by M M Buckner
Max smiled and kissed her nose. “He set me free to pursue my music career.”
His dusky face loomed close. Was he handsome? She watched his amber-gold eyes narrow with concentration as he scrubbed a patch of mud in her hairline. His nose seemed larger than she remembered. His breath smelled of chewing gum. Could this be the father of her child?
No. There is no child. No child.
“We’ll have to pretend you brought me around.” She squeezed his arm.
“Girl, this job ain’ my only hope. You do what your lespir say. Only”—he dampened the bandana with his tongue—“maybe that nomm right this one time. Two men dead, Ceegie. They dead.”
She flinched, but he caught the back of her neck and steadied her. Gently, he continued cleaning. As he massaged the bandana over her temple, he hummed softly. The new tune he’d composed for Marie still needed more sharpness in the bridge, more piquant. Almost unconsciously, he worked at the melody line. CJ closed her eyes and listened.
When he felt her relax, he spoke again. “Sacony remind me of Popa Coon hemmed in by a pack of dogs. He lie, fight nasty, sneak around. I dis the old deyò. But he ain’ lazy. He got espíritu.”
She caught his bandana in her fist and jerked it away. “I can’t believe you’re siding with him.”
“No sides, lamie.” Max bit his lip. The last thing he wanted was to upset her. Every time they met, he could see her deciding whether she still cared for him. Maybe today, that decision would not go in his favor. But there came times when a man had to plunge in. He considered his next words carefully.
“Djab dile, he like a wild éléphant. Natural and blameless, minding his business, tromping along to the water hole.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“But he tromping where people live. Éléphant and people don’ mix. They hurt each other. Tha’s natural, too.”
“It doesn’t have to be a war.” She pushed back from the table and stood up, knowing he was right and furious that she couldn’t change what was “natural.”
Max dreaded the anger in her eyes, but he had to finish what he’d started. “We coming up on Plaquemine. Lotta people live there, and they blameless, too. We got to put djab dile in a cage, else somebody get hurt.”
Hot blood mottled her cheeks. “They’ll destroy him. You know that.”
“Get you a little piece to keep alive. This might be your las’ chance.”
Her fingernails ripped through the bandana in her fist. When she saw what she’d done, she dropped it on the table. “I know you need money, but I never dreamed you would grovel to Roman Sacony.”
They stared at each other. CJ was the first to drop her eyes. “Tell your bossman you brought me around.”
When she was gone, Max lay his head on the table and gazed sideways out the porthole at the white empty sky.
Corrode
Friday, March 18
5:00 PM
News about the Watermind repeated at the bottom of every hour on Channel 17, thanks to Hal Butler. Hal had scooped the story to the local Baton Rouge station in exchange for his brand-new assignment as roving TV reporter. He’d had enough of his windowless office. Print was dead. Blogs were for amateurs. Hal was going mainstream.
He slouched in a deck chair on the station’s sleek aluminum pontoon boat and sipped a rum mojito. While his cameraman shot telescopic footage of the ray guns aimed at Manchac Point, he cracked his knuckles, swelled out his chest and watched himself on a small battery-powered TV.
The taped segment showed him interviewing a black man in a Devil Rays cap. His screen was too small to read the text at the bottom, which would have identified the man as Merton Voinché, a recently retired Quimicron employee.
“These secret experiments in Devil’s Swamp,” Hal mouthed his own words as his TV mirror image spoke them aloud, “is that where Quimicron invented the Watermind?”
“Man, I signed the disclose pledge. I cain’ say nothin’ about that evil water.” Merton made bug eyes at the camera. He was standing outside the Pickle Barrel bar, weaving slightly and showing off for his drinking buddies who crowded behind. “Yeah, all that poison they been dumpin’, they done stir up Baron Samedi. I cain’ tell you about that. They sue my a—” Channel 17 bleeped the last word.
With touching sympathy, Hal asked Merton if Quimicron had threatened him.
“Hell yes.” Merton turned to his friends and laughed, and the camera caught a fuzzy close-up of his ear. “We ain’ suppose to speak about how that Mexican boy froze. Or how that water done eat through solid steel. So you just better turn them cameras off. You ain’ getting nothing outta my mouth.”
