It was while looking at a hastily made printout of Prime Power deployments that she absently raised her hand to her right eye and looked at the list with her left.
A chill whispered up her spine as she realized that her left eye had gone blurry. She looked at the list for the length of three long, slow heartbeats, then reached for her cellphone and hit Pat’s speed dial number.
“Do you know the gentleman I saw this morning?” she said. “The gentleman in Jackson?”
“Yes.”
“I need to see him again,” Jessica said. “I need you to make the appointment.”
“Are you—”
“It’s not like it was last time,” Jessica said. “The situation has improved, but I still need to see the gentleman.”
“Jessica,” Pat said, “you are not keeping this job at the expense of your sight.”
“I hear you,” said Jessica, and rang off.
Her phone chirped again the instant she returned it to her pocket. Her caller was Helen Hallock, Larry’s wife, wondering if her husband had checked in. “When I last talked to him, he was about to call for his helicopter.”
Jessica checked and discovered that the helicopter hadn’t been called. She called her own chopper and took off into the waning light.
It was after the sun had already set that Jessica landed on Poinsett Island and made contact with the handful of people waiting there. They’d been cut off because their radio antenna had pitched into the river. It was then that Jessica discovered that part of Poinsett Island had slid into the river, that Larry Hallock was missing, and that a barge filled with murderously hot nuclear waste was drifting, untended, down the Mississippi.
The Mississippi Delta is filled with magnetic anomalies. Known as “plutons,” these objects are believed to be extrusions of magnetic ore created by volcanic activity during the distant geological past. These structures are enormously dense, and they straggle along the middle Mississippi like pebbles being washed along a ditch. Their immense weight creates stress on the surrounding subsoil—and since the Delta’s geology consists of little more than layers of muck, there is very little save inertia to prevent a pluton from doing exactly what it wants to do.
Plutons have been associated with earthquake activity, particularly in places where no fault lines have ever been detected. A large pluton discovered off Cape Ann, Massachusetts, has been blamed for the earthquakes that struck Boston in 1727 and 1755, quakes that inspired a famous sermon by the revivalist Reverend Thomas Prince, “The Works of God and Tokens of His Just Displeasure,” in which Prince demonstrated that the quakes were caused by the Lord’s opposition to the sinful behavior of Boston’s backsliding Puritans. Another pluton beneath Charleston, South Carolina, has been held responsible for the giant earthquake that shook the southeastern United States in 1886.
The first June earthquake, J1, began at 5:54 p.m., Central Daylight Time, when a pluton, sitting atop gooey Delta sub-soil beneath Jonesboro, Arkansas—subsoil destabilized by the series of quakes—dropped six meters through slumping ground. The shocks caused by the passage of the pluton set off a familiar chain reaction as stored tectonic force was discharged throughout the various New Madrid fault structures.
J1 registered at 8.3 on the Richter scale, one-sixth the strength of M1 and a third the power of M6, but still equivalent to the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Its destruction was mitigated only by the fact that so much of the affected area had already been destroyed. Anything that was likely to fall down had already fallen down, and much of the population had been evacuated. Those remaining in the area were wise to the ways of earthquakes. Deaths were later reckoned to be in the 100-plus range. Jonesboro, already hard hit by M1 and M6, was shattered. Memphis—by this point a near-desert of broken stone, torn roadways, refugee camps, and collapsed homes—received another pounding. More land slid, more fountains geysered skyward, more damaged buildings collapsed. Precarious infrastructure repairs, to power and sewer lines, to bridges and railroad tracks, were wiped out. Efforts by the Coast Guard and the Corps of Engineers to mark a safe navigation channel in the Mississippi and other major rivers were brought to nothing as the topography of the river changed once again. But relief workers were already in place. Supplies and funds had already been allocated. In spite of the quake’s great size, remarkably little disruption took place, if only because everything had been disrupted long since.
Most of the survivors considered themselves lucky.
