Eastern North America
August 17, 2000
Morning to Mid-Afternoon
Time After Impact: Fourteen to Twenty Three Hours
THE BEIDERMAN WAVE HAD RUSHED INLAND; it had taken its time going out,
and, indeed, was still draining as the sun rose; it had only gravity to
pull it back, and it would take as long as the waters of a river to go
back to the sea. Coming in, it had been much faster than the cars
trying desperately to reach high ground could have gone even if all the
main highways weren’t clogged, until close to the end of its run. Now
those cars might lay miles from where the Wave caught up with them; they
well might be in pieces, closer to the coast. And the people they had
carried—flesh and bone were more fragile than steel. It was unlikely
that many bodies that were found would ever be identified.
Still, some people had made it to high ground in time. But they
weren’t safe. Beiderman had vaporized many cubic miles of the
Atlantic. That water was coming down as rain; steady, and cold.
Overcast was solid up to two hundred miles inland, and it spread
westward every hour. Under it, the sun provided no more than wan light,
and no heat. When Army and National Guard units began to reach the
scattered refugees, they found many had died during the night. As the
cold rain continued, and the gray day stretched on, life after life
after life quietly ended.
3:35 PM EDT
Former site of University of Virginia at Charlottesville
THE NATIONAL GUARD was still flying some Vietnam-era helicopters, and a
few of them were OH-6 Cayuses or LOACHs, very light helicopters which,
in a pinch, might take four, including the crew. The stubby egg-shaped
Hughes was built for scouting, not fighting or hauling loads, and there
were few left after three decades. But eyes in the air were always
needed, and never were they needed as much on the day after the
Beiderman Impact. Everything that could fly, flew.
Captain John Patch had asked for this mission as soon as the overcast
raised. He was a graduate of the University of Virginia, and he had
wondered if there was anything left of it. Now he knew there wasn’t.
But, up on the highest points east of the town, there might still be
survivors. Not as many as there would have been the day before, though.
“Anything, Henderson?”
Corporal Henderson, his observer, was peering through his binoculars.
“Don’t see anyone down below. Mud must be a foot deep down there, and
there’s still a lot of water. If I was down there, I’d stay on the
hilltops. Like that big mother up ahead.”
“Wolfpit Mountain,” said Patch, who remembered hiking on it in his
college days. “That’s where I’m going. Don’t stop watching down below,
though, someone may be trying to walk out.”
“I’m looking, Captain. Just not finding anyone. Anyone alive.”
They flew on, climbing as they approached Wolfpit. There was a crown
of trees still on it, so the Wave hadn’t overtopped it. But there
weren’t any signs of life on the western face. Patch began circling
around to the south, and was perhaps halfway around the mountain when
his observer spoke again.
“Got something,” said Henderson. “Yes, I got some. That ridgeline
there. Two, three, five . . . maybe two dozen coming out. They’ve made
some kind of lean-to. That’s it, I don’t see any more coming.”
“Two dozen?”
“Well, better’n none. Gonna set down? Looks like you’ve got room to
land.”
“It’s still a lot more than we can carry . . . are any of them armed?”
“Don’t look like it . . . One has a kid.”
“We’ll land. Corporal, get your weapon ready.”
Patch set the machine down at the opposite end of the bald patch from
the lean-to—but he still saw branches scatter from its makeshift roof.
He made ready to get out as soon as the rotors stopped turning,
strapping on his pistol. “Stay by the ship; don’t let anyone come close
unless I bring them.”
“Yessir, Captain.”
Patch got out and walked as briskly toward the group as he could manage
in the mud. Sensibly, they had returned to the lean-to. If the group
had a leader, it seemed to be the oldest, a wiry, leathery man showing
tattoos on both hands and on his neck. A girl of about twelve or
thirteen stood close by him, and resembled him. The young couple with
the baby seemed to form the second center of the gathering.
Patch looked first at the couple as he said, “We can take you and your
baby, Ma’am, and one other. The rest of you people will have to
decide.”
“My daughter, if no one has an objection,” said the leathery man.
The young mother looked enormously stricken, glanced at her partner,
and then nodded with him.
But the leathery man’s daughter cried out, “No, I want to stay with
you, Dad.”
The girl with the baby rushed over to her, grabbed her by the arm, and
said, “Wanda, don’t be stupid! You’re going!” Then, as her partner
came up and gently took her hand off Wanda, she dissolved into tears.
