by Sweet, Dell
Noon, or what they judged to be noon, found them parked under the tilted remains of a gas pump island: The rain was back, beating on the steel panels above them. The convenience store that had anchored the gas pumps was gone. Churned up earth marked the most likely spot. The air reeked of raw gasoline despite the rain.
Glenn was bent over a map which was spread across the hood of one of the Cherokees. The other two Jeeps were parked beside it, tailgates down as the rest of the group sat eating a lunch of cold, canned-meat sandwiches they had made. Johnny and the others stood talking and studying the map. They sipped at warm sodas and ate, talking between mouthfuls.
“This,” Glenn said, “leads straight into Rochester.” He pointed with one finger down the roadway as he spoke. “Of course...” he said, pausing to swallow, “there's no real way to know what shape it's in, or how much traffic we'll run into.”
They had decided farther back not to take either of the turnoffs that could have shortened their trip, because of the traffic they contained. They seemed to have been more popular, and therefore much more heavily traveled.
Both of the turnoffs had been built after the main route, and had been designed to bypass the larger towns and cities on the route offering a more direct route: Both had been blocked with large tractor-trailers, several of which had been involved in accidents.
They had stopped momentarily to gaze at the scene, walking quietly through the twisted and blackened steel shells. They had expected to find bodies, but none of the trucks had any passengers, dead or alive. They seemed to have been driven by no one at all, wrecked, and then abandoned.
As far as they could see down the road they were now on, there was no traffic at all. The road on the other hand was buckled and twisted for as far as they could see so there would be little time that could be made up. A trip that would take three hours at the outside just a few days before looked as though it would now take three or four days.
In fact the entire small town seemed to be completely deserted. They had met no one as yet, and had begun to wonder aloud to one another whether they were completely alone.
It felt that way. It seemed as though everyone had simply decided to leave at the same time. Perhaps a mass exodus of some sort had occurred. Even so the feeling of being watched was pervasive. Creeping up on nearly everyone one, making them stop what they were doing, quickly lift their heads and look around, only to find no one there.
“It can't be any worse than the alternate routes we've stopped at,” Johnny said, staring down the empty road.
“No,” Glenn said, and then continued after taking a deep drink from the warm can of soda he held. “This tastes horrible,” he said, making a grimace. “Anyway, I would bet that we're going to hit some of that truck traffic again before we get to Oswego. The last alternate we passed, 104 B, comes back into 104 just before we get there, at...” he paused as one finger traced the route on the map, “...New Haven. Have you been there, Alan?”
“It's the gas fumes,” Johnny said. “Messes your taste buds up.”
Glenn nodded.
“Wide place in the road is all it is,” Alan replied, looking at the map as well. “Problem I'm concerned about is Oswego. Mighty damn close to the lake.”
“True,” Glenn said, “but I don't think we have too much to worry about. It's a good twenty-seven feet above lake level, according to the map. I guess the big worry would be damage from the quake though. Road might be all busted to hell, maybe some buildings down, no way to tell 'till we get there, for sure anyway, but I think we ought to count on a tough time getting through there...”
“...All that truck traffic will be back, and they do a lot of container shipments from the Oswego docks, mostly by train, but a good portion by truck, so that'll add even more traffic. It's also a college town, and even though most of the kids there would've been gone on break, they do run classes’ year around... Could be a lot of dead there right now.”
“There's another problem too,” Alan said. “Although the map doesn't show it, there are two bridges that we have to cross... dead downtown too. I think one's a canal of some sort, and the other spans the Oswego River. You think the quake took them out?” he finished, looking at Glenn.
“It's possible I suppose, but like I said, there's no real way to know till we get there,” Glenn replied, frowning.
“What about a boat?” Lana asked.
“No good,” Alan replied, “good idea, but the banks are too high. It might be something to keep in mind though. If we have to we can take to the lake and skim around the roads. There are quite a few marinas all along 104, so if we had to go a way before we could get back in, it would at least get us back somewhere down the line, even if the water's still down.”
“You think it is?” Johnny asked, looking at Glenn.
“Well, it was farther back. A lot depends on whether the locks in the Sea Way held or not...”
“Hey!” Amber shouted. “Hey don't run off!”
Johnny looked over to see what she had yelled about, but she was standing on the edge of the protected pump area staring back down the road. He caught Lana's eye, but she only shrugged as she walked over to her.
“Something?” Glenn asked.
“Don't think so,” Johnny said... “Maybe a mutt or something... Go on, Glenn.”
“Okay, So... Oh yeah, the Locks, I don't imagine they could have all been down. I'm not positive, but I think it drops somewhere around twenty-two feet from the Atlantic to Ontario, and the levels of all the lakes are different too. Most people don't know that, unless you live up here of course. I'd bet though that they held, at least so far, or at least the ones that were closed: If not I think the lake level might have already started to rise again, unless... Well, could be like I said before. There could be a whole new river cutting through the middle of the country, and if so I wouldn't want to bet on anything.” Glenn drew a short breath and then continued after looking over to where Lana and Amber were talking.
