“Take two men and a vehicle. Start on the other side of the river and work your way back. Stay clear of shaded areas, and keep out of the buildings.”
“I’d like to help,” Jock said.
“Fine, do your best but be quick about it. You’ve got one hour. No passengers unless they’re injured. Anyone who can walk can make it here on their own.”
“What if we find more infected who haven’t turned yet?” Caleb asked.
“That’s up to them. Make the offer. If they don’t take it, leave them where they are. It won’t make any difference.” He paused. “Is everyone clear?”
Nods and murmurs passed around the group.
“Then that’s it,” Peter said. “We’re done here. Sixty minutes, people, and we’re gone.”
74
They were 764 souls.
They were dirty, exhausted, terrified, confused. They rode in six buses, three to a seat; four five-tons, crammed with people; eight smaller trucks, both military and civilian, their cargo beds full of supplies—water, food, fuel. They had only a few weapons, and barely any ammunition. Among their numbers, they counted 532 children under the age of thirteen, 309 of these below the age of six. They included 122 mothers of children three and younger, including 19 women who were still nursing infants. Of the remaining 110, there were 68 men and 42 women of various ages and backgrounds. Thirty-two were, or had been, soldiers. Nine were over the age of sixty; the oldest, a widow who had sat in her house through the night, muttering to herself that all the noise outside was just a bunch of goddamn nonsense, was eighty-two. They included mechanics, electricians, nurses, weavers, shopkeepers, bootleggers, farmers, farriers, a gunsmith, and a cobbler.
One of the passengers was the drunken doctor, Brian Elacqua. Too inebriated to comprehend the orders to relocate to the dam, he had found himself, as night had fallen, wondering where everyone had gone. He had passed the twenty-four hours since his return to Kerrville drinking himself into oblivion in the abandoned house that had once been his—a miracle he had managed to find it—and awakened to a silence and darkness that disturbed him. Departing his house in search of more liquor, he reached the square just as gunfire erupted along the wall. He was profoundly disoriented and still quite drunk. Dimly he wondered, Why were people shooting? He decided to head for the hospital. It was a place he knew, a touchstone. Also, maybe someone could tell him what in the hell was going on. As he made his way there, his apprehension mounted. The gunfire had continued, and he was hearing certain other sounds as well: vehicles racing, cries of distress. As the hospital came into sight, a shout went up, followed by a barrage of shooting. Elacqua hit the dirt. He had no idea what to make of any of this; it seemed entirely unconnected to him. Also, he wondered, with sudden concern, what had become of his wife? It was true that she despised him, yet he was accustomed to her presence. Why was she not here?
These questions were shoved aside by the sound and shock of a tremendous impact. Elacqua peeled his face off the ground. A truck had crashed into the front of the building. Not just into: it had rammed straight through the wall. He got to his feet and stumbled toward it. Perhaps someone was injured, he thought. Perhaps they needed help. “Get in!” a man yelled from the cab. “Everybody in the truck!” Elacqua wobbled his way up the steps and beheld a scene of such disorder that his addled brain could not compute it. The room was full of screaming women and children. Soldiers were shoving and tossing them into the cargo bed while simultaneously shooting over their heads in the direction of the stairwell. Elacqua was caught in the crush. From the chaos, his mind distilled the image of a familiar face. Was that Sara Wilson? He had a sense that he’d seen her rather recently, though he could not pull the memory into shape. Either way, getting into the truck seemed like a good idea. He fought his way through the melee. Children were scrambling all around and underfoot. The driver of the vehicle was racing the engine. By this time, Elacqua had reached the tailgate. The truck was packed with people, barely any room at all. Also, there was the problem of getting one foot onto the bumper to hoist himself into the cargo compartment, an act requiring a degree of physical coordination he didn’t think he could muster.
“Help me,” he moaned.
A hand, heaven-sent, reached down. Up and into the truck he went, tumbling over bodies as the vehicle shot forward. A syncopation of bone-jarring bangs followed as the truck sailed out of the building and down the steps. Through the fog of terror and confusion, Brian Elacqua experienced a revelation: his life had been unworthy. It might not have begun that way—he’d meant to be a good and decent man—but over the years he had strayed far from the path. If I get out of this, he thought, I won’t ever touch a drink again.
