Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (53 page)

Then the table shook and the potato chip bowl
fell to the floor.

Power Station, Table Rock Lake Dam

At the Table Rock power station, Sergeant
Wachowski sat through the mild shaking and felt a sense of relief. They were
going to be okay, he thought thankfully. Tommy was looking pale, but stood in
the doorway grinning foolishly.

"Was that it?" he asked.

"I think so," said Andy. He had arrived a couple
hours earlier to stay with Lisanne and the other Power People. Waldo had
started barking right before the shaking as Merlin hissed in Lisanne's arms.

"You think the dam's okay?" Lisanne asked
Wachowski nervously.

"Yep," he replied. "Oh, we'll still need to
inspect it, but this wasn't bad at all. Not like those dreams of the L.A.
quake. We'll be fine. Bet you we have the power back up and running within
twenty-four hours."

"Hey, do you think the horses will be okay?"
asked Tommy anxiously. He was dying to ride a horse.

"They should be okay," Andy said, then shook his
head at himself. "Duh--why don't I just use the cell phone and call them? I don't
think this would have brought down the cell phone tower."

The Farm, Cape Fair

Out at the farm to be near her mother during the
dangerous time, Rachel sat with Janine in one of the barns. Janine was speaking
about the horses.

"They knew what was going to happen, so they
were ready for it. I'm not hearing of any injuries at all."

Rachel grinned at her as Janine suddenly jumped,
surprised by the ring of a cell phone in the dark. Janine laughed shakily and
answered, "Hello?"

Rachel heard enough of the conversation to know
it was the folks at the power station calling and stood up next to her favorite
horse, Midnight. She'd met Midnight earlier in the afternoon. Black had
suggested that she and Max get familiar with the horses and, in Max's case,
learn to ride. For Rachel it was just a matter of brushing up on it as she'd
ridden horses when she was younger. Black wanted them to try and establish some
kind of connection with their chosen mounts, but none of them were sure it
could be done. Rachel had not bonded with any animal yet, and so far, her
attempts to talk to Midnight had failed miserably. But he did seem to like her,
although, she acknowledged, that could have to do with the apples she'd been
feeding him this evening.

Janine finished her call and walked back to the
farmhouse with Rachel. As they entered the back door and went through the mud
room into the kitchen, they heard Abby saying, "There's no water, Clay. That's
never happened to us before. All the little ones we've been through before and
now we don't have water! San Francisco usually comes through better than this.
I wonder why the water stopped this time."

Rachel and Janine stopped and looked at each
other. "San Francisco?" Janine asked softly. Rachel nodded with a worried look
on her face.

Gracie walked over to Abby and, holding her by
the arm, led her to a chair at the big wooden rectangular kitchen table. "Why
don't we have some tea out of the thermos? I made it just in case we lost the
water. I think that would taste good about now. Some tea with lemon and sugar?"

Abby nodded slowly as Gracie poured a cup of tea
and glanced at Clay across the room. The candlelight barely showed his face,
but she could see he looked anguished by his wife's obvious distress. This,
Gracie thought, was going to a problem. Abby had to pull out of her denial, but
Gracie didn't know what to do to help her. Another little shake rattled the
dishes in the cupboard and Gracie heard Rachel let out a little yelp.

"Hey! I thought it was over!" Rachel said.

"If we're feeling this here, imagine what it's
like near the epicenter," Clay said gravely.

Janine observed quietly, "I don't have to
imagine. The horses are getting information from somewhere and it's bad there...really...bad."

White House, the Oval Office

The President looked around the room at all his
experts. A bunch of nincompoops, he decided, but they were all he had at the
moment.

"I thought you guys told me there would probably
be a flood of the Mississippi--not a damned earthquake!" he spluttered.

"Sir, we had no way of knowing," Dr. Hutton
replied cautiously.

"This is part of it, isn't it? This is part of
the pattern? Part of the attack?" the President asked.

"Attack, sir? What attack are you talking about?"
queried Dr. Hutton.

"You know what I'm talking about, you--you--" He
stopped, took a deep breath, then started again. "I told you about the pattern
I saw in all those reports you gave me. I showed you on the map where we've
been attacked. It's us versus nature, Hutton! Surely even you can see that."

