The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  “The camp’s going to be a real mess in the morning,” Frankland said. “We’d better have a hot meal ready when people get up.”

  Sheryl nodded. “Already taken care of.”

  “How you doing, honey bun?”

  Sheryl looked at him over the rims of her reading glasses. “Dreadful damage. Just dreadful.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Just watch where you put your feet.” A lot of the linen rolls had ended up on the floor for lack of anywhere else to put them. Frankland shuffled his boots from the fragile artwork.

  “I’m going back to the studio.”

  “Mm.”

  He opened the inner door and walked down the corridor to the control room. Lights glowed, and dials clicked back and forth unattended as the station broadcast a tape that Frankland had made weeks ago, before the first great earthquake

  Frankland felt an aftershock rumble up through his boots. That, he thought, must have been the throbbing sound he’d heard.

  He took off his rain slicker, then unstrapped the AR-15 he carried across his chest to protect it from the weather. He propped the gun in a corner, took off his pistol belt—the grenades made it too uncomfortable to wear while sitting—and sat in front of the microphone.

  He hadn’t broadcast much new material since the first quake. He’d been too busy organizing the camp. But now that he knew the black helicopters were coming, Frankland felt he wanted to talk about what had happened, to explain his point of view and the necessity for everything he’d done. Frankland wanted to leave a testament behind him. So that after the black helicopters came people would understand.

  It was for souls, he wanted to say. The bodies didn’t signify, it was winning souls for Christ that mattered.

  And so he cued up a tape, positioned himself behind the microphone, and as the rain drummed on the roof and the building rocked to thunder, he began to speak.

  When he broadcast the tape in the morning, the world would know.

  The Rangers moved forward, hunched in their cloaks beneath squalls of wind and rain. While the pouring water streamed down the canopy of her helicopter, Jessica listened to her helicopter’s command channel, the terse, breathless communications of the officers. Her hands clutched the sides of the seat as reports came in of the camp coming into sight, as night-vision and infrared gear was used to carefully scan the camp and spot any sentries who dared to stick their heads out.

  There weren’t many, it appeared. The camp was buttoned down against the storm.

  “Coffee, General?” Jessica’s pilot produced a thermos.

  “No. Thanks.” Much as she craved coffee at the moment, she was wound tightly enough as it was. Jessica had read that Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery used to go to sleep the night before an attack, with strict orders not to be disturbed until the battle had already developed. She wondered how he managed it.

  The smell of coffee filled the cockpit, activating Jessica’s salivary glands. A mild aftershock rolled up the Kiowa’s struts as commands hissed into Jessica’s earphones. The Rangers were crawling forward toward the camp under cover of the intermittent squalls. They were moving toward the machine-gun nest at the catfish farm by crawling along the base of the earth embankment, so a lightning flash wouldn’t silhouette them on the top.

  “This is Badger Six,” a voice crackled. “We have secured our objective on the northwest perimeter. The guards did not resist. Repeat, no resistance.”

  “Roger that, Badger Six.” Rivera’s voice.

  Jessica’s breath eased from her aching lungs. One corner of the unmarried women’s camp was secure.

  “Holy shit!” came Badger Six’s voice again, very excited. Jessica jerked forward in her seat as if pulled by an invisible wire. “We got fragmentation grenades here! And a couple M-16s. Do you copy that?”

  “Copy that, Badger Six.” Rivera’s voice was laconic.

  “These people are loaded for bear, sir!”

  “No chatter on this channel, Badger Six. We copy.”

  Another outpost fell in silence, then another. Then—Jessica wanted to scream out her relief—the machine-gun nest on the catfish farm.

  And then the rest. The camp’s perimeter had been secured without a shot, without an alarm, without a single act of violence.

  Relief sang in Jessica’s veins.

  Rivera began to position his teams to cut the camps off from one another, to secure the church, the radio station, and Frankland’s house.

  Jessica leaned back in her seat.

