The Rift (21 page)
Authors: Walter Jon Williams
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic
Without thought he put the cap on the objective lens, then turned and gazed at the scene below him.
The burning wreckage that once was his home had dispersed a bit, though it was still heading west with the flood. To the north, a dark, lowering cloud of smoke, its bottom marked by scarlet flame, hung above Cabells Mound. It seemed as if the whole town was burning. He could not see the water tower and assumed it had fallen. With no water pressure, he knew there was no way that Cabells Mound could fight the fires.
Not until the river water smothered them, anyway.
To the east, the two gaps in the levee were growing toward each other. As chunks of the levee tore away, Eubanks kept shuttling his police car back and forth, trying to remain in the exact center of his diminishing island. His car’s rack lights continued their mute flashing:
Emergency! Emergency!
Within a few minutes, however, the island was not much bigger than the car, and Eubanks had nowhere to go.
Jason could see his dark silhouette moving inside the car. At first he wondered what Eubanks was trying to do, and then he realized that he was closing all the car’s windows, making it as watertight as possible.
He was planning on floating away, then, as far as he could. Jason supposed it was as sensible a plan as any.
But Eubanks’s plan never had a chance. The levee did not tear away beneath his car, it
was torn
— a mass of laden metal rammed through the breach, trailing a nest of cables, a barge that had broken free from its tow. Perhaps it was one of the barges that Jason had just watched the
Ruth Caldwell
push upstream. It smashed the levee beneath the front half of Eubanks’s car, and as the barge swept past, the car pitched down nose-first into the gap, then toppled over onto its roof. Jason could hear the thud from where he sat, along with the sound of shattering glass. The car spun madly in the current for a few seconds, water pouring into the broken windows, and then the river swallowed it with the same fantastic speed with which it had swallowed everything else.
Jason watched with the same dull, mute acceptance with which he had viewed the rising waters, the burning of Cabells Mound. It was as if he’d already used up all his stock of emotion and there was nothing left.
A gust of cool wind blew across the mound, and Jason shivered in his wet clothes. He looked up into the dark, threatening sky.
And then, out of nowhere, the first lightning bolt rained down.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Had such a succession of Earthquakes as have happened within a few weeks been experienced in this country five years ago, they would have excited universal terror. The extent of territory which has been shaken, nearly at the same time, is astonishing
—
reaching on the Atlantic coast from Connecticut to Georgia and from the shores of the ocean inland to the State of Ohio. What power short of Omnipotence, could raise and shake such a vast portion of this globe? The period is portentous and alarming. We have within a few years seen the most wonderful eclipses, the year past has produced a magnificent comet, the earthquakes within the past two months have been almost without number
—
and in addition to the whole, we constantly ‘hear of wars and summons of wars.’ May not the same enquiry be made of us that was made by the hypocrites of old
—
"Can ye not discern the signs of the times."
Connecticut Mirror
“
Is
this the day?”
Frankland demanded. “
Is
this the day? Is this the Day of the Lord?”
The station was vibrating to pieces around him as he shouted into the microphone. Things tumbled off shelves: a stack of tapes slid off their metal trolley and spilled on the floor with a clang. Frankland’s chair was moving in wild circles across the tile floor, anchored only by his hand on the mike. He ducked into his collar as a fluorescent light exploded overhead.
“And I looked when He broke the sixth seal,” Frankland shouted, “and there was a great earthquake—
are you ready for judgment?
— and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair—
are you ready for Jesus?
— and the whole moon became like blood—
are you ready for God’s Tribulation?”
Frankland, trying to hold on, was wringing the microphone as though it were the neck of the Devil himself.
“Are you ready?”
he howled as something in the outer office crashed to the floor.
And then the lights went out. Frankland waited, in the rumbling darkness, for the emergency generator to kick on, but nothing happened.
Darn that diesel anyway. Frankland tried to stand, but he put a foot on something that had tumbled from a shelf and fell clumsily to his knees. Crawling, he made his way to the door, tugged it open, and then crawled through the office— all the shelves had fallen, all the furniture had shifted— to the exterior door.
Suddenly the shaking ceased, and the rumbling receded, like a train passing on to somewhere else. Frankland hauled himself upright by the doorknob. Vertigo swam through him. He needed to use his shoulder to drive the metal door from its bent frame.
As he burst open the door, sunlight and the smell of sulfur hit him in the face.
