“Where is everybody?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Parking structure collapsed,” one of the park rangers said. He was gasping with the effort of carrying the injured woman. “There are dozens of people in there. We’re trying to dig them out.”
“We’ve got this one,” the other ranger said. “Get out there and see if you can help someone else.” Marcy cast a last look at the bleeding woman and sprinted for the wide stair. The parking structure adjacent to the Gateway Arch was several stories tall and held hundreds of cars. If it had collapsed, there was no telling how many people were trapped in the rubble.
She ran out into the open and into a hot wind that blew burning cinders across her path. Heat flared on her exposed skin. Her feet slowed as she stared in horror at the wall of fire blazing on the other side of Memorial Drive.
Half the city seemed ablaze, everything from the tallest structures to the smallest heaps of rubble. She held up a hand to shield her face from the heat, and her palm turned hot. Clouds of black smoke curled up between her and the arch, obscuring its gleaming stainless steel skin. Hundreds of people swarmed across the highway toward her, crossing the park as they tried to get away from the fires. Others had collapsed on the grass, exhausted simply by the effort of getting here.
Marcy kept trotting toward the parking structure. Most of the trees that lined the walkways had fallen, and she had to keep zigzagging around fallen trunks and limbs.
She glanced in the other direction, saw another cloud of dense smoke, growing from roots of flame, in East St. Louis. The Casino Queen, the huge riverboat that fed the East St. Louis economy with its gambling income, was lying on its side in the river. Its ornate smokestacks had fallen, and the ginger-bread on its balconies was broken. A few people were seen clinging to the part of the boat remaining above the water.
St. Louis’s boats hadn’t fared much better. The excursion boats Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher had been moored for the evening on the landing right under the Gateway Arch. Only Becky Thatcher seemed reasonably intact: Tom Sawyer had sunk at its moorings, and Huck Finn drifted downriver, trailing its mooring cables in the water. All had lost their stacks. Marcy swerved around a fallen tree and came within sight of the parking structure. It looked like a crater of the moon. A hideous pit filled with broken concrete and mangled steel. Smoke burned Marcy’s eyes. She slowed, gasping for breath.
“Evan!” she shouted. “Damn you!” And then, though her feet felt as if they weighed a hundred pounds apiece, she went down into the pit to rescue her visitors.
A neighbor girl knocked on the window of the BMW. Charlie looked at her in some surprise. The electric window wouldn’t go down, because he didn’t have the ignition key, so he opened the door. The air smelled of smoke from the houses that were burning.
The girl was maybe fifteen and lived next door. Charlie saw her and her friends from his deck all the time. Charlie tried to remember her name.
“Are you all right, Mr. Johns?” the girl said.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Everything’s fine.” He thought about Megan in the master bedroom, and his mind shied away from the thought.
“Fine,” he repeated.
“My dad says we shouldn’t go into our houses,” the girl said. “In case there’s another earthquake.”
“Earthquake,” Charlie repeated. It was an earthquake, he thought in surprise. For some reason he hadn’t even considered earthquake. He’d seen public service announcements on television every so often, usually late at night, but none of the locals seemed to take earthquakes seriously, and he didn’t either.
Besides, everyone knew that earthquakes only happened in California and Japan.
“We’re going to pitch a tent in the backyard and camp,” the girl said. “We have a spare sleeping bag if you want one.”
“No,” Charlie said. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“We were wondering if we could get some water from your swimming pool.” Charlie blinked as he processed this strange request. He couldn’t make any sense out of it. “Fine,” he said finally.
“Thanks, Mr. Johns. See you later, okay?”
“Fine,” Charlie said again.
He closed the door. Now the BMW smelled of burning.
He looked at the cellphone receiver he’d thrown down on the next seat, at the red lights winking. He picked it up again. He tried to call emergency numbers and nothing worked. He tried to call Dearborne, because Dearborne had been at the country club and perhaps hadn’t realized they were all rich. The phone didn’t work. He threw it on the passenger seat in disgust.
Earthquake, he thought. His mum and dad would think it very strange when he told them. McPhee’s house was burning by now in a very lively manner. The neighbors had saved some of the furniture, which was all over the lawn and street, but could not save the house. There was a huge pall of rising smoke over down-town Memphis, as if a lot of things down there were burning. Charlie realized he was hungry.
Too bad, he thought, that the caterers were going to be late.
TWELVE
This day I have heard from the Little Prairie, a settlement on the bank of the river Mississippi, about 30 miles below this place. There the scene has been dreadful indeed—the face of the country has been entirely changed. Large lakes have been raised, and become dry land; and many fields have been converted into pools of water. Capt. George Roddell, a worthy and respectable old gentleman, and who has been the father of that neighborhood, made good his retreat to this place, with about 100 souls. He informs me that no material injury was sustained from the first shocks—when the 10th shock occurred, he was standing in his own yard, situated on the bank of the Bayou of the Big Lake; the bank gave way, and sunk down about 30 yards from the water’s edge, as far as he could see up and down the stream. It upset his mill, and one end of his dwelling house sunk down considerably; the surface on the opposite side of the Bayou, which before was swamp, became dry land, the side he was on became lower. His family at this time were running away from the house towards the woods; a large crack in the ground prevented their retreat into the open field. They had just assembled together when the eleventh shock came on, after which there was not perhaps a square acre of ground unbroken in the neighborhood, and in about fifteen minutes after the shock, the water rose round them waist deep. The old gentleman in leading his family, endeavoring to find higher land, would sometimes be precipitated headlong into one of those cracks in the earth, which were concealed from the eye by the muddy water through which they were wading. As they proceeded, the earth continued to burst open, and mud, water, sand and stone coal, were thrown up the distance of 30 yards—frequently trees of a large size were split open, fifteen or twenty feet up. After wading eight miles, he came to dry land.
Jason huddled between the lightning and the flood. He had lost track of the number of thunderclaps, the number of times lightning had blasted the top of the mound. Storm gusts blew dust, spray, mud, and rain, the alternations from one to the other coming with bewildering speed.
Jason clung to the steep side of the mound, away from the lightning. All he could hope was that one of the tall trees that loomed above him would not attract a bolt of lightning, topple, and kill him. The water continued to rise. And on the northern horizon, Cabells Mound continued to burn. There was wreckage, some of it still on fire, tangled with the row of trees to the north that marked the boundary of the cotton field. It was all that was left of the row of homes that Jason had lived in. The hope that Jason’s mother might still be alive, somewhere in that wreckage, haunted his mind. If only, he thought, I could get over there…