The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  He wondered if he could get the parish council’s permission to fence it off somehow. The parish was a little short of food and hospitality, but there was plenty of fencing material. Hunger burned in Nick as the boy Orville guided him to Rails Bluff. In Rails Bluff there were fourteen people who came off boats from Toussaint two days before, and according to the boy one of them sounded like Arlette.

  Yearning filled Nick to the brim. He saw Arlette every time he closed his eyes. Love, your daughter. And a row of hearts.

  Orville was twelve years old, and he, his older brother, and his uncle the church deacon had been sent out the day before, after the second big quake, to look for refugees and guide them to Rails Bluff. Orville had joined Jason and Nick as guide, while the others continued their search. He hadn’t looked twice at the firearms piled around the boat. Guns weren’t anything to Orville one way or another, just a part of the background.

  The way to Rails Bluff was difficult, but not as difficult as their earlier wanderings had been. Orville’s father had blazed a trail through the wreckage, and though there was still a lot of tree trunks that had drifted back into the channel and needed to be shoved out of the way, it was easier with much of the work already done. And part of the journey was along the Arkansas River, which though flooded and nearly choked with debris was open to movement by small boats.

  Jason was quiet, Nick noticed, but he did his job. Nick couldn’t manage to concern himself with the boy’s moods, though, not with his daughter’s presence tingling through his mind. There was a rumble, and the boat tilted to port as something large and solid thundered along its aluminum bottom. Nick cut the throttle and jumped to the stern to tip the outboard up, out of the water, so its prop wouldn’t be sheared off.

  “That’s a sawyer,” Orville said. “Log just under the water.” He grinned. “Lucky we’re not in a wooden boat! We’d have a hole punched in the bottom!”

  The boat grated as it slid off the sawyer. Nick waited till the boat was clear, then cautiously dropped the outboard back into the water.

  “I wonder if Tom Sawyer was named after one of those,” Nick said.

  “Who’s Tom Sawyer?” Orville asked, without interest. Then he looked up. “There’s the bluff. We just bear off to the right here, till you get to Rails River.”

  The bluff rose gradually above the flooded land. It had been covered by thick stands of pine, but most of the trees had fallen in the quake and lay tumbled on the slope, their torn roots revealing the bluff’s red clay. It looked as if a bulldozer had run mad among the pine groves, leveling everything it could find. They followed the bluff, and Nick found himself in a flooded river. The fallen girders of a venerable iron trestle bridge lay spread across the river’s channel, with the wreckage of an old Lincoln washing around amid the rusting beams.

  There was a kind of improvised landing below the broken bridge, a homemade pier supported by oil drums. A miscellaneous collection of boats were moored there, or run up on the bluff, and there were two guards on the boats. Nick didn’t like the look of that, particularly the man who set Nick’s cracker vibe tingling, the big white guy with the homemade tattoo of an angel on his biceps. But the other was black, which was reassuring, and the big man, who said his name was Hilkiah, said that one of their scavenging parties had been shot at two days ago, by some men who Hilkiah thought were probably trying to break into the safe at a rural grocery store.

  Nobody had been hurt, the big man said, but the Reverend was being cautious. He wanted armed men posted on anything that anyone might want to steal.

  Nick figured he knew who the Reverend was: he’d heard about the situation in Rails Bluff from Orville. A bunch of preachers, Orville said, were running Rails Bluff. Nick reckoned that he’d rather have his daughter in the care of preachers than some rural sheriff or town council.

  “I’m looking for the people from Toussaint,” Nick said. He couldn’t keep it in any longer. “They were supposed to have been brought in a couple days ago.”

  The black guard nodded. “I drove ’em to the camp myself,” he said. “There was a whole bunch of ’em, right? Three or four families?”

  “How were they?” Nick said.

  “They spent a couple days in boats, which was hard on the old folks, but they was okay.” The man looked concerned, put a coffee-colored hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Any of ’em family?”

