Janet found Tom on the cot he’d had installed in the tiny area behind his desk that he now called home. He was not about to leave this headquarters, not for any reason, lest he miss a crucial development.
NOAA had been using the National Emergency Alert System to alert travelers of much more than weather conditions, such as information about food and gasoline supplies along the highways, traffic problems, the availability of medical support, and anything else that might help refugees.
Janet shook Tom’s shoulder. “Tom, wake up. I just received some images from the International Space Station. You’d better take a look.”
Tom rolled off the cot, rumpled but fully dressed. He followed her to a monitor and there, for the first time, saw the storm whole. He stared down at the pale mass made weirdly beautiful by infrared imaging that saw through the cloud tops into the structure of the storm below. A map was overlaid on the storm, and heavy weather could be seen on its northern border over Quebec somewhere north of the St. Lawrence Seaway, while its more clearly defined southern border reached well into Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. From there it curved up across the northern half of Texas, where it became joined with another system plunging down from the north that was now blizzarding across the western half of the country, with three inches of snow falling an hour, and wind gusting on the flat prairies past a hundred miles an hour.
“The vortex is fifty miles in diameter,” Janet said, pointing to a spot approximately over Detroit. “It’s growing. And the cells over Europe and Asia are even bigger.”
“Good God.”
She pointed to a nasty bulge in the overall mass of the storm. “This megacell’s going to hit New York inside of an hour.”
Even now, every communications officer in the system was using every means available to try to let the people facing this thing know of their peril. Tom thought, though, that few of them would be able to save themselves, even if they did know. This monstrosity’s vertical circulation was going to get so fast and so high that it would bring down supercold air from the upper levels of the atmosphere, air that would, briefly, drop ground temperatures to a 160 below, cold enough to freeze a human body solid in seconds.
He looked up at Janet, his tired mind focusing on a small detail that suddenly seemed intensely important. “Does Jack know?”
“We can’t reach him.”
Tom thought it ironic that a storm of a type that only Jack Hall had believed was even possible was going to kill him.
Jack had been in willpower mode before, so he knew that it was a matter of making sure that one foot went down ahead of where the other one had gone down. The wind swirled around him and the snow slid downward, but he was aware that it seemed less thick now. Even the worst storms, it seemed, played themselves out. Of course they did, he knew that. He was just beginning to have a hard time believing it.
Suddenly the rope around his waist went taut. He turned and, for a moment, didn’t see Jason. His heart started hammering: he was full of guilt for what had happened to Frank. Losing Jason was totally unacceptable.
He hauled himself toward the lump that was Jason, being careful not to let the line go slack. When he saw him, he realized that Jason hadn’t dropped into a hole, but had simply collapsed. He bent down. The kid’s eyes were closed, he was breathing normally. Jack reached into his parka and felt the pulse in his neck. Normal.
The kid was exhausted, that was all that was wrong with him. Jack got his arms around his chest and lifted him onto the sled. Then he went behind it and started pushing.
The air was definitely lighter. The snow was less. It had warmed up so much that Jack was actually feeling a little sweat under his arms, deep beneath his six layers of clothing.
Had he been less exhausted himself, he would have recognized these danger signs. Instead, he pressed on, even allowing himself to hope that he’d soon see the sun.
EIGHTEEN
S
am had found some chairs with cane seats. He cut
into one now, struggling to turn it into something that would work as a snowshoe. Without snowshoes, you’d sink to your waist out there. Ten feet out, you’d stop, too exhausted to go any farther. Struggling to turn around would take you down to chest level. If you made it back to your starting point, it would be a miracle.
“What are you doing?” Judith asked.
What Sam was doing was either saving Laura’s life or giving up his own. He gazed out toward the wrecked cargo ship that was visible through the windows. “That ship has to have medicine aboard.”
“You said it was too dangerous to go outside.”
His dad had warned him about lethal downbursts, but they’d been here for four days now, and so far there hadn’t been a sign of one. They were out there, for sure, but they were apparently more rare than Dad had thought they would be. He continued working on the snowshoes.
“Where’d you find those chairs?” Brian asked. He had been sitting with J. D. The two of them were caring for Laura, making sure she was as warm as possible. When the wind slacked off, you could hear her teeth chattering and the steady murmur of her delirium. “Where’d you find those chairs?” Brian repeated.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going with you.”
J.D. came over. “Me, too.”
Sam might have been worried, once, for their safety. He was beyond that now. Just getting up on that ship was going to be a tremendous job, and he had to save Laura. Anybody willing to help was welcome.