  “I’d appreciate some of that coffee, soldier,” she said.

  They will say I have committed murder. The phrases rolled through Frankland’s mind as he pushed back from the microphone. Certainly I have killed, but I have killed justly. And God will judge me in the end, as he will judge all men. I have no terror of standing before the Throne of the Almighty.

  Frankland stood, stretched, felt his vertebrae crackle. His body was weary, but his mind still churned with ideas, with images. The spirit still sang in him, stirring his nerves, and he knew that it would be hours before he would sleep.

  He rewound the tape to its beginning, then turned up the in-studio speaker on the tape that was already playing. He waited until the older recording came to a natural pause, then Frankland turned it off and cued the new tape.

  “This is the Noble Frankland of the Church of the End Times.” The voice came from the battered old speakers in the room. He turned down the volume, then strolled down the hallway to where Sheryl still sat behind the desk, working briskly with her tweezers.

  “Any news?” he asked.

  “No.” She looked up from her work. “Rain’s slackening off, I think,” she said. Frankland looked at his watch. It would be dawn shortly.

  And then the door opened and a pair of armed men entered, rifles held across their chests, faces blackened and rain-streaked below the broad, dripping brims of their hats. “U.S. Army!” one of them said. “Nobody move!”

  Frankland stared as his heart lurched into a higher gear. Caught! he thought. His rifle, his pistol, and his precious grenades were in the control room. He was helpless.

  Another man entered the room, a pistol held lightly in his hand. “Colonel Rivera,” he said. “U.S. Rangers. I understand you had some trouble here?”

  Frankland could only gape. He couldn’t understand how this could happen. He had guards! He had outposts! He hadn’t heard a single shot.

  Black helicopters! his mind screamed. Black helicopters of Satan! They had come in the night, and he and his poor people had been caught unprepared.

  Now they would all live. Live, and sin, and go to Hell. When they could have died and gone to Glory.

  “You—” The word hissed from Sheryl. She stared in outrage at the colonel’s muddy boots planted on her artwork, right on the seven angels and the seven vials. “You—” She half-rose from her seat. “You’re wrecking my Apocalypse!” she shrieked.

  It was only then that Frankland’s paralyzed mind recalled the double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun clipped under the desk, the shotgun that had been there all along, from well before the quake. He threw himself backward, down the hall.

  The shotgun blasted out, twice. All three soldiers were caught in the broad swath of buckshot. Sheryl dropped the sawed-off, opened a desk drawer, took out a grenade, primed it, and pitched it straight out the open front door.

  Frankland scuttled down the hall, on hands and knees, heading for his weapons. There was a flash and a bang out-side the door. Grenade fragments whined off the station’s steel walls. Frankland grabbed the Armalite, cranked a round into the chamber, then snatched up his gun belt with its grenades and pistol. He ran down the hall again toward the front room.

  “Hang on, sweetie pie!” he said. “I’m coming!”

  The Kiowa bored into the Arkansas dawn. Jessica could hear the grinding of her teeth amplified beneath her helmet.

  Somehow, late in the ga
me after all danger should have been passed, Rivera had somehow lost control and everything had gone to hell.

  Rivera was dead, apparently, along with two other Rangers. Several others were wounded by grenade fragments. After everything had been secured—the outposts, the camps, the church, Frankland’s home—there had been some last-minute screw-up at the radio station. Shots fired. Grenades thrown. And the Ranger officer on the spot had ordered return fire.

  Jessica had ordered support elements aloft as soon as she heard the news. Apache gunships and Hueys to provide close support, more Hueys carrying her engineers with heavier weapons and the body armor that the Rangers lacked.

  It was over by the time Jessica’s Kiowa first soared over the camp. Resistance had ended. The radio station was on fire, smoke billowing from under the metal eaves. Rangers were diving inside, braving the flames, to haul out the bodies of their comrades.

