The Rift (34 page)

The waters rose. DeForest told his men to stay at their stations and summoned other units. He called in police to make certain the area was evacuated.

The pumpers pulled flood water into their intakes, then spewed it out over the tank field. From his command post on a hill overlooking the tank field, DeForest could see the propane cylinders rising, straining at their moorings.

The water just kept on rising. DeForest deployed more hoses and called for more backup. He ordered a fire boat to wait at the outlet to the Des Peres, ready to catch any cylinders that floated that far.

He gave a start at the sound of a shot. One of the cylinders had broken a cable.

There was another shot, another. DeForest felt sweat gathering beneath his helmet. He blinked salt droplets from his eyes and began to pray.

God help
those people,
he thought earnestly.
God help us all.

More shots, a metallic shriek. One of the cylinders broke free, began bobbing on the tide. It floated up against one of the other cylinders with a metallic clang.

“Can we corral it somehow?” One of DeForest’s deputy chiefs, with panic in his eyes.

DeForest shook his head. “Do you know how much one of those things
weighs?
It will go where it wants. The only way we could move it around would be with motorboats, and I don’t want hot motor exhaust around
any
of those cylinders.”

More bangs, more cables parting. Weary hopelessness washed over DeForest. People down in the tank field were reporting the smell of propane. They asked permission to evacuate.

“Denied,” DeForest said. “Put on your respirators, and keep that water pumping.”

The huge unmoored cylinders were spreading like oil on the surface of a pond. Some of them caught in a line of trees on the edge of the property. Others floated off into residential areas. DeForest didn’t have any way to chase them down. All he could do was hope that they would disperse so much that if one of them blew, it wouldn’t set off any of the others.

But he knew too much about liquid propane to really believe in that hope.

He had a daughter in college in Wisconsin. A son lived in Colorado. Both were safe.

He began to mentally say good-bye to them. And to his wife, whom he had left in her housecoat on their front lawn, and whom he hadn’t been able to contact since. He hoped she would be out of the blast radius.

Two of his men breathed in too much propane and collapsed. They were dragged to ambulances and replaced. The hoses continued to flood the area with gentle rain.

Even on his little hill, DeForest could smell an occasional gust of propane. It was everywhere.

The cylinders spread across the quiet inland sea. The waters were still rising. The city was very quiet.

And then he saw the flame rolling in from the direction of the Des Peres, a little blue wavy line that fluttered and shifted in the wind, but that raced like lightning toward the huge leaking cylinders.

DeForest turned to dive behind his car, and he thumbed the transmit button on his walkie-talkie and opened his mouth to tell his men to take cover.

It was a futile gesture.

The fireball, one and a half million gallons of liquid propane going up in an instant, was over a mile in diameter.

*

Five or so miles to the north, Marcy Douglas felt the earth tremble. She was working to clear fallen trees from a part of the Jefferson Memorial Park so that the area could be used as a helipad. Army helicopters had soared in just after dawn, and were questing for a place to land.

Marcy thought the tremor was just another aftershock, but then she saw the flash brighten the shining steel of the Gateway Arch, and turned south to watch in awestruck horror as the bright fireball rose over south St. Louis. Bright arching trails of flame shot out of the fireball, like Fourth of July rockets, as debris rose and fell.

The sound came a few seconds later, the colossal concussion that drowned out the roar of the helicopters circling overhead. The copters spun dangerously as the concussion caught them.

It is the Bomb,
Marcy thought.
It is the End.

The bubble of fire rose into the heavens, and its reflection turned the Mississippi to the color of blood.

*

Accounts from la Haut Missouri, announces a general peace among the Indians, it is said that the earthquakes has created this pacification.

Pittsburgh, April 18, 1812

“For then shall be great tribulation!” Frankland barked, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be!

“And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” He glanced down at his notes to make certain of the citation. “Matthew,” he said, “chapter twenty-four.”

