Caller: Hi, Paul. Tell Frank all of us in LA. wish him well.
DiAngelo: He’ll be happy to hear that, Margaret. Why don’t you tell our listeners where you are right now?
Caller: I’m in my office, on the third floor of the Warrior Warehouse on the waterfront.
DiAngelo: And what are you doing there?
Caller: Actually, I’m working late. I’m one of the partners at Warrior. But what I’m really doing is watching for the tidal wave. And I can tell you, the ocean is smooth as silk.
DiAngelo: Wait a minute, Margaret. You’re sitting down at the waterfront watching for a tidal wave?
Caller: (Laughs.) I’m perfectly safe. These are high floors. I’m almost a hundred feet over the parking lot, and the building is concrete.
DiAngelo: Margaret, why are you doing this?
Caller: How many times do you get to see a tidal wave, Paul? Anyway, I’ve got my minicam up here, and if it comes I expect to get some good pictures.
DiAngelo: I hope so. Have you thought about the possibility you might get cut off up there?
Caller: The freezer’s loaded. Listen, this isn’t the reason I called, though.
DiAngelo: Okay, Margaret, but we’re almost out of time. Make it quick.
Caller: How many people died last night?
DiAngelo: I don’t know. The estimates are all over the place.
Caller: A let.
DiAngelo: Yeah.
Caller: That’s right, Paul. And we could have saved a lot of those people if those clowns in Washington hadn’t just dismissed the whole thing.
DiAngelo: Looks that way.
Caller: I think we’re ripe for an impeachment, don’t you?
DiAngelo: Margaret, the president is among the victims.
Caller: I know. And I wish I could say I’m sorry he’s dead. But they really screwed up this time. And somebody needs to pay.
DiAngelo: Thanks for your thoughts, Margaret. We’re out of time, folks. Don’t forget, Frank’ll be back tonight, at his regular time, live.
3.
Micro. 6:22 A.M.
“I, Charles L. Haskell, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Justice Mary B. Longbridge administered the oath by radio. She was at Egmont Air Force Base. It was the first time in U.S. history that the presiding official and the incoming president were physically separated.
In fact, other than Haskell, no U.S. citizen was present at the inauguration.
Had Mr. Haskell been visible to the electorate, they would have noted that the new president looked as if he’d been mugged. His face was swollen and he was covered with bruises.
There was no physical Bible in the microbus. Therefore, Mr. Haskell brought up an appropriate biblical verse from the ship’s library and placed his left hand on the display while he took the oath. The passage, recommended by Chaplain Mark Pinnacle, was from Numbers, Chapter VI, Verses 24–26.
At thirty-eight, Charlie Haskell became the youngest president in U.S. history, surpassing Theodore Roosevelt by three years. He was the ninth vice president to succeed to the presidency on the death of the incumbent, and the tenth overall to assume the post (Gerald Ford having been inaugurated after the resignation of Richard Nixon).
His middle initial stood for Lionel, which was the name of an uncle he had met only once. He detested the name, and to the extent he was able, he never allowed it to be used or to appear in print.
He spoke for six minutes and eleven seconds, easily the shortest inauguration address on record. No other president, he said, had been sworn in at a darker moment. But he would do everything he could, with the united help of the American people, and their friends around the world, to ensure that the nation survived the event, to ease its burdens, to head off further disaster, and to begin the long process of recovery. “We will go on,” he said. “We will learn from this, and we will not be turned aside. The broken Moon will remain in our skies, to remind us that we are not isolated on the Earth. There is a greater world beyond, and we must recognize we are part of that greater world. We must learn to apply our technologies to protect ourselves to the extent we are able; and we must also rethink who we are. Tonight we have arrived at a critical moment in our history. We must accept our losses, because we cannot do otherwise. But we will not accept defeat, we will go forward, because to fail to do so would be a betrayal of all who died during these last few hours.”
When the ceremony ended, they drank a toast to his success. Evelyn had designed, and Saber printed, programs for the event, and everyone asked him to sign a copy.
“This isn’t exactly the way I’d pictured my inauguration,” he told them. “Usually the swearing-in includes a parade, ball-rooms, dignitaries, lots of press coverage.” He smiled at Keith Morley, who’d agreed to shut the mike off momentarily. “This one is quieter than most. But I think no other president has been so fortunate in the persons who surrounded him during the rite of passage. Living and dead.” He lifted his glass to toast them. “Thank you.”
4.
WPYX REPORTING. 4:33 A.M. PDT (7:33 A.M. EDT).
(Helicopter in the background, rotors slowly turning.)
“…atop the New County Courthouse in Los Angeles. From our perch up here we can see the Hall of Justice, the Federal Building, the Civic Center. Everywhere, frightened crowds are breaking into whatever buildings, whatever skyscrapers, they can, hoping to get up high.” (Crowd noises, explosions, gunfire audible in background.)
“We can see lights and people moving on the upper floors of police headquarters and at the Museum of Contemporary Art. As far as we can tell, there is no longer an organized police force left in the city. The streets are filled with people. I don’t know where they keep coming from.