  Fucking amateurs, Jessica thought. The people in the radio station had no idea of the firepower of a modern military unit, even a lightly equipped outfit like the Rangers. They’d thought it was going to be like the movies, like a Western gunfight, like Davy Crockett at the Alamo.

  Instead, everyone in the radio station was probably dead within seconds after the Ranger commander had ordered his people to return fire. A kill zone. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. Just like that. Ranger training was not for the faint-hearted. One of the exercises featured a fifteen-mile ruck march, with 100-pound field packs plus a rifle, that ended with three shots to the bulls-eye at a range of fifty meters. Compared to that, a little slog through the mud and a firefight against a few hayseeds didn’t even signify.

  The Kiowa circled the camp once, then dropped onto the highway in front of the church. Jessica dived out of the vehicle and ran for the church as fast as her short legs would carry her. Then she stopped in her tracks. Put a hand in front of her right eye, then her left.

  Half the vision in her left eye was gone, gone as if a black curtain had dropped across the world.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Our voyage was from various causes tedious and disagreeable, we being 28 days from St. Louis to this place, Mr. Comegys has fared worse, being two months. Our progress was considerably impeded by an alarming and awful earthquake, such as has not I believe, occurred, or at least has not been recorded in the history of this country. The first shock which we experienced was about 2 o’clock on the morning of the 16th Dec. at which time our position was in itself perilous, we being but a few hundred yards above a bad place in the river, called the Devils Race Ground: in our situation particularly, the scene was terrible beyond description, our boat appeared as if alternately lifted out of the water, and again suffered to fall. The banks above, below and around us were falling every moment into the river, all nature seemed running into chaos. The noise unconnected with particular objects, was the noise of the most violent tempest of wind mixed with a sound equal to the loudest thunder, but more hollow and vibrating. The crashing of falling trees and the loud screeching of wild fowl made up the horrid concert. Two men were sent on shore in order to examine the state of the bank to which we were moored, who reported that a few yards from its summit, it was separated from the shore by a chasm of more than 100 yards in length. Jos. Morin, the patron, insisted on our all leaving the boat which he thought could not be saved, and of landing immediately in order to save our lives: —this I successfully combatted until another shock took place, about 3 o’clock, when we all left the boat, went on shore and kindled afire.

  Extract from a letter by John Bradbury, dated Orleans January 16th

  “Sir! Sir! Mr. President!”

  The President blinked awake, trying to adjust his eyes to the sudden glare of the overhead light. He had been dreaming so very nicely, too, a warm dream about—was it bread? Yes, bread. UFOs, it seems, were really loaves of bread, and the blinking lights were just the LEDs on the bread machines that made them… You could eat UFOs if you spread butter on them, that was the point.

  “Sir? Are you awake?”

  “Yes, Stan. What is it?”

  There were a limited number of people who could wake the President. The names were on a list: the Secretary of State, the ambassador to the U.N., the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, whoever was on duty at NORAD…

  A relatively small list. The President very much regretted that he had ever put his Press Secretary on it.

  “Calm down, Stan. And tell me what it is. And if it’s the results of some kind of poll, I want you to march right out of here and—”

  “It’s not that, sir! It’s General Frazetta! She’s gone berserk!”

  The President sat up in bed and frowned at Stan. “Berserk? My little Jessica, berserk? What’s she done—” He smiled. “Gone and built another island?”

  “She’s conducting a renegade military operation in Arkansas! She’s using Army Rangers and helicopters to attack some kind of church group!”

  The President frowned. “Sounds serious.”

  “The Attorney General tried to reach you earlier, but he’s not on the list to get you out of bed. He’s mad enough to spit. He called me—I was in my office in the Executive Wing—and he practically chewed my ear off. Civil rights violations, abuse of power, separation of Church and State—my God, what a fiasco. I came right over.”

  The President considered Jessica Frazetta. Energetic, enthusiastic, overachieving. Sexy in a spunky, girl-next-door sort of way. And short. Really short.

