Some people shouted and shook their fists, but many more abandoned their cars and took to the walkway, climbing down and attempting to get over the fence that blocked the Rio Grande. The most athletic of them made it, some even with a few possessions, and went swimming out into the flooding, uneasy water, struggling for the far side with their backpacks and suitcases floating around them.
Normally, the Rio Grande was a slow river, often not even flowing, but today it was steady, and from the darkness that scarred the northern horizon, it looked as if it would be in flood soon. Unless, of course, it also froze.
Washington was experiencing a full-scale blizzard. Nothing was abnormal about it yet—it was simply intense. But the city was still functioning with a skeleton crew of police and National Guard troops out to prevent looting and protect the national monuments.
Six of those men were destined to lose their lives at the top of the Washington Monument when the cold touched it, many others to die in the Capitol, in the various official structures, in the streets.
Alone among all the federal structures, only the White House blazed with light. Inside, it was warm and quiet, with only the faintest whisper of falling snow, and an occasional wail from the wind as it compressed against the eaves of the private apartments on the upper floor.
Also alone, having even sent his Secret Service personnel south, the president of the United States sat at his executive desk. The building was on its own power and fuel, so he had closed off the largely ceremonial Oval Office.
Vice President Becker and the secretary of state burst in. They’d been in the Cabinet Room, which had become a sort of state headquarters.
The president gave them a cold look. He could not help but feel that Becker had betrayed him by scoffing at this man Hall. Becker should at least have given the president the opportunity to decide for himself.
Like most presidents, he was most hurt by mistakes made not by him, but on his behalf.
He raised his eyebrows. Becker puffed himself up. He was about to yell, looked like. He shouted, “The Mexicans have closed the border!”
Blake had been expecting that. “Have you spoken to the Mexican ambassador?”
“He’s dead,” the secretary said. “A tree fell on his car.”
“Mr. President, we can open the border by force if we want to.”
General Pierce appeared as if on command, which was probably exactly what had happened, the president thought.
“What are your contingency plans, General?”
“We already have the Third Corps out of Fort Hood on Threatcon Delta, sir.”
Ready to go, the president thought.
“Have you lost your minds?” Secretary Linn yelled. “We’re facing the largest ecological disaster in human history and you’re talking about going to war?”
“We’re talking about survival,” the vice president bellowed.
The president thought, I must never have another shouter on my ticket. Shouting is always a sign of weakness.
Becker continued, “When resources become scarce, nations go to war.”
Yes, the president thought, that had been old Tojo’s approach. He’d sent the Imperial Japanese Navy to Pearl Harbor because we’d cut off his oil.
“What about sovereignty?” the secretary said. “It’s their sovereign right to close their border.”
“America was built on land stolen from the Indians. So was Mexico, for that matter. The only claim nations have on the land they hold is force.”
That was enough. Adolf Hitler, the president thought, had been the last one to buy into that argument. “I will not start a war, Raymond,” the president said mildly.
He saw the flicker of surprise in his vice president’s eyes. He reflected that he’d been passive too long, much too long. How many lives was that going to cost? He dared not think. But he did think this: The Blake presidency was not going to make any more stupid mistakes.
“Get me the president of Mexico on the phone,” he said to his secretary. “We’re going to ask for help.”
The Trustee’s Room of the New York Public Library, where people like Brooke Astor and Norman Mailer had held elegant court, was ponderously ornate. Were it not for Judith, they might never have found it. And it was important that they had, because it was the only place in this building where they had any chance whatsoever of surviving.
“The fireplace probably hasn’t been used in a long time,” Judith said uneasily. She was thinking about things like chimney draw and whether the flue could still be opened.
J.D. walked over to it. He sized it up, then bent down and peered inside. He came out, then reached along one wall of the hearth and pulled a black lever. There was a high-pitched crunching sound and a gust of wind came in, scattering ash and snowflakes across the floor.
Sam had worried, also, that the fireplace might be sealed. If it was, he thought that they might die here. Dad had talked to him many times about what had happened on this planet ten thousand years ago. Temperatures had dropped so fast and so far that huge animals had been frozen solid. There was evidence, also, of massive winds and floods and all manner of mayhem. Most of the large land animals of North America had gone extinct—the camels, the giant ground sloths, the mammoths and mastodons, and of course, the saber-toothed tigers that depended on them for food.
The buffalo had survived because they could run fast and far, and enough of them had done just that to keep the species alive.
As for men, they had been almost stripped off the continent. It was why, when the Europeans arrived thousands of years later, they found a North America that only had about a third of the population that would have been there if the superstorm hadn’t taken place.
Of course, most scientists had other theories. Nobody really thought Dad was right—except Dad, of course. Too bad he had only won his battle with his colleagues because all of mankind had lost its war with nature.
