Double Dose, page 33
Cadoc
He watched from the second-floor dining room as his mother walked toward the Lodge from the equinox festivities. She carried what looked like a plate of food.
Cadoc had intended to attend the celebration—make his debut as a Pendry adult, so to speak—but had lost his nerve at the last minute. He’d be going from living in the dark and never being seen to the center of attention. The Pendry no one knew existed. The freak. The recluse. The hermit.
I’d heard rumors he was too ugly to show his face. I’d heard he was a hunchback. But he doesn’t look so bad, just pale. Awfully pale. Let’s cluster around him and gawk and ask him a million questions.
No thanks.
Had to admit though, he was awfully pale. When had he last exposed his skin to the sun? Age eight, maybe?
His mother disappeared below as she entered the Lodge, and soon he heard her on the stairs.
“Oh, there you are, dear,” she said, proffering a paper-napkin-covered plastic plate. “I brought you a sandwich.”
“Thanks, Mother. You didn’t have—”
“Hot corned beef on rye. I know you love it.”
Well, yes, he did. His mouth started watering as he caught the fragrance.
She placed a hand on his arm. “You really ought to come down. I’d love to show off my two handsome boys.”
“Maybe some other time.”
She gave a little squeeze. “Reconsider, Cad. Just show your face. A flyby, just enough to prove to everyone that you’re more than a rumor. And then you can come back here.”
“I’ll think about it. Where’s Papa? I thought I saw him drive off.”
“Oh, you know your father. Always something going on. He had to meet someone down by the array, and then there’s an Elders meeting.”
“Did Rhys go with him?”
“No, he’s out there trying to avoid Fflur Mostyn. He needn’t worry. Like everyone else, she’s heard of his trysts with that Healerina woman from town, and she seems just as happy to avoid him.”
The Mostyn and Pendry families had “promised” Fflur and Rhys to each other to be married when he turned thirty, but Cadoc couldn’t see that happening now, not after Rhys’s very public affair with Daley.
His mother headed toward the rear of the house.
“Where are you going, Mother?”
“I just want to lie down for a minute. I need a break from the other Elder wives. I can take only so much of their chatter.”
Half a minute later a thundering Boom! shook the house as if a bomb had gone off, knocking Cadoc onto his back. The building shifted and shook and rattled, bouncing him off the floor, making it impossible to regain his feet. Despite all Papa’s retrofitting of the Lodge with wall braces, foundation bolts, and base isolators to keep the place from shaking too much, his first thought was getting to the shelter of a doorway. The second was…
“Mother!”
From the rear of the house rose a cacophony of rattles and rumbles and the cracks of lumber snapping and splintering
“Mother!”
Fighting the jumping floorboards, Cadoc had just struggled to his hands and knees when something crashed onto his back, knocking him flat again as dishes and glassware shattered all around him. Pain shot down to his wrist and up to his shoulder as something cracked in his left forearm. The damn China cabinet had tipped off the wall. The house stopped shaking as he tried to worm out from beneath it but his clothing was tangled in it.
Rhys stormed up the steps then.
“Cad!”
He rushed over and lifted the cabinet enough to allow Cadoc to slither free.
“Are you okay?”
“My arm’s been better but never mind me—”
“The whole rear of the house collapsed and—hey, where’s Mom?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She went back to her bedroom.”
“Oh, shit!”
Rhys took off at a run. Cadoc struggled to his feet—damn, he hurt all over—and raced after him. They both skidded to a stop when they found the hallway choked with debris.
“No!” Rhys cried. “No-no-no-no!”
Cadoc shouted, “Mother!”
Then Rhys: “Mom!”
They were answered by a high-pitched groan from beyond the rubble.
“She’s still alive! Dig! We’ve got to get her out!”
Becky
“I need aerial recon,” Becky said. “Any way there’s a satellite in range? Get hold of our contact at NRO. See if they can feed us some images.”