Patch walked off a bit to give the people some privacy, and did not try
to hear the low words spoken between the ones about to part. After a
minute, he turned and called out. “We have to go; this weather could
close in again any time.”
The couple with the baby, and the father with the daughter, started out
toward him. He turned back and went back to the helicopter, where
Henderson stood with his M-16, looking past him. He stopped a few yards
from the blade radius and said, pointing, “You, you, go on. You two,
you’d better stop here.” There was a second and last series of last
words, last embraces, last kisses. Then the half-grown girl and the
much-too-young mother went on into the helicopter. He noticed that
Henderson put the mother in his seat. But instead of getting in behind,
the Corporal said to Patch as he finished his walk-around, “If I stay,
you can take one more.”
“Corporal—”
“Just say I ran off, if you want. But I think I’ll make it.”
Patch considered Henderson for a very long moment. If he was still in
the regular Army, Patch wouldn’t have hesitated a second. But the Guard
wasn’t really the Army, and this moment was beyond anything the book
envisioned. At last, he gave his answer. “Take out all the survival
gear. I’ll tell them.”
Captain Patch went first to the ones waiting outside in the rain. “The
Corporal will stay with you. I can take one more. Let’s—”
The leathery man interrupted. “Take the little Professor, here.”
The young man put up his hands in protest and shook his head. “No, one
of the women,” he wheezed. It was the first time Patch had heard his
voice clearly. He sounded very bad.
The leathery man took the young man by the shoulders and said,
“Remember when I thumped your chest this morning? I didn’t tell you
then, but your lungs are starting to fill up. You got pneumonia, boy.
You don’t get some help now, your woman is going to be a widow tomorrow
or the next day.” He shoved the young man roughly toward Patch. “Get
him in and get going. He don’t need to prove how brave he is.”
When it looked as if the young man would fall, the leathery man caught
his shoulders and guided him on.
Before they were close enough to the helicopter for the young wife to
hear, Patch asked the leathery man, “How sure are you? About the
pneumonia?”
“Damn sure. I was a Green Beret medic in the Nam. Would’ve got my
M.D. if I hadn’t pissed half my life away on smack and coke after I got
back. Hey, Professor, remember, you watch out for Wanda until I catch
up. Any asshole you catch trying something, you cut off his balls for
me!”
“I’ll make a stab at it,” wheezed the boy.
Then it was time to get the “Professor” into the helicopter. His wife
gave up the left seat for him, giving her baby to Wanda for a few
moments while she made sure he was strapped in securely. He protested
feebly; he was getting weaker. She stopped his final protest with a
long kiss and a longer hug. Then she squeezed back behind his seat,
telling Patch, “We’re ready” as soon as she’d taken her baby back from
Wanda. Patch gave the girls in back one final look before he strapped
himself in to make sure they were buckled into the webworked jump
seats. It was then that he noticed that the “Professor’s” wife was
crying again, silently, eyes closed. Her lips were moving.
After Patch lifted off and was safely distant, he remembered what that
last part would be about.
She was praying.
Patch hadn’t been lying about the weather; as if to prove his word, it
closed in not ten minutes after he’d taken off.
“Captain, do you know what this is about?”
“Corporal Henderson, most likely.”
“That’s right. If I could, I’d bust you down right now.”
“But you aren’t until later?”
The Colonel sat down; Patch remained standing at attention. The
Colonel took some papers from his in-box and began to read them, or made
as if he was. Without looking up, after turning a page, he asked, “Do
you even remember the name of the one you brought back instead of
Corporal Henderson?”
Patch thought a moment. “I don’t think I ever heard it. They called
him the Professor, I think. Maybe his wife called him ‘Lee’ once, but I
couldn’t hear very well. I haven’t seen any of them since I brought
them in.”
The Colonel wrote something on the paper he was holding. “He was an
acute case, according to Major Beers. We sent him out on medivac. The
others went out with him.” He put the paper away, and took up another.
“Would you like to know his name, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s ‘Leo.’ Leo Beiderman.”
“Beiderman?”
“That’s right. The kid who found the comet. They’re going to give
Corporal Henderson a posthumous award, and I think you’ll be getting
something too. So I guess they won’t let me bust you down, Captain.”
He turned another page. “Don’t pull any more shit in my outfit, John.
That’s all. You’re dismissed.”
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