Authors: Walter Jon Williams
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic
The pilot’s voice interrupted Jessica’s thoughts. “This isn’t a nuke plant, is it, General?”
“Yes. This is nuclear.”
“Should we be wearing moon suits? Shall I get us some altitude?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” She hoped.
“Yes, sir.”
Jessica noticed, however, that the Kiowa began to crab slightly away from the reactor complex. A little caution in the pilot’s hands. And then one of the hands pointed.
“Some survivors, General. On that little hill over there.”
The Kiowa rotated in space while maintaining its bank, and Jessica saw a clump of people— waving, jumping up and down, probably screaming their heads off— on a flat grassy hill near the perimeter fence.
“Call your outfit,” Jessica said. “Tell them we need a dustoff.”
*
Larry Hallock let the others run waving and shouting as the Army helicopter roared overhead. He was too tired and hungry and sore to race around like a lunatic, so he just sat on the tailgate of Bill Henry’s camper pickup, cradled his arm, and waited.
The burned man had died in the night, screaming. Some of the injured were nearly comatose. No one had been able to help.
He had expected rescue before now. Someone in the Department of Energy, someone in the power company. He had figured he’d see the first helicopters silhouetted against the red dawn.
Instead it had been hours. Things must be worse out there than he’d thought.
And while he waited, he’d seen that there was a current in the flood waters. Up till the morning they had been still, a calm brown lake that ringed the old Indian mound. But then the waters had begun to move. The debris that had been floating atop the water was carried away downstream, and as time passed the debris began moving by faster. Larry had watched to see if the level of the water was declining, if the current meant that the flood was draining away.
But the water level didn’t fall, and the current grew in power. Which meant that Poinsett Landing, the reactor vessel included, now sat on the bed of the Mississippi River.
There was a flurry of people running to their vehicles, and then cars and trucks began to clear an area on top of the mound. The roar of the chopper increased to painful levels, a jet whine combined with the flogging of the rotors, and Larry felt blasts of wind on his face. The copter— it seemed pretty small for something that could make such a big noise— settled with surprising grace onto the cleared space of the mound.
Larry dropped off the pickup gate and shuffled toward the helicopter, holding his injured arm. His neck and shoulder throbbed. Some of the other people had suggested he’d broken a collarbone, but it was impossible to tell without an X ray.
A door slid open on the side of the helicopter, and an officer jumped out. A woman, Larry saw with some surprise. A
short
woman. A short woman with a flier’s helmet and Ray-Bans and camouflage fatigues and the stars of a general.
Larry blinked. When the government finally got around to moving, it moved with authority.
“Do you have any injured?” the woman general shouted. “And who is in charge?”
*
Lieutenant Grimsley was a National Guard second lieutenant with washed-out blue eyes and a dusting of acne on his cheeks. “Sheriff,” he told Omar, “I’m supposed to tell you that we’re pulling out.”
“What?” Omar blinked at Grimsley sleepily.
Omar stood out in front of the courthouse, supervising the crews that were chainsawing away the fallen limbs of the lawn’s blackjack oaks. The old trees had taken a beating, and a couple of them were going to have to be cut down.
The Mourning Confederate, looking somberly down from his pillar, had survived without a scratch or a crack. Omar liked to think of it as an omen.
“The President has called up our outfit,” Grimsley said. “We’re heading north to help restore order in Arkansas.” Grimsley seemed proud of this fact.
Omar tried to clear the weariness from his mind. He had caught a couple hours’ sleep toward dawn, but he’d been wakened by an aftershock and the jolt of electricity the shock had put in his veins had kept him from getting back to sleep.
“But what about Spottswood Parish?” Omar asked. “We need you boys here.”
“Sorry, Sheriff. But things here are pretty much under control, and I guess the President figured we’d be more useful up north.”
Faggot President,
Omar thought wearily.
This was just like that asshole.
“When do you boys pull out?” he asked.
“Soon’s we can load up the trucks with seventy-two hours’ rations.”
“Well.” Omar offered his hand. “Good luck, son.”
They shook hands. “Thanks, Sheriff.”
A chainsaw stuttered as it caught an oakwood knot. Omar looked up, felt sweat trickle down the back of his neck.
He’d done his job, he figured. More than the President had. And voters would remember
that
come the next election.
Omar figured his career was right on track.
*
Omar was at the armory when the National Guard pulled out. All those guardsmen were voters— some were even his deputies—and he figured that it would be a good thing to pump a few hands as they loaded up.
The guardsmen were in battle dress and helmets, and they carried their rifles. All except one man, who Omar to his surprise recognized as Micah Knox.
“I’m heading north.” Knox grinned. “Your Guard are giving me a ride.”
“Great,” Omar said.
