The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  The nightmare journey had only begun.

  It took half an hour to clear the five-mile-long port channel. There was no time for Jason or Nick to absorb the colossal scope of the damage—there was scarcely time to react at all as the river tried to run them against piers or pipes, burned-out towboats, or whole rafts of barges tangled in steel cable. Nick fended off one obstacle after another, lunging with his stick, sobbing with weariness. All he could see of the port were glimpses caught in the moments between frantic activity: the silhouette of a broken grain tower against the horizon; a blackened crater, half-filled with water, that marked an explosion. In the back of his throat lodged the reek of burning, the reek of chemicals, the reek of hot metal. He hoped that none of it was the reek of burned flesh.

  Nick lunged, pushed off, poled, paddled. Water foamed over the jagged steel that lined the waterway. When they passed the port and entered the Tennessee Chute that dumped them back into the main channel, they gave up trying to control their direction and just hung on for dear life. Waves poured over them as they clutched the gunwale of their spinning boat.

  They never noticed, as the white water lessened and they found themselves on the calmer surface of the Mississippi, that they had just passed the broken, burned, flooded, and abandoned remains of the Memphis District headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the organization entrusted with the control of water for this part of the Mississippi.

  You had to say one thing for the man, Jessica thought: he was tough. Just a few moments after one of the paramedics had set his broken collarbone, given him some aspirin, equipped him with a sling made from a dish towel, and handed him a breakfast MRE, a Meal Ready to Eat, Larry Hallock was back at the helipad with some of his crew, ready to be flown back to Poinsett Landing to make a proper survey of the damage to the nuclear power station. He was flying in a big Sikorsky, with an amphibious hull that could float him anywhere he needed to go.

  All he asked was that someone go to his house to make sure that his wife was okay. It turned out that one of his own people could do that on the way to his own family, so Jessica didn’t even have to detail one of her own.

  “Good luck,” she said, there being little else she could offer.

  A crewman took Larry’s good arm and helped him into the chopper. Jessica stepped back and waved as the Sikorsky lifted from the grassy pad.

  Her office, minus walls and her collection of diplomas, had been recreated in one corner of the headquarters tent. The scent of old canvas and fresh grass was invigorating. The tent’s sides were rolled up for light and ventilation, and from Jessica’s corner she had an excellent view of the bustling techs setting up her state-of-the-art satellite communications rig.

  Working for an organization with the resources of the Defense Department was sometimes perfectly awesome.

  “Jess?” It was Pat, with the portable computer in hand. “I’ve got a selection of those photos from NASA and NOAA.”

  “Set the ’puter down here.”

  Once Jessica saw the pictures, she knew why she hadn’t heard from Memphis or St. Louis. The rubble that was St. Louis was practically an island, the Missouri flooding toward it from the north and west, the Mississippi from the east. Much of Memphis was covered by a cloud of smoke, and what she could see through the cloud looked like rubble. She looked at the photos from the Harbor of Memphis, and she heard her breath hiss from between her teeth.

  “God damn,” she whispered to herself. “I was afraid of this.” Natural disasters do not just have a single result. There was a whole chain of consequences: earthquakes cause fires, fires cause deaths, broken levees cause floods, floods cause evacuations. And industry, destroyed by earthquake, flood, or fire, had levels of consequence all its own. Jessica feared she was going to have to call the President soon and advise him to do something she knew very well he would not want to do. She didn’t want to have to do that: powerful people had been known in the past to execute the messengers who told them about problems they didn’t want to know about. What Jessica badly wanted was a choice. She had a feeling the situation wasn’t going to give her one. But she would give it all the opportunity she could. She would lay on a helicopter flight for tomorrow morning, and do the research with her own eyes and mind. And then, if necessary, she would call the President and give him his orders.

