Authors: Allen Steele
Of course, this could be only another rumor. We’ve heard a hundred of them since the quake, and since it was never substantiated, we never ran it in the paper. Nonetheless, I think I’ll keep talking only until the low-battery light begins to blink. Bopping on down to the 7-Eleven ain’t what it used to be.
When the family who once lived here moved out of the city, as have so many others since New Madrid, they took with them whatever they could salvage. What little furniture they left behind is mostly buried beneath the rubble of what used to be their bedrooms; there’s also a bad stink from that part of the house. I hope it’s only a cat. Dead cats don’t bother me, but dead children do.
The former residents left behind the refrigerator and the stove, but since there’s no electricity in this neighborhood, they don’t work. Union Electric must have determined that this is a vacant block, because even the streetlights are inoperative. There’s also a filthy couch infested with insects, a mildewed Mickey Mouse shower curtain, which is the sole clue that there were once kids living here—like I said, I hope it’s only a dead cat I smell—and, on the top shelf of the kitchen pantry, a half-empty box of Little Friskies.
Got to be a dead cat.
I’ll have to ask the dog if he knows.
The dog who discovered me in the house was glad to have the Little Friskies. I found a forgotten spare key tucked beneath the back-door welcome mat—whoever once lived here didn’t have much sense of originality when it came to hiding places, but then again, St. Louis used to be a much safer place—and had invited myself in when I heard something panting behind me. I turned around to find, in the last weak light of day, a full-grown golden retriever who had followed me into the backyard. His big red tongue was hanging out of his mouth, his fur was as wet as my leather jacket, but unlike so many other strays I’ve seen recently he didn’t appear to be feral. Just a big old chow dog, living by his means in what used to be a middle-class neighborhood.
He sniffed me and wagged his tail, and didn’t mind when I patted him on the head, so I let him into the house with me. What the hell; we both needed company. As luck would have it—for the dog, at least—there was the box of cat food. He didn’t seem to mind the moldy taste. I only wish I could have eaten so well.
Friendly pooch. He decided to stay the night. I warned him that he was accompanying a federal fugitive and was thereby subject to prosecution to the full extent of the law, but the mutt didn’t give a shit. I had given him a bite to eat, so I was square in his book, and he paid me back by warning me about the helicopter.
Several hours later: the sun was down, I was exhausted from running. Lying on the couch, idly scratching at the fleas that had come crawling out of the upholstery, listening to the cold, hard rain that pattered on the roof and dribbled through the cracks in the ceiling. Eyes beginning to close. It had been a hell of a day.
The dog was curled up on the bare floor next to the couch, dead to the world, when he abruptly leaped to his feet and began to bark. I opened my eyes, glanced at him, saw that he was looking out the wide picture window on the other side of the room.
I couldn’t see anything through the darkness, but I could hear a low drone from somewhere outside the house ….
Chopper.
I rolled off the couch and fell to the floor, then scurried across the living room and through the kitchen door, out of sight from the window. By now the sound of rotor blades was very loud.
While I cowered in the kitchen, hugging the wall and sweating rain, the dog fearlessly advanced to the window and stood there, barking in defiance as the clatter grew louder. Then the helicopter was above the front lawn, invisible except for its running lights.
Captured by the Apaches.
One, at least: an AH-64 gunship, twenty-one thousand pounds of sudden death. Maybe it was an antique, but I remembered when I was a kid back in ’89 and saw the TV news footage of those things circling the skies above Panama City, hunting for PDF holdouts and some pimple-faced cokehead named Noriega. Now one of them was hunting for a journalist named Gerry Rosen.
By the way, did I mention my name?
For several long minutes the Apache hovered outside the window. I could imagine its front-mounted TADS infrared turret peering into the house, the copilot in the chopper’s back seat trying to get a clear fix through the downpour. The helicopter was close enough for me to make out the shadowed forms of the pilot and copilot within its narrow cockpit. The picture window shuddered in its tortured frame from the propwash.
