The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  He stayed in the little shower a long time, enjoying the hot water, the clean scent of the soap, the pounding droplets that relaxed the muscles of his shoulders and neck. He cleaned the dried blood from the wound on his arm, winced at the sting. The wound itself seemed to be scabbed and, so far as he could tell, healing. At least it wasn’t hot, or oozing pus. He slathered on the disinfectant and bandaged the wound.

  Then he shaved and splashed on the Mermen’s Skin Bracer he found on the sink. The sharp, clean scent stung up a memory. His father had used Skin Bracer. At the remembrance, sadness briefly clouded his eyes.

  In the mirror he looked better than the refugee he’d seen a few minutes ago, but he still looked as if he’d been worked over with a baseball bat. He didn’t look much like a general’s son, that was for sure. He found Jason in the galley, eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate sauce. The dinner things were gone, and Nick presumed Jason had put them away.

  The boy knew how to do a few things, anyway.

  “Don’t you ever stop eating?” Nick said.

  Jason looked at him. “I didn’t fill up on cattails, the way you did.” Damn, Nick thought. Ask a question, get a zinger. What was with this kid?

  “I’ve been thinking,” Nick said. “We can stay on this boat awhile, I guess, maybe till someone takes us off. The people who own this boat are going to come back before too long, I imagine. But in case something happens, we should have some emergency supplies ready to put in that bass boat. Canned food, fresh water.”

  Jason looked up from his bowl of ice cream. “If there’s an emergency,” he asked, “wouldn’t we be safer here?”

  “What if the water rises, and this boat goes floating onto some rocks, or into the trees? What if a snag punches a hole in the hull?”

  Jason scraped the bowl with his spoon. “Okay,” he said. “I guess you’ve got a point.”

  “I’ll put it together. You might as well take a shower. See if you can find yourself some clothes.” Nick assembled his emergency food in plastic garbage bags. There were jugs of fresh water right on the shelf. He threw in a container of flour, another of sugar, another of salt. Matches and a skillet. Soap, scissors, sun block, a sewing kit he found in one of the rooms, a bag of disposable razors, and a mirror—for signaling, as the Boy Scout manual might say. He smiled at the memory. He stowed everything aft on the deck, where Retired and Gone Fishin’ was tied. Then, since he remembered seeing a long extension cord, he plugged it in, ran it over the side, and plugged in the bass boat’s battery recharger.

  If another catastrophe occurred, he thought, the boat’s little electric motor could carry them away. At all of maybe three miles per hour. Maybe he should study the engine controls, find out if he could operate the towboat single-handed.

  He could feel exhaustion floating through his mind like fog. Stress, a wound, and a night spent in a tree had caught up with him. He would find one of the unused beds and turn in.

  In the morning, he thought, he would figure out how to work the radio. Maybe he could make a radiophone call, or whatever they were called, directly to Arlette, surprise her as she was eating breakfast.

  In the morning, he thought. First thing.

  He found an unused bed, dropped his clothes to the deck, slid between fresh crisp sheets. Before he could turn off the light there was a gentle knock on the door.

  “Yes?”

  Jason stuck his head in. “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night, Jason.”

  “And thanks.” Jason’s words came slowly. “Thanks for pulling me out of the water. When I went in. You know.”

  “Sure, Jason. You’re welcome.”

  Jason nodded, drew back his head, closed the door behind him.

  Weird kid, Nick thought as he turned off the light. Weird kid.

  Jason woke with a cry of terror bottled up in his throat. He gasped for air and stared wildly into the night. His heart throbbed in his chest like a diesel.

  He listened to the stillness for a moment and tried to decide what it was that had awakened him. An aftershock? A cry for help?

  Broken fragments of his dream rattled in his head. He couldn’t feel anything but a sense of alarm. Something must be wrong. He swung his legs out of bed, opened the cabin door, and padded down the hall to the crew’s dining area. He opened a door and stepped out onto the narrow steel deck. A cool spring night floated up around him. Frogs and crickets called to one another in the midst of the silence. The river glimmered like a thread of quicksilver in the moonlight. A distant navigation beacon blinked downriver, marking a channel that probably no longer existed. It was the only sign of humanity in the entire magnificent desolation of the Mississippi.

