The Rift (48 page)

Communication was nonexistent: the telephone exchange had been destroyed, ground lines were down, radios in the sheriff’s cars didn’t carry far enough to reach anywhere else, cellular phone relays were all gone. It was probably a blessing, Frankland thought— he could do his work here without worrying about corruption and evil broadcast from the outside, but he still felt sorry for those worried about loved ones they could not reach.

“Brother Frankland?”

Frankland turned at the sound of Garb’s voice. “Brother Garb?” he smiled.

“Heaven-o,” said Garb.

“Beg pardon?”

Garb gave a shy smile. “Heaven-o. It’s a way of saying ‘hello,’ except it leaves out the ‘hell.’ It always bothered me that there was hell in hello.”

Frankland nodded in admiration. “Heaven-o! That’s great!” he said. “Did you think of that?”

“No, I heard that there was this county in Texas that voted to replace hello with heaven-o, and I thought it was a pretty good idea.”

“Maybe we should make it official here in the camp.”

“I’d be very pleased if we could.” Garb adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles. “I’ve just been speaking to that last busload of refugees that came up from town,” he said. “Half of them are from below the bluff, down in the Delta.”

Frankland nodded. “They can hear our message in the Delta? That’s good.”

Garb shook his head. “No, they didn’t hear you. They came here because it was the only place they could go. The levees broke, and everyone in the Delta was flooded out.”

Frankland shook his head. All those rich farmers growing cotton and soya in the Arkansas Delta, living off the fat of the land while their neighbors, and their neglected brethren in Rails Bluff, stayed poor. Now the rich farmers were refugees, and Rails Bluff their only hope.

“God bless them,” Frankland said. That Wal-Mart superstore, he thought, must be flooded out, too.

“The ones who got out were those who live close to the bluff,” Garb went on, “or who owned boats that could get them through the flooding. There must be many more people down there who have been stranded.” Garb looked up at Frankland. “I was thinking that we should organize rescue groups with boats, just as we’ve done with jeeps and trucks. Go out there into the flooded country, bring people in.”

Frankland put a hand on Garb’s shoulder. “Brother Garb, that’s a brilliant idea. Bless you.”

Garb smiled. “Thank you
.
I can ask some of the refugees to serve as guides, because they know the country. And of course they already have boats.”

“Put our own people in the boats as well, make sure the thing’s done right.”

“
Reliable
people.”

“Exactly.” Frankland nodded.

It was glorious to have so many people here on his wavelength.

“I will organize it, if you like,” Garb said.

“Thank you, Brother Garb.” He hesitated. “Don’t forget the Wal-Mart. Tools, supplies, food.”

“Guns and ammunition.”

“Amen,” said Frankland.

There was the sound of a horn blaring from the highway, and Frankland looked up to see a pickup truck rolling in from the east. The driver waved a hand from his window as he turned into the church parking lot. Frankland could see another man in the bed of the truck. He and Garb trotted up to the truck as it ground to a halt on the gravel.

The driver hopped out. Frankland recognized him as the sixteen-year-old son of one of his parishioners, a scavenger who had been sent out east with some others. “We’ve got a casualty,” the boy said. “We pulled him out of a wrecked car at the bottom of the Rails River Bridge. He must have been on the bridge when it collapsed.”

“He’s been down there for two days?” Garb said, impressed.

“He was about to drown when we pulled him out. The river’s rising.” The boy walked around the pickup and let down the tailgate. “It was a heck of a job getting him up the riverbank,” he said. “We need a stretcher or something to get him to the infirmary.”

“We don’t have any stretchers,” Garb said, “but I’ll get a canvas cot.”

Garb hustled away. Frankland looked into the bed of the truck and felt a rush of cold surprise.

Father Guillaume Robitaille. Personal emissary to Rails Bluff from the Prince of Darkness.

The priest was pale where he wasn’t sunburned, and crusted with his own blood. His nose was mashed over most of his face, his eyes were black, his front teeth had been knocked out. He looked at the world without comprehension, from rolling, half-slitted eyes. He shivered and trembled and made little whining noises.

Frankland gave silent thanks to the Lord, who had put the great Roman Enemy in his power.

“We’ll take Father Robitaille to my house,” he said. “I want to look after him personally.” He looked down at the priest.

