"Did the other helicopter get off?"
He spoke with one of the pilots again. "Yes, sir. They're in the air."
The roar of the engines eased and Henry got to his feet. The world below was full of liquid darkness and electricity. The lights were out, the ground was dark; he could see no streets, no homes, no monuments. He shivered.
Lightning glimmered against a black torrent pouring across the rotunda. The Lincoln Memorial, half-drowned, flickered in and out of existence.
He eased into the cockpit. "Pilot, can you contact the other aircraft? The one that took off behind us?"
The pilot nodded. "Welcome aboard, Mr. President," he said, and handed him a mike and a pair of earphones. "Bagel Three," he said, "the president would like to talk with you."
There was a long silence on the other end. Then: "This is Bagel Three. Glad you made it, Mr. President."
"Thank you. Were you able to get the people on the ground?"
Another long pause, long enough that Henry knew the answer. "No, sir. Not all of them. There wasn't time." The voice on the other end had become somewhat high-pitched. "There was nothing I could do, sir."
"I know, son. I was there."
"We just barely got off as it was, Mr. President. If I hadn't gone, everybody would have died."
"It's all right." He took a deep breath. "Is Al Kerr there?"
Emily squeezed his shoulder while they listened to people at the other end call Kerr's name. A jumble of voices, and then Henry heard him. "I'm here, Mr. President."
"Thank God, Al. Al, how bad was it? How many'd they have to leave?"
"Ten, fifteen. I'm not sure, sir." He didn't elaborate.
"Al, have you looked out the window?"
Another massive bolt of lightning hit. They were flying over a broad sea, with here and there a monument or a piece of the State Department projecting out of the water. "Yeah," said Kerr. "I saw it."
Henry wondered how many people had still been in the city. Taking his advice. "Al, where are we headed?"
"It's still dry at Camp David, sir."
They were turning to the northwest, running over the quiet waters, riding in relative silence now, save for the storm. "Mr. President." The pilot's voice again, breaking in, bringing him back from some other place.
"Yes. What is it?"
"You've got a call. Man named Feinberg."
"Patch him through, pilot."
Some clicks in his earphones. And then Feinberg's rasp: "Mr. President?"
"Hello, Wesley. You'll be interested in knowing we've just lost Washington."
"Mr. President, don't do it."
"Don't do what?"
"Don't nuke the Possum."
Henry looked down at the drowned city. "I think we've had enough, Wesley."
"No! If you persist, you'll only make things worse."
They were the last words Henry heard. He was about to reply, to ask how he could possibly make things worse, to observe that he was by God going to take the Possum out of the game, when someone screamed, the inside of the cockpit blurred, fire broke out, and the chopper's nightlights died. He was half-conscious, trying to find Emily in the dark, and he knew he was falling.
TRANSGLOBAL COMMENTARY. 5:10 A.M.
"The loss of power in the middle of the presidential press conference is the final straw in the assault against the public nerve. Probably never before in the history of the republic has the entire population stayed up all night. Millions have been driven from their homes, people have died in vast numbers, families are swept away in full view of TV cameras, and property damage mounts, God help us, into the trillions.
"The American people were surprised to see a presidential press conference only hours after two presidential addresses. If they were expecting Mr. Kolladner to announce Armageddon, they were carried along by his unexpected spirit of confidence and optimism. His clear goal of calming the nation might have been obtained had he not suddenly disappeared from the world's screens. In a hundred languages around the globe, voices explained that the transmission had been lost temporarily at its source, and that the telecast would continue momentarily.
"That news was followed, a few minutes later, by an announcement that a tsunami had struck Washington and continued all the way to Front Royal before exhausting itself against the Blue Ridge. The whereabouts of the president, as of this moment, are unknown. This is Judy Gunworthy with the Transglobal News Service, at the National Weather Service Office in El Paso." Micro Passenger Cabin. 5:43 A.M.
"Charlie." It was Kerr again. But his voice sounded strange.
"Yes, Al. What's wrong?"
"Charlie, we've lost the president."
Charlie Haskell's heart began to speed up. What had Harry Truman said on hearing of FDR's death? It was like a load of bullshit got dropped on me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sunday, April 14
1.
Manhattan. 5:45 A.M.
The effort to loot the local grocery store failed. Marvin and one of the accountants tore down a double-sized door to use as a raft, but their combined weight was too much and it capsized several times, dumping them into the flood. The accountant lost heart, and everybody else, including Larry, decided the smart thing would be to wait for the Guard. Finally Marvin set off alone. He came back an hour later, complaining that the store Louise had described was completely underwater. But he'd gotten off the raft, forced his way inside, and nearly drowned. He looked as if the story were true. He now joined those recommending they simply wait until help arrived. An unaccustomed whine had come into his voice, and Marilyn decided he didn't look as good this morning as he had last night. Never start a romance with somebody, she thought, until you've seen him in a flood.
Louise's refrigerator emptied out in a hurry, and the bottled water disappeared, despite all efforts at rationing. Her guests began to suggest that maybe they should make another effort to get canned goods out of the submerged store. "You can't tell how long we might be here," one of them said. Marv said he would not try it again under any circumstances.
A stock analyst who'd done a year at medical school pointed out that anybody going into the water, which was choked with corpses, risked typhus or some other ungodly disease. "Marv's right," she said. "We should wait."
They were cut off from the rest of the world. The batteries in the TV had died, and there was nothing to do now but gaze out over the city, gray and forlorn in the morning light. A stench had begun to creep into the air.
Larry tried to play the role of defender and provider that he must have felt was expected of him. He assured Marilyn everything would be okay, asked whether she was all right, and gathered her into his arms when she got teary. He didn't quite fit the part: Larry looked more at home in an office than in a crisis. But she felt it was nice of him to try.
She knew her husband would never have gone inside a submerged grocery store. But she also knew that, if he had, he wouldn't have come back and whined about it.
There was sudden commotion behind her: people pointing to the northwest. A helicopter, several helicopters, were coming in from over the Hudson, flying in formation, staying low. They penetrated the concrete valleys and divided into pairs as they approached the Central Park area.
There were other people atop other buildings, and everybody was waving. One of the choppers came in close and hovered directly overhead. It was olive-drab. Military. A voice spoke through a loudspeaker: "Folks, please clear the roof." Backwash from the rotors tore at her hair.