“This is pointless,” Michael said. “We have to think of something else.”
Then, miraculously, the wheel began to turn. An inch, then two. They all heard it: water had begun to move. A fine spray shot through the vent on the floor of the dock. With a jolt, the wheel released. Below them, the seas began to pour in. Lore backed away, flexing her fingers.
“We must have loosened it,” Rand said lamely.
She gave them a droll smile.
The time was fast approaching.
His army was gone. Carter had felt the dopeys leaving him: a scream of terror, and a blast of pain, and then the letting go. Their souls had passed through him like wind, a whorl of memories, waning, then gone.
He did the last of his chores for the day with a solemn feeling. A deck of low clouds moved over the sky as he rolled his mower to the shed, padlocked the door, and turned to face the yard so that he might survey his handiwork. The crisp lawn, every blade just so. The tailored edges along the walkways with their bit of monkey grass to mark them. The trees all limbed up and the flowers, banks of them, like a carpet of color beneath the hedges. That morning, a dwarf Japanese cut-leaf maple had appeared by the gate. Mrs. Wood had always wanted one. Carter had rolled it in its plastic pot to the corner of the yard and set it in the ground. Cut-leafs had an elegant feel to them, like the hands of a beautiful woman. It felt like an act of completion to plant it there, a final gift to the yard he’d tended for so long.
He wiped his brow. The sprinklers came on, scattering a fine mist over the lawn. Inside the house, the little girls were laughing. Carter wished he could see them, talk to them. He imagined himself sitting on the patio while watching them play in the yard, tossing a ball or chasing each other. Little girls needed time in the sunshine.
He hoped he didn’t stink too bad. He sniffed his armpits and supposed he’d pass all right. At the kitchen window, he inspected his reflection. It was a long time since he’d bothered to do that. He supposed he looked like he always had, which wasn’t really one thing or the other, just a face like most people’s.
For the first time in over a century, Carter opened the gate and stepped through.
The air wasn’t any different here; he wondered why he’d thought it might be. The busy city made a whooshing sound in the background but the street was otherwise quiet, all the big houses staring back at him with no particular interest. He walked to the end of the drive to wait, fanning himself with his hat.
It was the hour when everything changes. The birds, the insects, the worms in the grass—all know this. Cicadas were buzzing in the trees.
75
1700: Greer and Patch had been waiting in the tanker truck for two hours. Patch was reading a magazine—reading or perhaps just looking at it. It was called National Geographic Kids; the pages were brittle and popped out when he turned them. He nudged Greer on the shoulder and held it out to show him a picture.
“Think it’ll be like that?”
A jungle scene: fat green leaves, brightly colored birds, everything wreathed in vines. Greer was too preoccupied to look very closely.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Patch took it back. “I wonder if there’s people out there.”
Greer used binoculars to scan the horizon to the north. “I doubt it.”
“Because if there is, I hope they’re friendly. Seems like a lot to go through if they’re not.”
Another fifteen minutes passed.
“Maybe we should go look for them,” Patch suggested.
“Hang on. I think this is them.”
A cloud of dust had formed in the distance. Greer watched through the binoculars as the image of the convoy took shape. The two men climbed down from the cab as the first vehicle drew up.
“What kept you?” Greer asked Peter.
“We lost two buses. A busted radiator and a broken axle.”
All of the vehicles took diesel except the smaller pickups, which carried their own extra fuel. Greer organized a team to pour the diesel off into jugs; they began moving down the line to refill the buses. The children were allowed off but told not to wander far.
“How long is this going to take?” Chase asked Greer.
It took almost an hour. The shadows had begun to stretch. They had fifty more miles to go, but these would be the hardest. None of the buses would be able to travel more than twenty miles per hour over the rough terrain.
The convoy began to move again.
The dock had been filling for seven hours. Everything was ready—batteries charged, bilge pumps on, engines ready to fire. Chains had been fixed to hold the Bergensfjord in place. Michael was in the pilot house with Lore. The sea had risen a yard past the waterline—within a reasonable margin of error but disturbing nonetheless.
“I can’t stand this,” Lore said.