Peter gripped the end of a plank and pulled up. It didn’t give, not at all. Another try with all his might, grabbing, trying so hard the slivery edge tore at his hands. The plank was too well nailed.
The next?
Peter went at it even more determinedly, met the same resistance. He fought and finally the plank surrendered, its long nails creaking in protest as it gave up. He got his fingers in under the sides of the plank, worked along, maintaining upward pressure until the plank came free.
It was eight feet, would just do.
As a bridge to Island Three, it bowed beneath Peter’s weight. When he was across he took up the plank and extended it from Three to Island Two. He made doubly sure it was in place, held it steady.
Amy hesitated. Never, even in her childhood, had she found fun in the dare of walking any narrow, slightly higher thing, such as the top of the garden wall. Now in the dim light she could hardly see the plank. It would be like stepping off into space.
Understanding, Peter told her, “Put your arms out for balance.”
Instead, Amy placed her hands on the curve of her pregnant belly, her elbows out evenly. Without looking down she felt for the plank with her right foot, found it and told herself it would be merely four or five ordinary steps. She would be more likely to fall if she tried to inch along. She disliked being afraid.
Actually, there was good reason for her fear. Brydon had warned them about it. Although the mud was only four feet deep, anyone who fell into it would probably be lost. Being in mud was not the same as being in water. When you fell off balance into water of that depth you could easily bring yourself upright. But with mud you sank in and immediately its consistency prevented you from recovering. Try as you might for a standing position, the mud would have its way. Unless, of course, you just happened to be lucky enough to go in exactly feet first, and even then, getting out would be no easy matter.
Amy put all that from her mind, replaced it with the reward of being with Peter. The baby gave her an inside kick that got her started.
She stepped one, two, three, four, across to him, to the safety of the strength of his hands, the cave of his arms. Body against body, hers unable to fit. Their kiss was brief but grateful. They said one another’s names.
Judith also came across. Marion received her and led her a ways down the island where the light was much dimmer, before holding her for a moment. An exchange of covert whispers: “Love you.”
To be together was important for them all. As Peter had done, they all had pried up planks and used them to connect the islands. Placing two, three planks side to side they created wider, safer bridges. It was a lot of work but worth it — a relief to be able to go freely from island to island, to overcome insularity at least to that extent. They got acquainted with one another and became better accustomed to their increased confines. It lifted their spirits.
All except Warren Stevens’.
He took no part in the bridge building. He sat cross-legged on Twelve — three islands and four aisles from the others. Just sat there observing them as though they were performers whom he did not appreciate.
Lois called out to her brother several times. He didn’t reply. She was concerned that he might be injured.
Brydon put a plank in place and went over to Island Nine. Then to Ten and to Eleven. From there, from across the aisle, he asked Warren if anything was wrong.
Warren stood up. He mumbled something.
“What?” Brydon had the plank in hand, was about to extend it to Island Twelve.
“Leave me alone.”
Brydon tried to make out the young man’s face, to read his expression. “Don’t you want to be with us?”
“Why should I?”
“Just thought you would.”
“Fuck off.” Warren snapped it like a command.
They’d all heard it, there was no need for Brydon to explain when he returned to the others.
“That’s how he gets sometimes,” Lois said, half-heartedly apologizing.
Brydon was rankled. The back of his neck was hot and his throat full. He swallowed, rubbed his neck and took his gaze from Warren’s direction. Placing his hand on Lois’s shoulder, he told her: “He’s okay. Anyway, he’s not hurt.”
“He’ll get sick of being over there alone,” insurance man Emory Swanson predicted.
“Uptight mother,” Spider Leaks commented. Spider didn’t really care one way or the other about Warren, but he used the situation to make known his alliance with Brydon. His convict’s intuition told him Brydon was the head man.
Brydon got that, and he realized then that the majority of the group seemed to be directing its hopes at him. Was that why they had chosen to gather on Island Eight? Hell, he thought, he was more of a loner than a leader, didn’t want the responsibility. Besides, there was no reason anyone should be in charge. Considering the apparently hopeless circumstances, they might all do just as well on their own.
As though picking up the thought, Emory Swanson said, “We haven’t got a chance.” He blamed, hated more than anything he’d ever hated, the tube of toothpaste his hand felt in his jacket pocket.
Phil Kemp tugged uncomfortably at the money bags he still had haltered about him. Their weight was causing the twine to cut into his shoulders. “Only possible way out is the back,” he said.
“Why?” Peter asked.
“Can’t be as much mud there.”
“Probably just as deep,” Spider said.
“I mean overhead. Maybe the slide didn’t even cover the back of the building.”
“So what? Here, there — we’ll still be locked in,” Peter said.
Manager Kemp, as usual, resented having his opinion questioned. “Could be the wall is broken through or the roof caved in,” he said. “Anyway, if we’re going to get ourselves out or if someone’s going to rescue us it’ll be the back room.”
“Makes sense,” Dan Mandel said, still agreeing like a salesman.
Brydon had remained silent. Now he explained his theory about the slide, how it might have altered the position of the market.
“Bull!” was Kemp’s reaction.
