Footfall

Harry waited until Melissa was gone. “I don’t quite know how to say this. Hate to be the one to do it, but somebody’s got to. We’re almost there. Another ten, twelve miles—”

“Yes. Thank you. I know it was out of your way, and it can’t be comfortable, riding three on a bike—”

“It’s not, but that isn’t the problem,” Harry said. “You got across the Colorado River the day before the aliens came, didn’t you?”

“Yes—”

“And all you’ve seen since is a few towns, and that crater.”

“Harry, what are you trying to say?”

“I looked on the map. That town you’re headed for — there’s a dam just above it.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, to let that sink in. “Jeri, I goddam near didn’t get across the Colorado River. There’s nothing left of the town of Needles. Or Bullhead City. Or anything along the Colorado. They hit Hoover Dam with something big. When Lake Mead let go, it scoured out everything for two hundred miles. I mean everything. Dams, bridges, houses, boats — all gone. I had to get a National Guard helicopter to take me and the motorcycle across.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So I don’t know what we’re going to find up ahead. You got any idea of where Dave lived in that town?”

“No,” Jeri said. “He never told me anything about it. Harry — Harry, it’s got to be all right.”

“Sure,” Harry said. He couldn’t even try to sound sincere.

One more rise. Over the top of that little ridge—

Jeri sat uncomfortably among the gear tied to the bike. She couldn’t stop crying. Wind-whipped, the tears ran tickling across her temples and into her hair. Damn it, I don’t know anything yet, why am I crying? At least Melissa can’t see.

What should I tell her? Warn her? But …

The bike lumbered over the top of the ridge.

A sea of mud lay below. The reservoir had been ten miles long and over a mile wide; now there was only a thick sluggish ripple at its center, a tiny stream with obscenely swollen banks. A thick stench rose from the mud. They rode slowly, feeling that hot wind in their faces, smelling ancient lake bed mud.

There was no need to tell Melissa anything. She could see the dead lake, and must be able to guess what was ahead. It used to be we could protect children, spare them from horrible sights. They always do that in the old novels.

They rode along the mud, banks toward the ruins of the dam at the far end. Long before they reached the dam there were new smells mingled with the smell of decayed mud and the hot summer. Everywhere lay the smell of death.

The town below the dam was gone. In the center the destruction was complete, as if a bulldozer had come through and removed all the buildings, then another came along to spread mud over the foundations. Farther away from the stream bed was a thin line of partially destroyed houses and debris. One house had been torn neatly in half, leaving three-walled rooms to stare out over the wreckage below.

Above the debris line nothing was touched. People moved among the debris, but few ventured down into the muddy bottom area.

They’ve given up looking for survivors. She could feel Harry’s chest and back tighten as they got closer to the ruined town.

A sheriff’s car stood beside a National Guard jeep to block the road. Harry let the bike coast to a stop. He had his letter ready to show, but it wasn’t needed.

“I am Mrs. David Wilson,” Jeri said. “My husband lives here, at 2467 Spring Valley Lane—”

The young man in sheriff’s uniform looked away. So did the Guard officer.

She knew before the sergeant spoke.

“You can see where Spring Valley Lane was, just down there, about a mile,” the sergeant said. He pointed at the center of the mud flat.

“Maybe he wasn’t home,” Melissa said. “Maybe—”

“It happened about two in the morning,” the sergeant said. “Maybe five minutes after they blasted the Russian space station.”

“Warning didn’t help anyway,” the deputy sheriff said. “They did something that knocked out the phone system at the same time. The only way we could warn anybody downstream was to try to drive faster than the water. That wasn’t good enough.”

“How bad was it?” Harry asked.

“Bad,” the Guard officer said. “The whole Great Plains reservoir system, everything along the Arkansas River, is gone. There’s flooding all the way to Little Rock and beyond.” He drew Harry aside, but Jeri could make out what he was saying.

“There’s a temporary morgue in the schoolhouse three miles east of here,” the officer was telling Harry. “Some bodies still there. The best-looking ones. We’ve had to bury a couple of hundred. Maybe more. They’ve got a list of all they could identify.”

“Thanks. I guess we better go there. Anyplace I can get some gas?”

The officer laughed.

The wallet held two pictures of Jeri and one of Melissa. Jeri stared at her own face distorted by the tears that kept welling in her eyes.

My pictures. I think he would have been glad to see me. The driver’s license was soaked, but the name was readable. “That’s his,” Jeri said.

The thinly bearded young man in dirty whites made notes on a clipboard. “David J. Wilson, of Reseda, California,” he said. “Next of kin, Mrs. Geraldine Wilson—”

He went on interminably. He took David’s wallet and went through that; noting down everything inside it. Finally he handed her a shoe box. It contained the wallet, a wristwatch, and a wedding ring. “Sign here, please.”

She carried the box out into the bright Colorado sunshine. My God, what am I going to do now? There was no sign of Harry or Melissa. She sat down on a bench by the school.

What do they want? Why are they doing this? Why?

“Mom—”

Jeri didn’t want to look at her daughter.

“Harry told me, Mom.” Melissa sat beside her on the bench. After a moment Jeri opened her arms, and they held each other.

“We have to go,” Melissa said.

“Go?”

“With Harry.”

“Are we — where are we going with Harry?”

“Dighton, Kansas,” Harry said from behind her. “And we got to be starting right now, Miz W. We’re on the wrong side of the river, and there aren’t any bridges downstream at least as far as Dodge City. We have to go upstream and cross above where the reservoir was. It’s maybe two hundred miles the way we’ve got to go. We need to get started,”

Jeri shook her head. “What — I don’t know anyone in Kansas.”

“No, ma’am, and I don’t either, except Mrs. Dawson.” Harry snorted. It was easy to tell what he was thinking. Harry Red had no woman of his own, just other people’s widows …

“Harry, you don’t want us on your bike.”

“I sure don’t,” he said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Melissa stood and pulled her by the hand. “Come on, Mom, we don’t want to stay here.”

I might meet David’s friends. Find out how he spent his last months—

That’s morbid, and you’ll more likely meet his New Cookie. Or was she with him? Did the Earth move for you, sweetheart? “All right, let’s go, then. Harry, I thought you were out of gas.”

“He used his letter,” Melissa said. “Talked the highway patrolman into a full tank for the motorcycle.”

“Should get us there,” Harry said. He led the way around the corner. The bike stood there. It didn’t look in very good shape. It looked overloaded even with no one on it.

“Even loaded down with three?”

“Should.” Harry climbed aboard, groaning slightly. He looked a little better; the monstrous belly was tighter, and his back wasn’t quite so thoroughly bent. “Anyplace you want to go first?” he asked.

Jeri shook her head. “They…” — she took Melissa’s hand — “they buried over a hundred in a common grave. I don’t want to see that—”

“Me, neither, Mom.” Melissa hopped onto the bike in front of Harry.

The young are so damned — resilient. I guess they have to be. Especially now. Jeri crammed the shoe box into the saddlebag and climbed on behind Harry. “All right. I’m ready.”