Eukie James was trapped. He’d figured that out. He was trapped and he couldn’t help Victor or Emily or Showanda or anybody.
“Damn it?” he said into the mike. “What was that about Latimer Street?” The whole damn city was on fire. That was clear enough. All a man had to do was look at that glow on the clouds.
He thought about Victor and tears came burning to his eyes.
“Where was that?” Eukie demanded of the mike. “Where was that damn looting?” And the dead boy kept staring at him with his son’s eyes. Reminding him that there wasn’t anything he could do.
It was usually quiet on these back roads. The worst thing he’d ever seen since he’d been patrolling here were some car accidents where nobody was badly hurt, even if a lot of metal got bent. His presence helped to keep the speed down, and people waved at him in a friendly way when he drove past. And now this. Nuclear war or something, Eukie figured, somebody finally pushed the button. Some asshole shot a rocket at Memphis, and the whole place had gone up in fire.
And there was nothing Eukie could do to help his family, who were probably right smack in the middle of that—what was it called?—firestorm.
He couldn’t get to them. A whole forest of trees had fallen across the road both in front of him and behind, and he couldn’t move the patrol car off this little piece of ground. He’d barely avoided a power pole that tried to fall right on the car—there was a big scar on the trunk where it had bounded off. He’d never before thought a public utility would try to kill him.
All that seemed to exist on his little strip of state road was the collapsed Mobil station with its little population of dead people. Eukie had heard the screams from the wreckage as soon as he pulled over to the side of the road after the nuclear strike, or whatever it was. He’d dug through the fallen brick Mobil station, gashing his hands on broken glass, till he’d found the kid, the little black boy with the staring eyes, no more than six years old. But even after he’d dragged the boy out of the rubble and wiped the brick dust from his face and tried to revive him with mouth-to-mouth—even after he’d pounded on the kid’s chest and breathed for him and shouted at the kid to wake up—even after all that, the screams went on, and so Eukie finally worked out that there was someone else trapped in the building. And then, digging farther into the wreckage, he found the old man, an old white-haired black man in overalls. Maybe he was the kid’s grandpa. All the man could do was stare up with his yellow eyes and scream. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t answer Eukie’s questions, all he could do was take another breath and yell. So Eukie grabbed him under the arms and put his back into hauling him out of the wreckage. The old man gave one last full-blooded shriek and then fell limp.
And as soon as Eukie got him clear, he knew why.
The old man had left his legs in the wrecked station. Sliced off by falling glass or something. Eukie fell to the ground in shock when he saw the stumps spurting blood. The man just rolled his head to the left and died. Eukie’s hauling him out had completed the partial severing of his legs. Had sliced the arteries and killed him.
Eukie jumped up and felt himself all over to make sure he didn’t have blood on him. If he found a wet spot, he tried to brush it off.
It was then that he noticed how much the dead boy looked like his own son Victor. Fear tingled cold along his nerves. He ran back to the car, got on the radio. But nobody would listen to his ten-fifty-five, his call for an ambulance. All the other officers seemed to have plenty of ten-fifty-fives of their own. The air rang with ten-threes, commands to clear the air and let someone talk. But people kept jabbering away anyhow.
Maybe they weren’t hearing each other properly, because Eukie’s reception was very spotty. Sometimes that happened, the flat wet ground tended to soak up radio signals, but now there was a lot of static, too, as if there was some kind of serious electrical disturbance. There were a lot of ten-ones, people signaling they were having trouble receiving the radio calls.
Eukie sagged into the car and listened to all the calls. Darkness gathered around him. Every so often the ground would shake, as if another bomb was going off somewhere.
Ten-forty-three, rescue call. Ten-thirty-three, fire. Ten-eighty-three, officer in trouble. Ten-fifty-eight, dead on arrival. Ten-seventy, chemical spill. Ten-nine, repeat. Ten-three, clear this channel. Ten-seventy-two, street blocked. Ten-thirty-three-four, hospital on fire. Ten-fifty-three-one, fire alarm. Ten-nine, repeat. Ten-forty-six, send a wrecker. Ten-nine, repeat transmission. Ten-three, clear this channel. Ten-nine, repeat. And calls for which there were no ten-codes: Power lines down. People trapped in building. Flooding on the riverfront.