The earth shuddered, trembled, hummed. Children screamed. The long evening shadows were darkened by dust and debris.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi… Nick, without a watch, counted the seconds slowly to himself. This was bound to disrupt the whole parish, Nick thought. Which would make things easier for him. The more emergencies the sheriff had to deal with at once, the better.
The world ceased its moaning after three minutes. Nick could hear the S-waves receding toward the south, the freight train moving away. Nick looked up, saw others cautiously lifting their heads. Children screamed as their parents tried to comfort them. Nick carefully raised himself to his feet.
“Everyone into a car!” he said. “Let’s get ready to move out!” He made sure that Cudjo was in the lead car. He kissed Arlette and Manon. He hugged Jason and rubbed the red casing of the telescope for luck, then made sure they were all three on a truck rolling south.
When the last of the Home Guard, the women, and the children were gone into the growing darkness, Nick waved the shotgun over his head and shouted for the Warriors to get on the road. Bringing the war to the sheriff, Nick thought. To the capital of the enemy’s kingdom. Micah Knox lay half-submerged in the ditch. His heart pounded louder than the shots that still rang out over the fields. His men were being killed. Run down and killed by niggers. It was like every nightmare he’d ever had. He should help his friends, he knew.
But he didn’t help. He didn’t even move.
It was the snake that saved his life. As he and the others approached the gate, Knox saw a snake whipping through the grass just ahead of his boots, and his heart lurched and his steps faltered, and the others swept on through the gate while he pointed at the snake and stammered at them to be careful. He’d been ten paces behind when the bombs went off, and suddenly the air was filled with shrieking, screaming bits of sharp metal. He felt it tug at his clothing and flesh.
And then he saw the niggers coming, a howling black wave with weapons held high, and Knox let his shotgun fall and took to his heels. He ran back through the gate, through the parking lot, and across the road. He flung himself into the half-flooded bar ditch on the far side of the highway and wormed his way along it, sloshing through the warm water without daring to lift his head above the level of the ditch. He stayed there. He stayed in the ditch, his nose barely above water, while cars raced past his hiding place and shots rang out. The shots died away. Cars ran back and forth. People shouted and cheered. Knox didn’t move. There were cuts on his hands, tears in his clothing. From the mines. He ignored them. The earthquake came and Knox didn’t move. He didn’t move until the earthquake was over, until dozens of cars drove past, until he heard other cars drive off in the other direction, toward Shelburne City. And even then he didn’t move. He stayed in the ditch, alone with his heartbeat and his terror and his breath. He didn’t move until he heard birdsong in the trees, until he heard wind fluttering the grass on the shoulder of the highway. Until he heard nothing made by the hand of man.
He raised his head carefully, put his eyes at the level of the road, and looked for three seconds. Then he ducked down, crawled twenty feet along the ditch, then looked again.
The fields on either side of the road were empty. The camp sat abandoned. The setting sun reflected in shimmering rose color on the fence. A few cars sat forlorn in the parking lot, or stretched along the road. Vultures circled overhead, uncertain whether or not to land.
Knox rose cautiously, then ran in a crouch to the nearest car. Then to the next. T
he only cars that remained near the camp were those that wouldn’t start, or those whose owners were dead. And the car that Knox had come in. The Escort belonged to David Paxton, and Knox had been driving it for several days. The back window had been caved in by gunshots or by the mines’ terrifying ammunition. No one had driven it away, because Knox had the keys.
Knox ran to the car, opened the door, scrabbled in the back for his duffel. He opened the duffel and brought out his overnight kit with his drugs. He opened the big aspirin bottle and shook out the contents. His hands trembled. He moistened a finger, and dabbed out the last of the crystal meth from the baggie. He rubbed the crystal on his gums, then shook out a pair of black mollies and dry-swallowed them. It was only then that he noticed flies settling onto a corpse fifteen feet away. Jedthus, he saw, mutilated horribly.
He stared for a while, too shocked to feel fear, and then he straightened, took his bottle of aspirin in hand, and walked into the camp.