Which was how, sixteen hours later, Brian Elacqua came to find himself on a school bus of 87 women and children, deep in the physical and existential sorrows of acute alcohol withdrawal. It was still early morning, the light soft, with a golden color. He had, with many others, watched from the window as the city faded, then disappeared from sight. He wasn’t completely sure where they were going. There was talk of a ship that would take them to safety, though he found this difficult to fathom. Why had he, of all people, a man who had squandered his life, the most worthless of worthless drunks, survived? Seated on the bench beside him was a little girl with strawberry-blond hair, tied in back with a ribbon. He supposed she was four or five. She was wearing a loose dress of thick woven fiber; her feet were dirty and bare, covered with numerous scratches and scabs. At her waist she clutched a ratty stuffed toy, some kind of animal, a bear or maybe a dog. She had yet to acknowledge him in any manner, her eyes staring forward. “Where are your parents, honey?” Elacqua asked. “Why are you alone?” “Because they’re dead,” the little girl stated. She did not look at him as she spoke. “They’re all dead.”
And with that, Brian Elacqua dropped his face to his hands, his body shaking with tears.
At the wheel of the first bus, Caleb was watching the clock. The hour was approaching noon; they had been on the road a little more than four hours. Pim and Theo sat behind him with the girls. He was down to half a tank; they planned to stop in Rosenberg, where a tanker from the isthmus would meet them to refuel. The bus was quiet; no one was talking. Lulled by the rocking of the chassis, most of the children had fallen asleep.
They had passed through the last of the outer townships when the radio crackled: “Pull over, everyone. Looks like we’ve lost one.”
Caleb brought the bus to a halt and stepped down as his father, Chase and Amy emerged from the lead Humvee. One of the buses, the fourth in line, was parked with its hood open. Steam and liquid were pouring from its radiator.
Hollis was standing on the bumper, slapping at the engine with a rag. “I think it’s the water pump.”
“Can you do anything about it?” Caleb’s father said. “It’d have to be fast.”
Hollis jumped down. “No chance. These old things aren’t built for this. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for one to conk out.”
“As long as we’re stopped,” Sara suggested, “probably the children need to go.”
“Go where?”
“To the bathroom, Peter.”
Caleb’s father sighed impatiently. Any minute of delay was a minute they’d be driving in darkness at the other end. “Just watch for snakes. That’s all we need right now.”
The children filed off and were led into the weeds, girls on one side of the buses, boys on the other. By the time the convoy was ready to move again, they had been stopped for twenty minutes. A hot Texas wind was blowing. It was 0130 hours, the sun poised above them like the head of a hammer in the sky.
The patch was complete, the dock ready to fill. Michael, Lore, and Rand, in one of six pump houses along the weir, were preparing to open the vents to the sea. Greer was gone, headed with Patch to Rosenberg in the last tanker truck.
“Shouldn’t we say something?” Lore asked Michael.
“How about ‘Please open, you bastard’?”
The wheel had not been turned in seventeen years.
“That’ll have to do,” said Lore.
Michael wedged a pry bar between the spokes; Lore was holding a mallet. Michael and Rand gripped the bar and leaned in.
“Hit it now.”
Lore, positioned to the side, swung the mallet. It glanced off the top of the rim.
“For God’s sake.” Michael’s jaws were clenched, his face reddened with effort. “Hit the bastard.”
Blow after blow: still the wheel refused to turn
“This isn’t great,” Rand said.
“Let me try,” said Lore.
“How’s that going to help?” Then, when Lore just stared at him, he stepped aside. “Suit yourself.”
Lore left the pry bar where it was, gripping the wheel instead.
“You’ve got no leverage,” Rand said. “That’ll never work.”
Lore ignored him. She planted her feet wide. The muscles in her arms tightened, thick ropes stretched over bone.
“This is pointless,” Michael said. “We have to think of something else.”
Then, miraculously, the wheel began to turn. An inch, then two. They all heard it: water had begun to move. A fine spray shot through the vent on the floor of the dock. With a jolt, the wheel released. Below them, the seas began to pour in. Lore backed away, flexing her fingers.