Emory Swanson agreed. “Kemp knows the place.”
Brydon didn’t argue that. He couldn’t be absolutely certain he was right. It was as much hunch as it was logic. “The back is the wrong way.”
“What do you think?” Elliot Janick asked Marsha Hilbert. He hardly ever asked her opinion, never about anything important. As much as possible, a star was to be seen and not heard.
“You tell me,” she said.
“I don’t know.” He lowered his head. “I don’t know.”
“Some help you are,” she said, a bit cutting, wondering how he’d take it.
He just took it.
Kemp grabbed one of the flashlights and went to the end of the island. Swanson and Dan Mandel went with him. Kemp played the light on the rear wall. The permanent freezer cases were under mud. But not the fixture shelf above the cases. It ran the entire length of the wall to where a doorway with double swinging doors gave access to the receiving and storage area. From the end of the island to that shelf was a good fifteen feet. So close, and so far. The temptation was to jump off and wade to it.
“Rip up a couple of planks,” Kemp said.
They did.
Two eight-foot planks would be just long enough if there was some way of joining them. Kemp decided the best possibility was to overlap and nail them. Mandel used one of Swanson’s shoes, the hard leather heel of it, to drive the nails that were bent and difficult. The shoe wasn’t really heavy enough to hammer with, and after hundreds of hits three nails were in place through both planks.
“That’s good enough,” Kemp said. He tested the planks by lifting and shaking them.
Never hold, was Brydon’s opinion, and although he wanted to say it he held back, knowing it was useless because it wasn’t what Kemp, Swanson, or Mandel wanted to hear. Also, Brydon realized once again that he might be wrong.
He watched them extend the plank from the island to the shelf. Only inches to spare at both ends.
Because it was Kemp’s idea and he seemed so sure of it, it was assumed he would be first to go across. However, Kemp used the excuse of having to retie the money bags, so first was up to Swanson or Mandel.
Swanson was convinced. No doubt in his mind that when he reached the back of the market, he would be safely out of it. Let the others wait until too late—screw them — he’d be out and home tonight — warm bath, straight drink. He’d brush his teeth with that toothpaste. Damn right.
He stepped out onto the plank.
Brydon told him not to, told him, “It won’t hold you.”
Swanson disregarded that. He committed himself with three cautious half-steps, paused, took three more. Then he was at the most critical place, where the planks were joined, and he was hit with the realization that he was gambling his life on the cooperation of three ordinary nails. Unequitable. Poor insurance. Not fair, he thought, not fair. His legs went numb, incapable. He didn’t dare move.
“Go on,” Kemp urged.
Swanson couldn’t.
“Keep going, for God’s sake.”
Swanson felt the planks give some and that suddenly turned his legs on, all of him becoming electric with fear. He took six short, quick steps and reached the shelf, could hardly believe he was standing safely on the solid metal shelf.
He didn’t wait for anyone, went along the shelf to the doorway. He leaned out to peek through the slight space. Nothing. Pitch black in there. Perhaps when he opened one of the doors. He grabbed hold of the top of the nearest. The door looked easy — but it was impossible. Off to the side as he was he couldn’t get much leverage. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. The pressure of the mud four feet deep on his side, and the other side of the door held it like a vice.
Swanson gave up.
“Keep trying,” Kemp shouted.
Swanson told him to shut up. He retreated along the shelf to the planks. Stood there. The planks seemed narrower now, not to be trusted. Swanson glanced across.
“Stay there,” Brydon advised.
Swanson hated all of them. He had been used. The bastards had tricked him into the risk, and now he was over here alone. He had to get back at them. He didn’t want to be alone. He had to get back. No matter what. He stepped out onto the plank, took six short steps to be halfway across.
On the seventh step the planks came apart.
Swanson dropped ass first into the mud. His head, arms and feet were above the surface. He struggled, slapped at the mud, screamed for help, but there was nothing anyone could do but watch. His head and hands sank from sight, and his feet, encased in expensive shoes, went under last.
For the other survivors, Swanson’s gruesome death was a demonstration of what they could expect. They sat huddled on Island Eight. No talk of what they had witnessed or any discussion about trying to get out. They sat silent, in touch with one another for consolation. Brydon had Gloria Rand pressed close to one side, Lois Stevens to the other. Marion Mercer and Judith Ward were together, using his back for support.
For a long while closeness eased them, but gradually it turned on them, became uncomfortable. It reminded them how futile any attempt was they might make to share truly and thereby lessen their plight.
One by one or in pairs they dispersed, went without a word to other islands, where they were as far apart as possible.
Brydon was the last to move. He was relieved to be alone. He stood, stretched, rotated his head, trying to get rid of neck tension. There was whispering from several directions, the same sort of sibilance he had heard once in a cathedral in Spain — people praying. He hadn’t gone there to pray, he remembered, had sat in a pew to study the cathedral’s architectural merits. That had been back in his free-and-easy time. He grunted at the memory, and his next thought was how sorry he was for the others, sorrier for them than for himself. They had more to lose, more months, years of sensations.
Nevertheless, he wanted his time, all he had coming. What a no-good Indian giver God was — had promised him a regular lifetime, taken it back, giving him only a year or two and now was even reneging on that. Now death could come with the mud pouring in any moment.
