William Prochnau - Trinity's Child

Sedgwick drew a deep racking breath and began to explain a story so strange his words sounded unbelievable to himself. But the woman listened quietly and patiently, as if she had seen too much to discard anything. She watched him without expression as he concluded the story of a President lost and injured for many hours, Sedgwick not being certain of the time any longer. He pointed shakily through the light haze. A few hundred feet away, wrapped in splintered trees, the forward section of the Sikorsky helicopter lay mangled at the lip of the gully. The skin of Nighthawk One was broken jaggedly, creating a jigsaw puzzle of the words “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” The woman gazed only briefly at the wreckage. Then she firmly directed the two older boys, who seemed far more intent on salvaging the helicopter, down into the ravine.

Sedgwick sagged back in relief, slipping toward his dreams again. He shook himself, drawing deep on his will, and forced himself to remain alert. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Ya’all didn’t get far, young man,” the woman replied. “Fell down in Rocky Gorge.”

Sedgwick looked befuddled.

“The reservoir. The President fell down in the reservoir. Lucky it’s winter. Ya’all mighta drowned.” Sedgwick still looked befuddled. “Doan know your way around much, do you? Skaggsville’s over the gorge. Ednor’s a mite closer. Brown’s Corner, too.” Sedgwick shook his head despairingly. He had never heard of any of these places. “Lordy me, young man, you really doan know your way around. We’s kind o’ out in the toolies here. But Baltimore’s just over yonder. Washington’s only frog-hop away, maybe a dozen miles.” She wagged her head sadly. “Not that ya’s goin’ there.”

Sedgwick struggled, fighting the mind fog for some rough fix on where they were. “Fort Meade,” he said suddenly, remembering that the Army post, headquarters of the National Security Agency, was somewhere near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

“Yessir, yessir, Fort Meade’s over the gorge too.” The woman wagged her head again. “Was. They had a ba-a-ad Fourth of July, young man.”

“Ma’am,” Sedgwick began to plead, “the President must get to a military base, with radios and a hospital. I can’t exaggerate how important it is.”

The huge black woman looked down at Sedgwick and smiled for the first time. “Doan imagine you can exaggerate anything today, mister. Jus’ can’t see how we’s goin’ to do it. Doan look like you’re gonna walk far.” She paused. “A world full of trouble out there, too,” she added with great melancholy.

Sedgwick slumped back to the ground, the memory of the wailing and the shooting and the godawful race across the White House lawn filling his mind. “Riots,” he said dully.

“O-h-h-h, no, no,” the woman’s mournful voice continued. “Time for that’s gone. Can’t you hear it, young man?”

Sedgwick listened. He heard only the soulful wind, ebbing in a low haunt as it passed through the naked stands of trees, then flowing in a distant shriek as it rushed down the gorge. It was a horrible wind, and his flesh crawled as the woman’s silence let its sound immerse him. He stared at her in confusion.

“People,” she said in a hush. “That’s the sound of people, young people.”

Sedgwick felt very nauseated.

“Oh, they did their riotin’, the big, fancy cars racin’ at us one way from Baltimore, the other way from Washington, crashin’ inta people, crashin’ inta houses, crashin’ inta each other till there was no room t’ crash no more. Then they was shootin’ and when they got tired o’ shootin’ they jus’ started walkin’. Walkin’ and moanin’, moanin’ and walkin’.” She looked at him curiously. “Your man start it?”

Sedgwick buried his head in the ground. “No, ma’am,” he whispered.

“Don’t make no never-mind. Comin’ anyway. Preacher tol’ us. Teevee tol’ us. Plain sense tol’ us.”

Sedgwick heard thrashing behind him and saw the cherub boy dart away. Then he watched the two muscular teenagers approaching through the woods, carrying a limp form.

Sedgwick’s heart sank. The President, still wrapped in the blankets like a mummy, looked quite dead. The teenagers placed him carefully on the ground and the woman hovered over him. “So that’s the Man,” she said solemnly. “Doan look so mean now. Doan look so good, either, do he?” She poked at the quiet form. “Alive. Always knew he was a tough cuss.” She beckoned to her sons. “You boys gonna carry these men over to the hospital at Olney.”

Sedgwick’s mind fuzzed on him again. “Olney?” he muttered.

“Hospital there. Leastways, there was yesterday. It’s four, five miles. Best we can do.”

Sedgwick reached up toward her, grasping at a worn woolen coat. “FEMA,” he said desperately. In his muddle, he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Out past Muncaster Road.” He pulled hard at her coat. “FEMA,” he repeated weakly. “Please understand.”

She took his hand and released it from her coat. “I’s not stupid, young man,” she reproached him. “I teach m’ boys. I read the papers. You talkin’ ‘bout civil defense.” She stopped, the disdain spreading across her face. “They’s been real helpful folk. Yessir, real helpful.” Sedgwick began to whimper in pain. “Calm down, young man. Everybody in these parts knows the place. Out past the feed store. The Man ever wakes up, you tell him he can’t keep a place secret if’n they’s always poppin’ radio aerials up ‘n down out of cee-ment holes.”

Sedgwick faded then, somewhere in the realm between consciousness and unconsciousness. He seemed asleep, but his dream-visions were far less blissful. The soulful winds turned woeful and he saw shadows of people walking, empty-faced and hunched, down country roads strewn with smashed cars and rubble. The wailing followed him through suburban yards deep in shattered glass and decapitated azaleas. It trailed him across farmers’ fields where cow eyes watched him dolefully, accusingly, from the tangled debris and crumpled barns. Then his visions went totally black.

The flight south was a dreadful drone. The B-52 cruised economically but uneventfully at just over forty thousand feet in a slightly southwesterly drift edging them slowly west of the 150th meridian. Kazakhs had cut off all radios except the intercom, and it was rarely used. For the most part, except for the engine noise, the plane had become deathly silent, its occupants keeping their thoughts to themselves. The make-work chores were unnecessary and undone. It was a bus ride.

Kazakhs and Moreau had had no further discussions about a final destination, but they both knew they were not going to her fantasy island. They were moving west of Tahiti, and while they could cut back later, it was not the place for them. Gauguin’s velvet had turned to acrylic long ago. If civilization were busily killing itself off, as they assumed it was, they had no desire to land among overweight, hysterical tourists whose last dream had been to bring home a silicone-covered conch shell. Nor did Kazakhs want to land among provincial French gendarmes casting about for the guilty ones in the destruction of the far-off republic which, even to French provincials, was the world. He had no wish to spend whatever time he had left in a stinking tropical bastille.

Kazakhs had a few illusions. In the vast expanse of the Pacific their options were mostly paradises lost or paradises never there—bleak little atolls on which a living might be scrounged while they waited for God knew what. Radiation, solar or manmade. A half-crazed exodus of survivors from a totally wrecked world. Naval patrols from a half-wrecked and angry world. Nothingness….

If they had options. The Air Force had not been considerate enough to provide accurate charts for the turncoat run. They had no navigators. They were heading into a blue desert as intimidating and untracked as the Sahara. In the tedium of the flight south, the pilot’s mind wandered into a thousand thoughts. But one occurred—a faint memory of a history lesson about Magellan sailing ten thousand miles through the atolls and islands of the mid-Pacific without spotting a rock until he stumbled onto Guam far on the other side.