“I got side tracked with that damn fault line right after I read the article about it. You know, one of those things that sort of grabs your attention. Hell, until I read it I wasn't even aware we had any fault lines up here. You hear earthquake, you think California, not northern New York.”
“But I thought you said you read about it in school?” Lana said as she walked back over.
“No... What I said was you could read about it in school. I checked it out at the library. You know, I just couldn't believe it, and I learned a long time ago not to always believe what you read in the paper, so I went to the library and asked,” Glenn said grinning. “Everything okay, Lana? With Amber?”
“Oh, yeah... Thought she saw someone across the road in that wreck of a diner. Ran as soon as they saw her.” Lana shrugged.
“We could go check it out,” Johnny said.
“If someone doesn't want to be found, goes through the trouble of avoiding us, maybe it's best to let them be,” Alan said.
Glenn chuckled.
“Library,” Johnny prompted.
Glenn nodded.
“I am sorry,“ Alan said and smiled heartily.
“Me too, Glenn,” Lana agreed.
“Library,” Johnny prompted again.
Glenn laughed. “Okay, library; as it turned out I wasn't the only one interested in that fault line. I had to wait better than a week to get the book I wanted. It was worth the wait though. The book was written by a fellow name of Jack Frederick. Guess he was living somewhere up here at the time. I haven’t ever heard of him though. He told all about the fault line, and the locks. Got into a lot of boring shit, and used a lot of fancy words, but the gist of the whole thing was that he felt the thing was getting ready to go at any time. Course he wrote it back in the fifties, and I suppose when nothing happened right away people just forgot it. Till the article in the paper anyway...”
“...He thought it was more likely to go before the big one ever hit California, and I guess writing that book was his way
to call attention to it. I'm running at the mouth here, but bear with me and I'll try to get to the point. See, he thought the whole damn continent would crack right down the middle, with a hard enough quake. The newspaper article was aimed at that side of it too. He also thought that it would eventually drift apart, course that goes back to the theory that the continents are not finished moving yet. But he thought it would move pretty quickly initially, leaving a huge gap more than three or four miles wide and running from north to south. If that's true then it'll probably be even worse through the middle states, as the land's all low to begin with.”
“So,” Glenn continued, after a brief pause, “you'd have one hell of a big river, and then almost an inland sea in the middle of the country. In effect it would pretty much cut the country in half, I guess. Of course, who knows? Science ain't based entirely on fact like most people think it is. It's just a bunch of theories, and whoever gets the most people to believe their particular theory comes out on top, I guess. Thing is a lot of people forget it's just theory and start to believe everything they say. I remember in school being taught about dinosaurs and people living at the same time. Hard science,” he laughed.
“This guy though, he did a lot of research on it, and I think the reason no one wanted to believe him was because it's a scary thing to think about. So I guess that's it. It still boils down to the same thing. Maybe, maybe not. We'll never know till we get there, and we ain't going to get there if I keep running my mouth, are we?” Glenn smiled, as he finished.
“You do talk up a storm,” Johnny agreed, “but at least it’s interesting stuff. I've read about it too, not to that extent, but I have to agree with a lot of what you said. Hell, I'm a skeptic. I rarely believe anything I read,” he laughed as he finished.
“I think that's everyone,” Alan said. “You get bamboozled a few times and that's it. You think it's all garbage. And,” He chuckled a little, “The sad thing is a lot of it still is junk.”
Lana nodded. Her eyes cut to Amber who was still watching the wrecked diner on the other side of the road. Shading her eyes to see better.
“Seriously though,” Johnny continued, the smile leaving his face. “I still don't know what the hell was going on in those caves back in Watertown, not entirely anyway, and it bugs the hell out of me. Makes me wonder if that had anything to do with this.”
“Not likely,” Alan said. “If the damage was not so wide spread, say just localized, I would say hell yes, it probably did, but this thing is nationwide, so no. One secret whisper-the-name military base isn't gonna get my vote. I'd say this was a natural event. A meteor and a bad set of circumstances of where it hit at an active volcano site. We might find, once we get to Rochester that this thing is confined to the U.S. Maybe Canada and Mexico, parts of South America, but it doesn't seem it could have affected Europe... Australia. We may be able to expect help from those countries.”
“I would like to think that, Alan. I surely would, but I'll need to see it proved,” Glenn said.
“Here,” Alan said, walking back from the rear of the Jeep. He held a warm six-pack of beer in his hand. “Stole this for us, to wash down the taste of that orange soda.”
“Aren't you afraid we'll get pulled over for drinking and driving?” Johnny said, smiling as he opened one of the cans.
“Hell no,” Alan said, smiling back. “Of course I ain't the one driving, you are. Don't worry though; we'll post bail if you get arrested.”
“Ha, Ha,” Johnny said, as he climbed in behind the wheel of the Cherokee, “you'd probably let me sit there.”
Lightening forked across the sky and Lana jumped. Amber laughed and put one hand on her arm. “Easy, Lana,” she told her. “I thought I was spooked.”
