He looked in the rearview mirror, and his heart leaped into his throat as he saw it coming at him from behind.
Behind him, the ground was collapsing. A line was crossing the land, and behind the line it looked as if the ground was dropping ten or fifteen feet, like a stage set with the props knocked out. The line reached the cotton wagon and its tractor. They both fell—Robitaille saw the arms of the driver rise, an expression of dismay on his face, as the tractor dropped out beneath him, its nose kicking up as it threatened to roll over on him. Behind the moving line, where the land had fallen, was nothing but wreckage. The line was rolling up on the Lincoln’s rear bumper.
A cocktail of adrenaline and vodka surged through Robitaille’s veins. There was only one response. Accelerate!
Robitaille punched the accelerator and felt the big car leap in answer. Duct-taped upholstery absorbed his weight as he was pressed back into the seat. He clutched the wheel with white-knuckled hands, tried to keep the car on the pavement as his speed increased.
He wasn’t getting the smooth acceleration he was used to—the car was jumping so much that the drive wheels weren’t in contact with the pavement half the time, they were just spinning in air. But the speed built nonetheless. Robitaille’s glances at the mirror assured him that though the line was still overtaking him, it was doing so more slowly.
Faster. He mashed the accelerator to the floor. Sooner or later, he hoped, the geology might change, the land wouldn’t be so susceptible to quake.
The Lincoln vibrated like a mad thing under his touch. The engine roared. Robitaille felt it trying to leave the road, become airborne.
He rocketed around a parked pickup, saw the open-mouthed woman behind the wheel staring at oncoming ruin. Faster. The car landed heavily—or perhaps the ground had leaped up to meet it—and the suspension crashed. He felt the oil pan scrape on asphalt. The drive wheels screeched as they dug in and flung the car forward. He saw his muffler and tail pipe assembly bounce free in the road behind him before being swallowed by the encroaching abyss.
Faster. He saw the road arching up ahead of him, the bridge over the Rails River. Exultation sang through his mind. Surely the wave that was collapsing the country behind him wouldn’t cross the river?
Behind he saw the line of ruin recede. He was gaining on it.
The bridge was just ahead. The unmuffled engine thundered like an artillery barrage. Robitaille began to laugh. The Lincoln bottomed again at the bridge approach, then flung itself up the arching roadbed. The laugh froze in Robitaille’s throat.
The far half of the Rails River Bridge was gone, just a fallen rubble of steel and asphalt. The Lincoln’s wheels spun in air as it launched itself into space. The engine roared. Robitaille felt the car’s nose tip downward, saw the water below.
Wished he had time for another drink.
“Hey, darlin’,” Larry said to the phone. As he spoke his greeting, he raised his voice slightly to let everyone in the control room know that it was his wife Helen who had interrupted the day’s desultory football analysis.
“Are you busy?” Helen asked.
“We are analyzing the Cowboys’ jackhammer offensive,” Larry said.
“I’ll take that as a no, then.”
After a lot of work during refueling, and stacks of related paperwork afterward, Larry and the Poinsett Landing Station were in a fairly relaxed period. The plume of steam floated above the cooling tower, a finger of white that pointed toward Louisiana. The facility was running at eighty percent capacity, and the operators had little to do but watch the controls. Sometimes Larry wondered how long Poinsett Landing would continue to run if he, and everyone else in the control room, simply left, locked the door behind them, and never came back.
Months, probably. Possibly even years, until the enriched U-235 in the fuel assemblies finally spent itself, until the fuel finally lacked the ability to heat the demineralized water in the reactor vessel to anything greater than the temperature of hot tea, and the huge steam generator, rotating on its 160-foot shaft, finally cooled and cycled to a stop.
Larry stole the last glazed doughnut from the box parked atop the computer monitor, then settled into his chair with the phone at his ear. Below, the football discussion continued uninterrupted.
“I thought I’d call about Mimi’s birthday,” Helen said.
“It’s not for another month,” Larry said. He bit his dough-nut, felt sugar melt on his tongue.
“Yes, but I saw something this morning that was just perfect for her. Do you know that old antique store up by the courthouse?”
“Uhh—guess not.”
“Well, I saw this amazing lamp. It’s a bronze horse, a kind of Frederick Remington thing…” Larry sat up in his chair as something jolted up his spine. “Just a minute,” he said. It felt as if someone had just kicked the bottom of his chair seat. His eyes darted to his metal-topped desk, where pens and pencils were suddenly jiggling. He lowered the hand holding the doughnut to his desktop.
“Hey,” he called out, trying to get the attention of the operators below. Larry’s eyes were already scanning the displays. Pump malfunction? he wondered. Something with the turbine?
He heard a kind of percussion in his ear, like a shelf had fallen on the other end of the phone. “What was that?” Helen called in his ear, alarm in her voice. And then, a second or two later, Larry felt it himself, a lurch as if something large had fallen sideways against the control building.
“What was that?” Wilbur echoed.
The lurch came again, then again, a thudding, wham-wham-wham-wham, a steady pounding triphammer. Everything on Larry’s desk was shivering over to the right. He stood, phone in one hand, doughnut in the other. His eyes frantically scanned the control room displays. A folder of documents spilled from his desk, splashed unnoticed to the floor.
“Power spike on station transformers!” one operator shouted.
“Turbine feedwater pump’s offline!” shouted someone else. Books pitched off shelves. And then Larry heard it coming, a chuffing noise like an express train hurtling forward on its tracks, choom choom choom choom choom CHOOM, coming closer at terrifying speed. Larry had a moment to wonder if it was a tornado; he’d heard that tornados could sound like trains… Then the express train hit the building. Larry felt a shocking blow to his right shoulder as he pitched sideways into the wall. The computer monitor flung itself into his lap, making him cry out. Fluorescent light shattered overhead, glass raining down on the room.
“Fuuuuuck!” Wilbur yelled.
Larry rolled the monitor off his lap and attempted to stand, one hand groping at his desk, trying to lever himself upright. His boots went out from under him and he shouted as he fell and received another slam to his shoulder.
“Turbine trip! Turbine trip!” The voice was so distorted by fear and shock that Larry did not recognize it. Larry could barely hear the voice over the express-train sound of the catastrophe. He felt the teeth rattling in his head. Glass shattered throughout the control room. Panels spilled from the ceiling, revealing ducts and bundles of cable. There was an actinic arc of electricity, a chaotic series of shouts from the operators. Larry rolled over on his stomach and tried to crawl toward the door. The floor kept trying to kick him in the belly.