  Nothing had happened, Jason realized. It had been a bad dream, that was all.

  He made his way back to his cabin, imagining that it would take forever to fall back to sleep. Somewhat to his own surprise, he found that slumber reclaimed him with ease.

  Jason woke to feel gooseflesh on his arms. The weather had cooled during the night, and the sheet he’d used for a cover was not enough to keep him warm.

  He blinked open gummy eyes and looked at his watch. 8:13. He smelled bacon. His stomach rumbled. Time to get up.

  Jason pulled on some of the clean clothes he’d found in one of the crewmen’s lockers—they were too big, but he could roll up the legs of the jeans, and if the sleeves of the shirt hung down past his elbows, it would just help to protect him from the sun.

  He strapped on a pair of sandals that he’d found—the other footwear was too large—then made his way forward. He found Nick sitting at the dinner table, looking through a stack of manuals. Dirty dishes were piled up in front of him.

  “Smells good,” Jason said.

  Nick looked up from his manuals, his chin propped on one fist. Shaved, cleaned, in clean clothing, Nick looked a lot less like an escaped felon than he had the previous day. Maybe, Jason conceded, he really was an engineer.

  “Bacon,” Nick said. “Eggs. English muffin. Want some?”

  “Sure.”

  “Want coffee and orange juice with that?”

  “Juice, sure. I don’t drink coffee.”

  Nick stood, stretched, yawned. “Young people don’t need coffee in the morning,” he said. Jason frowned down at the manuals, tried to read them upside-down. “What are you reading?” he said.

  “I’m going to try to work the radio. Maybe I can get a message to my family.” He looked at Jason. “Your family, too, maybe.”

  “My dad’s in China.”

  “I can’t get China with that radio, I suppose, but I can get someone to try to pass a message to him. I know that the Red Cross does that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t know where he is, exactly.” Jason tried to remember his father’s itinerary. Would he still be in Shanghai? Or was he in Guangzhong by now? He hadn’t paid his father’s schedule much attention since he found out he wasn’t going himself.

  Nick looked at him. “Any other family here in the States?”

  Jason thought for a moment. Aunt Lucy lived in Cabells Mound, and he had watched Cabells Mound burn. Even if she survived, her home probably had not. Also she was elderly and wouldn’t be able to look after him. There was another elderly aunt in upstate New York, but he hadn’t seen her in years.

  “My dad’s the best bet,” he said.

  “Well,” Nick shrugged, “I’ll try. How would you like your eggs?”

  “Scrambled.”

  Thoughts of his family left Jason downcast. When Nick went into the galley, Jason decided he didn’t want to hang around waiting and being depressed, so he stepped out onto the deck and was surprised to discover that Michelle S. was now high and dry on an island. The river had dropped to a lower stage since the middle of the night, and the mud reef on which the towboat had grounded was now above the level of the water, a muddy plain that stretched several hundred feet in all directions. The island had caught a lot of debris, and its upstream
flank was walled with driftwood, logs, and with what looked like a green-roofed metal storage shed, deposited on its side with a door hanging open. The whole island was covered with dead fish. Flocks of crows and water birds were feasting on the corpses. Their croaks and calls were almost deafening.

  The day was gray and cooler than yesterday, for which Jason was grateful. A wind made singing sounds as it gusted over the superstructure.

  Jason made his way forward to the blunt bow. The tow stretched out before him, fifteen long barges laid out three abreast, all lashed together with steel wire held taut by big ratchets. The nearest barges were domed with pale green metal, and a complex network of pipes ran fore and aft along their length. There was a short mast on the middle barge, with a red flag and a light on top.

  Jason jumped up on the prow, balanced for a precarious moment, and then jumped across to the nearest barge. Metal rang under his feet as he landed. The wind gusted toward him, bringing a sharp chemical smell.