Brimstone!
he thought in sudden delight. The dirt parking space in front of the studio was torn clean across by a rent four feet across. He made his way around the building, one hand on the wall to keep him steady. The church, he saw, was still standing, though its windows were gone. He felt a grim satisfaction: he had built his station, and his church, to survive this and more.
His hands were trembling, and it took him a while to get the padlock on the generator room open. Once there, it only took a moment to start the piggyback electric motor on the diesel.
The diesel coughed into life. The light in the shed winked on. Frankland staggered out of the shed and waved his arms at the heavens. “The voice of the Lord is back on the air!” he shouted.
And the heavens answered. Frankland’s hair sizzled as it stood on end. There was a flash, a boom, the smell of ozone. Frankland tottered and fell to his knees, his mind swimming.
A lightning bolt, he thought, from a clear blue sky. What more sign did a man of God need?
He stayed on his knees, clasped his hands, began to pray.
“Thank you, Lord, for letting me see this day,” he said. “Thank you for this destruction out of which Your kingdom will be born. Thank you for giving me my mission.”
Heaven’s lightning rained down around him. He raised his hands in praise.
It was a new world, he thought, and he knew exactly what to do.
The Reverend Noble Frankland had come into his own.
TEN
We entered the Mississippi on the morning of the 14th, and on the night of the 15th came to anchor on a sand bar, about ten miles above the Little Prairie
—
half past 2 o’clock in the morning of the 16th, we were aroused from our slumber by a violent shaking of the boat
—
there were three barges and two keels in company, all affected the same way. The alarm was considerable and various opinions as to the cause were suggested, all found to be erroneous; but after the second shock, which occurred in 15 minutes after the first, it was unanimously admitted to be an earthquake. With most awful feelings we watched till morning in trembling anxiety, supposing all was over with us. We weighed anchor early in the morning, and in a few minutes after we started there came on in quick successions, two other shocks, more violent than the former. It was then daylight, and we could plainly perceive the effect it had on shore. The bank of the river gave way in all directions, and came tumbling into the water; the trees were more agitated than I ever before saw them in the severest storms, and many of them from the shock they received broke off near the ground, as well as many more torn up by the roots. We considered ourselves more secure on the water, than we should be on land, of course we proceeded down the river. As we progressed the effects of the shock as before described, were observed in every part of the banks of the Mississippi. In some places five, ten and fifteen acres have sunk down in a body, even the Chickasaw Bluffs, which we have passed, did not escape; one or two of them have fallen in considerably.
Extract of a letter from a gentleman on his way to New Orleans,
dated 20th December, 1811
Father Guillaume Robitaille rolled over the Arkansas blacktop at 85 miles per hour, his radar detector alert to the presence of the state police. Traveling throughout his parish, if such it could be called, put at least 800 miles on his old Lincoln every week, and his policy was to spend as little time in the car as possible, which meant getting from one place to another as fast as the machinery permitted.
The words to the old song “Hot Rod Lincoln” tracked through his mind as he squinted through the windshield. Commander Cody, he remembered, and His Lost Planet Airmen. It had been a hit when he was young.
Tonight he would say mass for his tiny congregation in Rails Bluff, all six of them—maybe seven, if Studs Morris had succeeded in raising his bond money.
He raised his 64-ounce Big Gulp and sucked on the plastic straw. The motivation with which he had spiked his Sprite warmed his insides.
Though whisky was his preferred drink, he used vodka when he was on the road. It wouldn’t fill the confessional with telltale fumes.
It’s got a Lincoln motor and it’s really souped up.
That Model A Vitimix makes it look like a pup.
It’s got eight cylinders; uses them all.
It’s got overdrive, just won’t stall.
A cotton wagon blocked the lane ahead, drawn by a rusty old tractor and moving at ten miles an hour. The Lincoln swooped around it as if it were standing still. Father Robitaille drove one-handed, his Big Gulp in the other. He overcorrected, had to straighten out, felt the Lincoln fishtail.
Only one way to fix that. Hit the accelerator.
The big car responded. Robitaille smiled.
Now the fellas was ribbin’ me for bein’ behind,
So I thought I’d make the Lincoln unwind.
Took my foot off the gas and man alive,
I shoved it on down into overdrive.
At first Robitaille thought he’d blown a tire— maybe more than one. The car leaped as if each wheel was trying to go in a different direction, some of them no longer horizontal.
Robitaille lifted his foot from the accelerator, put his Big Gulp between his thighs, grabbed the wheel with both hands. Now he could see it wasn’t just the car— power poles and fence posts were dancing, and branches waved in the air. The cotton fields on either side of the road heaved up in waves.