No, Brydon protested, and no, it wasn’t like him to give up. He went from Island Eight, found Kemp sitting on Three. Kemp started to rise. Brydon yanked him up roughly by his shirt front and told him, “That was stupid.”
Kemp tried to break Brydon’s hold. “I still say the back way is our best bet.”
“Don’t say!”
“I’ll do whatever the hell I want.”
Brydon was almost angry enough to shove him off. He let go of him. “Next time you’ll walk the goddamn plank.”
17
Eleven A.M., Saturday, the day after the slide.
Still raining, no wind, the rain coming straight down.
Sightseers were gathered at the police barricade on the highway north of the slide. Some had come as far as a hundred miles for a look. They couldn’t see much from there and they resented not being allowed nearer. The fascination, of course, was death, and binoculars were used to scan the distant muddy slope for any sign of it.
Sirens and motorcycle growls.
The crowd parted, the barricade was lifted aside for a pair of highway patrolmen on Harley Davidsons, escorting two Cadillac limousines, an Army-colored Chrysler and two highway patrol cars. The limousines had government insignias, eagles, attached to their bumpers front and back. Also decals of orange Day-Glo that said:
The vehicles stopped a short distance beyond the barricade. Senator and Mrs. Hugh Tyler got out of the lead limousine. Both had on clear plastic raincoats. She wore a clear plastic bonnet that tied beneath her chin and his hat was identically covered. Large black umbrellas were held over them. A man from the second limousine hand-held a sixteen-millimeter motion picture camera that he aimed at the senator and shot in spurts from various angles. Another man took stills with a Nikon. The senator glanced at the crowd, acknowledged them with a quick smile and a single wave, but he didn’t wait to see that no one waved back. Changing his expression to grim, he turned his attention to the slide.
The rest of the inspecting party consisted of Brigadier General Schyler and Major L.C. Babb of the Army Corps of Engineers, James McCrary, former television network news analyst and now the senator’s campaign adviser, Bill Everett, commander of Zone Six of the highway patrol, along with his immediate assistant, Supervising Inspector Hal Chapin.
From the last highway patrol car, last to get out, Captain Royden Dodd. He hadn’t been home at all, had only changed his socks, put on the fresh pair he kept in a desk drawer at headquarters.
The group proceeded along the highway in the direction of the slide. Senator Tyler held his chin forthrightly up and out, an affectation he believed in, although it often gave people the impression he was looking down his nose at them. Dodd walked slightly behind, in range of Zone Commander Everett in case he had any questions but definitely away from the senator and his entourage. Dodd hadn’t voted for the man in the last election, wouldn’t in the next.
A hundred yards from the edge of the slide the senator stopped so abruptly General Schyler stepped on his heel. The senator had decided he was near enough. He was skeptical of the hillside on the left, camouflaged his apprehension by pointing to the top of the slide for General Schyler’s benefit. That also inspired the cameraman, who hastily switched to a longer lens that would optically make the senator appear close up to the slide. Campaign adviser McCrary clipped a microphone to the Senator’s lapel.
“Is it on?” the senator asked.
“Not yet.”
“Tell me when.”
“Okay, when.”
McCrary, on camera, introduced himself and announced where he was and who he was with. The camera angle widened to include the senator.
“My schedule called for me to speak at a National Association of Manufacturer
s breakfast this morning, but as soon as I learned about this terrible tragedy I hurried here.”
“You have a special personal reason for involvement, Senator.”
“Oh, yes,” the Senator remembered the leading statement. On the way down from Los Angeles he and McCrary had gone over what they would say. “Yes, I most certainly do. I was born and raised right here in Orange County. In Fountain Valley to be exact, where my father ran a grocery store. So, these are my people.”
“Yesterday the President designated Southern California a disaster area. How do you feel about that?”
A thoughtful pause. “I most certainly agree the situation calls for emergency measures.”
The interview continued.
Zone Commander Everett signaled Inspector Chapin with a glance and they went further down the highway. Captain Dodd followed along. All the way to within a few feet of the slide. They stood in silence for quite a while, then Everett asked Dodd, “How many did we lose?” Meaning highway patrolmen.
“Twelve.”
Everett lowered his head and shook it slowly. It was worse than 1970, when four officers had been killed in a shootout in Newhall. “Families been notified?”
“All but two.”
“Sure?”
Dodd was sure because he’d seen to it himself, had spent all morning on the phone. He’d always made it a point to know the personal lives of his men, got acquainted with their wives and families whenever possible.
“You were real lucky, Dodd,” Inspector Chapin said as he appraised the slide.
No comment from Dodd. Being the only survivor wasn’t a distinction. He should have been dead and buried with the others. He didn’t give a damn how it looked to anyone. That wasn’t it. It was how he felt. Every breath he took now was borrowed.
Everett told him, “Lucky for us.” The commander seemed to realize the weight of the guilt that had been turning over and over in Dodd’s mind.
Dodd thanked him.
“I’ll send you up a replacement for Porter,” Everett said. “Unless you have someone you especially want.”
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