New Madrid Earthquake

by Bobby Akart

  He used to comment the river seemed to take a vacation of its own along that stretch. He imagined kids like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn floating along on a homemade flatboat, meandering along serpentine curves that swooped and turned past New Madrid towards Tennessee. In fact, at New Madrid, the Mississippi appeared to become confused. It cut to the south along the Missouri-Tennessee border, made a U-turn back to the north, and then took another U-turn toward the south. There was a stretch of farmland along old Highway 22 that was in the midst of three states, all surrounded by the river.

  Similar geographic oddities occurred farther south near Dyersburg. When the river flooded, it seemed to move the borders between Tennessee and Missouri with it. When it was dry, like in late summer, farmers in Tennessee suddenly found themselves owning parts of Missouri. Even during the Civil War, the river was modified to suit a particular side’s purposes.

  In the end, the Mighty Mississippi was called that for a reason. It was the centerpiece of the second largest watershed in the world, covering over a million square miles. It was fed by tributaries from thirty-three different states as well as two provinces in Canada. It began as a tiny creek near Lake Itasca, Minnesota, in the north and emptied nearly twenty-four hundred miles later into the Gulf of Mexico. Quite simply, as much as man tried, the Mighty Mississippi was too big to be tamed.

  Jack had no idea what was happening to his east as he drove down the desolate county roads through Missouri. They’d stopped once to ask for directions when the GPS seemed to take them way off course. He began to wonder if the satellites feeding the device information had become confused by the massive earthquake. To confirm he was headed in the right direction, he chatted up a group of people commiserating about the quake in their front yard.

  Most of them had little news to report. AM and FM radio stations had ceased broadcasting. Jack was frustrated that even the satellite radio in the truck they’d borrowed provided nothing but static. He found it odd that an earthquake in the Central U.S. would cut off access to the rest of the world.

  He tried to stay positive. However, the worst-case scenarios concerning Memphis continued to creep into his head. Their home was well east of the river, about twenty-two miles or so. Flooding might occur, but he doubted it would affect where they lived. He’d even been required to purchase flood insurance even though they lived on the banks of a small neighborhood lake.

  The problem with his imagination was he loved Jill and the kids so much that it was easy for worry to overtake his conscious thought. If he could only call them and make sure they were okay. He gripped the steering wheel and picked up his speed as the two-lane road opened up into a highway.

  Woot-woot, he said to himself. Now I’ve got yellow stripes and a shoulder to rely upon. Maybe I won’t drive us into a ditch if I fall asleep.

  “Are you sleepy?” Tony stirred in the back seat.

  Jack had to check himself to determine whether he’d said out loud what he thought he was thinking to himself. Maybe he should give Tony a turn behind the wheel. They still had two hours to go, and it was after midnight. He looked into the rearview mirror and responded, “Nah. Well, sort of. It’s slow going. I miss the interstate.”

  “I’m guessin’ a lot of people are missin’ it, too. Probably under water. Hey, I’ve gotta pee.”

  “Lucky you,” said Jack, who’d consumed the sixteen-ounce bottle of Diet Coke he’d found underneath the driver’s seat. Tony had opted for the two beers in the man’s cooler.

  Jack looked at his side mirrors to confirm it was safe to pull over on the side of the road. He rolled his eyes at himself and smiled. They hadn’t encountered a single vehicle in over two hours. Everyone else was smart enough to stay put.

  He stopped the truck, and the guys relieved themselves on the side of the road. Tony was refreshed after the quick nap and took over the driving duties. Within seconds of pulling away from their makeshift rest stop, Jack was blissfully snoring in the back seat.

  Jack had no idea how long he’d been sleeping when he heard Tony yell his default phrase when surprised by something unpleasant.

  “Holy shit!” The pickup swerved hard toward the northbound lane of the county road until its left wheels were hugging the gravel apron.

