’t pour through in a stream, it leaped down in stages, like a rapid.

Nick slalomed through the obstacles, his confidence growing as the boat responded to his commands. And then he was clear, the Mississippi opening up before him, choked with floating wreckage but still perfectly navigable. He laughed, turned to Jason.

The boy looked at him, eyes wide. “My God, Nick!” he said.

Nick grinned at him. “Glad we waited till it was safe, huh?” he said. He pointed. “And look there!”

The bass boat bobbed in the current, scarred and glittering with spray but still defiantly afloat. Nick pulled the speedboat alongside, and Jason caught the bass boat’s trailing towline with a boathook and then tied it astern of
American Dream.

Nick looked out at the river through the spray-bedecked windscreen. He reached for the throttle and pushed it forward. The boat’s bow rose high as the Evinrude bellowed.
Arlette,
he thought,
I’m on my way.

*

Larry stood above the holding pond in the auxiliary building. His boots were planted on the fuel-handling machine that was used to shift fuel assemblies within the holding pond— in essence a giant overhead crane that ran on tracks, like the one in the reactor containment building but less robust. The machine had suffered considerable damage when the roof had fallen on it during Ml, and putting it into working order had been one of Larry’s greatest priorities.

Replacement parts had been a problem. Machines of this sort were intended to last decades, longer than the nuclear facility itself, and for that reason spare parts were not readily available, and such as had been available were stored in buildings destroyed by the quake and then flooded. Larry missed Poinsett Landing’s huge machine shops, which could probably have scratch-built a Saturn V moon rocket, let alone parts for a big crane. In the end the parts were scavenged from other nuclear facilities and installed by Larry, Jameel, and Meg Tarlton. Power was provided to the system by a generator warped alongside the auxiliary building in a barge. Now the three of them stood on the machine’s control platform, looking at the kludged-together control panel— part of which consisted of switches set into a raw-looking piece of plywood— and were ready to give the system its first test.

Larry raised his walkie-talkie to his lips, then paused while a helicopter thundered overhead. He caught a glimpse, through the open roof of the auxiliary building, of an Army Super Jolly helicopter with a load of earthquake debris.

The island that Larry had recommended be built around Poinsett Landing was rapidly taking shape, a steel, stone, and concrete ship’s prow pointing upstream into the river. After the helicopter crews had a chance to practice their aim, and demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction that they weren’t about to drop a ten-ton load on plant workers, Larry and his people had been allowed back into the building.

Larry waited for the helicopter sound to recede, then pressed the handset trigger. “Power up!”

“Power up, Mr. Hallock,” the answer fizzed out of the speakers.

Elsewhere in the building, huge circuit-breakers were thrown. Lights gleamed on the control panel. Larry felt himself tense, waiting for the short, the pop of a fuse, the fizz of a misinstalled control system. Dim pain throbbed in his broken collarbone, and he rubbed the broken bone absently. It almost never bothered him unless he was under physical tension.