Robitaille fought to keep the car on the road. At times it seemed it was jumping out sideways from beneath him.
He looked in the rearview mirror, and his heart leaped into his throat as he saw it coming at him from behind.
Behind him, the ground was collapsing. A line was crossing the land, and behind the line it looked as if the ground was dropping ten or fifteen feet, like a stage set with the props knocked out.
The line reached the cotton wagon and its tractor. They both fell— Robitaille saw the arms of the driver rise, an expression of dismay on his face, as the tractor dropped out beneath him, its nose kicking up as it threatened to roll over on him. Behind the moving line, where the land had fallen, was nothing but wreckage. The line was rolling up on the Lincoln’s rear bumper.
A cocktail of adrenaline and vodka surged through Robitaille’s veins. There was only one response.
Accelerate!
Robitaille punched the accelerator and felt the big car leap in answer. Duct-taped upholstery absorbed his weight as he was pressed back into the seat. He clutched the wheel with white-knuckled hands, tried to keep the car on the pavement as his speed increased.
He wasn’t getting the smooth acceleration he was used to— the car was jumping so much that the drive wheels weren’t in contact with the pavement half the time, they were just spinning in air. But the speed built nonetheless. Robitaille’s glances at the mirror assured him that though the line was still overtaking him, it was doing so more slowly.
Faster.
He mashed the accelerator to the floor. Sooner or later, he hoped, the geology might change, the land wouldn’t be so susceptible to quake.
The Lincoln vibrated like a mad thing under his touch. The engine roared. Robitaille felt it trying to leave the road, become airborne.
He rocketed around a parked pickup, saw the open-mouthed woman behind the wheel staring at oncoming ruin.
Faster.
The car landed heavily— or perhaps the ground had leaped up to meet it— and the suspension crashed. He felt the oil pan scrape on asphalt. The drive wheels screeched as they dug in and flung the car forward. He saw his muffler and tail pipe assembly bounce free in the road behind him before being swallowed by the encroaching abyss.
Faster.
He saw the road arching up ahead of him, the bridge over the Rails River. Exultation sang through his mind. Surely the wave that was collapsing the country behind him wouldn’t cross the river?
Behind he saw the line of ruin recede. He was gaining on it.
The bridge was just ahead. The unmuffled engine thundered like an artillery barrage. Robitaille began to laugh. The Lincoln bottomed again at the bridge approach, then flung itself up the arching roadbed. The laugh froze in Robitaille’s throat.
The far half of the Rails River Bridge was gone, just a fallen rubble of steel and asphalt.
The Lincoln’s wheels spun in air as it launched itself into space. The engine roared.
Robitaille felt the car’s nose tip downward, saw the water below.
Wished he had time for another drink.
My pappy said, “Son, you’re gonna’ drive me to drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot ... Rod ... Lincoln.”
*
“Hey, darlin’,” Larry said to the phone. As he spoke his greeting, he raised his voice slightly to let everyone in the control room know that it was his wife Helen who had interrupted the day’s desultory football analysis.
“Are you busy?” Helen asked.
“We are analyzing the Cowboys’ jackhammer offensive,” Larry said.
“I’ll take that as a no, then.”
After a lot of work during refueling, and stacks of related paperwork afterward, Larry and the Poinsett Landing Station were in a fairly relaxed period. The plume of steam floated above the cooling tower, a finger of white that pointed toward Louisiana. The facility was running at eighty percent capacity, and the operators had little to do but watch the controls. Sometimes Larry wondered how long Poinsett Landing would continue to run if he, and everyone else in the control room, simply left, locked the door behind them, and never came back.
Months, probably. Possibly even years, until the enriched U-235 in the fuel assemblies finally spent itself, until the fuel finally lacked the ability to heat the demineralized water in the reactor vessel to anything greater than the temperature of hot tea, and the huge steam generator, rotating on its 160-foot shaft, finally cooled and cycled to a stop.
Larry stole the last glazed doughnut from the box parked atop the computer monitor, then settled into his chair with the phone at his ear. Below, the football discussion continued uninterrupted.
“I thought I’d call about Mimi’s birthday,” Helen said.
“It’s not for another month,” Larry said. He bit his doughnut, felt sugar melt on his tongue.
“Yes, but I saw something this morning that was just perfect for her. Do you know that old antique store up by the courthouse?”