It occurred to me that, if the 30-mm chain gun beneath the forward fuselage were to let go, the plaster wall in front of me wouldn’t protect me more than would a sheet of Kleenex … and if I ran for the back door, the IR sensors would lock onto me before I could make it through the backyard. Anyone seen on the streets by ERA patrols after the nine o’clock curfew was assumed to be a looter, and in this side of town they didn’t bother to make arrests anymore. In fact, they didn’t even give you the dignity of slinging an old Clint Eastwood flick around your neck.
I clenched Joker against my chest and waited for the bullets to come through the window. They had found my best friend, they had found the poor bastards from the Tiptree Corporation, and now they had found me ….
And yet, despite all the noise, locked in the center of a crosshairs, the dog stood his ground. With his paws jammed against the windowsill, his lips pulled back from decayed brown teeth, his tail down but not tucked between his rear legs, this scrawny, matted stray dog angrily snarled and snapped and barked ferociously at the flying machine on the other side of the window, and in a brief, sudden, very clear moment of understanding, I knew what he was saying—
Get out of here, get out of here, this is my house, my house, MY HOUSE, GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE THIS IS MY HOUSE!
—and then, in that moment between life and death, the copilot studied the image on his night-vision screen and reached a decision.
Ain’t nothing here except a damn dog.
The ERA chopper rose upward, then angled away into the wet night, its lights following the ghostly strip of the ruined street until it vanished from sight.
The dog got some more Little Friskies for his smooth move, and I haven’t slept since then.
Perhaps you may feel secure, hiding behind whatever walls you’ve erected around yourself, but I tell you now, as solid fact, that what happened to me and my city is not far removed from you. None of us is safe, and any sense of security you may have now is a lie.
My name is Gerry Rosen. I’m a reporter, and this is what happened to me during two days and three nights in Jericho, now better known as St. Louis, Missouri.
From the Associated Press (on-line edition): May 17, 2012
ST. LOUIS, MO. (AP)—A major earthquake, registering 7.5 on the Richter scale, struck St. Louis today, devastating large areas of the city and surrounding area and killing hundreds of people.
The quake, which began at 1:55
P.M.
and lasted approximately 45 seconds, was epicentered in the town of New Madrid, about 130 miles southeast of the city. The quake caused high-rise buildings in the downtown area to sway, destroyed scores of smaller buildings and countless homes across the county, and led to the collapse of a light-rail bridge spanning the Mississippi River.
The exact number of people in St. Louis killed or injured by the quake is not known at this time. However, local police and fire officials say that at least two hundred fatalities have been reported so far and city hospitals are overwhelmed by people seeking medical assistance.
Particularly hard hit by the quake was the downtown business district, where many older buildings suffered extensive damage. Although no high-rise buildings collapsed during the quake, many interior walls fell. Dozens of smaller buildings were completely demolished, burying their occupants under tons of rubble. These included the old St. Louis City Jail, where at least 35 prisoners were instantly killed, and the nearby City Hall, where at least 10 office workers are reported missing.
Two local schools were also leveled during the quake. One city fire official said that there were “hardly any survivors” among the elementary schoolchildren who were attending classes at one of them, a Catholic private school in the city’s prosperous west side.
Many streets in the downtown area have been ripped up by the collapse of underground caverns beneath the city, causing dozens of vehicles to fall into the gaping crevasses. Underground sewage pipes and electrical conduits were torn apart by the quake, causing the downtown area to be flooded with raw sewage. At least one chemical storage tank has been ruptured, and hazardous toxins are reported to be flowing through storm drains into the Mississippi.
Electrical power has been lost to most of the city, along with telephone lines and cable communications systems. Scattered fires in various neighborhoods have been reported by utility officials, largely caused by severed gas lines. Efforts to control the fires have been hindered by breakage of municipal water lines to much of the city and the loss of firehouses in at least three wards.