“We must have loosened it,” Rand said lamely.
She gave them a droll smile.
The time was fast approaching.
His army was gone. Carter had felt the dopeys leaving him: a scream of terror, and a blast of pain, and then the letting go. Their souls had passed through him like wind, a whorl of memories, waning, then gone.
He did the last of his chores for the day with a solemn feeling. A deck of low clouds moved over the sky as he rolled his mower to the shed, padlocked the door, and turned to face the yard so that he might survey his handiwork. The crisp lawn, every blade just so. The tailored edges along the walkways with their bit of monkey grass to mark them. The trees all limbed up and the flowers, banks of them, like a carpet of color beneath the hedges. That morning, a dwarf Japanese cut-leaf maple had appeared by the gate. Mrs. Wood had always wanted one. Carter had rolled it in its plastic pot to the corner of the yard and set it in the ground. Cut-leafs had an elegant feel to them, like the hands of a beautiful woman. It felt like an act of completion to plant it there, a final gift to the yard he’d tended for so long.
He wiped his brow. The sprinklers came on, scattering a fine mist over the lawn. Inside the house, the little girls were laughing. Carter wished he could see them, talk to them. He imagined himself sitting on the patio while watching them play in the yard, tossing a ball or chasing each other. Little girls needed time in the sunshine.
He hoped he didn’t stink too bad. He sniffed his armpits and supposed he’d pass all right. At the kitchen window, he inspected his reflection. It was a long time since he’d bothered to do that. He supposed he looked like he always had, which wasn’t really one thing or the other, just a face like most people’s.
For the first time in over a century, Carter opened the gate and stepped through.
The air wasn’t any different here; he wondered why he’d thought it might be. The busy city made a whooshing sound in the background but the street was otherwise quiet, all the big houses staring back at him with no particular interest. He walked to the end of the drive to wait, fanning himself with his hat.
It was the hour when everything changes. The birds, the insects, the worms in the grass—all know this. Cicadas were buzzing in the trees.
75
1700: Greer and Patch had been waiting in the tanker truck for two hours. Patch was reading a magazine—reading or perhaps just looking at it. It was called
National Geographic Kids;
the pages were brittle and popped out when he turned them. He nudged Greer on the shoulder and held it out to show him a picture.
“Think it’ll be like that?”
A jungle scene: fat green leaves, brightly colored birds, everything wreathed in vines. Greer was too preoccupied to look very closely.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Patch took it back. “I wonder if there’s people out there.”
Greer used binoculars to scan the horizon to the north. “I doubt it.”
“Because if there is, I hope they’re friendly. Seems like a lot to go through if they’re not.”
Another fifteen minutes passed.
“Maybe we should go look for them,” Patch suggested.
“Hang on. I think this is them.”
A cloud of dust had formed in the distance. Greer watched through the binoculars as the image of the convoy took shape. The two men climbed down from the cab as the first vehicle drew up.
“What kept you?” Greer asked Peter.
“We lost two buses. A busted radiator and a broken axle.”
All of the vehicles took diesel except the smaller pickups, which carried their own extra fuel. Greer organized a team to pour the diesel off into jugs; they began moving down the line to refill the buses. The children were allowed off but told not to wander far.
“How long is this going to take?” Chase asked Greer.
It took almost an hour. The shadows had begun to stretch. They had fifty more miles to go, but these would be the hardest. None of the buses would be able to travel more than twenty miles per hour over the rough terrain.
The convoy began to move again.
The dock had been filling for seven hours. Everything was ready—batteries charged, bilge pumps on, engines ready to fire. Chains had been fixed to hold the
Bergensfjord
in place. Michael was in the pilot house with Lore. The sea had risen a yard past the waterline—within a reasonable margin of error but disturbing nonetheless.
“I can’t stand this,” Lore said.
She was pacing around the tiny space, all her energy suddenly having nowhere to go. Michael picked up the microphone from the panel. “Rand, what are you seeing down there?”
He was moving through the corridors below decks, checking seams. “All good so far, no leaks. She seems tight.”