  He pictured her in a helicopter, spewing leaden death upon the citizens of Arkansas. He pictured her grinning as she did so. The thought of it made him smile.

  “Any casualties?” he said.

  “Several dead, both Army and civilian. My God, sir, how do we spin this?” The President lay back in his bed and pulled his covers up to his chin. “It’s a no-brainer,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “We absolutely and categorically support General Frazetta’s actions.”

  “Sir!” Stan was flabbergasted.

  “Think about it, Stan. I appointed her to her present position. I was with her on her island, just a few days ago, shaking her hand and telling the world how wonderful she was. Implying that she’d saved the entire South from radiation poisoning. She’s in an absolutely critical position—she’s made herself damn near indispensable. I have to support her.”

  “But—this fiasco—”

  The President closed his eyes. “It’s not a fiasco yet. Right now it’s a brave and courageous action taken in defense of civilian lives.” The President smiled. “If it turns out to be a fiasco later, if she’s really bungled it, then we’ll say she misled us and cut her off at the knees.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Yes, sir,” Stan said.

  “Like I said, a no-brainer. Turn out the lights when you leave, Stan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The President heard Stan’s feet crossing the room, and then the lights went out and the door swung softly shut.

  The President sighed and tucked the covers up to his ears. He tried to remember the dream he was having.

  Bread, he remembered. It was about bread.

  A pair of Hueys throbbed away into the rising sun, carrying Rails Bluff’s wounded. Including the Reverend Dr. Calhoun, who had been gut-shot two days ago, who had been in a coma for some time, but for whom—incredibly—no one in charge had ever thought to call a physician. Crazy, Jessica thought. The man would rather die than let anyone know about his little operation here. Fanatics. Jessica and her people were going to have to be very careful.

  “Everyone gets patted down for weapons!” Jessica ordered. “When each is done, line them up on the road. Tell them rations and fresh water are coming!”

  “O Lord!” cried a gangly red-headed man among the refugees. “O Lord, let me die with Brother Frankland! Let me pay for my sins!” The other refugees had cleared a space around him, looked at him with sidelong glances.

  “O Lord! Take me now! I can’t be saved without Brother Franklan
d!”

  “Who the hell is that?” Jessica asked. “Another preacher?” One of the grim-faced Ranger officers looked up. “He’s been like that ever since the shooting. He keeps saying he was a pornographer and that he should die.” He gave the man a grim look. “I think the others are good and sick of listening to him, but we can’t shut him up.”

  Jessica rubbed her forehead over her injured eye. “Just make sure he doesn’t try to kill himself,” she said. The camp was going to be a colossal administrative night-mare. Sorting Frankland’s henchmen from the mere bystanders, and sorting the henchmen who had broken the law from those who hadn’t, and in the meantime feeding the hungry and doctoring the sick—the legal issues alone, she suspected, were enough to keep several grand juries busy for years.

  Officers hopped to carry out her instructions. Jessica rubbed her forehead over her damaged left eye while she reached into a pocket to pull out her Iridium cellphone.

  She dialed Pat.

  “Yes?” he answered at once. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I came through it.”

  “We were listening to the radio. Frankland had just started this new rant, but it went on for only a couple minutes, and then we lost the signal. So I figured that the Rangers showed up right then. How’d it go?”

  “It went about…” She looked around at the stunned refugees, the burning radio station, bodies of the Rangers lying under blankets. “About as well as we could rationally have hoped,” she finished.

  “That doesn’t sound too good,” Pat said.

  “No,” Jessica said. “No, I wouldn’t call it good. It was the smallest and least destructive of a whole series of possible catastrophes, and that’s all the good you can say about it.”

  “I’m glad you came through it okay.”

  Jessica turned, pulled her rain cape over her head, hunched away from the nearest soldiers. “Pat,” she said, “I need you to make a phone call for me. I need you to call an ophthalmologist—probably one in Jackson—and make an emergency appointment. ASAP.”