The William Eads Bridge, a major conduit for the city’s light-rail system, collapsed into the Mississippi River, and eyewitnesses say that a westbound commuter train was crossing the bridge from East St. Louis, Ill., at the time of the quake. No official statement has yet been issued regarding the number of casualties, but officials at the scene say that dozens of people who were riding the MetroLink train may have fallen to their deaths.
The Gateway Arch, the national landmark on the west bank of the Mississippi that is the city’s symbol, survived the quake intact, although roof sections of the underground visitors’ center beneath the Arch fell during the quake, killing at least five people and injuring dozens of others. Witnesses report that the Arch itself swayed during the tremors.
Missouri Gov. Andre Tyrell, who was attending the National Governors Convention in Las Vegas at the time of the disaster, has phoned the President to ask for federal assistance, says spokesman Clyde Thomson at the state capital in Jefferson City, itself rocked by the quake. Thomson said that Tyrell is flying back to the state, although commercial air traffic in and out of St. Louis International Airport has been suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration because of hazardous runway conditions.
Although the local Emergency Broadcast System was crippled by the loss of the KMOX-AM radio tower, St. Louis Mayor Elizabeth Boucher went on the air from radio station KZAK-AM at 2:30
P.M.
to plead for calm and cooperation from the city’s residents. “Please help our police and firemen do their jobs,” she said, “and assist your neighbors in whatever way you can.
“May God help us in this time of crisis,” Boucher said, her voice shaking.
Several small towns in eastern Missouri and southwestern Illinois were also devastated by the earthquake, the force of which has been estimated to be equivalent to the detonation of 900,000 tons of TNT, or a nine-kiloton nuclear explosion. Significant damage was also reported in Evansville, Ill., and Memphis, Tenn., and tremors were felt as far west as Kansas City, where a church bell was reported to have rung twelve times during the quake.
Hundreds of National Guard troops from across the midwestern region are being sent to Missouri to aid local relief efforts. Spokesmen at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Emergency Relief Agency say that ERA troops are being mobilized at this time …
Excerpt from
The Big Muddy Inquirer
:
Seven months ago, Jean Moran lived in a two-bedroom ranch house in suburban Frontenac. Each morning she packed sack lunches for her two children and sent them off to meet the school bus, while her husband, Rob, skimmed the paper and had one last cup of coffee before driving downtown to the insurance brokerage where he worked. Jean then spent the rest of the day doing housework, paying bills, shopping for groceries, chatting on CompuServe with friends around the country … the daily affairs of a slightly bored young housewife who believed that her life was as solid as the ground beneath her feet.
Then, one day last May, the ground was no longer solid.
Now Jean Moran and her kids, Ellen and Daniel, are only three of some 75,000 residents of the vast tent city that is still in place in Forest Park seven months after the New Madrid earthquake.
She still does housework—or rather, tentwork, the day-to-day housekeeping responsibilities shared by the four homeless families who occupy tent G-12—but gone are all the material things she once took for granted, except for a few family pictures she salvaged from the wreckage of her house.
For a while after they moved into the park, Ellen and Danny went to school three days a week, attending one-room elementary classes conducted in the mess tent by volunteer teachers from the Urban Education Project, until government cutbacks closed the school last November. Now, while Jean fills plastic bottles from the water buffalo parked nearby, her children are two more kids playing in the frozen mud between the olive drab tents of Squat City.
“I’m just grateful I didn’t lose them, too,” Jean says quietly, watching her kids as she hauls the two-gallon jugs back to her tent and stows them on the plywood floor beneath her metal bed. “They were both out in the playground for recess when it happened … thank God I was in the carport and managed to get out in the open, or they would have lost both their parents.”
Her husband had also been out in the open during the quake, but he wasn’t as lucky as his wife and children. Rob Moran was killed when a cornice stone fell ten stories from a downtown office building while he was on his way back to work from a late lunch. He had a life insurance policy, just as the Moran house had been covered by earthquake rider on the home insurance, but Jean is still waiting for the money to come through. The small insurance company that had protected them went bankrupt before all its claims could be settled.