  He sneezed.

  There were a pair of huge blue rubber gloves lying on the barge near his feet. Why blue? he wondered. He wandered forward along the green roof of the barge. More blue gloves were scattered here and there. A gust of wind ruffled his hair. He sneezed again.

  He jumped easily to the next barge in line. He wondered if it would be possible to skate on the barges, roll along the smooth metal tops and hop over the piping. Do it fancy, land fakie and jump the next pipe going backward. It would be easy enough to leap from one barge to the next.

  Pity that the pipes were mostly horizontal. Otherwise he could ride them as he’d ridden the tower rail in Cabells Mound.

  The next gust of wind brought a strong chemical sting to his nostrils. What was in these barges?

  He looked up, saw the short mast planted on the barge in front of him. The mast’s red flag, he saw, was metal, so it would always stay rigid whether there was wind or not. The flag had lettering on it. Jason jumped onto the barge—the chemical smell was stronger now—and approached the flag.

  NO SMOKING

  NO OPEN LIGHTS

  NO VISITORS—EVER

  A chill finger touched Jason’s neck. Now he knew why Michelle S. had been abandoned by its crew. The gusting wind backed around to the southeast, and the chemical smell blew strong at him. Fumes raked the back of Jason’s throat. He ran to the side of the barge and peered over the side, into the gap between this barge and the next.

  A foul chemical lake lay beneath the barge.

  One or more of the barges had broken open during the quake, or when the tow went aground, and had been leaking its cargo ever since. Until this morning the river had carried the stuff away, whatever it was, but now the river had dropped and the noxious mess was pooling on the surface of the tow’s little mud island.

  Jason whirled, looked again at the red flag through eyes that stung in the chemical reek.

  NO SMOKING

  NO OPEN LIGHTS

  The barges’ cargo had to be explosive. Otherwise the barge wouldn’t be flying the red danger flag. Otherwise the crew wouldn’t have abandoned ship.

  NO VISITORS—EVER

  Horror ran through Jason’s veins as he thought of his breakfast bacon sizzling in a skillet over a blue propane flame.

  He scrambled aft, the southeast gusts blowing the chemical smell past him. He cleared the gap between barges without breaking stride, then leaped from the barge onto the Michelle S. in one bound. He dodged around the superstructure and dived into the first door.

  He heard the sizzling sound of bacon. Never had he found an ordinary, homely sound so terrifying. Jason dashed into the galley, past a surprised Nick, and turned off the stove burners. The blue flames fluttered and vanished with a whuff. Nick stared at Jason’s terrified expression.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to blow up!” Jason shouted.

  “What—?”

  Words exploded through Jason’s gasps for breath. “Barges leaking! Chemicals! That’s why the crew ran away!”

  Horrified comprehension snapped into Nick’s eyes. “What chemicals?” he asked.

  “Who cares?” Jason cried. “Just go outside and smell.” While Nick went out to investigate, Jason ran aft to where Retired and Gone Fishin’ sat on the mud aft of the towboat. He untied the line securing the bass boat to the stern, and flung it over the side. He lowered himself over the rail, felt the mud squelch to his ankles as he landed. Nearby birds broke for the sky, a fleeing black cloud. Jason slogged to the bows of the bass boat and yanked away the extension cord that was recharging the boat’s batteries. Acrid fumes drifted over him in waves. Nick appeared on the deck above. “Catch,” he said, and swung out a plastic garbage bag filled with emergency supplies.

  Three more bags followed. Jason tossed each into the bass boat. Then Nick rolled over the towboat’s side, tried to lower himself to the mud on the rope, and lost his grip. He tumbled helplessly into the soft ooze. Jason jerked his head away as mud sprayed over him.