He looked at the dead boy, and he saw Victor’s eyes.
Ten-eighty-one, civil disturbance.
Ten-sixty-nine, sniper.
Ten-eighty-three, officer in trouble.
Eukie grabbed the mike, thumbed the button. “Where?” he said.
“Looters.” A breathless voice. “Latimer Street.”
Damn. Eukie lived on Latimer street.
“You are authorized—”
“Ten-three! Stop transmitting, for Christ’s sake!”
“—to shoot looters on sight. Repeat.”
“Ten-one, dispatch. I am not receiving—”
“What?” Eukie demanded. “Where on Latimer Street?”
“Will you ten-three, damn it!”
“Shoot on sight. Repeat.”
“Ten-one, dispatch. I am not—”
“God damn it!” Eukie took off his hat and threw it down the road. People were shooting on his own damn street and there was nothing he could do about it. He wanted to grab the shotgun out of the car and run south to Latimer Street to defend his family, but it was twenty miles away, and he knew he’d never make it through the kind of chaos he could hear on the radio. He stamped back and forth past the door of his car, tethered at the limit of the mike cord. He tried not to look at the dead boy with his son’s face.
In disgust he threw down the mike and stalked down the broken road to find his hat.
“Where the hell—?” he asked the world. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” He jammed his hat back on his head and gazed defiantly into the darkness. And then twigs and brush crackled as something moved ahead on the road. Adrenaline sang in Eukie’s veins. “Who’s that?” he demanded.
There was no answer, but the sounds got closer.
Eukie backed for a few steps, then turned and sprinted for his car. He was breathing hard by the time he dived head-first into the passenger compartment, grabbed the Remington shotgun, and racked in a round. The ten-codes spat out of the radio. Officer in trouble. Fire. Looters.
Eukie turned on the driver’s door spotlight and panned it across the darkness. A white-faced cow gazed back at him.
A cow.
Eukie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Jesus,” he said. “Jesus God Almighty.” The cow ambled past, oblivious to whatever had destroyed the city to the south. That cow, Eukie thought, was having herself an adventure. She had probably never been out of her pasture before.
“Jesus,” he said again. He leaned the shotgun against the side of the vehicle. The radio continued to rattle out its ten-codes.
Ten-thirty-three-four, hospital on fire.
Ten-fifty-three-one, fire alarm.
Ten-nine, repeat.
Ten-forty-six, send a wrecker.
Looters.
You are authorized to shoot…
Victor’s dead eyes gazed up at him from the broken pavement.
“What about Latimer Street?” he said into the mike. “What about that ten-eighty-three?”
“Ten-three! Ten-three!”
“Damn it,” Eukie said, “what about Latimer Street?”
“Officer needs assistance…”
“Ten-three! Clear the air, whoever you are!”
“Listen, motherfucker,” Eukie said. He could feel tears springing to his eyes. “What about Latimer Street! What’s going down out there?
” All he could see was Victor’s dead face.
“Asshole!” the dispatcher yelled. “Ten-three when I tell you to ten-three!”
“What about my son?” Eukie demanded.
It was then that the looters came out of the darkness. “Say, brother,” one of them said. Fear and anger blazed through Eukie’s veins. He spun and through his mask of tears saw the looter looming right out of the darkness, a huge man, big hands clasped around a cardboard box full of stuff he’d stolen, complete with a huge silver pot he’d probably killed somebody for. There was blood all on his face and clothes, probably from beating someone to death over that silver pot, and the looter had some kind of weird stripes on his forehead that strobed in the emergency lights of the car. The looter looked like the Frankenstein Monster.
And there was another looter right behind him, a tall man whose features were obscured by the darkness. And probably there were more looters behind, circling the car, trying to sneak up on Eukie while the first two distracted him.
All Eukie could think of was that Victor and Showanda and Emily were depending on him.