A major slip and spreading in the Cerro Prieto fault had triggered a massive 7.8 multi-fault event in the lower end of the Imperial Valley with the epicenter just west of in Mexicali. Seismic waves had propagated south through the isthmus to the Gulf of California and north through the valleys—definitely rattling Pasadena and the South Mudd Building here at Caltech—and into the Los Angeles basin where they gained velocity and destructive power. Very preliminary reports cited extensive damage.
And because the epicenter was in Mexico, and SASMEX neglected the Baja area, Becky was not getting anywhere near the data she needed.
Hendry said, “One of the Yuma TV stations has a chopper in the air over Mexicali. I’ve got it on my monitor.”
Becky and the other members of the seismic lab crowded in behind him. The feed from the chopper said they were just west of Mexicali.
“Shit!” Cheatham cried. “That looks like a surface rupture!”
“Nah,” said Pryor. “Can’t be. It’s too big.”
Becky strained to focus on the jittering image.
The Cerro Prieto complex involved a major spreading center so no surprise that the surface had split, but she agreed it was awfully damn big. Had to be some sort of camera artifact.
Then the chopper closed in on it, leaving no doubt that they were looking at a huge surface rupture. The data collection center fell silent as the chopper followed it south. Though it stayed over the fissure, Becky could make out few details.
“If they’d only get closer we could—”
Just then the camera changed angle to the east where smoke and flame belched into the air.
“Something’s caught fire,” a voice behind her said—Pryor. “That’s where they’ll spend their time now. Fire’s much more interesting than a crack in the ground.”
But the smoke and flame weren’t coming from ground level. It seemed to be originating from a mound that had to be seven- or eight-hundred feet high.
“But what’s burning?” Cheatham said. “It looks like a mountain’s on fire.”
“Holy shit!” Hendry gasped. “That’s a volcano. I’ve been down there. That’s the Cerro Prieto Volcano. The last time it erupted was during the Halocene!”
Someone on the other side of the room shouted, “We’ve a satellite view coming in!”
Like stampeding cattle they all rushed to the new monitor. A few people gasped, but then they all stood and stared in silent awe. A huge surface rupture ran from Mexicali to the Gulf of California.
Becky had never seen anything like it…had never dreamed she ever would. Water from the gulf was rushing into the fissure. Good thing it didn’t extend through Mexicali into the Imperial Valley, otherwise they’d have an unimaginable catastrophe on their hands.
“Hey, you know,” Hendry said from his station, “those sine waves are still running.”
Becky walked over to the data monitor on the wall. Now that the other seismic activity had simmered down—at least until the next aftershock—the sine waves were still present. They’d probably never stopped. They didn’t look natural. Was someone creating them?
“I’ve got a bad feeling about those sine waves,” she said. “Someone get hold of Homeland Security. This could be a terrorist act.”
Hendry looked at her. “You’re serious?”
She pointed to the monitor. “Look at those waves.” She’d spent most of her adult life monitoring seismic feeds and had never seen anything like that. “Those do not originate in nature. Those are manmade. I’ll stake my career on it.”
And they meant that whatever was going on wasn’t over yet.
Tom
This could still work out, Tom thought as he piloted the Hummer toward the Salton Sea. The quake could have disrupted things enough down at the marina that they wouldn’t be able to rent a thing.
Marina Drive sounded promising so he turned onto it and followed its curving course past scattered houses; many looked like converted double-wide trailers, although some were fairly nice with Spanish-style stucco walls and tile roofs. A lot of the houses showed quake effects ranging from cracked stucco and fallen tiles to being knocked off the foundation. One had a roof cracked like an egg. Eventually he found the marina and RV park. It had a big parking lot, a motel, and a corrugated steel building billing itself a “Johnson’s Landing Café & Bar.” A couple of RVs lay on their sides. This was looking better and better for no rental.
He parked and walked toward the water. The stink hit him again. He spotted a crusty bearded fellow in a camo boonie hat standing at the waterline with an aluminum outboard runabout nosed onto the sand.