  “What?” Jack shouted his question. He shot up in the back seat and leaned forward to get a better look. On the right side of the road, the trees were toppling over. Most fell parallel to the road, but the wide canopies of some made their way onto the pavement.

  “Hold on!” screamed Tony as he pressed the gas pedal to the floor, quickly accelerating to nearly eighty miles an hour. He kept looking into the rearview mirror, prompting Jack to turn around.

  Behind them, the moonlight afforded him enough illumination to see a stitch appear in the asphalt pavement as if a giant sewing machine had gone off the rails. On the passenger side, parts of the earth were disappearing, causing the trees to topple or get sucked into the ground altogether.

  “Keep going!” Jack yelled.

  “Duh!” was Tony’s smart-aleck response.

  On both sides of the truck now, trees and branches were splitting with the noise decibel of a high-powered rifle’s gunshots. The jagged fissure continued toward them until suddenly it stopped. Tony never let up, racing away from the beast that had threatened to devour them until Jack gently patted him on the shoulder.

  “Hey, I think it’s over.”

  Tony was breathing heavily, so much so Jack became concerned he might hyperventilate. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the backs of the bucket seats. Tony regained his composure.

  “I see some kind of business up ahead. Maybe a gas station or something. I think I shit myself.”

  Jack laughed and then pretended to sniff the interior of the pickup. “Sure enough. You soiled your britches, young man.”

  A scowl came over Tony’s face, and he reached between his legs to feel between his crotch and the seat.

  “No, I didn’t. But I was close.”

  He pulled over to the side of the road and slowly entered the parking lot of an abandoned gas station. The windows had been broken out years ago. The building appeared to be falling down, and the kudzu vine was taking it over before winter made it dormant.

  Jack looked at his watch and then at the GPS display. “Listen, I’m anxious to get home, too. However, it wouldn’t kill us to get a couple of hours’ sleep and cross the river in the morning. We won’t do our wives any good if we wrap this thing around a tree or accidentally drive into the center of the Earth ’cause we missed a humongous crack.”

  Tony wiped his sweaty hands on his pants. “No arguments from me. But if the damn earth starts shaking again, we’re outta here.”

  “Agreed.”

  Jack traded places with Tony, and the two men quickly dozed off. It’s funny how the body has this internal alarm clock. Jack’s was no different. If he went to sleep at midnight, he’d wake up at five the next morning. If he was exhausted from a strenuous day and fell asleep at nine the night before, once five a.m. rolled around, he was ready to get up. It didn’t matter what time zone he was in or what the circumstances were, five in the morning, Central Time, was his inner rooster’s wake-up call.

  He didn’t bother to wake up Tony, who was zonked out. He slipped out of the truck, took a leak, and got them underway for the final eighty miles into Memphis. He was full of excitement as he followed the GPS directions to West Memphis, taking a slightly circuitous route to avoid potential flooding.

  From time to time, the headlights would wash a house or a building in this remote section of East Arkansas. They appeared intact, giving Jack hope that Memphis had been spared. He took a chance and turned on a country road that led him east toward the river on a direct route for the Hernando de Soto Bridge, which held Interstate 40 leading from Arkansas over the Mississippi into Memphis.

  The sun began to appear on a new day. He picked up speed as mile after mile was ticked off in their quest to get home. The lowland
s along the Mississippi became more predominant on both sides of the road as he got closer. His heart began to race as he wound his way through the farms. He crested a rise just as the sun began to show itself in the east. They were close.

  A smile broke across his face as emotion overcame him. He glanced over to see if Tony was awake. Jack tried to contain himself as he wiped the tears of joy off his cheeks.

  He daydreamed, visualizing the outline of the massive I-40 bridge. In its shadow, the Memphis Pyramid would be standing alongside the river in its thirty-two-story glory. The Memphis skyline would be behind it. A city that he’d called home for two decades. The place where he’d set himself on a path that led to meeting Jill, adopting Tate and Emily, and making a wonderful home for the four of them.