“Don’t you move, nigger!” Eukie yelled, and reached for the shotgun. The looter’s eyes widened in surprise. And when Eukie fired, it was those eyes he used for an aiming point.
Nick’s heart dropped into his shoes at the sound of the shotgun, and he stared at the scene in shock. The first round was birdshot, lightweight pellets, but it hit Viondi in the face. Viondi staggered back, dropping the cardboard box. The silver samovar clanged on the pavement. Viondi raised his hands to his eyes.
“Hey,” Nick said, too surprised even to move, but the cop was shouting, “God damn it, God damn it!” and he jacked another round in the shotgun.
The second round was double-ought buckshot, twelve steel pellets each the size of a 9mm pistol round, and it struck Viondi full in the chest. He threw his arms wide and fell back into Nick. Nick dropped his suitcase and tried to catch Viondi, but Viondi’s big body was all great ungainly weight, and Nick found himself falling with Viondi on top of him. He landed hard, feeling the impact slam up his spine, and while he was falling he heard the awful click-clack of another round being fed into the chamber.
“Hey,” he said again, but the cop kept shouting.
“Stay away from my family, motherfucker!” And then another round went off, and Nick felt a breath of air on his face as the pellets whirred past his face.
Click-clack. Nick felt concrete bite his hands as he scrambled out from beneath Viondi’s heavy body. The cop was standing right over him, and the barrel looked the size of a cannon. Nick stared for a long, cold eternity at his own death, an invisible fist closing off the air in his throat, and he saw the cop’s brown finger twitch on the trigger.
Snap. That was all. No explosion. The shotgun had jammed.
“Shit!” the cop screamed, and he banged the butt of the shotgun on the ground. Nick took off. He didn’t know how he got to his feet, how he managed to start running, suddenly he just was, and he was running fast. And when the gun went off again, he just ran faster. He could hear the cop’s screams behind him as he fled into the night.
After a while, he realized he’d run off the road into a field, and that in the dark he couldn’t find his way back.
And then, when he ran into the water, he couldn’t find his way out of it.
Before nightfall Dr. Calhoun drove up to the Church of the End Times in his bus. “Heard your message on the radio,” he told Frankland. “The Rails River bridge is out, and I can’t get all my kids home. And they won’t have homes anyway, because every home out here is wrecked, and so is my church, and so is my trailer.”
“Your people are welcome,” Frankland said.
The bus was full, adults as well as children. Calhoun had been trying to drop off the kids, but instead he’d ended up rescuing their families from wrecked homes.
“I’ve put Sheryl in charge down at the church,” Frankland said. “She’ll find room for your kids to sleep.”
“Thank you, Brother Frankland.”
Calhoun gave the news to his people on the bus. People began pouring out. Frankland recognized some of his own parishioners, adults and children both, and some of Reverend Garb’s black kids, still in their white shirts and slacks. Frankland turned to Calhoun.
“Can you ask some of the men if they’re willing to join some teams I want to send out to find the injured and bring them in? And also to scavenge for food and such? We should get back to the Piggly Wiggly just to get the food before it spoils.”
Calhoun nodded his bald head. “That’s good thinking, Reverend.”
“I knew this would happen. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.” Frankland smiled. “In just seven years, Christ’s kingdom will be established here on earth. And we can help, if we can get things organized fast enough.”
“Well,” Dr. Calhoun said, “as someone who just gave up being a pre-Tribulationist Rapture wimp, let me just say that I’m pleased to offer any assistance that you or the Lord may require.” Frankland smiled down at the shorter man. His heart glowed at the sound of this endorsement.
“Well,” he said, “I’m sure I will be thankful for your assistance.” Larry Hallock gazed out at the flooded remains of the Poinsett Landing Nuclear Station, the broken double hyperboloids of the cooling tower that glowed softly in the night. The soft darkness and bright starlight gave the power station a majestic, almost ancient air, like the ruins of the Coliseum crouching beneath the Roman moon.
Water lapped at Larry’s feet, and Larry wondered if it was still rising. It had kept rising after the earthquake, and finally Larry and everyone else realized that the levees had gone—some distance away, apparently, because the flood, however inexorable, came slowly. It was clear that the plant personnel would have to evacuate.