Knox indicated the heavy duffel bag on his shoulder. “I went by your house and picked up my stuff,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I won’t.”
“Your house is okay, by the way. Your buddy Ozie was there with his trucks and jacks. He said that you and Winona can move back in tonight.”
“Great.” Omar looked at the duffel, at the way it weighed on the kid’s shoulder, and knew that Knox had retrieved his firearms and ammunition.
Well. At least he was taking the guns out of town.
“Hey, Sheriff! Hold still for a picture!”
Omar turned to see Sorrell Ellen of the
Spottswood Chronicle
pointing a camera. He sensed Knox fade quickly from the frame. Omar stepped in the other direction just as the camera flashed.
Omar blinked as purple blooms filled his vision. “Dang,” Sorrell said. “You moved.”
“Why don’t you get a picture of me saying good-bye to one of my deputies?” Omar said.
“That’s good,” Sorrell agreed.
He led Sorrell toward one of the trucks parked on the gravel drive in front of the armory. He saw Micah Knox fading away behind another truck, his heavy duffel bearing down one thin shoulder.
“Do you have any comments on the emergency?” Sorrell asked.
“Just that I’m very proud of the way my department has responded,” Omar said. “We’ve kept order, helped save lives, maintained communications that were vital to the parish.”
Sorrell jotted this down. “Several of your deputies are moving out with the Guard, aren’t they?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to be short-handed?”
Omar left that unanswered as he spotted one of his deputies, Frank Schwinn, in the act of loading gear onto the truck. He and Schwinn paused for the photo, and by that time Sorrell had forgotten about his last question.
Deputies, Omar thought. He was going to need to make some more, and he figured he knew just who to call.
Hell, he was their Kleagle.
SIXTEEN
Precisely at 2 o’clock on Monday morning, the 16th instant, we were all alarmed by the violent and convulsive agitation of the boats, accompanied by a noise similar to that which would have been produced by running over a sand bar
—
every man was immediately roused and rushed upon deck.
— We
were first of opinion that the Indians, studious of some mischief, had loosed our cables, and thus situated we were foundering. Upon examination, however, we discovered we were yet safely and securely moored. The idea of an earthquake then suggested itself to my mind, and this idea was confirmed by a second shock, and two others in immediate succession. These continued for the space of eight minutes. So complete and general had been the convulsion, that a tremendous motion was communicated to the very leaves on the surface of the earth. A few yards from the spot where we lay, the body of a large oak was snapped in two, and the falling part precipitated to the margin of the river; the trees in the forest shook like rushes; the alarming clattering of their branches may be compared to the affect which would be produced by a severe wind passing through a large cane brake.
Exposed to a most unpleasant alternative, we were compelled to remain
where we were for the night, or subject ourselves to imminent hazard in navigating through the innumerable obstructions in the river; considering the danger of running two-fold, we concluded to remain. At the dawn of day I went on shore to examine the effects of the shocks; the earth about 20 feet from the water’s edge was deeply cracked, but no visible injury of moment had been sustained; fearing, however, to remain longer where we were, it was thought much advisable to leave our landing as expeditiously as possible; this was immediately done
—
at a few rods distance
from the shore, we experienced a fifth shock, more severe than either of the preceding. I had expected this from the louring appearance of the weather, it was indeed most providential that we had started, for such was the strength of this last shock, that the bank to which we were (but a few moments since) attached, was rent and fell into the river, whilst the trees rushed from the forests, precipitating themselves into the water with a force sufficient to have dashed us into a thousand atoms.
Chronicle of Mr. Pierce, December 25, 1811
Jason poled
Retired and Gone Fishin’
through the stillness of the trees. His passenger Nick had begun to drowse in one of the front seats. This was all right with Jason. He preferred to be alone with his thoughts. The cottonwoods gave way to pine, and the floods slowly ebbed, bringing the tops of bushes and saplings above the water. Other than Nick, he saw no human being.
Edge Living, Jason thought. He’d hung posters to Edge Living in his room, but he’d never known what Edge Living was: living like a refugee, bereft of food, water, and shelter; lost in a disaster that seemed to have overtaken the whole world.
That was the Edge, all right. And Jason didn’t want it anymore.
Eventually the boat floated up to an unbroken green levee stretching left and right across its path. Dozens of cows, white with black splotches, grazed on the levee’s grassy flanks, which they shared with large refugee flocks of birds. Jason looked in each direction and realized he’d floated into the channel of a small river. Turning right, he thought, would take him back to the Mississippi, and a left turn would take him inland. He poled the boat to the levee and felt the bow thud up its grassy bank.
Nick opened his eyes. “What’s happening?” he said.
“Thought I’d go up the levee and look to see which way to go,” Jason said.
“I’ll do it,” Nick said.