  SEVENTEEN

  The inhabitants of the Little Prairie and its neighborhood all deserted their homes, and retired back to the hills or swamps. The only brick chimney in the place was entirely demolished by the shocks. I have not yet heard that any lives were lost, or accident of consequence happened. I have been twice on shore since the first shock, and then but a very short time, as I thought it unsafe, for the ground is cracked and torn to pieces in such a way as made it truly alarming; indeed some of the islands in the river that contained from one to two hundred acres of land have been nearly all sunk, and not one yet that I have seen but is cracked from one end to the other, and has lost some part of it.

  Extract of a letter from a gentleman, dated 20th December, 1811

  The second helicopter thundered into sight just as Larry Hallock was returning from his inspection of the Poinsett Landing station. Larry didn’t pay it much attention. He was returning in a rubber raft to the big Sea Stallion helicopter that had brought him out here, which sat on the water and had to keep its rotor turning to maintain its position against the current. Even though Larry was just a passenger in the rubber boat, the chop raised on the water by the downblast from the Sikorsky’s six huge titanium-edged composite rotor blades was enough to keep his head down, and his mind firmly on keeping his seat in the raft.

  Besides, he assumed the second helicopter was another military outfit.

  It was after two crewmen, careful to avoid his damaged left arm, helped him into the Sikorsky by its crew that one of them said, “We have a radio call for you, sir. From the other helicopter.” Larry made his way forward, and one of the crewmen handed him a headset. “Go ahead and talk, sir,” he said—shouted, rather—as Larry put the earphones over his ears.

  “Larry Hallock here,” Larry said. With his right hand, the one he could use freely, he pressed the right foam pads over his ear so as to hear the reply over the thunder of the Sea Stallion’s rotor.

  “Larry? This is Emil Braun. Are we ever glad to finally get ahold of you!” Larry only vaguely remembered Emil Braun, who worked for the power company that owned the Poinsett Landing station, but the relief that soared through him at the sound of the voice was still profound.

  He wasn’t alone anymore. He didn’t have to carry the burden of what he knew by himself.

  “We’ve been trying to get ahold of someone since the quake last night!” Emil Braun said. “But no phone answered. No radio. We couldn’t get a vehicle anywhere near the plant. And it was hell finding a helicopter, believe me! Our own chopper was down for maintenance, and ten minutes after the quake, you damn betcha that every civilian chopper in the country had been chartered by someone!” Larry eased himself onto a fold-down seat. He found Emil’s troubles in chartering aircraft to be at the least remote, not to say quaint.

  “We’ve got problems here, Emil,” he said.

  “I can see that. Can you follow me to corporate HQ in Jackson and give everyone a briefing?” Larry paused while a crewman competently and efficiently strapped him into his seat for takeoff.

  “I think the Navy will want their helicopter back, Emil,” he said finally. “From here I have to fly to Vicksburg to brief the Corps of Engineers,” he said finally. “Why don’t you follow me, and I’ll brief you both at the same time?”

  “The Corps of Engineers?” Emil repeated. Larry understood Emil’s uncertainty: the Corps of Engineers weren’t exactly in the electric company’s chain of command.

  “We’re going to need their help, Emil,” Larry said as the Sea Stallion’s huge rotor increased its speed and began to move the big Sikorsky forward over the brown water. “We’re going to need all the
help we can get.”

  Bail, splash. Bail, splash. Sweat ran into Jason’s eyes. Retired and Gone Fishin’ had survived the Tennessee Chute and had floated into a far more gentle part of the river. There were signs of burning on both flanks of the river, and the treeline was full of wrecked boats and barges that had come spinning down the chute from the port of Memphis, but the current was easy, and the cottonwoods on the western side cast long shadows on the sunset-tinted water.

  The air reeked of dead fish. There were hundreds of them within sight, pale bellies uppermost. Something had poisoned them.

  Nick, having lost his appetite for fish, had pulled in the fishing lines he’d been trailing astern. The cockpit had almost filled with river water, and now Jason’s job, and Nick’s, was to bail. Bail, splash. Bail, splash. Jason’s arm ached as he lifted the plastic milk jug filled with water and tossed the Mississippi back over the side where it belonged.