Damn.
“Are you Zeke?” Tom called.
“You the fella that phoned?”
Double damn.
“Yeah.”
“Still want the boat?”
He glanced back at Lucy who was vigorously nodding from inside the car.
“I guess so,” he said, walking down the gentle slope toward the water. “Are we going to have a problem out there with the aftershocks?”
“The water got a little rough during the quake, but this thing’s damn near unsinkable, especially on the Salton.”
“How so?”
“High salinity—maybe a dozen times saltier than the Pacific. Increases the buoyancy. You’d have a tough time drowning out there.”
“That’s good to know, I guess.”
“Yeah, you should be all right. I been listening to the FEMA channel. They said it was a seven point eight. That’s a big one.”
“Didn’t know FEMA had a channel.”
He gestured to a little battery-powered radio on a nearby cinder block. “Yeah. Shortwave. I ain’t got cable and my dish just got knocked off my roof, so the shortwave keeps me in touch. Anyway, FEMA says it mighta been just a foreshock.”
“Foreshock?”
“Yeah. A smaller quake that occurs before the mainshock. Pretty common with bigger quakes running above seven. And, like I said, this one was seven point eight. Knocked me right off my feet. So you’ve got to consider that could’ve been a foreshock.”
This was looking worse and worse. Tom turned to Lucy again but she was out of the Hummer and strapping her katana across her back. She walked past Zeke without looking at him.
“Get that radio,” she said to the air.
Then she stepped into the boat, seated herself near the front with her back to the shore, and started swaying back and forth.
Zeke grinned. “Looks like your lady friend’s made up her mind.”
“That’s my sister.”
He stuck out his hand. “I’ll take the hundred up front.”
One hundred bucks for a few hours rental. Seemed steep, but what did Tom know? He pulled out his wallet.
“How much for the radio?”
He shrugged. “I got a backup. I guess I can part with this one for fifty.”
“For that little thing?”
“Take it or leave it.”
He took it. No biggie. He had the money and Zeke was the only game in town at the moment.
“Been a while since I was out in one of these,” Tom said as he handed over three fifties. “How about a quick run-through?”
In truth, he’d never piloted a boat—not even a rowboat.
He got in and handed Lucy the shortwave, then started his boating lesson. Zeke showed him how to unlock the outboard engine, the starter button, and the combined throttle-gearshift with its simple F-N-R positions. Piece of cake.
“Your fuel tank is full,” he said, pointing to the red plastic container in the stern with a tube running to the engine. “Twelve gallons will last you hours but keep an eye on the gauge. You run out, well, no one’s gonna come for you.”
Tom didn’t like the sound of that. “What do we do if something happens? I mean, like, if the engine fails?”
“That’s why you’ve got oars. You’ll have to start paddling.”
Fair enough. Note to self: Do not go too far from shore and do not run out of gas.
Zeke pushed them off. As they drifted away Tom turned to Lucy and gestured to her katana.
“No marauders out there on the water, Sis.”
“There are water marauders, you know. Ever hear of pirates?”
On the Salton Sea? Ah, well. What can you do?
He dropped the propeller into the water, hit the starter button, and they were off. It had a car steering wheel and drove like one—except no brakes. Tom supposed you could reverse the propeller to slow down, but no worry: his was the only bloody boat on the water.
“You’d never know we just had a seven-point-eight quake,” he said, waving an arm at the placid surface perfectly reflecting the sky.
Lucy had the radio on but he couldn’t hear it over the outboard motor.
“What’s it say?”
“They say the Cerro Prieto Fault created a huge fissure into the gulf.”
“What gulf? The Gulf of California?” Tom was picturing the big spur of the Pacific filling the space between the Baja Peninsula and the Mexico mainland.
Lucy made one of her must-I-explain-this? faces that he hated. “No, the Gulf of Mexico.”