"Sir, I think it's premature to assume--" Hutton
began.

"Stop. Stop right there," the President
demanded. "I don't want to hear your namby-pamby explanations that are mostly
about covering your butt. I want to know where we can hurt her the most, where
we can do something to send a message that will get across."

"Her, sir?" Hutton asked carefully. "Don't you
think we'd better start talking about getting rescue teams and disaster relief
to the New Madrid quake area?"

"The Earth, dammit! She's the one doing it. I
want it to stop! You can notify those agencies that take care of this kind of
thing. If there's anyone left at the agencies to go help the poor souls in St.
Louis and Memphis. We may have to just write off those cities, Hutton. We're
overstretched. Not enough people to handle what we had going on before this.
That's why we have to act now, to get it to stop. We'll send her a message."

Hutton thought carefully before replying.
Clearly the President was having a breakdown. He'd lost touch with reality and
wasn't thinking rationally. And just as clearly, Hutton was not powerful enough
in D.C. to remove him from power. He'd have to talk to some people, and all
that would take time. The President appeared ready to take some action, and
Hutton knew he was the last person able to stop him at this point. So he
thought. He thought about where he wanted to be--outside of D.C.--and away from
wherever the President decided to send his 'message.' The lodge, he thought
suddenly. His family had a lodge in the Berkshire Mountains in Western
Massachusetts. Far enough inland from the east coast to avoid any more bizarre
disasters, man-made or otherwise. Ought to be safe there.

"Well, Hutton? Are you just going to stare into
space? That bomb is ready to be shipped while you sit there twiddling your thumbs."

"No, sir," Hutton replied. "I was thinking of an
appropriate place for you to send your message." The other scientists in the
room shifted in their seats and stared at Hutton in disbelief. He continued, "I
think the Atlantic Ocean would be good. That way we won't hurt any of our
citizens, but we'll definitely make an impact on the Earth's crust."

"Hmm, sounds good, Hutton," the President
replied, delighted finally with his science advisor. "Good man! Now you just
send the coordinates over to General Briggs. He'll know what to do with them."

Hutton nodded and motioned to the others to
leave with him. He'd have to deal with their questions, but after he talked to
General Briggs, he was leaving town. Whatever was going on, whatever was
causing it, Dr. Sheffield Hutton the Third had no intention of staying in D.C.
with a President who'd lost all his marbles.

Salmon Creek, Idaho

"Well, you know that New Madrid quake was a big 'un,
wiped out so many people and towns. Big cities, little cities, didn't matter.
Oh, there were survivors of the quake, don't get me wrong. The trouble was
there was so much danged destruction everywhere, so big an area, that the guv'ment
didn't really know where to start to help out the most people. It was like it
cut the nation in half, 'specially after the flood started the next day. So
there was folks some places that lost their national TV stations. Suddenly
everywhere there were people just wonderin' what the heck had happened. Then
the reports starting coming out, over the radios, over some those satellite
phones and even some cell phones, and then on the local TV stations. And nobody
could believe how bad it was. Nobody. 'Cept now they were all scared. And
anybody who hadn't already decided to pick up and move to some safer place,
well now all of 'em, folks everywhere were suddenly hoppin' in their cars and
getting on the roads. Some tryin' to help, and others tryin' to reach their
loved ones in different places where there was a disaster. And then other folks
was just runnin' and they didn't know what from. They were just that scared.
Only they didn't know where to go to be safe.

"But when the quake hit and then the next day the
flooding started from the Mississippi, well now, that just sent a bunch of
people over the edge. And then, you know what happened...all those people on
the roads and some of them driving straight into trouble. Nobody ever did get a
accurate count of all those poor dead people from the New Madrid and the flood.
There wasn't no way to do it. Oh some folks, now, they got big estimates, ideas
of how many died, all together 'round the world. Millions and millions. But let's
just say it was like the numbers from the biggest war there ever was. And then
that damn fool President went and decided we were
in
a war! If that wasn't
the stupidest jerk that ever lived! I know some folks say he just lost it, had
a breakdown. One thing's for sure. He didn't have all the cards in his deck when
he was decidin' to go to war. No, siree, he was a loose cannon and well, he
paid for it, I guess. Don't do to speak ill of the dead."