  “My daughter,” Nick said. “And… her momma.” Hesitating because he almost said “my wife.”

  “They probably just fine,” said the guard. He looked at Hilkiah. “Should I take these folks to the camp?”

  “Might as well,” Hilkiah said. He looked down at Orville. “You and your Uncle Tyrus find anybody out there?”

  The boy shook his head. “No, sir. But we didn’t get far—too many fallen logs in the way.” Hilkiah nodded, then looked back at Nick. “What do you have in the way of supplies? Food and water?”

  “We’re well supplied. We ran into a towboat that gave us provisions.”

  “And I see you’ve got three, four gallons of gas left. Well—if you’ll help carry your stuff to the top of the bluff, we can get it in the truck and you on to your family.”

  The pickup was an ancient Chevy that looked as if it had been salvaged from some junkyard. It had a bumper sticker reading trust in god and the second amendment. The five of them managed to carry most of Nick’s supplies from the boats, up the slippery red-clay path, to the back of the truck. Jason carried his telescope on his shoulder.

  “What’s that?” Orville asked.

  “A telescope.”

  “That don’t look like a telescope.”

  “Well,” Jason said, “that’s what it is.”

  “Can I look through it, then?”

  “Maybe later.”

  Jason put the telescope in the back of the pickup, nestled it safely against the cooler filled with provisions. Nick looked at him.

  “You okay, Jase?”

  “Yeah. I’m just tired.”

  “You can rest up here if you want. We can carry the rest of the stuff up without you.” Jason shook his head. “I can do it.”

  “I see you’ve got a rifle and some other guns,” Hilkiah said as they trudged down the path again. “We don’t allow guns in the camp, but we’ll take care of ’em for you.” He nodded. “We take good care of people’s guns,” he said. “In times like these, when the Lord is testing us, people want to know their firearms are being looked after.”

  “They’re not my guns, exactly—I picked them up for protection after I found some people murdered.” Hilkiah looked at him. “Wars and rumors of wars,” he said.

  Nick blinked. “Murder, anyway.” he said, and thought of Gros-Papa lying on the floor with his watch chain torn from his vest.

  Oh God, he thought, I’m going to have to tell Manon.

  The earth thundered with an aftershock. The old truck bounced up and down on its springs. Hilkiah remained behind. The black guard, whose name was Conroy, got behind the wheel of the truck. Nick took the passenger seat, and the two boys rode in back.

  The road was torn across by fresh fissures, one every few hundred feet; these were rudely filled in with dirt, rocks, and timber, sometimes sawn-up power poles that had fallen and been chucked into the gap. Every building visible from the road was in a state of collapse. The young cotton grew untended in empty fields. The pine trees that lined the road in places had almost all fallen and been shoved aside. The result was that the area’s large population of hawks had very few places left in which to roost. There must have been a lot of vermin for them to eat, because every remaining power pole or tree had at least one hawk sitting in it, each carefully facing away from all the others.

  Conroy turned to Nick. “Say, brother,” he said, “you been anywhere near a radio or TV?”

  “For a while I was.” They had listened to the radio regularly when they were aboard Beluthahatchie.

  “Is it true about what happened to the nuclear power plant ov
er in Mississippi? That it’s poisoned all the country south and east of here?”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Nick said. “I heard there was some trouble, with a little radiation released. But that’s all.”

  “Reverend says that the plant practically blew up. He says whole states are poisoned. And he says the rivers are poisoned, too.”

  “There is a problem with the water, yes,” Nick said. “Pollution from chemicals and fertilizers, oil tanks, that sort of thing. That’s why the Mississippi and parts of some other rivers are being evacuated.”

  “The comet Wormwood,” Conroy said. “That’s what poisons the waters. You can read that in the Book.”

  Nick didn’t quite have an answer for that, so he fell silent.

  The truck crawled over more crudely repaired asphalt. The Church of the End Times was a strangely ordered island in the sea of devastation. The small metal-walled church stood intact, as did the radio station, with its tall tower and the small metal house behind it. In and about the area were ordered rows of tents, awnings, and vehicles. If it weren’t for the gaping rents that scarred the ground, the place would have looked as neat as a military encampment on inspection day.