Jason was sick of the boat and wanted to go himself, but Nick jumped out of the boat as if he wanted to make all the decisions, and so as Nick walked up the flank of the levee, Jason just sighed and leaned on his pole to keep the boat’s bow pressed firmly on the grass.
“More water on the other side,” Nick reported from the top. He looked inland, took a few more steps to get a better view. “Can’t see much but trees,” he said.
Jason scratched at the mud that coated his arm, sending flakes spiraling to the boat’s deck. Insects hummed about his ears.
And then there was a bellow, and a yell, and Nick came pelting back down the bank. “Jesusjesusjesus!” he panted, and Jason looked in surprise to see an enraged cow topping the levee. The cow paused for a moment, its head swinging back and forth in search of a target, and then it spotted Nick again, lowered its horns, and began to charge down the bank.
“Jesusjesusjesus!”
Nick shoved at the boat’s bow, pushed it into the water, and threw himself headlong across the foredeck. The cow paused partway down the flank of the levee, its forefeet spread in challenge. The boat swung out onto the water.
Jason collapsed in laughter, the pole clattering under his arm. Nick glared at him from the bows.
“God damn it! This isn’t funny!”
Laughter continued to erupt from Jason. The boat spun as it drifted across the flat, shimmering surface of the water.
Nick crawled across the foredeck and dropped into one of the seats. “It isn’t funny,” he insisted. “Bulls are dangerous.”
“That’s not a bull!” Jason laughed. He pointed. “It’s a cow! It’s got that bag thing between its legs!”
The boat spun lazily in the water and gave Nick a good look at the cow. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. But cows have horns, too.”
This struck Jason as the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. Water sloshed in the bottom of the boat as he sat on a corner of the stern while the laughter bent him double. Nick glowered for a long moment, then ventured a reluctant smile. “Well,” he said, “I’ve had no luck with wildlife today, that’s for sure.”
Jason clutched his aching sides. Dried mud flaked off him like a brown blizzard. He ran out of air and his laughter ran dry. A hiccup straightened him up in surprise, and then he began laughing again. Laughter and hiccups alternated as the boat spiraled down the river. Finally the laughter faded.
“Sorry,” Jason said finally.
Nick looked resentfully at the cow. “I wish I could come back here and turn that cow into steaks.”
Jason looked over his shoulder and remembered how hungry he was. He hiccuped. “Guess that’s what the cow was worried about,” he said.
Nick rubbed his eyes. “I think the cow was just crazy. That quake made everything crazy— people, animals, the river ...” He shook his head. “Wish I’d kept that snake. Could’ve eaten it.”
Jason looked at him. “Snake?”
“Never mind.” Nick sat up straighter, peered over the boat’s bows. “Are those cattails over there? Could you pole us closer?”
Cattails, Jason thought. Snakes. It occurred to him that his passenger could be as crazy as the cow.
He hiccuped.
He picked up the pole and trailed one end overboard, like a brake, till the boat’s spinning motion ceased, and then he dug the pole into the creek bottom and propelled it toward the patch of cattails.
The tails’ sodden heads were just above the water. Nick hung over the side of the boat and began pulling the cattails up from the bottom of the creek. He threw them flopping over the boat’s little foredeck.
Jason watched Nick carefully in case he turned out to be crazy.
“Cattails are edible,” Nick said. “We can fill our stomachs with these.”
Jason looked at the slimy plants lying on the foredeck. “You first.”
“Sure.” Nick reached for another fistful of cattail, pulled it from the river bottom. “I’ve eaten cattail plenty of times. When we visited my great-aunt in Mississippi, she’d fix us lots of wild greens. If we had some wild onion and poke-weed, we could have a salad.” He looked red-eyed over his shoulder at Jason. “Poor folks’ salad,” he said, making his point. “Hold the boat steady, now.”
Now it’s my fault I’m not poor,
Jason thought.
Listen asshole, I’m a lot poorer than you are. Bet you anything.
Jason put his weight on the pole and swung the boat left and right until Nick had pulled up a whole armful of plant matter. Then he poled off while Nick resumed his seat, rinsed off a cattail, and started eating the shoot near the root. “You can eat the soft part, see,” he said.
Jason nursed his hiccups and watched Nick warily. Nick tossed overboard the part of the cattail he wasn’t going to eat, then reached for another.
“We going upstream or down?” Jason asked. “What do you think?”
He did not want to go back to the Mississippi. The river had destroyed his home, drowned his friend and probably his mother, had flung him down rapids and tried to kill him. He didn’t want to see that river again.
“If we go inland,” Nick said, “we don’t know
where
we’re going. We know what’s
down
the Mississippi. There are bound to be people there who can help us. If we go inland, we could wander around forever and never find anyone in better shape than we are.”
