Memphis, close to the river and the center of the Blytheville Arch, received another pounding. The slippage of the Blytheville Arch transmitted to other subterranean fault lines via the Bootheel Lineament, which connects all other fault structures in the area. All the faults suffered further slippage, though a particularly severe shock was created along the Reelfoot South seismicity trend. This fault hammered western Kentucky and Tennessee—shaking unlucky Memphis from north as well as west—and created a pair of tsunamis, one that roared up the Ohio River, another that launched itself up the Mississippi, destroying the old river town of Cairo, which fortunately for its inhabitants had been evacuated due to flooding.
Other effects of M6 were similar to M1: ground liquefaction and geysering, widespread destruction to timber and other natural resources, and significant infrastructure damage. Buildings, levees, bridges, and other structures weakened by M1 and its aftershocks now collapsed. Damage in Mississippi, southern Arkansas, Kansas, and Louisiana exceeded that suffered in M1.
In some respects M6 was more merciful than its predecessor. Most of the population were asleep, not on the highways returning from work. The people had been suffering quakes for ten days and knew how to react; they knew to avoid weakened structures, and had evacuated lowlying areas subject to flood. A survivable satellite-based communications network was in place throughout the area. Emergency rescue and medical teams were deployed and already in the field. Loss of life was in the hundreds, not in the thousands. There were fewer catastrophic fires, and none that leveled whole areas of cities. But in other respects, M6 was a social catastrophe. It struck in the middle of the largest evacuation in the history of North America. Tens of thousands of people were caught somewhere in the process of evacuation, and though most of these people were not injured, they were isolated, unable to leave the areas where the quake had stranded them.
They were dependent, for every basic necessity, on the kindness of strangers. Frankland spent the quake praying. On his stomach, because the temblors would not let him stay on his knees. There was a nasty whiplike snap to the movement of the earth this time, something calculated to take the world off its feet.
Frankland prayed that the Lord’s will be done, that His kingdom would soon come. As the quake went on he prayed that his sins would be forgiven, that his wife’s life would be spared. He could hear the metal-framed church shrieking and rattling, and he prayed that the church roof wouldn’t fall in on the women and children.
He prayed that the Lord would be merciful on the hundreds of deserters who had left the camp, who had abandoned the faith of their fathers and accepted the false comfort of the godless government. He prayed that the Lord not drop these faithless, worthless, miserable people in crevasses, or strike them with his lightning, or break their bones, or cause buildings or trees to fall on them, or permit the ground at Hot Springs National Park to crack and release the magma that lay beneath the surface, so that the faithless deserters who had not remained true to Christ would not burn forever in God’s righteous hellfire.
Finally, as the shaking went on and on, and every thought was driven from his head, he just repeated Lord Lord Lord to himself, until suddenly the earth had ceased its groans and the world rang with silence.
And then the silence was broken by the screaming of children. Hundreds of them, wailing out of the night.
He spent the next few hours ministering to the hysterical children, who had been shaken from their dreams by a repeat of the trauma that had cost so many their homes, their belongings, and their loved ones.
Afterward Sheriff Gorton came to report. He had not deserted his faith; Gorton stayed in the camp and had been driving every day to his job at the county seat. But now he seemed in shock, pale, his watery eyes wide. “The Bijoux’s gone,” he said.
The sick people who hadn’t been able to evacuate were in there, along with the National Guard medic who had been detailed to look after them. And now they were dead.
“God’s mercy upon them,” said Frankland. “I guess we’re on our own, now.” Which was not, he considered, a bad thing at all.
It was fifty minutes after the quake that the President—pacing up and down in the situation room while he waited for senior staff to arrive—finally heard from the First Lady’s party.
He did not hear from the First Lady herself, but from one of her advance people in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where the First Lady had gone to present awards to members of a local radio station. After the quakes, people had begun to swarm into the disaster area to help with the business of rebuilding. Contractors, lumber dealers, homebuilders, roofers, heating and cooling specialists, hauling and freight companies, dealers in foodstuffs and fuel, all planning on making a profit at helping the victims of the quake to rebuild.
They were all, in some sense, profiteers. They did not leave their homes in safe parts of the country and travel, over dangerous roads, to hazardous areas without the intention of being rewarded for their services. If they wanted to make a normal profit, they would have stayed at home. Services out of the ordinary, they reckoned, deserved profits a little out of the ordinary. But the devastated areas had been so thoroughly destroyed, leaving such total damage, that repair and restoration very swiftly became a sellers’ market. Price gouging had become common. The suffering population had become enraged at the newcomers’ attempts to milk them for the few remaining pennies in their pockets.
There had been a move to freeze prices in the affected areas at pre-earthquake levels. But all that meant was that the people who had come to repair earthquake damage, deprived of the hope of extra profit that had caused them to leave home in the first place, would return home.
What the Jonesboro radio station had done was simply to start reporting prices in the area. All they did was quote numbers. Basic foodstuffs, lumber, roofing supplies, all the necessities for surviving the Year of the Earthquake. If a foodstore or a contractor was demanding unreasonable prices, that was reported, too, and people knew to avoid them. The radio station had restored a buyers’ market. Price-gougers were left without customers.
The Jonesboro program had been such a success that other stations began to imitate them. Essential supplies and services were still available, but prices had fallen all across the earthquake zone. It was one of the great successes of the recovery effort.
And so the radio station was deemed worthy of a visit from the First Lady, who was still shuttling about the devastated area on Permanent Compassion Duty. She was scheduled to appear on the radio station the next morning. Her plane had been landing on the repaired runway at Jonesboro at the very moment when M6 struck, and a crevasse had opened directly in its path. The plane’s nose wheel had dropped into the fracture, the plane rolled and burst into flame.