Rapid fade. Hal rubbed his palms together as the scene switched to a new location, the deck of a yacht where Hal stood interviewing the Quimicron CEO. Roman Sacony, in person. Hal salivated at his own gorgeous image standing mano a mano with the billionaire. Bold dreams required bold actions. Hal had snuck aboard with a camcorder and caught Sacony unawares.
Sacony didn’t try to hide. When Hal’s camera closed in for a tight shot, his black eyes didn’t even blink. He looked like an aging Latin soccer player. “We think the chemical reaction began spontaneously,” he said, “from an unstable mix of pollutants that washed onto our property from upriver. We detected it quite by chance, and we’re assisting the authorities to neutralize it.”
Hal grinned at the shaky footage and thought, You’re lying out your blowhole.
“The emulsion is very cold, and it may be corrosive,” Sacony spoke straight into the camera, “so we’re advising people to stay away from this area.”
Hal rubbed his damp lips. On screen, his strikingly telegenic image asked another brilliant question, which he silently recited, cherishing each pregnant phrase. “Admit it, Sacony. You invented this water-based artificial intelligence in a joint venture with the CIA. Am I right?”
Sacony’s expression was like no smile Hal had ever seen, a tense, almost painful grimace. He shoved the camera away, then covered the lens with his hand.
“Yes!” Hal bounced in his deck chair. “Gotcha, buddy. That’s a money shot.”
The segment cut to a floor cleaner ad, and Hal felt ecstatic. Powerful drama! He really had a knack for interviews. His fingers itched for his razor blade, mirror, and coke, but regrettably, he’d left those vital articles behind in Baton Rouge.
Warp
Friday, March 18
7:56 PM
A big round moon floated above the treeline, almost full. A yellow seed moon. Far from the spill of town lights, the moon’s face seemed shrewder and more critical than CJ remembered. She could feel its judgmental light burning her cheeks. Alone with the sound equipment aboard the Chausseur, she watched LEDs blink red and green. Garbled music radiated from the water, and fury hit her in gusts. The colloid was a miracle, not a beast to be tricked and tortured. She knew she was right, very right. Yet she’d been wrong to Max.
“Forgive me,” she whispered.
But it was too late for apologies. When Max left in his jetboat, she let him go without saying a word. Though all he did was speak the truth. Two people were dead. Two human beings. Alive. Then not alive. Manuel de Silva. The helicopter pilot. The moon seemed to blur and pulse in time with her shifting thoughts. Yes, her child prodigy could be vicious.
Like me, she thought. And a memory of crimson droplets stained a sea-green wall.
Spotlights flashed along the dark river, and whippoor-wills called across the flooded field. CJ smashed her fist against the gunwale again and again until it ached.
When Dan Meir came shuffling along and saw her huddled against the stern rail, he came at once to her side. “What’s the matter, honey? Are you sick?” He patted her shoulder and asked if she needed a drink of water. “I thought you’d want to know,” he said, “the cold spot’s moving.”
She sprang to her feet.
On the bridge computer, Dan showed her where the blue blot was oozing downriver, skirting the jetboats. As the slick rounded
the bend, Dan, Elaine, and CJ watched the screen in taut silence. When it moved into the main current and accelerated for Plaquemine, CJ rushed out to the deck, but spotlights blinded her view. Far away, the river raced South, and she realized she was the one trapped. Marooned on this luxury yacht, she had no way to follow the colloid.
Boil
Friday, March 18
8:23 PM
On the Pilgrim, Roman grabbed the radio mike and called his jetboat pilots. “Aim your generators at the east bank. Wear your gas masks.”
“We haven’t checked that area for pedestrians,” Ebbs thundered.
“This wasn’t in your permit,” Jarmond said.
Roman pulled at his shirtfront. His heart was thudding out of rhythm. He gripped the radio mike and wheezed, “Fire at will.”
Across the water, CJ saw the boat lights go dark a split second before she heard the thudding hiss of the pulse. Then the river strobed with fireworks, like giant flashbulbs popping underwater. “They’re shooting the EM guns!”
She ran back to the bridge, knocking headlong into Peter, who was just waking from a nap. At the yacht’s helm, she flipped toggle switches, trying to start up the engines, but she didn’t know how the controls worked.