There was but one place to go. The buildings were unsafe, the roads blocked by fallen timber. The only high ground was the old Indian mound that the archaeologists had insisted remain on the plant site.
It was there that the plant survivors fled. Those who could brought their vehicles, and the old mound now resembled more of a gypsy encampment than a gathering of highly trained engineers and technicians. None of the paramedics in the infirmary had survived the destruction of the administration building. The senior administrators had either been absent during the catastrophe, or died in it. Larry, if anyone, was in charge. He had done his best for the injured, sheltered them from the elements by putting them in a few pickup trucks that had camper shells. He had found some people with Red Cross or Boy Scout training to put in charge of his pathetic infirmary. He had counted heads, and had made a survey of the survivors’ food (none) and water (ditto). He had seen to the digging of a pair of slit trenches to use as latrines.
And he had tried to make contact with the outside world. But nothing worked. Even cellphones were dead. He would have sworn that somebody among all these people would have had a citizens’ band radio, but no one did.
There were a few radio stations that car and truck radios could pick up. Aside from one crazy preacher in Arkansas ranting—barely audible at this distance—about the end of the world, everyone on radio was discussing the earthquake, retelling over and over the few bits of news they seemed to think were certain. Memphis and St. Louis were hard hit, apparently—in flames, the radios said. Roads were out. Electricity was out. Communications were out. Floods, broken levees, fire. Even the Mexican station they picked up was discussing the quake in Spanish.
Larry and his cohorts were stuck on the mound till somebody came to get them. And surely, no matter how comprehensive the disaster seemed, it would be somebody’s job—either at the power company or at the NRC or at one of the contractors—to remember that there was a nuclear power station at Poinsett Landing.
He had done all that he could do. He had ridden that mare in as many circles as she was going to go. There was nothing to do now but worry.
He was capable of worrying on the same level
of thoroughness with which he did everything else. He had no reason to think that his wife Helen was anything other than alive and well. The quake had been bad, but their frame house in Vicksburg was sturdy, and Vicksburg was safe from flood on its bluff. There was no reason to think that Helen would not have escaped the quake: she would have known to stand in a doorway, or roll under a table.
The problem was that his imagination was too strong to find this logic in any way reassuring. Extrapolating from the way things had flown around the control room, he was fairly certain that his house would have been full of deadly missiles. He pictured Helen on the phone in the dining room, the sideboard flying at her, all deadly broken glass, crystal, and china. Or the heavy bookshelf in the living room toppling on her as she ran for the front door.
Or the water heater or the furnace—which so far as he knew were not secured to the floor, but just rested there—leaping into the hallway from their closet, spilling hot water and fire… The worry gnawed at him. He needed something to do, so he made the rounds again, making sure his people were as comfortable as the night, the flood, and the insects would permit. The burned man that Larry had met was there, and in agonizing pain. Two worried coworkers were sitting on his arms to keep him from tearing the flesh from his scalp. All they had to give him was Tylenol. Larry couldn’t think of any way to help the man.
Larry hadn’t mentioned his own shoulder injury to anyone—it hadn’t seemed important enough—but he found that his injured shoulder hurt less if he cradled the right arm in his left, so that’s what he did. It didn’t occur to him to ask someone to make him a sling.
He went to the edge of the mound and gazed out at the plant, giant concrete and steel islands in the flood. It was the darkest night he could remember. There were no lights anywhere, none. Normally the station was ablaze at night, flood-lights illuminating the parking lots, air warning flashers on the cooling tower, the other buildings outlined by spotlights and illuminated offices. There were no lights on the river, no lights from nearby towns. The whole country had gone dark, and that meant the whole power grid was down. Not just Poinsett Landing, but everywhere for hundreds of miles around. As a consolation, perhaps, there were the stars. Larry had never seen so many—just looking up took his breath away. He could see the broad swath of the Milky Way, the red glow of Arcturus, the bright yellow gleam of some planet or other, probably Jupiter. The stars of the Corona blazed with an intensity he had never seen, and Cygnus and Aquila wheeled about the pole.
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