  “Shit!” Nick pulled himself free of the sucking mud and staggered to his feet. Dragging the heavy aluminum boat over the mud flat was a nightmare. Getting traction in the soft mud was nearly impossible, and Nick and Jason often fell. Both were soon covered with ooze. Black birds swarmed around them and mocked them with their calls. Jason gasped for breath as sweat tracked mud over his face. His arms, legs, and back ached, and his brain reeled from chemical fumes. Finally the bass boat slid into the brown water. Jason and Nick flung themselves aboard. The boat spun lazily as the current caught it. Jason crawled forward to the bow, dropped the trolling motor over the side, and started it, heading directly across the current to get as far away from the towboat as he could. The wind blew fresh air over the boat, and Jason sucked it down gratefully.

  Retired and Gone Fishin’ made its way down the river, drifted around a bend. Jason and Nick lay gasping on the fore and afterdecks. Michelle S. disappeared behind a screen of trees.

  “God damn, God damn,” Nick repeated. “And we had clean clothes an’ shit.” Jason sat up, turned down the speed of the trolling motor, and tried to wipe mud from his face. Then a perfect sphere of fire rose from beyond the trees, and burst like a bubble over Michelle S. and its barges.

  EIGHTEEN

  At the Little Prairie, (a beautiful spot on the west side of the Mississippi river about 30 miles from New-Madrid), on the 16th of December last, about 2 o’clock, a.m., we felt a severe concussion of the earth, which we supposed to be occasioned by, a distant earthquake, and did not apprehend much damage. Between that time and day we felt several other slighter shocks; about sunrise another very severe one came on, attended with a perpendicular bouncing that caused the earth to open in many places—some eight and ten feet zvide, numbers of less width, and of considerable length—some parts have sunk much lower than others, where one of these large openings are, one side remains as high as before the shock and the other is sunk; some more, some less; but the deepest I saw was about twelve feet. The earth was, in the course of fifteen minutes after the shock in the morning, entirely inundated with water. The pressing of the earth, if the expression be allowable, caused the water to spout out of the pores of the earth, to the height of eight or ten feet! We supposed the whole country sinking, and knew not what to do for the best. The agitation of the earth was so great that it was with difficulty any could stand on their feet, some could not— The air was very strongly impregnated with a sulphurous smell. As if by instinct, we flew as soon as we could from the river, dreading most danger there—but after rambling about two or three hours, about two hundred gathered at Capt. Francis Lescuer’s, where we encamped, until we heard that the upper country was not damaged, when I left the camp (after staying there twelve days) to look for some other place, and was three days getting about thirty miles, from being obliged to travel around those chasms.

  Narrative of James Fletcher, 1811

  The black pillar of smoke that marked the burning Michelle S. slowly
fell astern. The river was slow and lazy: having spread itself wide beyond its banks, it seemed intent on staying awhile. The surface was less crowded with debris than it had been the previous day: much of the wreckage and timber had caught in the cottonwood and willow tangle that grew in the flood plain between the levees and the river. But there was still enough flotsam in the water to be dangerous, and Jason and Nick kept a watchful eye. When he had scavenged food and other useful supplies from the towboat, Nick had equipped the bass boat with a pair of proper boat hooks, which made it much easier to fend off wreckage.

  Jason’s breakfast consisted of some canned pineapple rings from Nick’s emergency cache. He tilted his head back, drank off the sweet syrup, and tossed the empty can over the side. The river received it with a dull splash.

  The river was his fate, Jason thought as he watched the can pace the bass boat on its way downstream. He kept being thrown up on the shore, but then the river would take him again. He was beginning to develop a superstition about it.

  Nick, he saw, sat on the stern deck, his hands dangling over his knees. The older man looked once again like a refugee, borrowed clothes soaked or splashed with mud, face and hair spattered, the newly acquired sandals ruined.

  Edge Living, Jason thought. This was real Edge Living—no resources, no help from outside, and every second on the brink of extinction. There were people, he thought, out in the Third World he supposed, who lived their whole lives this way. What he had thought was Edge Living, the kind he’d celebrated on his posters, was a sick joke compared to the real thing.

  Jason managed a grin. “So how’s our morale now, General?”

  Nick looked up, gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t imagine it can get much lower,” he said. He looked at the emergency supplies, then began to stow the cans and jars in the boat’s cooler compartments.