San Juan Islands, on board the Rhondavous
yacht

Margaret woke to the sounds of yelling.
Scrambling up from her bed in one of the yacht's staterooms, she pulled on her
clothes and stumbled out to the salon. Zack and Maria were walking in, Zack
staring wildly around the room and Maria clutching his arm and talking softly
to him to calm him down. Mayor Dubois and Alan Beakman appeared with the mayor
looking thoroughly disgruntled.

"What the heck is going on? And who was yelling
fit to wake the dead?" she asked.

"Dead--don't say that word right now," Zack
requested, sinking down onto one of the couches.

Margaret asked, "Did you have the dream, Zack?
About--"

"The volcano. Yes. I had the damn dream!" Zack
responded, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. Maria sat close to him,
rubbing his back with one hand.

"I thought you said it was a flood," Dusty
Dubois said irritably.

Alan had walked to the TV and turned it on. As
the sound came on, they all heard the announcer saying, "Massive earthquake on
the New Madrid fault. We don't have any reports yet from our stations there,
who all seem to be...ah...off the air."

"Huh! I had a glimpse of that earthquake, but I
thought it was later. That's strange," Margaret offered.

"Strange?" Zack replied angrily. "Strange is it?
Why didn't we warn them of an earthquake then, Margaret? And what are we going to
do about the volcano? You don't seem surprised to hear of it."

"Well, no, I had the dream tonight too. And I
guess none of it surprises me anymore," she replied.

"So are they going to have a flood out there or
not?" asked Alan Beakman. He'd been thoroughly thrown by his communication with
the whales earlier that day and had spent some time convincing Dusty that he
really had heard the huge Orcas. She'd been shaken enough by his collapse that
she'd listened.

"Yes, yes," Margaret replied, distracted. "Tomorrow--or
rather later this morning--it's late. Two in the morning already. We should all
try to get a few more hours of sleep because we have to get out of here later
today. And we might just have trouble doing that."

"Why do have to get out of here?" Dusty asked. "What's
going to happen?" She was willing to listen now to Margaret, even though the
woman still irritated the heck out of her.

"The volcano," Zack answered. "Mount Rainier is
going to just explode in a big eruption. It's going to be awful." He paused and
then looked at Margaret. "But it's not going to happen yet. I'm sure of it. It's
going to happen in a few weeks."

"You're right. A couple of weeks at the
earliest," Margaret agreed. "But we have to get out of town tomorrow because
the feds have found us. They're staking out the plane and we may have trouble
getting past them."

"The government is after you?" Dusty asked,
startled, but secretly a little bit pleased.

"I think it's the President--I'm not really clear
on it--but it has to do with him. Maybe they didn't like me warning people about
the flood."

"Oh, great! So now we're fugitives?" complained
Maria. "The network is never going to allow me back on the air!"

Along the Mississippi River

The earthquake in the upper Mississippi basin
weakened the levees that were built to keep the Mississippi within bounds
during flood stage. The rain had continued for two days straight. Heavy rain.
And now the levees crumbled. The water moved faster and faster, flowing over
boundaries and into towns and cities all along its banks. It spread out like an
oil spill in the ocean, and it just kept coming. Water levels in some towns
rose to what they had been in the flood of 1993. Then they rose higher. And
higher. The water was insidious, oozing into cities and pouring in, devouring
cars and buildings and people as it flowed. It was an implacable force, washing
away roads and bridges, and it became a river of death as it filled with bodies
and debris. The mighty Mississippi was loose from the boundaries humans had
decreed. In places where the earth had been deformed by quakes, new lakes were
formed. And the river kept surging forward, faster and faster. Heading into
areas already devastated by the hurricane. The levees of New Orleans had
already washed away with the rain from the hurricane. Nothing could save the
city now as the water swept away Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. Along
the path of the swelling waters, towns and cities alike fell to the roaring,
immense and inescapable deluge. The river waters carved out the easiest path to
the Gulf of Mexico and rushed onward.