“Our best information is that all highways out of the city remain hopelessly blocked. PacRail, of course, stopped operating earlier this evening, so right now the only salvation anyone has is to get above the water level. Whatever that might be. In fact, they’re signaling me that we can hear people moving up in this building.
“Okay, that’s the story from Hill Street and Beverly Boulevard. We’re going to switch over now to Linda Tellier, who’s in our news copter at Redondo Beach. Linda?”
“Thanks, Rod. We’re about a half mile off shore, awaiting the first of the waves that the National Weather Service has been predicting for the last few hours. We’re just over the water now, and while you can’t see it in the dark, Redondo Beach is experiencing an extraordinarily low tide. That’s one of the sure signs of an approaching wave.
“Looking east, we can see the lights of Torrance and Inglewood. Interstate 405 is almost dark, Rod. It’s filled with abandoned cars. Police and military units were up there until about an hour ago, just pushing vehicles off the highway, but they’re gone now too. And when we looked at it a few minutes ago, we saw only a few people wandering aimlessly, and some who were stripping cars.
“We were in touch with the Coast Guard—wait, I think I see something now. You’re not getting this in your picture, but I can see what looks like a wall across the horizon. The ocean just seems to be rising up. And up.” (Long pause.) “And up. God help us, Rod, it’s hard to tell for sure, but that thing might be fifteen stories high.
“I hope everyone’s out of Redondo.”
Pacific Coast. 4:39 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time (7:39 A.M. EDT).
The first wave struck well before dawn. It roared ashore between Point Conception and Santa Barbara and boiled into the Santa Ynez Mountains. Forewarned, the population had scattered to high ground, and only a handful of casualties were recorded. The National Park Service estimated that the wave was one hundred fifty feet high.
Within minutes other tsunamis hit Seattle and Coos Bay. The Seattle wave was initially reported to have been a half-mile high when it struck the city, but videos taken from of
fice buildings and aircraft put the crest at only a tenth of that figure. It was enough.
Between four thirty-five and five A.M., the Pacific rose from its bed and overwhelmed the coastline from Juneau to San Carlos. In the Los Angeles area, the city simply disappeared, save for a few downtown skyscrapers and the surrounding hilltops. Most of Santa Monica and Redondo, Inglewood and Long Beach went with it.
San Francisco also died. A wave estimated at six hundred fifty feet took down the Golden Gate Bridge, submerged the city from the Presidio on the north to San Andreas Lake on the south. It buried Oakland and Berkeley, and poured through the Simi Valley and the bays north of San Francisco into the California interior. The San Joaquin Valley became an inland sea.
Initial estimates put the death toll at two million in greater Los Angeles alone. Curiously, throughout the bombardment San Diego remained untouched. It reported lower than normal tides.
In Mexico the ocean surged over Baja California, spilled into the Gulf of California, and maintained enough power to impose severe damage on the eastern shore from Isla Del Tiburon to Mazatlán.
County Route 6, southeast of San Francisco.
4:59 A.M. PDT (7:59 A.M. EDT).
There were no emergency services. Phones were dead and the radio in the police car brought only a carrier wave. As the first gray light of dawn was appearing, a helicopter owned by Short Haul Airways arrived with a doctor and some medical supplies.
“Best I could do,” said the pilot, whose name Marisa never caught. “It’s pretty grim out there.”
Among the group trapped by the landslide, there’d been only one physician, and he’d broken his back. Marisa and Jerry had taken charge of the rescue effort.
They had converted the restaurant into a makeshift hospital, and the antique shop into a morgue. She’d tried to treat the seriously injured where they fell, despite the threat presented by the cliff. But the ground had continued to shake, and eventually she’d bitten the bullet and ordered everyone away. Ten minutes later the mountain had collapsed.
Jerry had rounded up volunteers and they pitched in to help, cleaning wounds, setting bones, and applying tourniquets. The doctor who’d come in aboard the chopper had been vacationing at a mountain cabin when Short Haul found him.
They had about forty people who needed hospital treatment. “Not going to happen,” said the doctor. His name was Hardacre and he was in his early thirties. He was a young, good-looking guy who complained that it was his first vacation in three years. He seemed to regard the disaster as a personal imposition. But he’d come, and he seemed competent, so Marisa wasn’t complaining.
“What do you mean, it’s not going to happen?” she demanded.
“You been watching the TV?” he asked.
“Not for the last hour or so.”
“When you get a minute, take a look. Whatever hospitals are left will be swamped. It’s likely to be a long time before anybody’s going to have beds available.”
She looked around at her patients. They had no cots, so the patients had all been placed on the floor and made as comfortable as conditions allowed. Hardacre had grabbed some painkillers and other supplies from the cache at the resort where he’d been staying, and they’d helped, had helped a lot. But these people needed serious treatment. What were they going to do?
As if to underscore the point, a distant murmur was becoming audible. Marisa’s first thought was that the rest of the mountain was coming down. They were well across the road, far enough away to be safe, but the sound was different from the one she’d heard earlier. And it was coming from the opposite direction, from the San Joaquin. Maybe the part of the mountain they were sitting on was going to go this time.