  At least it was going faster than the first time he’d had to bail out the boat, that morning. Jason then had held his motley assortment of containers under the water, waited for them to fill, after which he poured them out. Nick had shown him a better way, one so simple that Jason wondered why he hadn’t thought of it. Nick tore off the tops of the plastic jugs and bottles, so that he and Jason could scoop them full in one motion, then throw the water over the side.

  Simple, but one of those simple things that Jason hadn’t known or thought of. If he’d just known, if someone had shown him the trick, he could have taken it from there.

  If he’d known about the boat’s little electric motor, his mother might—no, would—still be alive. He didn’t know enough to live through all this, he thought. He didn’t know enough to help anyone. In fact, he thought, he knew just enough to get himself killed. Maybe he should just throw himself in the river before he killed someone else.

  “Hey, look.” Nick pointed downriver, where lights gleamed against the darkening sky. Jason straightened as he threw water overboard, and saw a towboat—intact, upright, apparently unharmed, sitting motionless on the river with its bow pointed downstream. His heart gave a faint throb at the sight. It was too weary and discouraged to express anything more.

  Nick displayed a more active interest. He dropped his bailing jug and turned on the electric motor, then steered for the towboat, half a mile away.

  As he neared the towboat, Jason gave up his bailing and sat wearily on the gunwale. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Stars glimmered faintly in the darkening sky. There were navigation lights glowing on the boat’s mast, but Jason saw no other lights on board. It was only when he got very close to the boat that he realized it was aground on a bar in only a few inches of water, and its entire long tow of barges with it. It was as if the river had dropped out from beneath the boat and its barges and left them intact, still ranked in formation, on the mud.

  Debris was stranded on the bar as well, though not as much as Jason might have expected. The main current of the river was elsewhere, and carried most of the wreckage with it. Dead fish, though, were everywhere, lying in the shallows in schools. Jason figured he’d never want to eat fish again.

  Retired and Gone Fishin’ avoided the debris and came gently aground on the bar about twenty yards off the stern of the tow boat. Nick shut off the electric motor, stood, and waved his pole at the towboat.

  “Hey! Ahoy!”

  It was the first time, Jason thought, he’d ever actually heard anyone say “ahoy.”

  “Ahoy the towboat! Anyone aboard?”

  The towboat answered only with silence. Nick shrugged, then bent to pull off his already-waterlogged shoes. “Let’s pull the boat over the bar,” he said, and jumped into the water. Jason pulled off his sneaks and socks and dropped over the opposite side of the bass boat, then was surprised at the near-liquid mud that sucked him in nearly to his knees. Without the weight of its two passengers, Retired and Gone Fishin’ floated free. Pulling one foot after another from the suck of the mud, Jason and Nick walked the boat up to the stern of the towboat, which Jason saw was named Michele S.

  The towboat was slab-sided, with a tall, squared-off super-structure. The pilothouse stood four decks above a raftlike hull that barely seemed tall enough for someone inside to stand upright. It hardly seemed possible that such a top-heavy design could travel anywhere without falling over. There were ropes dangling over the side, and Nick used one to tie off the bass boat. While Jason pulled free of the mud and went straight up one of the ropes, Nick climbed first into the bass boat, then jumped from there to the rail of the towboat. Jason found himself smiling at the way Nick was breathing hard after just the little climb to the towboat’s lowest deck.

  They stood on the boat while mud and water dripped onto the steel deck. Nick caught his breath and ahoy’d again. The only sound was the water river rushing past the stern.

  “Look,” Jason said, and pointed. There were davits overhead, on the end of the superstructure, that had once held a—would it be lifeboat, intended for lifesaving? A boat, any-way. And the boat was just as clearly gone.

  “Wonder why they left,” Nick panted. “You’d think they would be safer here.” There were doors leading into the superstructure from the main deck, and Nick opened one about halfway down the superstructure. He groped inside for a switch and found it. Light flickered on, revealed a narrow steel corridor.

  “At least their batteries seem to have a good charge,” Nick said. He ventured in, bare feet slapping on the deck. Jason followed, and felt a sudden glorious rush of relief, finding himself safe. Indoors in a place unlikely to fall down, a place that had electricity, that probably had beds, toilets, water… and, he realized, food.