“Why?” Lana asked. “The people that might be across the road?”
“Yeah... It was really weird though... I thought,” she laughed, “Don't laugh at me. Well, the person sort of lurched across the doorway, like a horror movie Frankenstein or something.” She screwed her face up, but she wore no smile at all.
“Yeah?” Lana asked. “Maybe it was just the rain... Or sniffing this gasoline, that will make you see things for sure.”
“Yeah... Yeah, what I told myself. Just the way they moved... Maybe they were injured.”
“Yeah... Probably were, Amber,” Lana agreed. “Could also be dead... Haven't seen many here, but we sure saw enough on the trip from L A.”
“Funny though that they would run away if they were hurt.” Amber finished. She climbed into the back seat.
“Dead don't want you to see them... Find them.”
Lana had also grabbed one of the warm beers and grimaced at the taste as she climbed in beside Johnny, and said, “So, you going to keep this buggy? I mean this was supposed to be a short test drive, and I don't know how I'm going to explain the scratches to my boss.”
Johnny reached over and picked up the factory sticker from the floor boards where he had tossed it, after tearing it off the rear window back in Watertown. They had been playing this little game most of the day. After what had happened they were all attempting to lighten one another's moods, and it seemed to be working, at least most of the time, except with Ed. Ed had simply withdrawn into himself, and no one seemed to be able to draw him out.
Johnny let out a long whistle as he looked at the sticker price at the bottom. “I haven't made up my mind yet, lady, do you suppose your boss would mind if I kept it a while longer?”
“No, I guess not,” she replied, “but you'll have to keep me along with it,” she finished, laughing.
“Oh,” Amber said from the backseat and laughed.
“Well, okay,” Johnny said, playing along. “I guess that kind of makes the sticker price worth it. What did you say those payments would be?”
They joked back and forth as they drove along the road, and Glenn and Alan joined in from the back seat. It helped to take their minds off their situation a great deal of the time. She seemed to have her wits together, and wasn't afraid to do whatever she had to, to protect herself and stay alive. That was all any of them could do, Johnny thought, just try to get past it to whatever was in front of them.
The whole group had begun to tighten up, he realized. The others had all gravitated towards Glenn, himself, Alan and Lana. They had discussed that. It had made Glenn especially nervous. While it was true he was used to taking charge, this was not the same thing as running a business, he had pointed out, and he wasn't so sure he liked it. He accepted it though, as did the others, although it was a reluctant acceptance.
Eventually the subject turned towards the more serious topic of Rochester, and what to expect when they got there.
“I can't tell you everything about it,” Alan said, and then continued. “Most of what I know about it is a couple of years out of date anyway,” he said pausing.
“Well, anything you know is more than we know now. For instance, when we get there what's the best way to get into the city? Or should we stay out of it?” Lana asked.
“Well, it's a big city. I think we should go in, but I think we'll probably have to give up the Jeeps, due to traffic. The best thing to do would be to get off 104 when we get to Fairport.”
“Fairport?” Glenn asked, looking at the map once more.
“It's a long way around, sort of, but I think it might be the best way in. I think we have to get down in the city, at least at first anyway, just to see what there is. Like Glenn said, who knows? Could be that the police are still there, or at least someone in authority.”
“Nice pipe dream,” Glenn returned.
“You're probably right,” Alan answered, “but I would bet that glow we could see across the lake last night was Rochester, and if it was, that means the power is at least still on. They just gave the okay last year to Rochester Gas and Electric to fire up that new nuclear plant out in Livingston County.”
“Where's that,” Johnny asked.
“Well, Rochester is in Monroe county, Livingston county starts ou
t past Henrietta, which is a small suburb of Rochester. It's maybe fifteen miles or so away from the city itself, I guess. There was a lott'a bitching when they first proposed it, but it ended up being built anyway. Anyway, I'm starting to sound like Glenn now, I guess. The whole thing's computerized from top to bottom. Oh they have people working there, but they're only there in case something goes wrong, not to run the place. Even if something does go wrong, the computer shuts the whole thing down, not people. They supply electric for the entire city with it, with some to spare. All the excess power that the place produces gets sold to New York City. They built a new plant to handle it downtown, on Broad Street. It's a way from the lake, so if that was Rochester we saw last night, the plant must still be up and running. That means there may still be some sort of control there, you know, police, or something, at least other people I would guess anyway...”
”...You know, I think I am becoming a Glenn clone. I guess I should get back to what I was saying before I started running at the mouth. Fairport looks like the best route in. We can get off at Webster and shoot across 250 straight into Fairport, and from there we have several routes to choose from. There are quite a few loops that surround the city, Can-of-Worms it's called. Most of the traffic would be there. They rebuilt the whole system just a few years back so it would be easier to get around the city. Almost all the old routes in and out were pretty much secondary after that, you know, really light traffic, but all of those routes in should be pretty well open.”
Glenn traced the route on the map as Alan spoke. “Looks good to me too,” he said. “Looks like we can get pretty much anywhere on the east side of the city from there.”