Frankland looked from the pulpit at the crowded people in his church. People murmured and shuffled and grumbled, and a number of children were wailing. Frankland’s amplified voice had no problem being heard over the cries of the children, however. He shouted over the cries for at least an hour.

He had begun his preaching at six o’clock in the morning, jolting the people awake with the sound and fervor of his call. He knew that the bellies of his audience were empty, that many had no rest. That was all to the good. It made them less likely to disregard his message. It was necessary to convince them, to terrify them, to make them want and need his guidance. Some of the grownups were weeping, he saw. Others stared up at him as if they’d been hit with sticks.

It didn’t slow him down. He’d written the sermon
years
before. It had been waiting in one of the fireproof safes in the guest bedroom closet, in a manila envelope labeled
End Times First Sermon.
There had been many other sermons filed alongside it.

“For the elect’s sake!” he repeated. “For the sake of those who remain true to Jesus’ word, the Tribulation will be shortened! Otherwise
nothing would be left!
The catastrophes of yesterday would go on and on until
every last human being is destroyed!
But out of compassion for those who hold true to the Word, the Lord will have mercy on us, elect and sinners both. For God promises, later in the Book of Matthew.” He looked down at his notes. “‘Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.’ And at the end of that time, Jesus will return in righteousness and reign for a thousand years. Amen.”

Afterward he called for volunteers— strong, young able people— to go out into the county round to look for survivors, and to bring in food. He called for more volunteers from among the ladies to help with cooking. And he called for the older men to help with jobs of construction, raising tents and building latrines.

There were plenty of volunteers. He divided them into groups, and put them under reliable people from his own congregation. “Bring in radios,” he told the leaders. “All the radios you can find. And if any of your people are carrying radios, tell them we’re going to need them. We need all the radios so that we can listen to the news, and pass it on to the people.”

And to keep them from hearing the word of the Devil, which would probably be on every radio station but his own.

Amen.

*

Nick shivered as dawn leaked over the eastern horizon. He had spent the night in a cottonwood tree with black flood waters rushing beneath him.

The levees must have broken, he thought. There were eight or ten feet of water under him, and the water was moving fast. Every so often the tree would shudder to the impact of floating debris.

He thought about Viondi’s body floating in the darkness, past the broken Mobil station, heading south toward his Aunt Loretta in Mississippi.

He thought about the Asian man trapped in his broken storefront, pinned down by a beam, the waters rising past his outstretched chin.

His left arm ached in the triceps region, and when he put his right hand there it came away sticky. He’d been shot. That crazy cop had shot him.

There didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He didn’t even have his stupid pale Band-Aids with dinosaurs on them.

Nick straddled a limb, leaned back against the bole of the tree, and tried to sleep. The wound throbbed all night long, and there were insistent biting insects, a truly amazing number of them, that kept him busy slapping them away. Occasional aftershocks rocked the tree, causing him to clutch at his bough and hope that the shock wouldn’t loosen the tree’s roots and topple it into the water.

He must have finally fallen asleep, though, because when he opened his eyes he found it was light, just past dawn. Birdsong rang through the trees. Nick blinked gum from his eyes and peered out at the drowned world.

He was in a grove, an old stand of cottonwood. His tree bore so many leafy branches that it was difficult to see through them. The area was brushy, and the tops of bushes waved from the murky water below. Far off to his right— southeast, to judge by the sun— there was a wide open area covered with water. He couldn’t tell if it was a flooded field, a lake, or a river.

There was a rustling out on the big limb that Nick was straddling. He looked out and gazed into a pair of brown eyes. He started and banged the back of his head on the bole of the tree.

Opossum, he recognized. With little pink-nosed babies clinging to its fur.

“Damn,” Nick said, and rubbed the back of his head where he’d knocked it on the tree. The opossum gave a disappointed murmur and climbed higher into the tree, out of sight.

“Possum,” Nick told it, “you don’t want to get down now, anyway.”

