Watermind (35 page)

The
Pilgrim
leaned precariously as she slid down the swell, and the crew fought to control her. Seconds later, her hull slammed against a wing wall, and Roman was thrown off his feet. Bodies tumbled together. Roman flailed for a handhold, any support. But nothing felt solid. The wet metal rail scalded his fingers. He used all his strength to pull himself up. Ebbs ordered him below deck, but instead, he staggered to the bridge. On the computer screen, the colloid's infrared image had changed from cold blue to raging scarlet.

But the next download was even more startling. It came through just before the computers shorted out. The pixels had reverted from red to icy blue. The colloid was chilling again, rapidly taking back its heat. And the swollen river was contracting. Where the dome had been, a depression formed in the water. And the air filled with the terrible liquid chatter of a sucking vacuum.

Roman's heart jolted out of time. He grabbed for a hold as the
Pilgrim
pitched away from the wing dam and rushed upriver with the collapsing water. His chest thumped brutal syncopation. He heard boulders crashing, men screaming, metal snapping in two. He tore at his collar. He couldn't see, but he knew the imploding water would suck the
Pilgrim
down.

 

Friday, March 18

11:02
PM

 

After an hour of vicious oscillation, the river below Manchac Point flowed like coagulated ink. Coast Guard floodlights punctuated the darkness, checking for damage among the flotilla of boats. Broken timbers and Styrofoam cups mingled with ancient wreckage stirred up from the river bottom. Part of an antique stern-wheeler. A gutted Model T.

Along the east bank, helicopters dropped bundles of heavy sandbags to shore up a crack in the levee. While ground crews signaled with flashlights, welders cut bright blue arcs along the
Pilgrim
's black hull, sealing a gash. The Coast Guard tender was built to take weather. She remained afloat. On the bridge, Roman allowed a medic to bandage a cut on his chin. He didn't mention his irregular heartbeat. Six people were missing.

An AP reporter got through to the
Pilgrim
by radio. Roman met the grim old eyes of Captain Ebbs while he told the Associated Press that a natural gas pipeline had ruptured under the river. Ebbs chewed his mustache, then stalked out to the deck to oversee the repairs to his ship. Roman felt clammy and light-headed. He slumped down onto a bench and glanced at Jarmond, but the younger man was peering at the modest rooftops nestling beyond the levee. The city of Plaquemine lay less than a mile downriver.

Jarmond jerked at his sparse goatee. “Those people. We've got to
do
something.”

“We're blind without our computers.” Roman radioed Dan Meir on the
Chausseur.
“Are you getting an image?”

“No. Nothing. We're trying to bring our power back up.” Meir cuddled an anxious Elaine while he told Roman
about the ten-foot wave that came out of nowhere and nearly swamped them.

“As soon as you can, bring the yacht.” Roman took a deep breath. “Is Reilly okay?”

“Oh yeah. She's about ready to walk on water to get over there.”

Roman deactivated his ear loop, and his mind went flaccid. His heart arrhythmia was easing. He'd never experienced that before, but he had no leisure to think about it. In fact, he couldn't think at all. Conflicting brain chemicals flooded his synapses. For the first time in his life, he had no idea what his next move should be. Loosening his collar, he felt the approach of something he had never expected.
Failure.

 

Friday, March 18

11:44
PM

 

As the
Chausseur
waddled across the shallow field toward the river, CJ gripped the phone she'd borrowed from Peter. She needed information. What caused that rogue wave? But Max wouldn't answer her call. She punched his number again. “Pick up, damn it.” She didn't know Max's phone was ringing that very moment in the
Chausseur
's galley, directly below her feet. Roman had confiscated the phone when he caught Max speaking to her on the sly. After using it to trace her location, he locked it in a food bin.

Because of the darkness, she couldn't see the river, and local news coverage wasn't much help. They were reporting a gas line break, but she knew that was a lie. That wave had rocked the
Chausseur
like an earthquake. River pilots were reporting damage as far north as Brusly Landing. But
the yacht's power and computers had come back online, and they were downloading satellite scans again. The plume had fractured into five small pieces.

As the yacht drew closer to the river, floodlights revealed the ragged break in the levee, and a cloud of hot steam stung her face. She thought of the gas mask, where had she dropped it? Closer still, she saw an overturned boat. Two. No, three jetboats had capsized. The wet air scorched her bare skin.
Max?

Along both riverbanks, debris collected in sodden clumps, and on all the trees and bushes, new spring leaves hung withered. Cattails lay limp in the water like poached noodles. Even the dead stumps had a blistered look. She began to grasp the magnitude of the calamity.

Harry laughed in her ear. “Do you still think you understand this better than everyone?”

She kept hitting redial, but Max stayed silent. Two LifeFlight helicopters set down on top of the levee, and when she realized they were evacuating injured people, she raced to the stern to get her binoculars. Police cruisers roared up the river. The Channel 17 pontoon boat was trying to get closer. Horns blared, and spotlights flashed through the trees like reckless goblins.

Her binoculars blinded her at first. Still set on infrared, they construed the roving spotlights as nuclear flashes. She dialed down the setting just in time to see two men in orange life vests retrieving a wad of garbage from the water's edge. The loose raggedy clump had a familiar shape. Clotted white scraps fell away like cheese curds as the men lifted it, and she zoomed in for a closer view. Spongy, fibrous veins—some kind of fungus? Then she saw the human hand.

As the gorge rose in her throat, she zoomed her binoculars closer. The two men were stuffing the object into a zipper bag, but the hand fell off and rolled down the bank. Its fingers stood out like fat yellow carrots.