“The Mississippi’s full of rapids,” Jason said. “And we’d have to stick close to the bank because this pole won’t reach too far.”
Nick looked at the cattail in his fist. “I’ve got a daughter downstream, in Arkansas. I’d like to get to her.”
Jason looked at him. “You’re not planning on going all the way in this boat, are you?”
“Well,” eating the cattail, “before we decide, maybe we should take stock of what we’ve got.”
“I’ve got a telescope,” Jason said. “
That’ll
get us to Arkansas all right.”
Nick gnawed on his cattail stalk as he began looking under hatch covers. “What’s this red thing?” he said, looking at the Astroscan.
“That’s my telescope.”
“Really? It’s funny looking.” He opened another hatch, pulled out a heavy metal box, and opened the lid. It was filled with fishing tackle.
“Well, there we go,” Nick said.
Jason looked at the tackle box in surprise. He hadn’t seen it there last night, not in the dark. “No fishing poles,” he said.
“Don’t need ’em. There’s spare line— we can just hang it over the end of the boat and troll.”
“Okay.” Jason felt annoyance creeping round his thoughts. Why was Nick messing around with his boat?
He
should have found that stuff.
“So we catch a fish,” Jason said, “how we gonna cook it?”
“Maybe we’ll have sushi.”
“Gaah.” Jason made a face. He wished Nick would just sit down and let him pole. He had done fine before Nick came on board.
Nick grinned. “No, we shouldn’t eat freshwater fish raw. Not unless it’s a choice between that or starvation. We could get flukes that would eat our liver.”
“Get
what?”
“Flukes. Little worms.”
“So we don’t get to eat raw fish,” Jason said. “Breaks my heart.”
Nick opened more hatches. Water sloshed. “We can keep fish alive in these cages till we’re ready to eat them.”
Another hatch. “Batteries,” Nick mused. “Why batteries?”
“To start the motor? Run lights at night?” Jason wasn’t quite able to keep sarcasm out of his voice.
Nick bent over, tracing the cables from the batteries. He looked under the boat’s front casting deck, then gave a grunt. He reached beneath the deck, grunted, pulled something from brackets.
What lay in Nick’s hands looked like a little outboard, a tiny motor at one end, a propeller at the other. And an electric cord wrapped in a neat coil and tied.
Nick jumped up on the front deck, connected the motor to a bracket right on the bow. Plugged the cord into an ordinary electric socket sitting flush on the deck. Then turned a switch.
There was a kind of a muffled thud, and Jason felt the motion of the boat change. It straightened its course and picked up speed.
“We’ve got a little electric motor, see,” Nick said. “It must be for trolling.”
Jason let the pole hang from the end of his arm. “You mean we’ve had power all along?” he said.
“More or less. We shouldn’t use it too much, though, we don’t have any way of recharging the batteries.”
Jason felt despair wrap around him like a black cloak. If he’d known the motor was there— if he’d just had the brains to search the boat until he’d found it— he could have got the boat moving last night and saved his mother. Or if he’d accepted any of old Mr. Regan’s offers to take him fishing, he would have known the motor was there, and he could have used it right away.
And his mother would be alive and they would be on their way back to Los Angeles and he wouldn’t be on this stupid boat with a stupid stranger.
“
Shit!
”
he shouted. He raised his pole and threw it as far as he could. The water received it with a splash.
Nick looked at him in surprise. “Something wrong?”
Jason threw himself onto one of the cockpit seats. “Nothing,” he said. He put his head in his hands.
He was an idiot, he thought. A total fuckdroid. If he’d just known the motor was there ...
The boat made almost no noise as Nick edged it toward the floating pole. He shut off the electric motor as the pole bumped against the side, and then he reached for it, pulled it in, held the pole dripping in his hands.
“Maybe I’ll pole for a while,” he said. “That okay with you?”
“Sure.” Jason edged away to give him room.
Nick looked at him. “Would you rather go inland, Jason? Is that what you’d rather? Because I’ll go where you want— it’s your boat.” He sounded as if he grudged that fact.
“I don’t care,” Jason said.
“I think it’s safe enough on the big river now,” Nick went on. “We can use the electric motor to get out of trouble.”
“I don’t care,”
Jason insisted. The river, he decided, was his fate. It had destroyed his whole existence; if it wanted to take his life as well, along with that of the stupid stranger, then it was welcome to do so.
Jason moved forward, slouched in the shotgun seat. “I’m going to take a nap.” He closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable.
He could sense Nick hesitating, on the verge of saying something more, but then came the splash as the pole dipped, and a surge as the boat began to move. Water chimed at the bow. Then there was a series of frantic splashes as Nick tried to adjust the boat’s course, but the boat was traveling too fast for the pole to get a purchase on the bottom, so Nick had to wait for it to slow down before he could pole again.