by Bobby Akart
Jill thought for a moment. “Don’t those things reach all over the country?”
“The world, even,” replied Tate. “I can see if he’s heard anything. He might even loan us one of his portable ham radios. I saw one sitting on their kitchen counter one day.”
Emily weighed in. “Mom, I’ll be okay. I’ll wait for Daddy to come home. My iPad has half a battery left. I think I’ll just hang by the fire and play video games.”
Jill shrugged and finished her breakfast. The thought of having access to information from other parts of the country through a ham radio was a plus. The Nashville station was providing some information, but it was only what the government was providing them. She was curious what people like her family were going through.
“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. “But no more than an hour. Okay? Check on Britney and her family. See if they have any information, and get your butt back home. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thanks!”
Tate pushed away from the table and put his paper plate with the plastic fork he’d used into the garbage. The family only had one case of bottled water, and they were conserving it to be divided between the three of them, not to mention Jack and Tony when they arrived.
Earlier that morning, Jill had taken an inventory of their food and drinks. Almost all of her refrigerator space was devoted to the upcoming holiday visit from Beth and Tony. The freezer had the usual things in it. Ice cream. DiGiorno Pizza. Chicken nuggets and frozen French fries. The ice cream had been consumed the night before, and the other items were on tonight’s menu.
She was especially disappointed in herself from the drink standpoint. They had more cans of soda than they had water. Even Tate’s Gatorade supply was running low. She just wasn’t one to stock up on food and drinks. When you had a Costco, Trader Joe’s, and Kroger store within a few minutes’ drive, why bother? Now she knew better.
Emily settled in by the fire with her iPad. Tate dressed to impress. It seemed a young man had to put his best foot forward when meeting with his girlfriend during the apocalypse. Jill pulled on a sweater and grabbed her sunglasses. Temperatures seemed to be rising into the upper fifties with the sun shining. Under any other circumstances, it would’ve been a glorious late-December day.
The Riverwood neighborhood of Cordova where they lived was a typical example of urban sprawl in which urbanized areas, such as low-density residential neighborhoods and supporting retail businesses, gradually spread from the cities into the rural areas surrounding them.
Her grandparents’ home was one of the six original houses built on the lake. The rest of the surrounding land had been owned by farmers who gladly accepted the big money offered by developers as Memphis exploded in population. The changes Jill had experienced over her nearly forty years were untold. The streets she was walking on now to chat with her neighbors were once paths taken by cattle when it was feeding time.
Initially, Jill was surprised by how few of her neighbors were home. She couldn’t decide if it was because they’d traveled elsewhere for the holidays, or perhaps they’d been caught downtown like she was. In any event, the first three places she sought out in order to visit with women she’d met through church or the kids’ school functions were devoid of activity.
She walked farther out of the neighborhood toward Germantown Road. She tried one more house of a family whose daughter was in Sunday school class with Emily. Only the mother was home. Her husband had taken their daughter, a child of her previous marriage, to meet her ex-husband at the airport. The ex-husband lived in Dallas and had flown up to pick up the child for a week’s stay. She hadn’t heard from them since.
The woman was too distraught to help find the parents of the possibly orphaned children and was too clingy for Jill to stay with her much longer. Jill said goodbye and walked another two blocks to try one more acquaintance. She was already becoming concerned. She’d been gone for over an hour and was uncomfortable leaving Emily alone to begin with.
She started up the street and struck up a casual conversation with a man and his wife talking in their front yard with another couple. She relayed the news from the Nashville radio station to them, but they offered nothing in the way of information in return. They did have a couple of gallons of spring water to offer Jill, who graciously accepted them. She promised to have one of the kids run back a twelve-pack of Coke, but they said that wasn’t necessary. They were glad to help.
As she was leaving their home, she felt a tremor. It was so slight she wondered if her mind was playing tricks on her. The two women exchanged glances and looked around the house.
There was another one. Stronger than the first and it left no doubt what was happening.
“Aftershocks?” the woman asked.
Jill set the water on her foyer table and said without turning, “I have to go.”
She raced past the three adults who’d suddenly appeared in the front yard, nervously looking in all directions. Before she could reach the asphalt road, the ground lifted and threw her upward several feet before she landed hard on her side.
The impact knocked the wind out of Jill. She gasped for breath, her eyes wide as she looked all around her. If this was an aftershock, it was gonna be a big one. Breathing hard to the point of hyperventilation, Jill found her footing and began running down the street as fast as she could.
The intensity of the tremor increased. Behind her, the asphalt began to crack until a gap of more than a foot appeared. Jill ran, frantically looking over her shoulder as the stitch in the road chased her.
“Leave me alone!” she shrieked as she zigzagged down the street, running toward the curb on the right to avoid the developing fissure, only to have it follow her. Or so it seemed.
Suddenly, the fissure took a hard left and cut through a yard. It swallowed several trees, a riding lawn mower, and a red Kia parked in the driveway.