They were there, his friends, his action group. He had recruited them in Detroit, or they had recruited him, and they had traveled around the country doing the noble work of the white man. They had been killed horribly, beaten and torn, and lay like broken sacks of meal in the grass of the camp. They hadn’t died alone. There were nigger corpses lying in the grass as well, and Knox walked to the nearest and kicked the body in the head. He kicked it again, and then he got down on his knees and punched the dead face, and in a spasm of rage he picked up the arm of the corpse and bit it. He licked the arm and bit it again and licked it and bit it. Speed began to crackle through his synapses. He thought he knew what he wanted to do.
It was growing dark. Swallows darted over the camp. He looked for weapons but didn’t find any. All he had was his .38 Special revolver hanging from his belt.
Well, that would have to do.
Speed sang through his blood. His body shivered and jittered. He was getting too hyper, so Knox went back to the car and cooked up some heroin and shot it into his arm. That mellowed him out fine. He could kill now, he thought. He needed to be hyper to want to do it, but he needed to be mellow so that he could do it well. Now he was hyper and mellow at the same time. He had reached the precise point of balance where he could accomplish anything he set out to do.
He put his things in David Paxton’s car and got in and started the engine. David’s father would take care of the nigs who went to Shelburne City. Sheriff Paxton was a man of vision and could handle things there just fine. Knox, therefore, should go looking for the others.
Most of the mud people had taken their cars north, away from Shelburne City and into the country. Knox would find them. Maybe take some trophies. That was clearly what the situation required. Knox headed north. He kept his lights off so that the mud people wouldn’t see him coming. He drove along the highway until it climbed the District Levee and dead-ended in the washout. He cursed and banged his fist on the wheel of the car.
Speed sang a song of death in his ears. He turned around and headed back the way he came. They had to be around here somewhere. He would check every road, every lane, until he found them. And then he would do what he had come to do.
After the quake had rumbled to its finale, Omar got on the radio and ordered all his deputies to report to his headquarters.
All seven of them. That’s all that was left, if all the special deputies at the A.M.E. camp were gone. Seven, not counting himself and David.
What could he do with seven men? There were almost two hundred in the camp, and they now had the guns of his special deputies. Their… general… was right. Omar was out-gunned now. But he couldn’t call in help, could he? The state police, the Federals, the Army… they wouldn’t be on his side.
So, he thought. Time to end it. Time to run.
That’s what he told David, when David came into the courthouse in response to his radio call. Omar took David into his office and told him it was time to run for cover.
“No!” David said. “I’m not leaving! They killed my friends! This is my fight, too! This is a fight for every white man in America!”
Omar shook his head. “Most of the white men in America aren’t on our side,” he said. “It’s too late.” He looked at his son. “We need to save the next generation, okay? Save the—” An aftershock rumbled for a few brief seconds. Omar cast a nervous look at the crack that ran up the exterior wall of his office.
“Save the seed corn,” Omar said. “We need you to carry on.”
“Dad—sir—I—” David shook his head. “I don’t want to run away. This whole thing is my fault, and I don’t want to desert you when the chips are down.”
“You’re not deserting me,” Omar said. “You’re obeying orders. I am your Kleagle, and I’m sending you out of here with a message.”
Omar turned to his desk and took out a piece of paper. He wrote the name and address of the Grand Cyclops of Monroe. He handed the piece of paper to David. “I want you to go to this address. Tell Otis there’s been some trouble, and you need to hide out for a while. Don’t go into details—either it’ll be on the news or it won’t, and if it’s not, you don’t want to start any rumors. I’ll make contact if it’s safe—and if it’s not, he can pass you on to some other people who can look after you.” He forced a grin. “You might even see me there in a day or two.”
He walked past David and opened his office door. “Merle,” he said.
When Merle entered, Omar closed the door. “Merle, I need you to get my boy across the bayou. Put him on the road heading south.”
Merle nodded. “I’ll take him across in my own boat.”
Omar turned to David, found himself without words, and instead put his arms around his boy. “You keep safe,” he said. Hopeless love and hopeless despair flooded his heart.
And then he heard shooting. A whole rattling volley heard clear as day through his screened-in windows. Thirty, forty rounds, all different calibers.