“We can’t move. We’re anchored,” Peter said.
“Give me your cell phone.” Without waiting for his answer, she tore his phone from his belt clip and keyed Max’s number. Max could come in his jetboat.
Aboard the Pilgrim, Roman drew shallow breaths through his gas mask and watched the light show. His chest was still spasming, and he felt faint, but he moved closer to the computer screen where Ebbs and the others were waiting for the next scan. Again and again, the jetboat pilots fired their guns, and the river blinked surreally. Dead fish erupted on the surface.
Kill the bastardo, Roman prayed to no God at all, as every fiber of his soul yearned toward those chromatic pixels downloading from space. May it be deleted. Disappeared. Dead.
Seconds trickled by. The screen began to paint. Then, simultaneously, everyone’s cell phone rang. They glanced at each other uncertainly as a dozen dissonant ring tones overlapped. Roman touched his ear loop, and the others reached for their cells. But before anyone could answer, the Pilgrim rose up like an airplane taking off from a runway.
Out on deck, a crewman wailed, “The Mesippi’s boiling!”
Roman stumbled outside into a wall of searing stream. For a moment, he was blinded. Then he saw the world turned on its edge. The Coast Guard tender was sliding sideways down a tremendous white swell in the river. He caught dizzy glimpses of volatile froth and panic-stricken crewmen. Then he realized what had happened. The colloid had released its heat.
Set free all at once, the pent-up heat in the Freon foam had exploded outward, expanding thousands of gallons of river water into a blistering white dome. Roman could only imagine the compression wave that must be ripping up and down the banks.
The Pilgrim leaned precariously as she slid down the swell, and the crew fought to control her. Seconds later, her hull slammed against a wing wall, and Roman was thrown off his feet. Bodies tumbled together. Roman flailed for a handhold, any support. But nothing felt solid. The wet metal rail scalded his fingers. He used all his strength to pull himself up. Ebbs ordered him below deck, but instead, he staggered to the bridge. On the computer screen, the colloid’s infrared image had changed from cold blue to raging scarlet.
But the next download was even more startling. It came through just before the computers shorted out. The pixels had reverted from red to icy blue. The colloid was chilling again, rapidly taking back its heat. And the swollen river was contracting. Where the dome had been, a depression formed in the water. And the air filled with the terrible liquid chatter of a sucking vacuum.
Roman’s heart jolted out of time. He grabbed for a hold as the Pilgrim pitched away from the wing dam and rushed upriver with the collapsing water. His chest thumped brutal syncopation. He heard boulders crashing, men screaming, metal snapping in two. He tore at his collar. He couldn’t see, but he knew the imploding water would suck the Pilgrim down.
Wreck
Friday, March 18
11:02 PM
After an hour of vicious oscillation, the river below Manchac Point flowed like coagulated ink. Coast Guard floodlights punctuated the darkness, checking for damage among the flotilla of boats. Broken timbers and Styrofoam cups mingled with ancient wreckage stirred up from the river bottom. Part of an antique stern-wheeler. A gutted Model T.
Along the east bank, helicopters dropped bundles of heavy sandbags to shore up a crack in the levee. While ground crews signaled with flashlights, welders cut bright blue arcs along the Pilgrim’s black hull, sealing a gash. The Coast Guard tender was built to take weather. She remained afloat. On the bridge, Roman allowed a medic to bandage a cut on his chin. He didn’t mention his irregular heartbeat. Six people were missing.
An AP reporter got through to the Pilgrim by radio. Roman met the grim old eyes of Captain Ebbs while he told the Associated Press that a natural gas pipeline had ruptured under the river. Ebbs chewed his mustache, then stalked out to the deck to oversee the repairs to his ship. Roman felt clammy and light-headed. He slumped down onto a bench and glanced at Jarmond, but the younger man was peering at the modest rooftops nestling beyond the levee. The city of Plaquemine lay less than a mile downriver.
Jarmond jerked at his sparse goatee. “Those people. We’ve got to do something.”
“We’re blind without our computers.” Roman radioed Dan Meir on the Chausseur. “Are you getting an image?”