“We should start bringing in books from the stacks,” Sam said.
Judith gave him a funny smile, as if to ask, What are you talking about?
A dictionary was on a stand across the room. Sam went over and got it. It was satisfyingly heavy. He threw it into the fireplace.
Judith looked at him as if he were insane. “What are you doing?”
Oh, boy. She’d better face some facts. “What did you think we were going to burn?”
“We can’t burn books!”
Sam felt for her. She was a librarian and obviously loved this library. And why shouldn’t she? Drowned down below their feet and frozen wai one of the world’s greatest book collections. But the real question here had nothing to do with whether the books could be saved. The only real question was whether enough dry books were available on this floor to use as fuel to save their lives.
Judith hung her head. She laughed a little, then she cried. Elsa said, “I’ll go hunting for books.”
Brian and several of the others followed her out.
Sam asked Judith a question that was going to become very, very important soon. “Is there a lunchroom or cafeteria?”
“On this floor, just an employee lounge with a few vending machines.”
Sam followed her along the hall to a small room with a door marked Employees Only. Laura and Jama came with them. Three vending machines were in the room, two for sodas and one that contained some Cheetos, potato chips, Slim Jims, and crackers. No candy, nothing anywhere near substantial enough.
Sam pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall and smashed it into the machine, which rocked but did not break. Of course not. They were designed to withstand vandalism, weren’t they? Well, maybe. He gave it another couple of blows, hoping that the fire extinguisher wouldn’t explode before the lock damn well broke.
With a satisfying clang, the vending machine popped open.
“We’re not gonna last long on Slim Jims and potato chips. There’s nothing else?”
“Food and drink aren’t allowed in the library,” Judith responded primly.
; That explained the bias toward the dry and the non-messy. No gooey candy, nothing that could stain a book … or sustain a life.
“How about garbage cans?” Luther asked. “Always something to eat in the garbage.”
Man, he was cool in his own weird way, Sam thought. J.D., however, went a really pooky shade of green.
“Gross! I’m not eating out of the garbage.”
Luther bowed his head, ashamed. But Sam also heard him mumble, “Good, more for us.” Then he left, obviously in search of wherever he might find some bread crusts or, joy of joys, sandwiches or something that the librarians might have confiscated and tossed.
Judith hurried out behind Luther. Sam thought that she probably shared the same hope, which was a good sign. Maybe Luther would save them all.
Back in the Main Reading Room, it was getting really cold. Sam did not want to frighten anybody, but he knew that this cold, when it came, would be fast. They had to get this fire going and get plenty of fuel for it, and it had to be done as if there were no tomorrow. He organized Elsa and Jeremy to load books onto library carts. She began moving along piling up telephone directories, and he started removing books from the ready-access stacks behind the librarian’s desk.
When he started reading one, Elsa did the right thing—she snatched it from him.
“Friedrich Nietzsche? We can’t burn that, he’s one of the most important thinkers in history!”
Elsa tossed it onto the cart. “Please, Nietzsche was a syphilitic chauvinist who was in love with his own sister.”
“He was not!”
Brian called to them, “Hey, you guys-come down here. I’m looking at a couple of tons of tax law.”
That stopped their bickering. Sam watched them go back to work, satisfied now that they would be able to get sufficient books to the fireplace. The one thing he had said nothing about was matches. He hadn’t seen any of these people smoking, not even Luther, so he needed to worry about it. But surely some were around here somewhere, which Judith would know about.
There had better be.
An empty hospital is a strange and desolate place, something that practically nobody ever gets to see … or wants to. But this particular empty hospital still had running generators and lights, and machines doing whatever they might do automatically. Far off down a corridor, a bell rang again and again, the sound echoing but calling nobody.
Footsteps joined it as a nurse moved past a television anchored to the ceiling of a small waiting area. “Traffic into Mexico has been moving smoothly since the president struck a deal to forgive all Mexican debt in exchange for opening the border …”
She stopped a moment and watched images of a truly gigantic amount of traffic crossing at Laredo, at Juarez, at Tijuana. All of it was going south into the world that Maria Gomez had left so many years ago. Her education, her prosperity, her pride—all of them were part of her American life and her hard-won citizenship. So she was angry at this storm, to see it ruining her adopted country, which had given her so much, had really made her life worth living.
She remembered Chihuahua City all too well, with its dirty cops who would rape you as soon as look at you, and its poverty and disease and its miserable few hospitals where only God knew if the drugs in use were even the real thing.
Shuddering, she walked on. As she approached the pediatric ward, she heard Dr. Lucy’s voice softly reading to the one little patient who had been left behind.