“No! No! No!” she shouted three times as she turned the corner toward her house. Several of the homes were starting to succumb to the second round of seismic activity. Bricks were falling off their façades. Glass was breaking out from the twisting and turning of the window frames. Trees were being lifted out of the ground and uprooted before being tossed to the ground.
But it was the mini-explosions erupting from the ground that puzzled her and eventually sent her tumbling down the street, ripping and tearing at her arms and legs. She crawled on her bloodied knees to the grass. She fought through the pain to stand. Jill stood in awe and shock as the asphalt street began to break into chunks before disappearing into the ground several feet.
Her eyes grew wide as a huge explosion accompanied by a fireball occurred behind her. Then there was another one. The area around Germantown Road sounded like a war zone.
Jill forgot her pain. She brushed off her bloody knees and elbows. She ran like the wind to find her children.
Chapter Forty-Three
Sunday, December 23
Atwood Residence
Cordova, Tennessee
Emily was enjoying the quiet solitude of the family room. She’d been one who always enjoyed her private time away from school, activities, and family gatherings. She loved to read, and one of her favorite pastimes was immersing herself in the latest video game apps for her iPad. Regardless of the latest and greatest game, Emily always seemed to gravitate back to Candy Crush. The game had been around for years. It had been continuously upgraded with new artwork and unique board designs. Hundreds of new stages challenged players of all capabilities. Plus, it was relatively brainless. When Emily wanted to relax, she sought out brainless activities.
She’d played for a while and then decided to mosey outdoors and enjoy some sunshine. The weather was exactly the way she liked it. She enjoyed bundling up in a sweater or a loose-fitting sweatshirt. There was something about the leafless trees with the occasional evergreen mixed in. A fire coupled with a mug of hot chocolate couldn’t be beat. In some respects, Emily was twelve going on thirty as she emulated the simp
le enjoyments preferred by her mom.
In addition, it was years of the family placing an emphasis on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The Hallmark Channel playing continuously created an atmosphere of love, family, and reflection. Even for a twelve-year-old, growing up in this kind of environment had a profound impact on how she developed. Her mom had avoided the kind of life led by her mother. Instead, raised by her grandmother, Jill epitomized the Norman Rockwell mom in an apron, serving up the fresh-baked cookies. When Emily visualized her future, that was what she saw as well.
The Atwoods’ backyard wasn’t particularly large, but it was directly on the lake in the center of the neighborhood. They had a fixed wooden dock capable of holding a flat-bottom boat or a canoe, neither of which they owned. Emily enjoyed walking to the end, removing her shoes, and dangling her feet in the water during the summer. Ever the show-off, her more athletic brother liked to do backflips and somersaults into the lake.
Another favorite pastime, especially in the winter months, was when migratory waterfowl stopped by to take a break en route to warmer climates. Memphis was in the heart of the Mississippi Flyway, a watershed twenty-three hundred miles long stretching from the top of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.
Old Man Winter didn’t discourage the regular feeder birds like chickadees, sparrows, and finches from hanging around. Emily saw them most of the year. She loved what she began to call the Big Show. It was the time when the ducks and geese arrived in large numbers. She’d even purchased from the TWRA, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, a laminated identification card that Jack had punched a hole through and affixed to the garden bird feed bucket.
Growing up, Emily constantly glanced out the back windows of their home, hoping to catch a glimpse of a ring-necked duck or a red-breasted merganser. Sure, the Canada geese and mallard ducks were regulars, but it was the exotics that thrilled Emily the most.
She’d stood on the deck that late Sunday morning with her binoculars, scanning the ever-withering lake. She was amazed at the exposed bank all the way around the water’s edge. Grass that still retained a hint of green turned to brown and then mud as it approached the current water level. After decades of being under water, the soil leading into the lake was moist and muddy.
A flock of ring-necked ducks circled and landed in the lake near the Atwoods’ backyard. Emily’s heart raced as she saw them washing themselves and milling about. There were dozens of them, prompting her to swiftly, but casually so as not to frighten them, make her way up to the house to fetch her garden seed bucket.
When she returned, the ducks were still doing what ducks do. Emily opened the lid of the bucket and grabbed the galvanized steel scoop. She filled it with a generous helping of sunflower seeds, crushed corn, and oats. She reached back and slung it toward the water. The feed fell woefully short, and the ducks didn’t even seem to notice.
She tried again but failed to reach the water’s edge with her toss. A slight breeze blowing across the withering lake toward her didn’t help matters. Emily was determined to feed the visitors, who bred near Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada, and wintered throughout the Southeastern United States.
Frustrated, she lifted the three-quarters-full, five-gallon bucket and walked back toward the house to exit the dock. She carefully made her way down the slope, beyond the dormant grass marking the end of their yard, and down into the muddy, somewhat slippery exposed lake bottom.
She pushed the heel of her sneakers into the soft mud to keep her stability. She worked her way closer to the water’s edge, keeping her strides to twelve-to-fifteen inches at a time. She cautiously approached the lake until the ground became too muddy and wet to approach further.
“Okay, you guys,” she advised the ducks. “Now you’ll get some treats.”