  Instead, he found himself abruptly letting off the gas as he cleared the hill, causing the front end of the pickup to dip down, jarring Tony awake. Jack allowed the truck to decelerate until he finally gently placed his foot on the brake and brought the vehicle to a stop.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. The imposing M-shaped supports of the I-40 bridge were still there, but the road itself had disappeared. Many of the familiar buildings comprising the Memphis skyline were either reduced to rubble, on fire, or were skeletal remains of their former selves. And the iconic Memphis Pyramid was there, yet it wasn’t. All of the glass panels had been broken, and only the misshapen frames remained.

  What he saw was utter devastation of his beloved Memphis, a sight similar to what they’d left behind in St. Louis. As the two men sat there in silence, Jack suddenly pushed himself upright in the driver’s seat. He did the calculation for the first time. He silently cursed himself for not realizing this until now.

  Emily’s rehearsal for the Christmas show. It was Friday afternoon. Or was it early evening? Where were they when the quake struck?

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” He pounded the steering wheel as he shouted the words.

  Part IV

  Fractured

  If you look close enough, you’ll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later. The Earth is no different. Our world has ended five times. It’s been fried and then frozen. Gassed with poison. Smothered with ash. Bombarded from space. Despite all of this, the planet’s surface remains a beautiful mosaic of continental plates. Some slowly push together, forming magnificent mountains. Others slowly tear the landscape apart, fracturing what was once whole. Leaving scars of the epic battle below.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Sunday, December 23

  Harahan Bridge

  West Bank of the Mississippi River

  West Memphis, Arkansas

  The roads leading through West Memphis, Arkansas, resembled driving through war-torn cities like Beirut, Lebanon; Aleppo, Syria; or Berlin, Germany, toward the end of World War II. Streets had buckled. Buildings had collapsed within themselves. Death was everywhere. And the eyes of the living were hollow, black, and lifeless.

  Jack and Tony had to abandon the pickup truck, as the streets were clogged with debris, vehicles, and pedestrian refugees. They stopped at times to speak to those who’d fled Memphis with nothing more than the clothing they wore and maybe a small duffle bag of their most prized possessions.

  The city had suffered. While it might not have been as close to the epicenter as St. Louis, Memphis had certainly been pummeled by Mother Earth’s rant. They were told older buildings had crumbled first. Similar to what they’d experienced in St. Louis, a domino effect occurred in which the stability of surrounding structures was compromised by the first buildings to fall. People had no time to escape. Even if they could, there was no place to hide from the bulky steel and concrete that fell to earth.

  We had no warning.

  No idea.

  It came out of nowhere.

  Phrases that were repeated by the refugees who’d streamed across the river on the last bridge standing.

  The Hernando de Soto Bridge carrying Interstate 40 had fallen first, leaving only the H-shaped concrete and steel supports standing out of the water. The entire double-arch truss-suspended deck had broken loose. After it fell one hundred and ten feet to the surface of the river, carrying motorists with it, the bridge system dropped all the way to the bottom of the Mississippi an additional one hundred eighty feet.

  Just to the south, the Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge built in 1949 had fared slightly better during the first earthquake. The Old Bridge, so named because it was built before the Hernando de Soto Bridge, remained standing for the most part except for a stretch of a thousand feet on the Arkansas side. Those traveling on Interstate 55 as the quake struck were lifted into the air slightly before being dropped to the road. During the quake, four of the five Warren trusses had held the structure together as it bounced up and down as the primary compression wave rolled through. However, the stress was too much, and one of the trusses couldn’t stand up to the massive pressure added by the strong secondary waves.

  The fourth bridge entering Memphis, the Frisco Bridge, never had a chance, according to the refugees. The hundred-twenty-four-year-old railroad bridge had fallen first. The weight of four BNSF Railway locomotive engines crossing at the moment the quake hit saw to that.