She put it out of her mind and went back to changing a dressing. The patient was a middle-aged woman with a shattered leg and a sliced arm. Hardacre had put twenty stitches in the arm and supported the leg as best he could. The woman’s husband, who’d come through untouched, was beside her.
Marisa’s thoughts returned to Jerry. They’d set up a center for the lost kids wandering around. Jerry had seen that it was properly staffed. Now he was busy on the far side of the restaurant, changing bandages. It wasn’t something he liked to do and, in fact, Jerry had never liked blood very much, but he was shining this morning.
When she finished with the woman, she went on to other patients. The distant sound was getting louder. It was nothing like the fearful roar of the avalanche, but it was disquieting all the same, as if something were coming.
She was changing a dressing when one of the volunteers charged through a door. “The valley’s filling up!” she cried.
Marisa was almost immune to alarms by now. She finished what she was doing and strode to a back window that looked down into the San Joaquin.
It spread out before her, a vast basin rimmed by mountains lost in early-morning mist. Toward the west, a deluge was gushing out of a narrow defile and spreading out across the valley floor.
Later, when she took a break and went to see Erin and Jimmy, they hugged her and asked when they were going home. By then an inland sea, quiet and tranquil, stretched toward the morning sun as far as she could see.
“We are home,” she said quietly.
Micro Passenger Cabin. 8:03 A.M.
“Say again, Al.”
Charlie tried to keep his voice low so he couldn’t be overheard. But the conversation among the other passengers always stopped as soon as he got on the phone. He knew they weren’t trying to eavesdrop, except maybe Morley, whose job it was, but human nature was at work here. It was useless to try for privacy under these circumstances. Anyway, what did it matter?
“I said NASA tells us you’ll be okay. They’ve figured out how to rescue you.”
“I didn’t know I needed to be rescued.”
“My God, are you serious? You’re on your way to Pluto or something. They’re sending the Lowell after you.”
Charlie waved it away. In the face of everything else that had landed on him, the news seemed almost anticlimactic. “Okay,” he said.
He’d been off and on the phone with Al Kerr for the better part of two hours, getting updates on a series of increasingly desperate situations. The United States had literally millions of people on the road for whom there was neither shelter nor food, swamping efforts by relief agencies. Both coasts and the Hawaiian Islands had been heavily damaged by waves and storms. In some places earthquakes had been triggered. Property damage would be in the trillions. And God knew how much loss of life. Medical Authorities were already warning about the possibility of infectious outbreaks; more tidal waves were reported in the Pacific.
Financial experts were pointing out that the functional loss of New York and Los Angeles would destroy the banking system, and were advising the government to move immediately.
“What do they suggest?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t think they have any idea at this point, Mr. President. But they want us to know that action is of the essence.”
What else?
There were major power outages in the Northeast and Northwest; tens of thousands of Mexican refugees for whom no provision could be made were streaming north; a freak electrical storm had virtually destroyed Tucson.
There were, however, some pieces of genuine good news: The heartland was still intact. The federal government was functioning well; early indications were that its agencies and the military were performing miracles. Europe and Asia had not been hit as hard as the Americas, and their allies, and even a few old enemies, were helping where they could. Best of all, the missiles were locked and loaded, and by nine A.M. the Possum would be history.
Charlie outlined his priorities. Foremost, they needed to concentrate on the refugee problem. “Do whatever’s necessary to get food and services out. There’s a potential here for even worse losses. We need to figure out what we can do for the people on the road, and we need to get it right the first time. And don’t feel you have to wait for presidential authori
zation. Something needs to get done, do it. Just keep me informed. I’ll support you.”
“Or fire me,” said Al, obviously uncomfortable. Kerr had never been a supporter of Charlie Haskell, and now he expected to pay the price.
Charlie had more important things to think about. “I want action plans waiting for me as soon as I get back. Assemble a working group to get ahead of the curve. I don’t want to be just reacting to disasters. Put some people together to figure out what else might happen, what else we can do.”
“What specifically did you have in mind, Mr. President?”
“Cholera and typhus, for one thing.” He took a deep breath because he sensed the man’s timidity. Anger flowed through him. There just wasn’t time now for people who weren’t ready to get things done. “Goddammit, Al,” he said, “if I knew, I wouldn’t need the working group. Keep it small. I want ideas, not ass-covering. What do we need to do to keep the country alive? Not just people, but the institutions. You got that?
“Get somebody from the military. CDC. FEMA. Some academics. Figure it out. We got blindsided this week, Al. And I think we’ve had all we can stand. No more surprises.”
Was there anything else?
Yeah, there was. His voice softened: “I’m sorry about Henry and Emily. I know you and they were close.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
“I’ll expect you to stay on as chief of staff. At least until we get through this.”
“Yes, sir.”
He broke the connection, wandered back into the passenger cabin, where everyone pretended to be busy reading. “Everything okay, Mr. President?” Evelyn asked.
They’d all gone formal on him again. And maybe it was just as well. He wondered how much Lincoln would have accomplished if everyone in the neighborhood had called him Abe.
“Fine,” he said. “We’re doing fine.”
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