Lucy sat on the edge of Peter’s bed reading Bill Peet’s Jennifer and Josephine, one of the most reliable old favorites in the hospital’s library. The story of the little old car and the little old cat who lived in her, and the salesman who was driving the car to ruin, never failed to get the attention, especially, of little boys.
“Dr. Lucy?”
Nobody called her by her last name. Maria wouldn’t have been too surprised if she didn’t have one. Lucy kissed Peter’s forehead, whispered to him that she’d be right back, and went out.
“Is the transport ambulance here?”
That was the problem. That was the big problem for Dr. Lucy. “They’ve all gone. In the confusion, I don’t know what happened. People started to panic, Dr. Lucy. They are running everywhere, the convoys all leaving.”
Dr. Lucy regarded her with steady, clear eyes. She saw no fear. She only saw bravery.
“There’s a policeman with a snowplow waiting outside.”
“He can’t be moved without an ambulance.”
“I know! I left messages at the county ambulance service. But, you know—”
Lucy knew all right. The county ambulance service was on its way south with the rest of America. So, now there was a choice to make. Leave Peter or stay with Peter. Take a chance at life, or resign herself to certain death. For her, there was no question. It wasn’t even close. “You go on that plow, Maria. I’ll stay and wait.”
Maria’s heart became very full. Her eyes did, too. Everybody loved Dr. Lucy. She was the best of the best, the kindest, the smartest of all the doctors at Washington Pediatric. “Lucy-—”
“You need to go. He won’t wait forever.”
Maria pleaded with her eyes. It was not her place to disagree with one of the doctors, she knew that, but Dr. Lucy might die here.
“Go, Maria.”
Why had they ever left little Peter? Just because he was so sick and required so much support? Maybe the administrators had decided to abandon him. Well, they shouldn’t have, if they did, because that would be a sin. Maria blinked away tears. Then she turned. She wanted the best for Dr. Lucy, but she also did not want that snowplow to leave.
“Maria!”
She stopped. Maybe Dr. Lucy was changing her mind.
“When you get to Mexico, leave word for my ex-husband at the American embassy.”
“What should i say?”
Lucy hesitated for a moment, then smiled slightly… a sad smile, Maria thought. A very, very sad smile. “Tell him that I had to finish reading a little boy his bedtime story. He’ll understand.”
Maria nodded. She would not forget this. She would do this.
Lucy returned to Peter’s room. He had no idea what was happening. She went into the soft light and sat down once again beside the little cancer patient with his bald head and big smile. He had the book open on his chest. He held it out to her.
She began to read.
FOURTEEN
F
rom Philadelphia to Bangor, the snow was falling, over the vast, silent cities and the whispering forests, along the highways and their immense, choked lines of cars, in the little towns where the intimate lights of evening were turned out forever, falling like a gentle, deadly spirit from the sky, dropping softly when the wind sighed, flurrying when it roared.
In Manhattan, it was literally pouring out of the sky. And yet, it was so cold that the flakes were each entirely discrete. If you put out a gloved hand, you would see individual snowflakes, each a gossamer universe of crystalline threads, and you would share in the wonder that no two of them are ever quite the same.
But that was where the romance of this terrible snow ended. All the rest was nothing but death, death by cold, death by wind, death by a cruel fall.
Inside, Laura was piling books into J.D.‘s arms. Once he was loaded up and carrying them out, she picked up a load herself. She intended to tell nobody, but her leg where she’d hurt it was killing her. It hurt even to touch it. And now, she couldn’t even put the weight of a few books on it. She could barely walk.
“What’s the matter?” Elsa asked when she noticed her rubbing her shin.
“Oh, I cut my leg getting here.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t walk around on it.”
Yeah, and not do her part. No way. Laura forced herself to pick up a stack of books. She headed for the Trustee’s Room. “I’ll be all right,” she said, forcing herself to suppress every sign of the agony she actually felt.
As Sam came in with books of his own to add to their stacks, he watched Br
ian holding the old radio to his ear. Then Brian motioned to him to come closer.
“Did you get a signal?”
He nodded. “For a second.”
“And?”
Brian’s eyes met his. “The storm is everywhere. It’s hit the entire northern hemisphere.”
This was incredible. This didn’t mean just the United States and Canada. Northern hemisphere covered Europe, Siberia, most of China. How were the Chinese coping? The Europeans?
“Europe is buried under fifteen feet of snow and they say it’s gonna get just as bad here.”
Fifteen feet. That was 180 inches of snow. If it had been snowing there, say, twice as long as here, that meant that they had been getting nearly four inches an hour for forty-eight hours. That was unimaginable. An inch an hour for half that time would be a major snowfall.
Day After Tomorrow Page 15