“Uhh— guess not.”
“Well, I saw this amazing lamp. It’s a bronze horse, a kind of Frederick Remington thing...”
Larry sat up in his chair as something jolted up his spine. “Just a minute,” he said.
It felt as if someone had just kicked the bottom of his chair seat. His eyes darted to his metal-topped desk, where pens and pencils were suddenly jiggling. He lowered the hand holding the doughnut to his desktop.
“Hey,” he called out, trying to get the attention of the operators below. Larry’s eyes were already scanning the displays.
Pump malfunction?
he wondered.
Something with the turbine?
He heard a kind of percussion in his ear, like a shelf had fallen on the other end of the phone. “What was
that?”
Helen called in his ear, alarm in her voice. And then, a second or two later, Larry felt it himself, a lurch as if something large had fallen sideways against the control building.
“What was
that?”
Wilbur echoed.
The lurch came again, then again, a thudding,
wham-wham-wham-wham,
a steady pounding triphammer. Everything on Larry’s desk was shivering over to the right. He stood, phone in one hand, doughnut in the other. His eyes frantically scanned the control room displays. A folder of documents spilled from his desk, splashed unnoticed to the floor.
“Power spike on station transformers!” one operator shouted.
“Turbine feedwater pump’s offline!” shouted someone else. Books pitched off shelves.
And then Larry heard it coming, a chuffing noise like an express train hurtling forward on its tracks,
choom choom choom choom choom CHOOM,
coming closer at terrifying speed. Larry had a moment to wonder if it was a tornado; he’d heard that tornados could sound like trains .. .
Then the express train hit the building. Larry felt a shocking blow to his right shoulder as he pitched sideways into the wall. The computer monitor flung itself into his lap, making him cry out. Fluorescent light shattered overhead, glass raining down on the room.
“Fuuuuuck!”
Wilbur yelled.
Larry rolled the monitor off his lap and attempted to stand, one hand groping at his desk, trying to lever himself upright. His boots went out from under him and he shouted as he fell and received another slam to his shoulder.
“Turbine trip! Turbine trip!” The voice was so distorted by fear and shock that Larry did not recognize it. Larry could barely hear the voice over the express-train sound of the catastrophe.
He felt the teeth rattling in his head. Glass shattered throughout the control room. Panels spilled from the ceiling, revealing ducts and bundles of cable. There was an actinic arc of electricity, a chaotic series of shouts from the operators. Larry rolled over on his stomach and tried to crawl toward the door. The floor kept trying to kick him in the belly.
Think,
he urged himself. But he couldn’t think at all, couldn’t put one thought in front of another. The express train seemed to have run off with his mind.
The remaining lights faded to a dull amber. Dismayed cries filled the air. Electricity arced somewhere in the room.
Emergency lighting,
Larry thought.
Wait for the emergency lighting.
The lights brightened for a moment, and Larry felt relief flood into him. Then all light faded.
There were shouts in the darkness, crashes as things fell. The whole building seemed to take a massive lurch to one side. Larry felt himself pitch forward. His hands scrabbled for support. He could smell burnt plastic. And then there was a roaring as the electric arcs triggered the control room’s gas extinguishing system, as pressurized cylinders of Halon 1301 began to flood the room with gas in order to suppress electric fires.
“Out!” Larry shouted. “Everyone out!”
Halon gas wasn’t poisonous, not exactly. You could breathe it and it wouldn’t kill you. But it drove the oxygen out of the room, and
that
would
put you six feet under.
There was so much noise that he couldn’t tell if anyone heard him.
Earthquake,
he thought. No other explanation.
Vertigo eddied through his brain. The floor didn’t seem to be strictly horizontal anymore. Larry groped his way to the door, felt the metal frame under his hand, tried to haul himself upright. A bolt of pain shot through his injured right shoulder.
CHOOM CHOOM Choom choom choom choom ...
The express train dopplered to a lower key, then faded. Larry found himself standing in the door to the control room. Over the hiss of the Halon cylinders he could hear a babble of confused voices both within and without the control room. A shrill call for help echoed down the corridor. He moved instinctively toward the sound, groping his way down the corridor. Broken glass crunched under his boots. The only light he could see was an exit sign that glowed a ghostly red in the middle distance.
Someone slammed into him from behind, and pain shot through his shoulder. “Careful!” he snapped.
“Did the reactor trip?” Wilbur’s voice shouted in his ear. “Did we have reactor trip?”