They bundled themselves up as best they could, but when they jimmied open one of the ice-encrusted windows, they all knew immediately that it was hardly enough. The cold that hit them was brutal, it shot through you like a jolt of ice lightning. It seemed to attack your skin, then your blood with a billion tormenting pinpricks. J. D. gasped, Brian cursed, and Sam started out into the snow, holding his head down, moving toward the gray hulk that was dimly visible ahead in the roaring blizzard.
He came up on something swinging back and forth, a ghostly, strange presence. At first, he was mystified by what this bizarre object could be, but when he got close, he saw, inside its crust of ice, a dimly visible image of a yellow stoplight. It was the traffic light at Fifth and Forty-second. The snow here must be at least thirty feet deep.
Moving slowly, hoping that their jerry-built snowshoes would hold together, the three of them approached the ship. It wasn’t really all that huge, but up close it seemed impossibly massive. Its bulk stretched off into the driving snow, creating the illusion that it must be miles and miles long. Craning his neck, Sam looked up to the Cyrillic lettering on the prow. Between the unfamiliar shapes of the letters and all the ice, he couldn’t even begin to read it.
Now came the hard part—how to get into the thing. He thought of Laura in there dying, and he knew he had to hurry. He’d read more about septicemia, and he knew just how unpredictable it could be. At some point, Laura’s heart would give out. When depended on a whole host of factors that he had no way of knowing.
She could have died five minutes ago. She might die in ten minutes, in an hour, in three days. All he knew was this: he had to get penicillin in her, or she was lost.
Brian went past him, hurrying ahead. Then Sam saw why. A rope ladder led to a narrow steel stair that rose up the side of the ship. The port entry. Sailors could use these steps to get down to a tender when they wanted to go ashore in a port that was too shallow for the ship to enter. Somebody must have used it to get off the ship. What an experience that must have been, riding a ship up Fifth Avenue on a storm surge.
They left their snowshoes tied to the bottom rung of the rope ladder, which was frozen iron-hard. It was exhausting, dangerous work, climbing the ladder in the wind, but the stairs were even harder. The offered absolutely no traction. J.D. had found some decent boots that fit him, but shoes were a scarce item in the lost and found, and Sam and Brian had had to make do with the sneakers they’d been wearing when this started.
The thing was, Sa
m’s feet were already getting numb, and he knew that Brian’s would be, too. How much time did they have before the cold incapacitated them, then killed them? Sam guessed half an hour, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
The deck was a complicated riot of cables and jumbled equipment, all of it thickly encrusted with ice. The ship’s superstructure was at the rear of the vessel. That was the crew’s living quarters. Their medical cabinet would be there. Sam hoped to God that this Russian vessel had been observing international sea law, which required vessels to carry safety equipment that included antibiotics. One hopeful thing was that it had obviously entered New York Harbor, which meant that it had passed a harbormaster inspection. They looked at safety equipment. But how closely, and could they be bribed?
They reached a door—a hatch, really—that was frozen closed. At first, getting it open seemed impossible, but then Brian found a piece of metal that was flat enough to force into the small gap between the hatch and the metal wall of the ship.
With a report like a rifle shot, the door came open. Inside, it was dark, but not pitch-black. The portholes were covered with snow and ice, but they still let in enough light to see. Thank God for small blessings, Sam thought.
They climbed a stairway, passing through a kitchen area, a dining room, then another stairway. There were beds here, bunks in small cabins. The crew lived simply, but it looked cozy enough.
At the end of the corridor was a door with a small red cross painted on it. “Over here,” he yelled to the others, who were searching different parts of the deck.
He tried to open the door, but it was locked. He kicked it. His foot bounced off with a clang and a flash of agony. Be careful, if you break anything, that’s death. Out here, that’s death. Like in the antarctic, where the simplest problem could so easily escalate into disaster.
They struggled for a time with the door. Their little piece of metal wasn’t going to help them. Whoever had run this ship had thought that the medical station was vulnerable to breakin. Probably full of painkillers, drugs that bored sailors on a long voyage might like to take advantage of.
Sam saw a porthole nearby. He remembered something about this part of the ship that he’d glimpsed from the street far below. A frozen-solid fire extinguisher made an excellent battering ram, and he and the others took turns slamming one into the glass.
Finally, it gave way, shattering along with the ice that covered it. He went out on the catwalk—and when he did, he noticed something odd. Far below, where they had come in, their own tracks were already covered by the snow. But other tracks were there, deep, round tracks that looked as if they belonged to some sort of animal. What would be out there in this? Dogs, probably, he decided, that had gone feral after being abandoned by their owners. The poor creatures were probably starving. He saw that the footprints went alongside the ship for a distance, then simply stopped. Maybe the dogs had found a way in. Good for them.
It was precarious out here, all slippery ice. His numbed feet were insensitive to slippage, and the wind buffeted him as he struggled along. He could be blown off here in a second.
