“Let’s move out,” Sharps said. “Station wagon in the middle.” He looked at his tiny command. “Preston, you’ll be with me in the lead car. Get that shotgun and keep it loaded.” They piled into their cars and started across the broken lot, moving carefully to avoid the huge cracks and holes.
Forrester’s car had survived. He’d parked it at the very top of the lot, well away from any others, well away from trees and the edge of the bluff — and he’d parked it sideways to the tilt of the hill. Sharps could just make out Forrester’s lights following them down to the street. He hoped Dan had changed his mind and was following them, but when they got to the highway, he saw that Dan Forrester had turned off toward Tujunga.
The fire road narrowed to a pair of ruts tilted at an extreme angle, with a sloping drop of fifty feet or more to their right. Eileen fought for control of the car, then brought it to a stop. “We walk from here.” She made no move to get out. The rain wasn’t quite so bad now, but it was colder, and there was still continuous lightning visible all around them. The smell of ozone was strong and sharp.
“Let’s go, then,” Tim said.
“What’s the hurry?”
“I don’t know, but let’s do it.” Tim couldn’t have explained. He wasn’t sure he understood it himself. To Hamner, life was civilized, and relatively simple. You stayed out of the parts of town where money and social position weren’t important, and everywhere they were, you hired people to do things, or bought the tools to do them with.
Intellectually he knew that all this was ending as he sat. Emotionally… well, this couldn’t be Ragnarok. Ragnarok was supposed to kill you! The world was still here, and Tim wanted help. He wanted courteous police, briskly polite shopkeepers, civil civil servants; in short, civilization.
A towering wall of water sweeps eastward through the South Atlantic Ocean. Its left-hand edge passes the Cape of Good Ho pe, scouring lands which have been owned in turn by Hottentots, Dutch, British and Afrikaaners, sweeping up to curl at the base of Table Mountain, foaming up the wide valley to Paarl and Stellenbosch.
The right-hand edge of the wave impacts against Antarctica, breaking of] glaciers ten miles long and five wide. The wave hursts through between Africa and Antarctica. When it reaches the wider expanse of the Indian Ocean the wave has lost half its force: Now it is only four hundred feet high. At four hundred and fifty miles an hour it moves toward India, Australia and the Indonesian islands.
It sweeps across the lowlands of southern India, then, focused by the narrowing Bay of Bengal, regains much of its strength and height a’ it breaks into the swamplands of Bangladesh. It smashes northward through Calcutta and Dacca. The waters finally come to halt at the base of the Himalayas, where they are met by the floods pouring out of the Ganges Valley. As the waters recede, the Sacred Ganges is choked with bodies.
They trudged through the mud, climbing steadily. The fire road went over the top of the hill in a saddle, not far below the peaks, but far enough; the lightning stayed above them.
Their shoes picked up huge gobs of mud, and soon weighed three or four times what they should. They fell in the mud and got up again, helped each other when they could, and staggered up over the top and down the other side. The world condensed into a series of steps, one step at a time, no place to stop. Tim imagined the town ahead: undamaged, with motels and hot water and electric lights and a bar that sold Chivas Regal and Michelob…
They reached blacktop pavement, and the going was easier.
“What time is it?” Eileen asked.
Tim pressed the button on his digital watch. “Just about noon.”
“It’s so dark — ” She slipped on wet leaves and tumbled onto the blacktop. She didn’t get up.
“Eileen…” Tim went over to help her.
She was sitting on the pavement, and she didn’t seem hurt, but she wasn’t trying to get up. She was crying, quietly.
“You’ve got to get up.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t carry you very far.”
Almost she laughed; but then her face sank into her hands and she sat huddled in the rain.
“Come on,” said Tim. “It’s not that bad. Maybe everything’s all right up here. The National Guard will be out. Red Cross. Emergency tents.” He felt it evaporating as he named it: the stuff of dreams; but he went on, desperately. “And we’ll buy a car. There are car lots ahead, we’ll buy a four-wheel drive and take it to the observatory, with a big bucket from Colonel Chicken sitting between us. You buying all this?”
She shook her head and laughed in a funny way and didn’t get up. He bent and took her shoulders. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t help. Tim lifted her, got his arms under her legs and began staggering down the blacktop road.
“This is silly,” Eileen said.
“Damn betcha”
“I can walk.”
“Good.” He let her legs drop. She stood, but she clung to him, her head against his shoulder.
Finally she let go. “I’m glad I found you. Let’s get moving.”
“Count off,” Gordie called.
“One,” Andy Randall answered. The others sang out in turn: “Two.” “Three.” “Four.” “Five,” Bert Vance said. He was a little late, and glanced up nervously, but his father didn’t seem to have noticed. “Six.”
“And me,” Gordie said. “Okay, Andy, lead off. I’ll play tail-end Charlie.”
They started down the trail. The cliff was less than a mile away. Twenty minutes, no more. They rounded a bend and had a magnificent view stretching eastward across the tops of the pine trees. The morning air was crystal clear; the light was… funny.
Gordie glanced at his watch. They’d been hiking ten minutes. He was tempted to skip his compulsory halt for bootlace adjustments. What difference would it make? Nobody would have blisters, not in another half-mile, and walking along, trying to be natural, was harder than the decision had been.
There was a bright flash to the east. Brilliant, but small. Much too bright to be lightning, and out of a clear sky? It left an afterimage that blinking couldn’t get rid of.
“What was that, Dad?” Bert asked.
“Don’t know. Meteor? Hold up, up in front. Time for boot adjustments.”
They dropped their packs and found rocks to sit on. The bright afterimage was still there, although it was fading. Gordie couldn’t look directly at his bootlaces. Then he noticed that the wind had died. The forest was deathly still.
Bright flash. Sudden stillness. Like—
The shock wave rumbled across them with a thunder of sound. A dead tree crashed somewhere above them, thrashing in final agony among its brothers. The rumbling went on a long time, with rising wind.
Atom bomb at Frenchman’s Flats? Gordie wondered. Couldn’t be. They’d never test anything that big. So what was it?
The boys were chattering. Then the ground rumbled and heaved beneath them. More trees fell.
Gordie fell onto his pack. The other boys had been shaken off their rocks. One, Herbie Robinett, seemed to be hurt. Gordie crawled toward him. The boy wasn’t bleeding, and nothing was broken. Just shaken up. “Stay down!” Gordie shouted. “And watch for falling limbs and trees!”
The wind continued to rise, but it was shifting, moving around to the south, no longer coming from the east, where they’d seen the bright flash. The earth shook again.
And out there, far beyond the horizon, rising high into the stratosphere, was an ugly cloud, mushroom-shaped. It climbed on and on, roiling horribly. It was just where the bright flash had been.
One of the boys had a radio. He had it to his ear. “Nothing but static, Mr. Vance. I keep thinking I hear something else, but I can’t make out what.”