It was a futile gesture.
The fireball, one and a half million gallons of liquid propane going up in an instant, was over a mile in diameter.
Five or so miles to the north, Marcy Douglas felt the earth tremble. She was working to clear fallen trees from a part of the Jefferson Memorial Park so that the area could be used as a helipad. Army helicopters had soared in just after dawn, and were questing for a place to land.
Marcy thought the tremor was just another aftershock, but then she saw the flash brighten the shining steel of the Gateway Arch, and turned south to watch in awestruck horror as the bright fireball rose over south St. Louis. Bright arching trails of flame shot out of the fireball, like Fourth of July rockets, as debris rose and fell.
The sound came a few seconds later, the colossal concussion that drowned out the roar of the helicopters circling overhead. The copters spun dangerously as the concussion caught them. It is the Bomb, Marcy thought. It is the End.
The bubble of fire rose into the heavens, and its reflection turned the Mississippi to the color of blood.
Accounts from la Haut Missouri, announces a general peace among the Indians, it is said that the earthquakes has created this pacification.
“For then shall be great tribulation!” Frankland barked, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be!
“And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” He glanced down at his notes to make certain of the citation. “Matthew,” he said, “chapter twenty-four.”
Frankland looked from the pulpit at the crowded people in his church. People murmured and shuffled and grumbled, and a number of children were wailing. Frankland’s amplified voice had no problem being heard over the cries of the children, however. He shouted over the cries for at least an hour. He had begun his preaching at six o’clock in the morning, jolting the people awake with the sound and fervor of his call. He knew that the bellies of his audience were empty, that many had no rest. That was all to the good. It made them less likely to disregard his message. It was necessary to convince them, to terrify them, to make them want and need his guidance. Some of the grownups were weeping, he saw. Others stared up at him as if they’d been hit with sticks.
It didn’t slow him down. He’d written the sermon years before. It had been waiting in one of the fireproof safes in the guest bedroom closet, in a manila envelope labeled End Times First Sermon. There had been many other sermons filed alongside it.
“For the elect’s sake!” he repeated. “For the sake of those who remain true to Jesus’ word, the Tribulation will be shortened! Otherwise nothing would be left! The catastrophes of yesterday would go on and on until every last human being is destroyed! But out of compassion for those who hold true to the Word, the Lord will have mercy on us, elect and sinners both. For God promises, later in the Book of Matthew.” He looked down at his notes. “‘Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.’ And at the end of that time, Jesus will return in righteousness and reign for a thousand years. Amen.”
Afterward he called for volunteers—strong, young able people—to go out into the county round to look for survivors, and to bring in food. He called for more volunteers from among the ladies to help with cooking. And he called for the older men to help with jobs of construction, raising tents and building latrines.
There were plenty of volunteers. He divided them into groups, and put them under reliable people from his own congregation. “Bring in radios,” he told the leaders. “All the radios you can find. And if any of your people are carrying radios, tell them we’re going to need them. We need all the radios so that we can listen to the news, and pass it on to the people.”
And to keep them from hearing the word of the Devil, which would probably be on every radio station but his own. Amen.
Nick shivered as dawn leaked over the eastern horizon. He had spent the night in a cottonwood tree with black flood waters rushing beneath him.
The levees must have broken, he thought. There were eight or ten feet of water under him, and the water was moving fast. Every so often the tree would shudder to the impact of floating debris. He thought about Viondi’s body floating in the darkness, past the broken Mobil station, heading south toward his Aunt Loretta in Mississippi.
He thought about the Asian man trapped in his broken storefront, pinned down by a beam, the waters rising past his outstretched chin.
His left arm ached in the tricep region, and when he put his right hand there it came away sticky. He’d been shot. That crazy cop had shot him.
There didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He didn’t even have his stupid pale Band-Aids with dinosaurs on them.
Nick straddled a limb, leaned back against the bole of the tree, and tried to sleep. The wound throbbed all night long, and there were insistent biting insects, a truly amazing number of them, that kept him busy slapping them away. Occasional aftershocks rocked the tree, causing him to clutch at his bough and hope that the shock wouldn’t loosen the tree’s roots and topple it into the water. He must have finally fallen asleep, though, because when he opened his eyes he found it was light, just past dawn. Birdsong rang through the trees. Nick blinked gum from his eyes and peered out at the drowned world.
He was in a grove, an old stand of cottonwood. His tree bore so many leafy branches that it was difficult to see through them. The area was brushy, and the tops of bushes waved from the murky water below. Far off to his right—southeast, to judge by the sun—there was a wide open area covered with water. He couldn’t tell if it was a flooded field, a lake, or a river.
There was a rustling out on the big limb that Nick was straddling. He looked out and gazed into a pair of brown eyes. He started and banged the back of his head on the bole of the tree. Opossum, he recognized. With little pink-nosed babies clinging to its fur.
“Damn,” Nick said, and rubbed the back of his head where he’d knocked it on the tree. The opossum gave a disappointed murmur and climbed higher into the tree, out of sight.
“Possum,” Nick told it, “you don’t want to get down now, anyway.” Loud bird calls barked from the next tree over. Nick hitched himself out on his limb to get a better view, peered between branches and saw a flock of guinea fowl, survivors from someone’s farm. In another tree, he saw a pair of squirrels leaping from one branch to another, just above the sullen, bedraggled form of a hen turkey. He could hear the cawing of a whole flock of crows, but he couldn’t see them. All nature had gone aloft when the water began to rise.
No, he discovered, not all nature.
The corpse of a drowned deer, already stiff, floated half-submerged in the current. Nick gave a shudder. At least the body wasn’t that of a human being.
It occurred to him that there might be someone within hailing distance. Even someone else stranded in a cotton-wood would be company. He cupped his hands to his mouth, turned his head in the direction he suspected was inland, then hesitated.