  Two middle-aged white men sat under a picnic table umbrella by the road. They rose to their feet as the Chevy approached, each lifting a rifle. Nick’s nerves jangled a warning as he recognized modern assault weapons, AR-15s, the civilian version of the Army’s combat rifle, the M-16.

  Guns, Nick’s nerves jangled, guns and crackers. The combination didn’t look good. Conroy halted the vehicle by the table, and one of the men peered in.

  “Heaven-o there, Conroy,” he said. “You got some new folks for us?”

  “This is Nick,” Conroy said. “The boy’s Jason.”

  “Welcome to God’s country,” the man said, and held a callused hand through the window for Nick to shake.

  “Thanks,” said Nick. The jolt of adrenaline that he’d received at the sight of the assault rifles was still jangling through his veins.

  A man’s amplified voice shouted in the background, ” is this the day!” it shouted. “Is this the day of the Lord?”

  The guard smiled with crooked teeth as he peered at Nick through the window. “Do you have any liquor, drugs, or guns?” he asked.

  Conroy answered before Nick could make up his mind whether he wanted to answer the question or not. “A rifle, shotgun, two pistols,” Conroy said. “I put them behind the seat.” The guard nodded. “Me and George have some tags here,” he said to Nick. “We’ll tag your weapons and put them in storage. You can get them out when you leave.”

  Nick thought for a long moment while the guard and his buddy George fooled around on their table for a ballpoint pen and their jelly jar of tags. He didn’t want to give the guns up, not in a situation like this, not in some kind of religious camp guarded by men carrying Armalites.

  But on the other hand, he thought, how else would he see Arlette? And why should he expect people in a refugee camp to allow guns inside?

  The guards scrawled Nick’s name on the tags and attached them to his guns with string. The ammunition went into a plastic bag and was likewise labeled.

  Nick, who had spent the first twenty years of his life going past military checkpoints with his father the general, figured he could have shot the guards fifty times over while this was going on. His anxiety over the assault rifles eased.

  “Are you ready for judgment?” the amplified voice asked.

  By the time the two guards were finished, two more people had hustled up from the camp. One white man and one black. Nick left the truck to greet them.

  “Heaven-o,” the white man said. He was a big, burly man and would have been good-looking if he hadn’t lacked a chin. He and Nick shook hands. “I’m Brother Frankland.” His was the voice, Nick recognized, that was shouting from the speakers.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Nick said.

  “This is Brother Garb from True Gospel Church.”

  Garb was soft-spoken and toffee-skinned, dressed neatly in a pressed white cotton shirt and gold-rimmed spectacles. Nick shook his hand. “I heard my family was here,” he said to Garb. “I heard they came in the other day from Toussaint.”

  A bright smile spread over Garb’s face. “Is Arlette your daughter?” he said. Relief and joy seemed to float Nick right off the ground. “Yes!” he almost shouted. “Yes, she is.”

  “She’s a smart girl, your Arlette,” Garb said. “She said you might be coming.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the church, most likely, looking after the children. I’ll take you.” Nick almost danced after the Reverend Garb, but then he remembered Jason, and he stopped. He turned to the boy, who had been standing in silence by the truck.

  “You want to come, Jase?” he asked.

  Jason seemed uncertain. “Sure. If you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind at all. I’d like you to meet my family.”

  Jason brightened, then hesitated again as he looked at the truck. “Don’t worry,” Frankland said. “We’ll look after your belongings.”

  “What does the Book of Daniel tell us?” said the amplified voice. A generator roared. Garb led Nick across the gravel parking lot, past the radio station—“Arkansas’ Voice of the Lord, 15,000 watts AM”—and toward the church. Nick saw that big crosses, twenty or more feet long and made from trees or fallen power poles, were scattered through the area, lying on the ground, with the crosspiece lashed or bolted into place.

