“Sir.” One of his aides, holding a phone. “The chairman of the Federal Reserve would like a meeting with you tomorrow, as early as possible.”
The President stared, a new realization rolling through his mind.
He had completely forgot that all this was going to have to be paid for.
Jason could feel the speed of the boat increase, hear the roaring ahead. He had been drowsing in the front seat, leaning forward on the boat’s useless wheel, but the grinding of the boat over some debris had woken him, and once awake he sensed a change. The wind was blowing much more steadily, a cool fresh breeze with the scent of spray in it. The black river was moving fast, raising a chop that slapped water against the sides of the boat. In the fitful starlight Jason could see debris crowding the water, boxes and bottles and lumber, limbs and whole trees. In the dark Jason couldn’t tell where the bank was, but he sensed it was close.
It was as if the river had spread itself out into a lake. And now someone had pulled a cork on the bottom of the lake, and it was all draining out at once.
The roaring sound increased. Water sloshed around his ankles as Jason stood on the pitching boat, holding on the wheel for support as he peered downriver.
A cold fist clamped on Jason’s throat.
Ahead, even through the darkness, he could see the white water, the white-crested chop leaping higher than his head.
A gentleman who was near the Arkansas river, at the time of the first shock in Dec. last, states, that certain Indians had arrived near the mouth of the river, who had seen a large lake or sea, where many of their brothers had resided, and had perished in the general wreck; that to escape a similar fate, they had traveled three days up the river, but finding the dangers increase, as they progressed, frequently having to cut down large trees, to cross the chasms in the earth, they returned to the mouth of the river, and from them this information is derived.
In the hot Tennessee night, Nick could see the lights of Memphis glowing on low cloud ahead, an angry red. At least Nick hoped they were lights and not fire.
He hoped, but hope was fading. He’d already seen too much.
As he and Viondi trudged toward Memphis, they began to pass into areas with a larger population, but they passed nothing but ruin. Every house was flattened. Sometimes the homeowners stood numbly in front of their shattered dwellings, or made vague attempts to fetch belongings from the fallen structures. Some of them waved as Nick and Viondi passed. Some were injured, but most of the injuries seemed light.
The badly injured ones, Nick figured, never made it out of their houses. Once Nick and Viondi heard someone calling from a shattered storefront, some kind of clothing store. They dug into the ruin, throwing bricks and ruined clothes behind them into the street, and found an elderly Asian man with a beam fallen across his legs.
There was no way to move that beam. All they could do was promise that they’d contact the police or somebody to help him.
At least the storefront wasn’t on fire, Nick thought. Many of the buildings were in flames. Nick didn’t want to think about people who might have lain in those ruins waiting for the fire to reach them, calling for help that never came. By the time Nick and Viondi passed by, the buildings were already blazing. Anyone inside was already long dead.
The road was often blocked by fallen trees or by crevasses, and every vehicle on it had been abandoned. Furious rain-storms pelted down on them, and they plodded on wearing windbreakers dug out of their luggage. Lightning boomed overhead even when it wasn’t raining. When night came on, there were no traffic lights, no street lights, no lights at all but the stars and the flare of burning structures. Nick saw no police, no fire engines, no ambulances. Everyone out here was on his own.
And then, just ahead, Nick saw the lights of a police cruiser, its flashers illuminating the rubble that was once a brick Mobil station. The Mobil sign, dark, was still intact on its metal pole, and pulsed faintly, blue and red, in the flashing police lights. The Mobil station was a pile of rubble. Standing by the open door of the car was a state trooper talking into a microphone.
“Hey,” Viondi said, and took a closer grip on his soggy cardboard box. He squinted ahead at the state trooper. “And the man’s a brother, too. Looks like we finally got lucky. I’d sure as hell hate to walk up to a cracker cop on a night like this.”
The dead boy kept staring at him with a face that looked like Victor’s. And the old man—he didn’t want to think about the old man.
Eukie James was trapped. He’d figured that out. He was trapped and he couldn’t help Victor or Emily or Showanda or anybody.
“Damn it?” he said into the mike. “What was that about Latimer Street?” The whole damn city was on fire. That was clear enough. All a man had to do was look at that glow on the clouds.
He thought about Victor and tears came burning to his eyes.
“Where was that?” Eukie demanded of the mike. “Where was that damn looting?” And the dead boy kept staring at him with his son’s eyes. Reminding him that there wasn’t anything he could do.
It was usually quiet on these back roads. The worst thing he’d ever seen since he’d been patrolling here were some car accidents where nobody was badly hurt, even if a lot of metal got bent. His presence helped to keep the speed down, and people waved at him in a friendly way when he drove past. And now this. Nuclear war or something, Eukie figured, somebody finally pushed the button. Some asshole shot a rocket at Memphis, and the whole place had gone up in fire.
And there was nothing Eukie could do to help his family, who were probably right smack in the middle of that—what was it called?—firestorm.
He couldn’t get to them. A whole forest of trees had fallen across the road both in front of him and behind, and he couldn’t move the patrol car off this little piece of ground. He’d barely avoided a power pole that tried to fall right on the car—there was a big scar on the trunk where it had bounded off. He’d never before thought a public utility would try to kill him.
All that seemed to exist on his little strip of state road was the collapsed Mobil station with its little population of dead people. Eukie had heard the screams from the wreckage as soon as he pulled over to the side of the road after the nuclear strike, or whatever it was. He’d dug through the fallen brick Mobil station, gashing his hands on broken glass, till he’d found the kid, the little black boy with the staring eyes, no more than six years old. But even after he’d dragged the boy out of the rubble and wiped the brick dust from his face and tried to revive him with mouth-to-mouth—even after he’d pounded on the kid’s chest and breathed for him and shouted at the kid to wake up—even after all that, the screams went on, and so Eukie finally worked out that there was someone else trapped in the building. And then, digging farther into the wreckage, he found the old man, an old white-haired black man in overalls. Maybe he was the kid’s grandpa. All the man could do was stare up with his yellow eyes and scream. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t answer Eukie’s questions, all he could do was take another breath and yell. So Eukie grabbed him under the arms and put his back into hauling him out of the wreckage. The old man gave one last full-blooded shriek and then fell limp.
And as soon as Eukie got him clear, he knew why.