  His dormant hunger woke at this thought, a hunger that clawed and bit at his belly from within. Jason had never been so hungry in his life. “Can we find the kitchen?” he asked. “The galley? Whatever it’s called?”

  “That’s just what I planned,” Nick said.

  They headed forward through the crew quarters. There were sleeping accommodations for six, but only four of the beds seem to have been used. Forward was a tiny toilet and a shower, then a room the width of the superstructure with a dining table. Jason’s mouth watered.

  The galley was right ahead, past some stairs. Jason went straight to the huge metal refrigerator door and opened it. Gallons of milk and juice sat on racks. He reached for one.

  “Careful, there,” Nick said. “The refrigeration might not be on.” It wasn’t, but the milk was still cool. Jason tore off the cap and tipped his head back. He took one deep swallow after another from the jug. The cool sweet milk flowed down his throat. He had never tasted anything so glorious. Runnels of milk ran down his cheeks, splashed down his shirt. He didn’t stop drinking until his lungs ran out of air, and then he just took a gasping breath and drank some more. Eventually Jason had to gasp for air again. Then he had to cough, and cough again, and when he bent down to clear his throat, he found that his cheeks were hot, and there were tears in his eyes. And then he became aware of Nick watching him, and Jason slapped the cap on the milk jug and turned away. Tears blurred his vision, and he stumbled against a table. Sobs clawed at his throat like razors, and his limbs had turned to water. He stood there, leaning against the metal table, and let the grief come keening out. Nick put his arms around Jason and thought, Oh God, I don’t need this. This isn’t my boy.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “Take it easy, okay? We’re safe.” Jason turned to him, buried his face against Nick’s shoulder. The sounds he made were like the whimpers of a dog caught in barbed wire, a pain so fundamental, so primal, that it caused the hairs to rise on the back of Nick’s neck. Damn, Nick thought, damn. This is not my kid.

  “It’s okay, Jase,” Nick said. “It’s not your fault. Just take it easy.” They stood that way for several minutes, Jason’s cries raining down on Nick’s heart, and then Jason turned away and sat slumped at the table, his face a swollen misery.

  “You all right?” Nick asked. A st
upid question, but Jason nodded anyway. Give him some privacy now, Nick thought.

  So Nick turned to the refrigerator and took out cold cuts, cheese, bread, and pickles. He made some sandwiches, put them on a plate, and put them in front of Jason. He took one of the sandwiches himself, and while he ate he made a thorough search through the refrigerator.

  The cook of the Michelle S. was very organized. Meals had been arranged well ahead of time, though not cooked. There were at least four days’ meals prepared, but the most inviting seemed to be the four thick sirloins waiting in a stack, along with vegetables and a sack of new potatoes. Nick wondered if the boat’s crew were all fat as Santa Claus.

  The gas stove lit when Nick tried it. He cut up potatoes and onions and set them to fry in a skillet, and put a pot of water on the stove for boiling vegetables. He looked at Jason, still slumped in his chair, and the boy’s pure misery made him want to offer comfort, but he didn’t know what comfort he had in him. Sorry your mother’s dead, kid. Too bad about your dad being in China and all. It didn’t seem adequate.

  Nick turned back to the stove. He stirred the potatoes, slathered butter over the steaks, and put them under the broiler. And then he went to explore the Michelle S.

  He climbed, first, to the pilothouse. From behind the wheel he could see the river stretching ahead in the darkness, the square island of the barge tow sitting before the bows, black against the shimmering river. In the darkness Nick couldn’t see what kind of barges made up the tow.

  He turned on the lights in the pilothouse and looked for a logbook or other indication of why Michelle S. had been abandoned. If there was a logbook, the crew had taken it with them when they left. He looked for a moment at the radio equipment and wondered about calling for help. But he didn’t know how to use the radio, and it looked complicated, so he decided that maybe he would try it later, after he had time to find a manual or instructions of some sort.