  There was good news that encouraged Jack and Tony and gave them the mental boost needed to begin walking. They learned the Harahan Bridge, also known as the Big River Crossing, was still standing. The cantilevered bridge, owned by Union Pacific, carried two rail lines along its one-mile length between West Memphis and Memphis. Opened in 1916, the bridge had withstood the test of time and several earthquakes in the region. Its caissons were sunk deep into the riverbed. Coupled with the weight of the enormous concrete and granite piers built upon them, they were driven deeper into the earth.

  Over time, as the interstate highway system necessitated the construction of the other bridges, the one-mile-long Harahan Bridge had been retrofitted for pedestrian and bicycle traffic as well. The Big River Crossing served as the connection point between Main Street Memphis and its counterpart in Arkansas.

  They walked briskly past the throngs of refugees headed away from the river. Conversations regarding the water rising on the banks on both sides could be heard. Jack and Tony didn’t waste any more time for updates on conditions across the river. Now their biggest challenge was pushing their way through the thousands of people fleeing Memphis. They were two of only a handful who seemed determined to head into the twenty-sixth-largest city in the U.S.

  Soon, their path to the bridge narrowed as the westbound refugees packed the raised railway bed, and the few pedestrians going against the flow were not accommodated. Frustrations boiled over near the entrance to the pedestrian pathway when an elderly couple was being pushed around by the crowds making their way off the bridge. Jack and Tony caught up to the couple and pulled them off to the side.

  “Sir, I’m sorry those guys gave you a hard time,” said Tony by way of an apology for the inconsiderate refugees.

  “Thank you for saying that, young man,” the elderly woman replied. “Our home is in Memphis, and we have no place else to go.”

  “We know it might be damaged, but at least it’s familiar to us,” her husband added.

  Jack stepped off the embankment slightly to get a better look. He returned to the group and relayed his observations.

  “Listen, this walkway is maybe six to eight feet wide. We’ll be butting heads with them all the way across. There is another option if you guys are up for it.”

  “What’s that?” asked Tony.

  “If we backtrack to the railroad bed, we can travel down the center of the bridge. We’ll have to walk over the tracks, but there are far fewer people than what’s crammed onto the pathway.”

  The old couple looked to one another. The husband was concerned about his frail wife. They looked like they hadn’t slept since Thursday night. “What do you think, dear?”

  “We can do it, with these young men helping us,” she
replied, looking to the guys with hopeful eyes.

  Jack wanted to assist them on a different path across, but he didn’t want to be bogged down on a one-mile journey across a railroad bridge with two octogenarians. After seeing the destruction of downtown Memphis from afar, his level of concern for his family skyrocketed. Backtracking would add thirty minutes to their crossing. He and Tony could easily bull their way through the oncoming refugees if they simply continued on the pedestrian pathway.

  “Yes, we’ll do it,” said Tony impulsively without consulting Jack.

  Jack wasn’t surprised. During the walk out of St. Louis, Tony had expressed regret for not taking the time to help those stranded at the Met. While none of the people in that emergency stairwell were their clients, they’d needed assistance nonetheless. He doubted they would be able to climb through the elevator shaft without assistance.

  The four of them turned to join the throngs heading west for half a mile. Then, when the floodwaters were shallow enough to wade through, they helped the elderly couple up the slight embankment and over to the railroad bed. There were some refugees greeting them from the east but not nearly as many as on the pedestrian pathway. After another twenty minutes, they were back to the point of the beginning of the Harahan Bridge where they’d turned around.

  “Can we take a rest?” the woman asked sheepishly.

  Jack looked to Tony, who shrugged and agreed. The old couple leaned against a rusty railing and encouraged one another. Jack pulled Tony aside to be out of earshot.

  “Listen,” he began in a hushed tone of voice. “We’ve got three-quarters of a mile to go. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but for these guys, it might as well be a hundred.”

  Tony sighed. “I know. They’re gonna want to take breaks every hundred feet. I mean, how far is it to the house from here?”