The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  It was to a sky such as this, he thought, which ancient Britons had in homage raised the monument of Stonehenge.

  His shoulder ached. The thought of Helen kept rising to his mind.

  He needed something more to do.

  THIRTEEN

  …the river was now doing what it liked to do, had waited patiently the ten years in order to do, as a mule will work for you ten years for the privilege of kicking you once.

  William Faulkner, The Old Man

  The Mississippi is lazy between Cairo and Memphis, and in no hurry to reach its destination. It moves in long, swooping, snakelike curves, heading generally south, but also turning east, west, and sometimes north. At the New Madrid bend it manages to move in all four directions, one after the other. On occasion the river shortens its path. Sometimes the Mississippi, instead of taking a gentle curve around a bend or point, will decide to cut right through the point at its base, shortening its length and leaving, in its old course, one of the many picturesque oxbow lakes that ornament the Mississippi valley. On occasion the river has left a piece of Tennessee attached to Arkansas, or annexed a piece of Arkansas to the state of Mississippi.

  Mark Twain, who noted that in his time the Mississippi shortened itself on average by a mile and a third per year, remarked that at this rate, in seven hundred years the Lower Mississippi would be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans would share their streets. Sometimes these shortcuts do not occur naturally, but are imposed on the river. Before the Civil War, some planters, resentful that their inland plantations were less valuable than those blessed with access to the river, brought their field hands out to the nearest point in the dead of night, armed with pick and shovel, to cut the river a new channel, giving themselves river access and stranding their neighbors on a newly formed oxbow lake. Sometimes these attempts succeeded. Sometimes they failed. Sometimes, whatever the outcome, the ambitious planter was shot dead by a neighbor firing in defense of his property values.

  During the Civil War, General U.S. Grant tried to cut the river a new path across DeSoto Point in hopes that this would strand the rebel fortress of Vicksburg inland, making it useless to the Confederacy. He failed, but a few years later a flood rushed across his old works on DeSoto Point and carved the river a new path through Centennial Cutoff, ending Vicksburg’s access to the river until the Corps of Engineers restored it a quarter-century later.

  Later, in the twentieth century, the Corps eliminated the four Greenville Bends—Rowdy, Miller, Spanish Moss, and Bachelor—shortening the Mississippi’s length by thirty miles and creating Lake Ferguson, named after the Army general who masterminded the project.

  But these cutoffs were created artificially, attended by all the massive Corps engineering necessary to achieve a safe result and a deep, navigable channel.

  When the river carves its own path, the result is less gentle. The path is cut across country, sometimes over a farmer’s fields, sometimes through stands of heavy timber. The channel is narrow at first, full of shoal water, and the Mississippi rages through it, the weight of the entire river turning it to foam. There are rapids and falls, and the channel is littered with trees, rocks, snags, and stumps. The bank on either side is continually eroded and falls in half-acre chunks into the water. Large steamboats were sometimes sucked out of control into these new channels, flung through the new-made chutes, and either dashed to pieces on obstacles or spat out spinning into the old river.

  South of Cabells Mound, the flooding Mississippi had cut through the bend called Uncle Chowder’s, and the flood waters were about to drain through it as if someone had pulled a cork at the bottom of the river. The boat dropped down a precipice and hit a mass of glistening black water stern-first. A fan of spray rose high and fell into the boat. The impact knocked the breath out of Jason as he clung to the wheel. He never realized that water could be so hard.

  The sound of the rapid was overwhelming, loud as the earthquake. Spray filled the air. Jason could feel the boat’s vibration up his spine, through his bones. A piece of wreckage—a whole tree, Jason realized—ground against the side of the boat, knocking it into a sideways lurch that brought another gush of spray into the boat. As the big tree surged past, tree limbs caught the bow and spun the boat around. Branches clawed at Jason’s face.

  Jason hung onto the wheel and wished that the boat had seat belts.

  The torrent whirled around him as the boat spun helplessly in the channel. Something slammed into the boat, sent it airborne for a few seconds, then dropped it into a hole. Jason gave a yell as the steering wheel punched his sternum. He had barely caught his breath before the boat took another bounce—this time off the bole of a cottonwood that was somehow still standing upright in the middle of the white water.

  He wondered how long the boat could take this kind of pounding before it was beaten into a shapeless hunk of metal.

  Retired and Gone Fishin’ careened down a chute of white water. The spray was so dense that Jason couldn’t tell if he was underwater or not—the boat might have capsized for all he could tell. At the bottom of the chute the boat hit something hard, and the impact threw Jason back away from the wheel, against the seat behind. The boat was spinning like a yo-yo at the end of its string. Jason clawed blindly for the metal wheel as the world rumbled and shuddered around him. He pulled himself forward onto the wheel again, felt the boat lurch madly to port. His inner ear spun. He opened his eyes and saw that the boat was tipped on its right side, that the starboard gunwale was underwater, that another ounce of weight added to rightward side of the balance could capsize her… Terror clutched at Jason’s heart. He flung himself to the left, threw his arms over the gunwale, tried to add as much weight as possible to the forces dropping the boat back onto an even keel.