She set the bucket down in the mud, scooped up the feed, and tossed it underhanded toward the paddling ducks. They immediately responded and scrambled toward the feed before it sank under the water’s surface.
Pleased with her first effort, Emily threw out another scoop. The ducks happily ate it up although there was a group to the side who stubbornly refused to partake in the feeding frenzy.
“You can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Emily repeated a sentence her dad often used when encouraging the kids to finish their meal. She had no idea where it came from. It was a parent thing, she’d surmised.
She scooped up another heaping portion, so much so that some of it fell out of the scoop. She heaved it toward the nonparticipating ducks with an extra effort.
Emily slipped ever so slightly. Her eyes grew wide in panic as she tried to keep her footing. The scoop fell out of her hand, and the bucket tipped over by her side. The lip of the opening stuck in the mud, preventing it from rolling into the water. However, it didn’t stop it from spilling all of the feed at the edge. She waved her arms in a windmill motion to maintain her balance. She started to fall backwards, but she was able to plant her right hand and push herself upright.
Emily had avoided slipping into the lake. Then Mother Earth’s shaken fury threw Emily in anyway.
When the earthquake hit, she was immediately tossed several feet into the air until she landed in the murky water. By the time her head popped back above the surface, the ducks had taken off in a flurry, further startling the young girl. Emily shrieked and covered her head with her arms, causing her to dip slightly below the surface. She kicked with both legs to push her body upward.
She tried to tread water, but the cable-knit sweater she was wearing weighed her down, causing her arms to fatigue. Emily kicked harder to raise herself higher out of the water in order to shout.
“Help! Help me!”
Gravity pulled her beneath the surface. She flung her arms about, desperate to get her head above water. The sweater fought against her, causing her to panic. Like Houdini in the midst of a magic act using a straightjacket, Emily tore her arms out of the sweater until it floated away from her. All of her gyrations forced her farther away from the bank.
Her head bobbed above the surface once again. A deafening roar filled her ears. All around her, the ground was shaking. The water had developed waves, some with whitecaps atop them. And the wind had picked up considerably. The combination of the two seemed to be pulling her away from shore.
Emily spun around and looked toward her house. Oddly, the water level had dropped another two feet from where her feed bucket was embedded in the mud. She kicked as hard as she could to raise her head and shoulders out of the water as each wave swept over her. The mud line was growing. She realized what was happening.
The water is draining out of the lake!
Emily began swimming aggressively toward the house. The dock was obscured from view by the rollicking waves on the normally still lake. As she swam over a crest, she could catch a glimpse of the dock, encouraging her to keep swimming.
She was making progress. She was twenty feet away. Ten feet.
Suddenly, a tall, mature oak tree from the neighbor’s backyard groaned and cracked before falling sideways along the bank. It crashed into the Atwoods’ dock, breaking it into splinters. The leafless tree then started to slide down the muddy embankment until it came to rest halfway between where the dock once stood and the new waterline, four feet below where it was just minutes ago.
Emily’s energy was waning, but she fought for her survival. She swam harder. Her resolve to live was there. She made her way to the edge. She tried to get her footing beneath the water to climb out. At first, she slipped backwards and had to start over. She used her small, delicate hands to dig into the mud to get a grip. She pulled her way up and halfway out of the lake.
She set her jaw, and a determined expression came over her face. One hand over the other, she pulled herself up the water-saturated bank as the earth shook in an effort to break her grip. Emily kept digging, pushing off with her feet and clawing with her hands, digging her nails into the steep, muddy slope. She was wholly out of the water now. Up
she crawled, a foot or so at a time, but progress nonetheless. The earthquake continued, fighting like a bedeviled bull trying to throw famed rodeo star Cooper Armstrong off his back.
Then the uprooted oak began to slide down the embankment toward her.
Chapter Forty-Four
Sunday, December 23
Harahan Bridge
West Bank of the Mississippi River
West Memphis, Arkansas
“Run!” Jack shouted at the top of his lungs. There was no mistaking what was happening. A second earthquake had roared to life. Tony remained frozen for a moment, but Jack racing past him brought his mind back into the present. He glanced back toward the couple they’d abandoned and saw they were gripped in fear. He gritted his teeth and almost turned back when Jack screamed his name again. “Tony!”
The jolt to the earth was massive. Unlike the first earthquake that struck St. Louis with its rolling, ground-swelling appearance, the second quake struck the region with the force of a hundred thousand atom bombs detonating all at once. The impact on North America would be unfathomable. But for Jack and Tony, it placed them in the midst of a textbook unstoppable force paradox.
It was the classic self-contradiction that occurred when an unstoppable force met an immovable object. Both the force and the object were presumed to be indestructible. However, in nature, one or the other must win out.
Jack and Tony would’ve implicitly rooted for the immovable object, the Harahan Bridge, to prevail over the unstoppable force, the toppling of the close by Memphis-Arkansas Bridge. However, as was most often the case, when two indestructible titans did battle, the only thing that was assured was mutually assured destruction.