Her tone irked him. “Don’t be a wiseass. It’s just that I’ve never heard of a Cerro Prieto fault.”
“Neither have I. But apparently it’s associated with a volcano that’s started erupting.”
“The shit’s really hitting the fan, isn’t it.”
“Big time”.
Lucy turned the radio off and swiveled to face front, scanning ahead. Tom checked his phone for the time—3:52.
“Almost half an hour till the equinox,” he said. “Plenty of time to position ourselves. Where do you think best?”
“Welllll,” she said slowly, drawing out the word, “that Tesla tower is to the south so maybe we should head down that end.”
She was swaying again. As if the boat weren’t rocking enough by itself. Usually Tom could ignore it, but the two out-of-synch motions were making him seasick.
He shifted his attention to the placid water. “Sounds like a plan.”
Hardly a plan, but at least they had a direction.
Daley
As they roared toward the windfarm, Daley could see that the quake had hit it hard. Half the turbines were either down or leaning against each other. The rest were still turning however—and still in synch.
Juana had driven her Harley like a mad woman, winding between and around the jammed cars in El Centro, then opening the throttle once they broke free. They raced along the desert roads at speeds way past Daley’s comfort zone, but she couldn’t lose a second getting to the windfarm.
As they rode Daley had given her a version of the situation which she’d simplified down to Elis Pendry using the tower to create earthquakes and open a passage to bring the gods of his religion back to Earth. Juana seemed to have no trouble accepting that.
“Drive by the front gate,” Daley told her.
“But don’t you want the tower?”
“I’m sure Elis has got it surrounded by clan men to keep everyone away. I’ll never get past.” The gate stood open with Jason’s car and the Tadhak bus parked outside. “Drop me here.”
“Then we should have brought the cops.”
Daley hopped off. Damn, it felt good to be off that seat. She adjusted her skirt which had ridden way up during the trip—not designed for hog riding, by any means. She pulled off the helmet and shed Dr. Milton’s lab coat. With fewer turbines turning, the noise wasn’t as gratingly loud as when she’d last visited with Cadoc.
“Think about how long it would have taken me to explain this situation. And even in the unlikely case they semi-bought it, they’re dealing with a town shaking itself to pieces. How could they spare anyone to come out here? And one cop isn’t going to hack it.”
Juana gestured toward the gate. “What do you expect to do in there, then?”
“Make an end run around Elis. Wait for me here.”
“You’re going in alone?”
Daley glanced at the maze of fallen towers inside. Looked like a forest after a hurricane. Or tornado, maybe. No way the Harley could get through.
“Some stuff there you probably shouldn’t see. I’ll be fine.”
She took off at a run, ducking under some fallen towers, sliding over others.
(“Reminds me of Tunguska,”) Pard said.
“What’s Tunguska?”
(“A place in Siberia.”)
“You’ve never been to Siberia.”
(“I’ve seen photos.”)
A black-and-white image sprang into her mind: What was once a forest with all its trees—all its trees—flattened like matchsticks, all pointing in the same direction.
“Hey. This isn’t that bad. A fair number of these are still standing.”
(“They won’t be after Pendry’s next quake, I’ll bet. That’s our destination straight ahead.”)
The central tower was still standing, its turbine’s blades turning. The door to its base building stood open.
(“Not much reason to lock it today, I guess. By the way, what do you hope to accomplish here?”)
“Stop any more quakes.”
(“Do you really think Jason cares about that?”)
“If you’ve got a better idea I’m all ears.”
(“Unfortunately…no.”)
Daley entered, crossed the empty front room to the rear door—also unlocked—and entered the short anteroom, closing the door behind her. Without hesitating, she pulled open the next door and stepped into the huge warehouse space Cadoc had shown her before. A few of Jason’s fellow Tadhaks moved among the putty-colored, boxcar-size blocks that stored all his voltage.
I don’t see any damage in here.
(“It’s probably located outside any seismic zones.”)