  The boat skated on its side for several long, terrifying seconds, then slowly began to tip to port. Jason gasped: he realized he’d been holding his breath. He slid back into the seat as the boat tipped, as its bottom slammed on water.

  The terror ride continued: Jason clung on as the bass boat raced along between steep banks, smashed into rocks, trees, and less identifiable debris. Something huge and black loomed up—Jason realized it was a stranded river barge—and the boat slammed into it, grating along its rust-streaked side. Jason ducked as steel cable whipped over his head. And then there was one last, horrible grinding noise—the boat tipped on its port side, sending Jason clawing to starboard as a frantic counterweight—and then the boat was over the obstacle and was being pushed by the rushing river into wide, calm water. Jason gasped for breath as the roaring faded behind him. His heart pounded in his chest. He glanced around, saw nothing but starlight glinting off debris-filled water. There was six or eight inches of water in the boat, and no way to bail.

  Though the rapids were falling behind, the boat was still moving fast. The river still had purpose, was still hurrying to get somewhere.

  Jason was too tired to wonder what the river had on its mind. He nodded over the wheel and let exhaustion claim him.

  Until a few hours later, when he woke to the sound of another rapid ahead.

  The sound of the human voice, raised in praise of God, floated toward Frankland through the broken windows of the church. Sheryl had everyone there singing, children and adults both, to keep them occupied and out of trouble. What they lacked in harmony they made up in enthusiasm. But Frankland had visitors. Sheriff Gorton was a lean, slit-eyed man of sixty who had been the town’s mortician until his business had failed. There weren’t enough people left in the county to keep the burying business profitable. He’d run for sheriff and got elected because his neighbors felt sorry for the way he’d lost his business after working hard all his life.

  Gorton was also, Frankland knew, one of Dr. Calhoun’s parishioners.

  “I heard your message on the radio for people to come here if they was in trouble,” Gorton said. “I wanted to see for myself what kind of facilities you had here.”

  Frankla
nd explained that his church, house, and radio station had all been specially reinforced against earthquake, and that he had food supplies enough to last for weeks, maybe months. He had a big tent left over from his days as a traveling preacher, and a number of large surplus Army tents. All these would be set up if the church began to overflow. “This is the safest place you’re going to find in Rails Bluff,” he said.

  Gorton nodded. “Can I send people here from town? We’ve got so many homeless…”

  “I will provide for them,” Frankland said. “Dr. Calhoun, Reverend Garb, and I have been conferring on how best to care for the people, and we are organizing everything now.”

  He hadn’t actually talked to Garb yet, but he knew that Garb was perfectly reliable on the subject of the Tribulation and how to handle it.

  Gorton looked anxious. “You don’t have any doctors or nurses, do you? We don’t have anyone who can take care of the injured except for old Maggie Swensen, who used to be a nurse before she retired. But she’s in her seventies, and she’s completely overwhelmed. We’re putting the injured in the old Bijoux, but it’s a real nightmare in there.”

  Frankland gave him a serious look. The county had lacked a doctor ever since old Sam Haraldsen had died—there wasn’t enough money in Rails Bluff to attract a doctor. “No,” Frankland said, “I regret to say that we have no one with any formal medical training. The boys and girls in the Christian Gun Club learned first aid, though, and I will send some of them to you. Maggie can give them some work, and teach them how to do some things, and they can help take a load off her that way.” Gorton seemed relieved. “I thought I’d seen it all, you know,” he said. “Korea, working around bodies. But this…” He leaned close to Frankland, lowered his voice. “Do you really think this is the end?” Frankland nodded. “Earthquake, brimstone, fire from heaven,” he said. “It’s all in the Book.” Gorton was solemn. “That’s what I thought, first thing. When the ground started to shake. Dr. Calhoun told us the signs.”

  “It’s clear enough to those who can see,” Frankland said. “And I’ll tell you frankly—the odds of a person surviving the next seven years of Tribulation is not good. The Antichrist will rise, and the world will burn with fire. There is not any part of the planet that will not be consumed with war. The comet Wormwood alone will poison a third of the world’s water. But what happens to their bodies doesn’t matter, we need to prepare the souls of everyone here, so that they can survive the Judgment of God. That’s the important thing now, whether they survive in the flesh or not.”

  Gorton tilted his hat back, wiped his forehead. “I’ve been worrying about that, pastor. You know, I think there are people down at the Bijoux who are dying. I would hate for them to die without the Word. And Pete Swenson’s been killed, you know—buried in his church.”

  The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, the graceful nineteenth-century brick building that had been greatly envied by those parsons in the vicinity who had not been blessed by such well-established congregations, had not been built with earthquake in mind. Frankland had taken one look at it, when he’d first moved to the district, and known it wouldn’t survive the End Times.

  He closed his eyes, said a little blessing for Pete Swenson.

  Frankland opened his eyes. “His entire flock will be needing consolation and guidance. I will go there directly. With you, if that’s all right.”

  “That’s good, Brother Frankland, that’s good.”

