But now the pieces of Hamner-Brown’s nucleus sink through Earth’s atmosphere like tiny blue-white stars. One drops toward the mouth of the Sea of Cortez until it touches water between the prongs. Then water explodes away from a raw orange-white crater. The tsunami moves south in an expanding crescent;. but, confined between two shorelines, the wave moves north like the wave front down a shotgun barrel. Some water spills east into Mexico; some west across Baja to the Pacific. Most of the water leaves the northern end of the Sea of Cortez as a moving white-peaked mountain range.
The Imperial Valley, California’s second largest agricultural region, might as well have been located in the mouth of a shotgun.
The survivors crawled toward each other across the broken JPL parking lot. A dozen men, five women, all dazed, crawling together. There were more people below, in the wreckage of the buildings. They were screaming. Other survivors went to them. Sharps stood dazed. He wanted to go below and help, but his legs wouldn’t respond.
The sky was boiling with clouds. They raced in strange patterns, and if there was daylight coming through the swirling ink, it was much dimmer than the continual flash of lightning everywhere.
Wonderingly, Sharps heard children crying. Then a voice calling his name.
“Dr. Sharps! Help!”
It was Al Masterson. The janitor in Sharps’s building. He had gathered two other survivors. They stood beside a station wagon that rested against a big green Lincoln. The station wagon was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, two wheels on the blacktop, two above it. The crying children were inside it. “Hurry, please, sir,” Masterson called.
That broke the spell. Charlie Sharps ran across the parking lot to help. He and Masterson and two other men strained at the heavily loaded station wagon until it tilted back to vertical. Masterson threw open the door. There were two young faces, tearstained, and an older one, June Masterson. She wasn’t crying.
“They’re all right,” she was saying. “I told you they were all right…”
The station wagon was packed to the roof and beyond. Food, water, cans of gas lashed to its tailgate; clothing, shotgun and ammunition; the stuff of survival, with the children and their blankets fitted in somehow. Masterson was telling everyone who would listen, “I heard you say it, the Hammer might hit us, I heard…”
A corner of Sharps’s mind giggled quietly to itself. Masterson the janitor. He’d heard just enough from the engineers, and of course he hadn’t understood the odds against. So: He’d been ready. Geared to survive, with his family waiting in the parking lot, just in case. The rest of us knew too much…
Family.
“What do we do, Dr. Sharps?” Masterson asked.
“I don’t know.” Sharps turned to Forrester. The pudgy astrophysicist hadn’t been able to help right the car. He seemed to be lost in thought, and Sharps turned away again. “I guess we do what we can for survivors — only I’ve got to get home!”
“Me too.” There was a chorus of voices.
“But we should stay together,” Sharps said. “There won’t be many people you can trust—”
“Caravan,” Masterson said. “We take some cars, and we all go get our families. Where do you all live?”
It turned out there was too much variety. Sharps lived nearby, in La Canada. So did two others. The rest had homes scattered as far as Burbank and Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley. The valley people had haunted eyes.
“I wouldn’t,” Forrester said. “Wait. A couple of hours…”
They nodded. They all knew. “Four hundred miles an hour,” Hal Crayne said. A few minutes ago he’d been a geologist.
“More,” Forrester said. “The tsunami will arrive about fifty minutes after Hammerfall.” He glanced at his watch. “Less than half an hour.”
“We can’t just stand here!” Crayne shouted. He was screaming. They all were. They couldn’t hear their own voices.
Then the rain came. Rain? Mud! Sharps was startled to see pellets of mud splatter onto the blacktop. Pellets of mud hard and dry on the outside, with soft centers! They hit the cars with loud clatters. A hail of mud. The survivors scrambled for shelter: inside cars, under cars, in the wrecks of cars.
“Mud?” Sharps screamed.
“Yes. Should have thought of it,” Forrester said. “Salt mud. From the sea bottom, thrown up into space, and…”
The strange hail eased, and they left their shelters. Sharps felt better now. “All of you who live too far to get to your homes, go down and help the survivors in the building area. The rest of us will go get our families. In caravan. We’ll come back here if we can. Dan, what’s our best final destination?”
Forrester looked unhappy. “North. Not low ground. The rain… could last for months. All the old river valleys may be filled with water. There’s no place in the Los Angeles basin that’s safe. And there will be aftershocks from the earthquake…”
“So where?” Sharps demanded.
“The Mojave, eventually,” Forrester said. He wouldn’t be hurried. “But not at first, because there’s nothing growing there now. Eventually—”
“Yes, but now!” Sharps demanded.
“Foothills of the Sierras,” Forrester said. “Above the San Joaquin Valley.”
“Porterville area?” Sharps asked.
“I don’t know where that is…”
Masterson reached into his station wagon and fished in the glove compartment. The rain was falling heavily now, and he kept the map inside the car. They stood outside, looking in at June Masterson and her children. The children were quiet. They watched the adults with awed eyes.
“Right here,” Masterson said.
Forrester studied the map. He’d never been there before, but it was easy to memorize the location. “Yes. I’d say that’s a good place.”
“Jellison’s ranch,” Sharps said. “It’s there! He knows me, he’ll take us in. We’ll go there. If we get separated, we’ll meet there.” He pointed on the map. “Ask for Senator Jellison’s placer Now, those that aren’t coming with us immediately, get down and help survivors. Al, can you get any of these other cars started?”
“Yes, sir.” Masterson looked relieved. So did the others. They’d been used to taking orders from Sharps for years; and it felt right to have him in command again. They wouldn’t obey him like soldiers, but they needed to be told to do what they wanted to do anyway.
“Dan, you’ll come on the caravan with us,” Sharps said. “You wouldn’t be much use down below—”
“No,” Forrester said.
“What?” Sharps was certain he’d misunderstood. The thunder was continuous, and now there was the sound of rising wind.
“Can’t,” Forrester said. “Need insulin.”
It was then that Sharps remembered that Dan Forrester was a diabetic. “We can come by your place—”
“No,” Forrester screamed. “I’ve got other things to do. I’d delay you.”
“You’ve got—”
“I’ll be all right,” Forrester said. He turned to walk off into the rain.
“The hell you will!” Sharps screamed at Dan’s retreating back. “You can’t even get your car started when the battery’s dead!”
Forrester didn’t turn. Sharps watched his friend, knowing he’d never see him again. The others pressed around. They all wanted advice, orders, some sense of purpose, and they expected Charles Sharps to provide it. “We’ll see you at the ranch!” Sharps called.
Forrester turned slightly and waved.