  The sight of the crosses, of the sort that men in white hoods burned on Southern summer nights, sent a shimmer of unease up Nick’s spine. But there were plenty of black people around, he saw, and they and the whites seemed on friendly terms.

  “What are the crosses for?” he asked.

  “‘The cross shall be your salvation,’” Garb quoted, then laughed. “The crosses are to save lives. You see these big chasms? If a chasm opens up underneath it, a big cross will bridge the gap, won’t fall in. We’re teaching everyone that when a quake hits, they’re to jump onto one of the crosses and hang on till it’s over.”

  “That’s interesting,” Nick said. He suspected that it probably would work, too, if the crevasse wasn’t too large.

  They passed a sheriff’s department vehicle—nice to know that someone official was present—and then, in front of the church, set up like a kind of wall, Nick saw a pair of banners, all covered with brilliantly colored, astoundingly detailed scenes. Nick saw angels, demons, volcanoes, scenes of violence and fire.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “Sister Sheryl’s Apocalypse,” Garb said. “She’s been working on it for years—careful, there.” This last was said to Jason, who had come very close to one of the banners, his nose just inches away from the Antichrist branding the number 666 into the forehead of one of his followers.

  “Come here, Jason,” Nick said.

  “That’s amazing,” Jason said. “You know, I bet you there are rock bands, heavy-metal types, who would pay a lot of money to put this on their album covers.”

  “Well, maybe.” Garb smiled. “You should get Sister Sheryl—she’s Brother Frankland’s wife—to give you a tour of her art.”

  Nick was impatient to see Arlette, and he walked faster, giving the others no time to view the banners. Behind Sheryl’s Apocalypse about a dozen children played in the area around the church. Nick craned his neck as he looked for Arlette. Garb led him into the church. The pews had been pulled back against the walls, and the space divided by blankets and towels hung on lines. Mattresses filled half the floor space. The place smelled of babies and disinfectant, and the crying of infants echoed off the metal walls. Nick’s heart gave a leap as he saw his daughter at the back of the church. She was bending over a table, folding laundry, dressed in a cotton shirt and cut-off blue jeans. She wore a kerchief over her hair and a frown of concentration on her face.

  My God, she’s grown, Nick thought. Arlette seemed a head tal
ler than when he’d seen her last. And she’d thinned out—at Christmas she’d seemed a little chubby, the way adolescents sometimes get just before a growth spurt. But now she was almost up to his chin, and looked graceful as an athlete. He sprang forward. Arlette looked up at that moment, and for a moment there was a little frown between her brows, as if she couldn’t understand why this strange unshaven man with grimy clothes and matted hair was lurching toward her; and then her face lit up, eyes wide with surprise and delight… “Daddy!” she cried, and ran to meet him.

  Her arms went around him and Nick’s head reeled. Arlette had survived the terror of the quake, the hazards of the river, the killers that had followed from her home. She had come through all this, to him. His sense of relief was so overpowering that it almost staggered him. He felt weak as a child, and clung to Arlette as much for support as out of joy.

  “Amen, brother,” he heard Garb say. “Amen.”

  The timeless moment ended. Nick dropped his arms, then stepped back to gaze at his daughter. “You’re looking fine, baby,” he said.

  Her chocolate-brown face broke into a smile. “Thank you, Daddy.”

  “I’ve got something for you. A present.”

  Nick reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the battered cardboard box that he’d brought from the jeweler’s.

  “Happy birthday,” he said.

  And there it was, what he’d waited for these weeks, what he’d dreamed about when he touched the box in his pocket—he saw it at last, the shining glow that kindled in her eyes as she gasped and raised the necklace to the light that came through the broken windows of the church.

  “It’s beautiful!” she said, and hugged him again.

  “Turn around,” Nick said, “and I’ll put it on you.”

  She turned and swept hair and kerchief off the back of her neck. Nick worked the clasp with clumsy fingers, and she hooked on the earrings.