“No. Nothing. We’re trying to bring our power back up.” Meir cuddled an anxious Elaine while he told Roman about the ten-foot wave that came out of nowhere and nearly swamped them.
“As soon as you can, bring the yacht.” Roman took a deep breath. “Is Reilly okay?”
“Oh yeah. She’s about ready to walk on water to get over there.”
Roman deactivated his ear loop, and his mind went flaccid. His heart arrhythmia was easing. He’d never experienced that before, but he had no leisure to think about it. In fact, he couldn’t think at all. Conflicting brain chemicals flooded his synapses. For the first time in his life, he had no idea what his next move should be. Loosening his collar, he felt the approach of something he had never expected. Failure.
Gorge
Friday, March 18
11:44 PM
As the Chausseur waddled across the shallow field toward the river, CJ gripped the phone she’d borrowed from Peter. She needed information. What caused that rogue wave? But Max wouldn’t answer her call. She punched his number again. “Pick up, damn it.” She didn’t know Max’s phone was ringing that very moment in the Chausseur’s galley, directly below her feet. Roman had confiscated the phone when he caught Max speaking to her on the sly. After using it to trace her location, he locked it in a food bin.
Because of the darkness, she couldn’t see the river, and local news coverage wasn’t much help. They were reporting a gas line break, but she knew that was a lie. That wave had rocked the Chausseur like an earthquake. River pilots were reporting damage as far north as Brusly Landing. But the yacht’s power and computers had come back online, and they were downloading satellite scans again. The plume had fractured into five small pieces.
As the yacht drew closer to the river, floodlights revealed the ragged break in the levee, and a cloud of hot steam stung her face. She thought of the gas mask, where had she dropped it? Closer still, she saw an overturned boat. Two. No, three jetboats had capsized. The wet air scorched her bare skin. Max?
Along both riverbanks, debris collected in sodden clumps, and on all the trees and bushes, new spring leaves hung withered. Cattails lay limp in the water like poached noodles. Even the dead stumps had a blistered look. She began to grasp the magnitude of the calamity.
Harry laughed in her ear. “Do you still think you understand this better than everyone?”
She kept hitting
redial, but Max stayed silent. Two LifeFlight helicopters set down on top of the levee, and when she realized they were evacuating injured people, she raced to the stern to get her binoculars. Police cruisers roared up the river. The Channel 17 pontoon boat was trying to get closer. Horns blared, and spotlights flashed through the trees like reckless goblins.
Her binoculars blinded her at first. Still set on infrared, they construed the roving spotlights as nuclear flashes. She dialed down the setting just in time to see two men in orange life vests retrieving a wad of garbage from the water’s edge. The loose raggedy clump had a familiar shape. Clotted white scraps fell away like cheese curds as the men lifted it, and she zoomed in for a closer view. Spongy, fibrous veins—some kind of fungus? Then she saw the human hand.
As the gorge rose in her throat, she zoomed her binoculars closer. The two men were stuffing the object into a zipper bag, but the hand fell off and rolled down the bank. Its fingers stood out like fat yellow carrots.
CJ turned and pressed her back against the rail until the cold steel bruised her spine. But the image wouldn’t leave her. The fat yellow fingers. She remembered Harry’s hand splayed across his desk. His brains splashed across the sea-green wall.
Her eyes squeezed almost shut. Her mouth stretched out of shape. No, please no, that couldn’t be Max’s hand. Urgently, she punched his number. Sliding to the deck, she pressed the borrowed phone to her cheek. “Please, please, pick up.”
Roar
Friday, March 18
11:58 PM
Rick Jarmond called the governor. He didn’t call his Corps supervisor first, as he should have. Nearly ten thousand people lived in Placquemine, and Rick fervently believed in their right to know. All evening, Rick had been hugging his thin jacket close around his chest and chewing the plastic cap of his pen. He resented the way Captain Ebbs stepped all over his authority, and how Sacony, a private citizen—maybe not even a citizen—consistently took matters in his own hands. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should be heading this operation. Rick shrank from telling his boss how these others had usurped him. Col. Joshua Lima, the New Orleans district engineer, wasn’t known for tolerance. So instead, Rick called the governor.