Loud bird calls barked from the next tree over. Nick hitched himself out on his limb to get a better view, peered between branches and saw a flock of guinea fowl, survivors from someone’s farm. In another tree, he saw a pair of squirrels leaping from one branch to another, just above the sullen, bedraggled form of a hen turkey. He could hear the cawing of a whole flock of crows, but he couldn’t see them.

All nature had gone aloft when the water began to rise.

No, he discovered, not
all
nature.

The corpse of a drowned deer, already stiff, floated half-submerged in the current.

Nick gave a shudder. At least the body wasn’t that of a human being.

It occurred to him that there might be someone within hailing distance. Even someone else stranded in a cotton-wood would be company. He cupped his hands to his mouth, turned his head in the direction he suspected was inland, then hesitated.

What does a person say under these circumstances? he wondered. ‘Help’? ‘Get me down!’? ‘I’m stuck in a tree’?

He settled on “Hello.”

He called out his hello, waited for an answer, called again. Called in all directions.

Only the guinea fowl in the next tree answered.

He sagged on the bough, discouragement rising in him like the rising flood. He was very thirsty, very hungry. His wounded arm ached. He tried to get a look at it in the morning light, but it was on a part of his arm that he couldn’t see, no matter how much he tried.

He decided to check his pockets, make an inventory. Billfold with credit cards and ID. Money clip with a hundred and sixty in cash, more or less. Thirty-seven cents in loose change. House keys. These, and the Timex on his wrist, seemed to be the sum total of his resources.

He felt something in his shirt pocket, and fished it out. Opened the box. Saw the lily-shaped pendant on the necklace, saw dawn light winking off diamonds and rubies.

For Arlette. He looked at the golden lily in his palm. He would have to survive for Arlette.

Nick felt a stinging bite on the back of his right arm and slapped at it with the left. Felt another bite, made another slap. Then he felt a bite on his back, and after slapping it away looked behind him to see what was the matter.

His heart gave a leap. Down the bole of the tree behind him poured a red river of insects. There were so many that the tree seemed to shimmer with the reflection of their glittering eyes.

He spasmed forward along the tree limb, slapping furiously at his back and behind. There were red ants all over his body. He moved forward along the limb, feeling it dip under his weight, leaves trailing in the water. The mother opossum, from somewhere in the clump of leaves, gave a cry of warning.

Nick threw one leg over the limb, turned to face the tree, swung the other leg over. An implacable swarm of ants marched along the bark toward him. He beat at them with his palms, then slapped at his body where other ants were still biting.

He wondered where the ants were coming from and looked up: a huge glistening ball of ants pulsed on the bole of the tree, only a few feet above where he’d laid his head all night. The ants must have evacuated their nest when the river rose, carrying with them their eggs, pupae, and queen; and now their nest was composed principally of their bodies, a ravenous scarlet sphere boiling with angry life, now wakened by the dawn and gone in quest of food.

There was a squawk above him, a flurry of beating wings, and a pair of grackles, cawing furiously, burst free of the foliage and thundered madly into the air. Apparently the ants had just invaded their perch.

For a moment he considered abandoning the tree in favor of another. But there was no guarantee that a new tree would be any more hospitable, or that he would be able to climb it as easily as he climbed this one.

Besides, something in him resisted dropping into the cold water below. He could all too easily get caught in brush or debris, and drown.

He reached behind him to one of the cottonwood’s many small branches, and wrestled it back and forth until he succeeded in snapping it off. Then he used the leafy branch as a broom to sweep the tide of ants off the limb.

Another large bird squawked and flapped out of the tree. Nick didn’t see what kind, he only heard it. The ants were hungry, or angry, or both.

There was more thrashing in the tree, and Nick saw a raccoon, big as a dog, bound out of one branch and to another, clawing madly to get a firm grip. Once safe on the new limb, the raccoon began a frenzy of frantic scratching.