CJ turned and pressed her back against the rail until the
cold steel bruised her spine. But the image wouldn't leave her. The fat yellow fingers. She remembered Harry's hand splayed across his desk. His brains splashed across the sea-green wall.

Her eyes squeezed almost shut. Her mouth stretched out of shape. No, please no, that couldn't be Max's hand. Urgently, she punched his number. Sliding to the deck, she pressed the borrowed phone to her cheek. “Please, please, pick up.”

 

Friday, March 18

11:58
PM

 

Rick Jarmond called the governor. He didn't call his Corps supervisor first, as he should have. Nearly ten thousand people lived in Placquemine, and Rick fervently believed in their right to know. All evening, Rick had been hugging his thin jacket close around his chest and chewing the plastic cap of his pen. He resented the way Captain Ebbs stepped all over his authority, and how Sacony, a private citizen—maybe not
even
a citizen—consistently took matters in his own hands. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should be heading this operation. Rick shrank from telling his boss how these others had usurped him. Col. Joshua Lima, the New Orleans district engineer, wasn't known for tolerance. So instead, Rick called the governor.

“You did what?” Ebbs backed the young man across the bridge, breathing in his face. “I thought we agreed to consult.”

Rick's hands roamed behind him for support. He braced against the navigator's swiveling chairback and pointed to Roman. “
He
didn't consult. Six more fatalities. I think we have an obligation to warn people.”

“That blamed oil slick, or whatever the hell it is, that thing will hit downtown Plaquemine before the governor wakes up good.” Ebbs glanced at Roman for corroboration, but the CEO was mumbling to his earphone again.

“What'd the governor say?” Ebbs asked.

“Well, I didn't speak to him in person. I left a voicemail.” Jarmond sidled away from the older man and picked up the pens that had fallen from his breast pocket.

Ebbs radioed his repair crew. “Gentlemen, put a cap on it. We'll be underway in one minute.”

“Computer systems are go, sir,” said a crewman. “We're getting a new satellite scan now.”

Roman shuffled toward the screen. The hammering in his chest had returned. Jarmond was rubbing his eye, yapping about the plume. “There's five of the damn things now. FIVE! Your fire power just made it spread.”

The fragments were drifting in a loose cluster. They were small, but the next scan showed evidence that they were growing. Ebbs radioed for another Coast Guard tender.

Roman tried to focus, but his heart jackhammered. Yue's amphetamines had scoured his nerves and left him cascading through a fugue of raw black emptiness. Edges failed. Surfaces melted, and walls grew spongy. Solid objects overlapped like ghosts. When he grasped for support, he found only empty space.

Engine noise roused him. The
Chausseur
had arrived. Reilly. He wandered to the deck. Boat lights scattered across the Mississippi's dark current, and the river tolled a low subliminal thrum. As he watched the water's headlong plunge to the sea, he felt a visceral urge to jump in and swim to the coast. This inland river smothered him. His lungs craved the clean breathing interface of land, sky, and sea.

All at once, the flow of time piled up and folded around him. He was a boy of twelve, standing barefoot in the hot sand, letting the sea sluice runnels under his toes. Its rhythmic fingers tickled and tugged at his ankles, and he
could feel the salty breezes easing his heart, lulling him to peace, when suddenly, CJ Reilly punched him in the jaw.

“¿Qué?”
He staggered backward.

“Where's Max?” She cupped her injured fist against her chest.

He faced her blankly, rubbing his bandaged chin—and finding to his surprise a thick stubble of beard. He peeled off the bandage, glimpsed the rusty blood spotting the white gauze, then tossed it overboard.

Reilly glared at him. “What's wrong with you? Why don't you say anything?”

Roman's lack of focus bewildered her. She elbowed past him and gripped the captain's forearm. “Is Max dead? Just tell me.” CJ didn't realize her grip was bruising Ebb's arm, and the old captain didn't have the heart to shake her off.

His cheeks puckered. “We're still searching.”

She rounded on Roman and raised her fists. “You! If you hadn't attacked—”

Roman waited for her blows, but she didn't strike him. Instead, she pounded her hands brutally against the pilothouse wall.

Roman gazed about, seeking ghosts that were no longer there. While the others puzzled over his odd behavior, he slipped two fingers into his breast pocket and drew out a small red-and-black capsule. It was the last of the amphetamine pills he'd borrowed from Li Qin Yue, and for a few seconds, he seemed to weigh it in his palm. Then he stepped to the rail and tossed the capsule in the river.

Jarmond called to them from the bridge. He'd just downloaded the latest image. “Your refrigerant isn't stopping at Plaquemine. All five clumps are moving downriver, damn fast.”

“El mar.”
Roman rubbed his weary face. “They're heading for the sea.”

Ebbs grunted. “They're heading for New Orleans.”

Roman met the captain's eyes. Then, with a grim tightening of his mouth, Roman activated his ear loop and called the governor's private line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, March 19

4:47
AM

 

Streetlamps beaded the narrow lanes of Donaldsonville, eighty river miles from New Orleans. Under their yellow sodium glow, pin oaks crowded in corners, and white sycamores raked the gloomy sky. Traffic lights cycled unnoticed. Postal employees reached from their warm beds to shut off alarm clocks, while ER nurses drank more coffee. Along the deserted city pier, the river smoked and quivered and suddenly plummeted 30°F.

The
Pilgrim
and the
Chausseur
glided down the black Mississippi current, followed by the remnants of their trailing regatta. Satellite images showed the five small masses of colloid racing downriver, dropping temperature almost as fast as they added volume. Onboard the
Chausseur,
CJ bolted awake. “Max?”