  “I will round up some of the Gun Club members,” Frankland said. “And they’ll follow us down.” Hilkiah brought some of the Gun Club kids in his pickup truck to act as nurses, while Frankland rode with Gorton in his cruiser. On the way he told Gorton his plan to send out people to scavenge food and other supplies from fallen buildings, and bring injured people from outlying areas into the town. Gorton said that it all sounded fine to him.

  “Only thing is, my people could be mistaken for looters,” Frankland said. “We want you to be able to identify ’em, so that your deputies won’t make any bad mistakes and people get hurt.”

  “I’ll depitize ’em, if you like.”

  “That’ll be good. That’ll be good. But maybe I should just put white armbands on ’em, like I did with the Family Values Campaign.”

  “That’ll work. I’ll tell my deputies.”

  “We’ll send them out tomorrow morning, then.”

  Frankland leaned back in the seat and smiled.

  Things were going to work out.

  The Old Man’s voice sounded faintly in Jessica’s headphones. “Have you been able to contact the St. Louis District or the Memphis District?”

  “No, sir,” Jessica said.

  “How ’bout Rock Island?”

  Jessica took a breath. “Not so far, sir.”

  “And your own headquarters has suffered considerable damage, especially in regard to its communications.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a pause as Jessica’s superior considered his next step. Jessica bit her lip. She had a suspicion that right in the middle of the worst natural disaster the United States had ever faced, she might find herself taken out of the loop.

  Communications with other military and Corps of Engineer units had finally been restored through use of Jessica’s lone satellite radio. But no word had come from the Corps of Engineers’ St. Louis and Memphis district, those closest to the New Madrid fault system. It had been anticipated that these districts might fall victim to a major quake, unable to carry out their assigned tasks, and the Kansas City and Vicksburg districts were the selected backups. But Vicksburg itself had been hard hit, and no one had expected the Rock Island Division, north of St. Louis, to fall victim as well.

  With all four of USACE’s Mississippi Valley districts either victims or potential victims, the earthquake had seriously compromised the Corps of Engineers’ ability to respond effectively in the crisis.

  “General Frazetta,” Jessica’s superior said at last. “I am declaring St. Louis and Memphis to be victim districts.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jessica said. “I concur.”

  “Should I declare Rock Island a victim as well?”

  Well. It was nice of the Old Man to let Jessica express an opinion.

  “With respect, sir,” she said, “I think that may be premature.”

  “What’s Rock Island’s backup district?”

  “Chicago, sir.”

  “Chicago’s been hit, too,” the Old Man mused.

  Jessica was shocked. Chicago? No one had imagined that Chicago would suffer in a New Madrid shock. How big was this quake? She had told her officers that this might be a three-hundred-year event. A thousand-year event, more like. Or five thousand.

  “Very well,” the Old Man said. “I will reserve judgment on Rock Island, but I will tell Chicago they may have to assume Rock Island’s responsibilities.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Now. Vicksburg.”

  Jessica’s heart gave an anxious little throb. If the Old Man decided that Vicksburg was a victim district as well, then she might well find herself and her command handed over to their backup in Mobile. The Mississippi Valley was hers, damn it. She wanted to keep it.

  “Sir,” she said, “we won’t be able to do anything till dawn, anyway. I think we will be back on line by then. We are doing a good job of recovery here. I see no reason to declare Vicksburg a victim district at this time.”

  A voice yammered faintly on the radio channel, then faded. Whoever it was, he sounded panicked.

  “You’re certain of that, Jessica?” the Old Man said. “You know that you’ll have to take on the Memphis District’s responsibilities, too.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jessica said. “It will take us some hours before we will be able to respond with efficiency, but once we’ve sorted ourselves out, I think we’re admirably placed for running the Joint Division Team.”

  “Very well,” the Old Man said. “If you’re that positive.”

  “I am, sir,�
� Jessica said, and hoped she wasn’t deluding herself.

  “What can I do for you,” he said, “to make your job easier?” Jessica had been waiting for this. “Communications, sir,” she said. “And Prime Power.” Jessica’s subordinates were almost entirely civilians, and her Prime Power—the actual military units under her command—consisted of only the 249th Engineer Battalion. If she was going to have to rebuild or reinforce most of the flood control structures between Rock Island and St. Louis, along with reconstructing roads, railroads, and airfields, getting power stations, communications, and waste treatment plants back online, the one battalion was clearly inadequate.

  “General Shortland has put the entire U.S. military on alert,” the Old Man said. “You can have your pick.”

  “Yes, sir!” Jessica said.

  Well now. That’s what she considered an adequate response.

  By midnight Omar began to feel that he had things in hand. Wilona had called their son David and heard that he and the city of Baton Rouge had been shaken up, but that both David and the city had got through the quake all right. In Spottswood Parish, the courthouse and many of the larger buildings had come through the earthquake well enough, with just windows and fixtures broken, and sometimes doors jammed. But in the semitropical climate many of the buildings in the parish, including Omar’s own, were lightly built, and many of them suffered. Homes and trailers fell off their pier foundations, and clapboards and roof shingles had been shaken off.

  It could have been worse, Omar thought thankfully. And according to the radio, it was worse north of there, with whole cities flattened.