“Heaven-o, Father,” he said. “Heaven-o.”

*

“Sweet Lord, look at that,” Sheryl said. Frankland nodded.

Father Robitaille trembled and whimpered in their bed. They had given him water, though he’d thrown most of it back up, and they’d tried to feed him, but he hadn’t been hungry, or maybe just hadn’t recognized his meal as food. He seemed pretty far gone.

He was safe enough in Frankland’s house, though. Like his church and broadcast center, it was steel-framed and set firmly on its foundation. It featured steel walls, steel window frames, steel doors and door frames.

Frankland hadn’t intended it that way, but when he was putting the building up, he realized it wouldn’t make a bad jail.

Or a drunk tank.

“When I was growing up in Little Rock,” Frankland said, “there was a little ol’ Catholic church between where I lived and where I went to school. And my folks told me that when I walked to school, I should be sure to cross the street when I got to the Catholic church, and walk on the other side, so that the Devil wouldn’t jump out of the church and get me. And most of the other kids in the neighborhood had been told the same thing, so practically everyone crossed the street to keep clear of the Catholics.” He chuckled. “Some of the braver kids would sneak up to the church, knock on the door, and run. Dare the Devil to come out and chase them.”

Sheryl nodded. “Your parents knew what they were talking about,” she said.

“Yep.” Frankland grinned. “When I was a child, I didn’t understand that it was just a, a what-d’you-call-it, a
metaphor.
There wasn’t a literal Devil in there, not the kind with horns and tail— well, I
guess
there wasn’t, I never looked. But my folks were right that if you went to the Catholic church, the Devil would get you in his clutches.” He laughed. “You know, I’ve never been in a Catholic church to this day. Not even just to look around.”

“Me neither,” said Sheryl.

“Ba ba,” Robitaille muttered through his broken teeth.

Frankland looked down at him. “Look at the Devil now.”

“Hah,” Robitaille said. His eyes came open, seemed to focus on Frankland. “Hah. Help.”

Frankland leaned closer. “Yes. We’re here for you.”

“Help.”

“We’re here to
save
you,” Frankland said. Which wasn’t the same thing as
help,
not exactly.

“Ta,” Robitaille said. “Ta. Trink.”

“He wants a drink,” Sheryl said.

Frankland poured a glass of water from the pitcher and held it to Robitaille’s lips. Robitaille raised a hand to the glass and gulped eagerly at the water, and then his whole body gave a violent shudder, and he turned away, retching. Water spilled from his lips.

“Cochon!”
he shouted.
“Qui es-tu? Un espece de fou?”

“He doesn’t want a drink, teddy bear,” Sheryl said. “He wants a
drink
.”

“Donne-moi un verre! Un verre!”

Frankland straightened. “Well. Water’s what he gets.” He looked down at Robitaille. “Water’s what we’ve
got
!
It’s
all
we’ve got!”

Robitaille began to cry. Fat tears fell from his blackened eyes.
“Je vais mourir! Donne-moi un verre! Je vais mourir si je ne trouve pas un verre.”

“What’s that language?” Frankland asked. “Latin, like the pope talks?”

“I guess.”

Frankland refilled the glass, put the glass on the table within the reach of Robitaille’s arms.

“I’m gonna let him calm down,” he said. “Then maybe the two of us can have a real chat.”

He and Sheryl left the room, and nodded to the guard that Frankland had put on the door. One of the older men in their church, a tough farmer who wasn’t about to let a drunk priest sway him from his duty.

“Look after him,” Frankland iaid. “Give him anything he wants except alcohol— and I’m afraid that’s
all
he’s going to want.”

“Where would I find alcohol, Brother Frankland?” The farmer grinned.

“Somebody might have snuck some alcohol in.”

“Well, I’ll keep on the lookout.”

“I appreciate it, friend,” Frankland said.

Frankland made his way down the hall, past the extra furniture and breakable items they’d taken from the bedroom before they put Robitaille in the bed.

And then Robitaille, behind the steel door, began to scream, hoarse wails that prickled the hair on Frankland’s arms.

“Dang,” the farmer said. “That don’t even sound human.”

Frankland thought about that for the next hour or so, and then he decided it was a question to which he’d better find out the answer.