It got even more dangerous when he started smashing what he hoped was the window to the medical cabinet. Of course, it could be that the room was small, and this would lead into another space behind it.
Smash!
He almost lost the extinguisher, it bounced back so hard. Then he slipped, fell back against the railing, felt it start to give way—and righted himself.
Again he hefted the extinguisher, aiming it at the center of the craze marks left from his last blow. This time, there was a satisfying crunch, and the extinguisher didn’t bounce back. Taking aim at what was now a hole, he slammed the extinguisher against the window with every ounce of strength he possessed—and it crashed through, leaving his hands and landing inside the room with a clang that echoed off into the storm.
He peered through the window and his heart started crashing in his chest so hard he was afraid he’d given himself a coronary at the age of seventeen. It was a beautiful, meticulously kept and well-equipped medical station. He pulled away the shards that remained in the window frame and climbed in.
He opened the door for Brian and J.D. Frantically, they began searching shelves and opening drawers.
“It’s all in Russian,” J.D. moaned.
They could have penicillin in their hands and not know it. Sam was about to scream, he just could not believe this. He threw open another drawer—Russian, Russian, and more Russian.
He looked along the shelves. There must be fifty different kinds of pills here, plus all manner of other medicine. But they couldn’t give her everything in hope that one bottle would be right.
“I think I’ve got it.”
Sam turned on Brian like a famished wolf going for a fat goat. Brian held up a vial with a hypodermic kit attached by tape.
“But how do you know?”
Brian looked straight at him. “It’s labeled ‘Penicillin’ on the bottom.”
Sam took the six precious vials—then stopped and distributed them, two each. Two doses would probably do it, so even if not all of them made it back, she’d still have a chance.
They took off down the corridor, running as fast as they dared, each aware that he was racing death for Laura’s life.
Then Brian stopped. “Hold on a minute. I think this is the mess hall. Shouldn’t we look for some food while we’re here?”
“We don’t have time!”
J.D. put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “None of us are gonna survive much longer,” he said gently, “unless we get food. Laura included.”
Sam had to admit that it was true. He did not stop to think how he would feel if he got back and she’d just died, because this was a chance to get something they all desperately needed. Like Dad said of his antarctic expeditions; “You never put anything off, because now might be your last chance. Things change fast in extreme places.”
“All right,” Sam said.
They went into the mess hall, with its long tables and tumbled mass of chairs. This was a ship that was getting ready to sink, obviously. Instead, it had ended up here, above water but still dead, and this room looked like that—it looked dead.
They crossed the mess to a door at the far end. No question where it led—the kitchen. Had to. And indeed, as soon as they stepped through it they were rewarded with a magnificent sight—shelves of canned food.
“Jackpot,” J.D. said.
Brian opened a steel cabinet. A large yellow package fell out. A moment later, there came a click, then a loud hissing sound—and a life raft started inflating at his feet, its frozen plastic crackling loudly as it took shape.
“All I did was open the cupboard.”
They were pushing the life raft out of their way, preparing to leave the boat with their wonderful haul of penicillin and all the canned goods they could carry, when something happened.
It happened so fast that at first Sam did not know what had made J.D. go flying off against the wall like that. Then he saw the gray shape standing over him, and J.D. shrieking and trying to fend off its snarling, snapping jaws.
That wasn’t any dog, that was a damn wolf! Brian hurled a can at it, but it didn’t help. Sam grabbed a chair from the mess, came back into the pantry, and hit the wolf with it. The creature let out a yelp and fell aside. Its eyes were open; it was still breathing and half-growling. Stunned.
He went to J.D., but another wolf started through the door. He threw the chair at it, and he and Brian dragged J.D. through into the kitchen proper.
Brian slammed the door shut behind them.
There followed a thud, then another and another as the famished wolves threw themselves against the door.
Sam went down beside J.D. “Are you all right?”
“I—I think so …” He started to his feet, but then winced and fell down. “No, I’m not. I don’t think I can stand.”
Brian found a long-nosed propane lighter, obviously used to light ove
ns. He clicked it a couple of times and it lit, giving them enough light to see that J.D. had a deep bite on his thigh. Blood was flowing, but not spurting. Sam had been reading every medical text he could find in the library, and he knew that this meant that no vein or artery had been opened. Still, the wound was bad.
He looked around and, sure enough, saw a first aid kit on the wall. Every school kitchen he’d seen had had one. Restaurants probably did, too. Certainly a ship’s galley would, given all the rocking and rolling that would be involved in cooking while at sea.
Mostly, the kit contained burn stuff, but there were plenty of bandages, and he was able to get a good covering on J.D.‘s wound. He would be in for some of that penicillin when they got back. Sam would give Laura two doses and J.D. one, then wait to see what happened.
Day After Tomorrow Page 20