“What the hell is that?” David demanded. Omar was too astonished to offer an answer. A few minutes later citizens began to swarm into the courthouse, shouting out that they’d just seen a whole posse of niggers shooting guns into the air as they broke into the Carnegie Library.
“Hey,” Jason said. “Hey, that’s our boat.”
He pointed out the side window of the little silver Hyundai. He saw the battered hull of Retired and Gone Fishiri sitting on a trailer outside a chainlink fence that surrounded a tumbledown clapboard business. The outboard was tipped up over the boat’s stem. The homemade sign by the road proclaimed Uncle Sky’s A-l Metal Building Products and Agricultural Machinery Repair—No Drugs!
The place was padlocked and closed. No lights shone in the building or in the fenced yard.
“Stop!” Jason said. “That’s our boat! We can put it in the water and get out of here!”
“I can’t haul a boat and trailer,” the driver said. “Not in this car. I don’t have a trailer hitch.” Jason, Manon, and Arlette were crammed in the backseat of the small Korean car, stuck in the middle of the long caravan of refugees following Cudjo away from the A.M.E. camp. They’d left the highway and were heading west along an ill-repaired blacktop road.
“We’ll use one of the trucks behind us,” Jason said. “One of them will have a trailer hitch.”
“I’m not stopping,” the driver said. “It’s not safe to stop.” He was elderly and peered anxiously over the steering wheel at the car in front of them. His wife clutched his arm in terror, with a grip so strong he could barely steer. She hadn’t said a word since she’d entered the vehicle.
“Hush,” Manon said to Jason. “Cudjo said he had a boat.”
“That boat won’t have a motor, I bet,” Jason said. “If we get the bass boat, we can run to Vicksburg and go for help.”
But no one was inclined to pay him any attention, so Jason tried to relax, squashed against the inside of the car, as the caravan moved west down a sagging, rutted two-lane black-top, slowing to a crawl every so often to negotiate parts of
the road ripped across by quakes. The country was mostly uninhabited cotton fields with rows of pine trees planted between them. The sun eased over the horizon, and the western sky turned to cobalt. The caravan moved south, then west again, on narrow gravel roads. Sometimes the cars splashed through areas flooded to the floorboards. Eventually the line of vehicles pulled to a straggling halt in an area filled with young pines. Jason could see car head-lights glinting off flood waters to the right.
After getting out of the Hyundai, Manon and Arlette thanked the elderly couple for the ride. Jason couldn’t stop thinking about Retired and Gone Fishin’ sitting in Uncle Sky’s yard. He saw Cudjo walk past with some men carrying rifles, and Jason trotted alongside, his telescope bouncing on his hip. A wind stirred the tops of the pine trees.
“Sir?” he said. “Mr. Cudjo?”
The hermit turned to him, yellow eyes gleaming in the growing night. “Boy, I want you stay with you mama.”
“Could we use another boat right now? As we drove here, I saw the boat we came in sitting on a trailer. We could go back and get it.”
“Put this truck ’cross this road, you,” Cudjo said to the driver of a pickup. “You—” Patting the shoulder of one of his riflemen. “You, la has, down in them trees, you. Stay quiet, you. Lord High Sheriff come, you flank him, yes? The rest of you, you stay here, behind truck, yes? You no shoot, you, you don’t know who come. Could be Nick and them who come, yes?”
Then Cudjo turned to Jason. “You tell me ’bout this boat, you.”
“It’s a bass boat,” Jason said. “We came down on it from Missouri. There’s a fifty-horse Johnson on it, and we had fuel left. If we put it in the water, we could travel to Vicksburg, send for help.” Cudjo frowned at him. A gust of wind tugged at his long beard. “Where you see this boat, you.”
“Uncle Sky’s Metal Building Whatever,” Jason said. “The boat was right in the yard. It wasn’t even behind the fence, it was like somebody just dropped it there. The place was closed, nobody around. We could hitch the trailer to a truck and drive it off, no problem.”
The Rift Page 90