*

Jessica’s stomach gave a pleasant rollercoaster lurch as her helicopter circled the Gateway Arch. The ruins of St. Louis were spread out below her. The blackened devastation of yesterday morning’s propane explosion, where the fire chief and a couple dozen of his men were martyred, was plain to see. There was a circular crater in the center of the area, filled with water from the River Des Peres. Smoke rose from persistent fires. The morning’s brisk southwest wind was whipping up flames that had died down the day before.

Still, there were parts of St. Louis that were more or less intact, standing like hollow-eyed sentinels above the rubble that surrounded them. The earthquake had laid entire districts in ruin, but spared others. It was like a game of survival roulette: if you put your chips, your house and family, in the right area, you could come through with some broken windows and fallen shingles, while other people’s chips were swept off the board. The only problem was that no one knew which neighborhoods would be spared until after the game began, and by then it was too late for most of the players.

The riverfront was a wreck. And the Chain of Rocks Canal in Illinois, through which river traffic bypassed the rapids that infested the river north of St. Louis, was now unusable. The canal’s banks had caved in, and so had the sides of the newly built Lock No. 27.

The grounds of the National Expansion Memorial were covered either with tents or helicopters. MARS had moved in force: the Memorial held a battalion of paratroopers from Fort Bragg and a thousand rescue workers from all over the world, all in addition to the refugees who had poured out of the ruined city. Other city parks were also filling up with rescuers and refugees. Airlift Command was having a hard time just keeping them fed, particularly as there were few surviving runways big enough to carry heavy fixed-wing transports. Even the tough and reliable C130s were having a hard time finding places to land. Almost everything had to be flown in by helicopter, and choppers were fragile craft that required a lot of down time for maintenance.

Jessica sympathized with Airlift Command. They were trained to supply a mere
army.
This was an entire
population.

During the Second World War, the United States had at its peak supported 15,000,000 soldiers, but that was after years of military buildup. Now there were millions of homeless refugees on American soil and the government was being asked to take care of them overnight, and with the heart ripped out of the country’s infrastructure.

“Take me down over the river,” Jessica said.

Her pilot gave a redneck grin. “You want to go under the bridges, or over?”

For a moment she was tempted, and then she decided she would feel truly ridiculous if, during the greatest adventure of her life, she was killed by a falling railway tie. “Better go over,” she said.

Jessica’s stomach sank into a single location as the Kiowa Warrior settled into a smooth dive. G’s tautened her grin.

She was going to have to learn how to fly one of these, that was clear. This was just too much fun.

The river was fast and carried tons of debris. Once they got south of the bluffs at Cape Girardeau, Swampeast Missouri spread out before them like a shimmering inland lake. There were a pair of waterfalls at Island No. 8, though the Mississippi was busy reducing them. Jessica asked the pilot to make a detour to Sikeston, west of the river, to look at the power plant. The Sikeston Power Plant had been built directly on an earthquake fissure that was clearly visible from the top of its smokestack. At the time when the plant was built, no one realized this was an earthquake feature. But even after the fissure had been properly identified, land atop it had been acquired for a housing subdivision.

Neither the power plant, the smokestack, nor the subdivision had survived Ml. Brown water washed through the wreckage.

The next power plant south had been built at New Madrid, not exactly the best choice under the circumstances. It and the town were a flooded ruin. So was Cabells Mound. The river had cut the New Madrid bend and the bend at Uncle Chowder.

Jessica took a professional interest in the area south of New Madrid designated the New Madrid Floodway. The levee east of the floodway had been built with plugs atop the levee that could be removed in the event of dangerously high water, allowing the floodway to fill with water until the water reached a backup levee built five or so miles behind the river. This was to enable deliberate inundation so as to take pressure off other critical areas of the river.

Removing the plugs hadn’t been necessary, not with the earthquake tearing away chunks of the levee. To that extent the New Madrid Floodway functioned as intended.

Unfortunately this hadn’t helped populated areas, not with every levee in the district broken, including the backup levee behind the floodway. Everyplace that
could
flood
had
flooded. But because the flood was
every
place, it wasn’t as bad as it could get in any
one
place. Once the water had a chance to spread out, it achieved a kind of uniform depth over the whole region. It was a lake, but the lake was fairly shallow.