Peter Hernon - 8.4

“She’s right,” Elizabeth said. “We’ve got to assume a major quake is imminent.”

Atkins agreed. By training, geologists were reluctant to make predictions about earthquakes. It was so easy to be wrong, and mistakes could have deadly consequences. But this wasn’t any time to be overly cautious. He’d seen the cracks in that dam.

“Assuming Prable’s right, and Guy’s crunched the right numbers, we’ve got maybe four or five hours,” he said.

“Can you call the sheriff?” Elizabeth asked Lauren. “Get him out here. Tell him what’s going on.”

“You bet I can,” she said eagerly. “He’s an old friend. He’ll come.” Once they’d made a decision to do something, anything, she immediately felt better.

Atkins wanted to hurry back to Mayfield and get the equipment in the Explorer. They needed to set up seismographs and other instruments. He wanted to be ready. If a quake hit, that data would be vital.

“How are we going to get back?” Elizabeth asked. She’d left her car in Mayfield.

“Take my Blazer,” Lauren said. “I’ve got a pickup I keep down here at the marina. After what you did, pulling me out of the water, it’s the least I can do.” She was just starting to get the warmth back in her legs.

Elizabeth glanced out a window at the lake. She opened the blinds for a better look. Still not trusting her eyes, she asked Lauren if she had a pair of binoculars.

Atkins didn’t need binoculars. He could see the strange glow in the water with his naked eyes. The murky green light appeared to be coming from the depths. It was as if bonfires were burning far below the surface.

“What… is… that?” Elizabeth asked.

Atkins shook his head. “It might be a strong electromagnetic charge emanating from some great depth,” he said. “Or maybe escaping gas or heat.” He frowned. Earthquake lights were one thing. The bizarre glow in the water was even more baffling. He admitted he didn’t have a clue.

THE LIGHT SHOW—THE PULSING HUES WERE almost psychedelic—kept blazing in the sky. If anything, the colors were more vivid as Atkins held the gas pedal to the floorboard of Lauren’s aging Chevy Blazer. It was hard not to stare at the dazzling spectacle as he pushed the speed over seventy miles an hour on the two-lane highway, ignoring the icy patches as he covered the last ten miles into Mayfield.

They were in extreme southwestern Kentucky, about thirty miles from the Tennessee line and another 120 miles due north of Memphis. The Mississippi River was just to the west. Atkins was glad he’d put Kentucky Lake far behind them.

“What about those lights in the water?” Elizabeth asked. She hadn’t been able to get them out of her mind.

Neither had Atkins. “My best and probably wrong guess is that some hot gases are venting from a deep fracture in hard rock maybe fifteen or twenty miles down,” he said. “It could be some kind of hot phosphorous that’s reacting with the cold water.”

“Or maybe radon,” Elizabeth said. The inert gas was radioactive. Its sudden release was a recognized precursor of big quakes, but she was unaware of anything in the literature that described such a large venting.

“Who knows?” Atkins said. “It’s got me stumped.” His heated-gas theory didn’t satisfy him. The subject was one of the first things he wanted to discuss with Walt Jacobs or Guy Thompson as soon as he could raise them on his cell phone. He’d tried repeatedly during the last hour. So had Elizabeth. The reception kept breaking off.

Elizabeth had leaned back in her seat with her arms folded, trying to keep warm. The Blazer’s decrepit heater, even on full blast, put out only a trickle of warm air. She touched Atkins’ hand.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you back at the dam,” she said. She’d been wanting to tell him that.

“Forget it,” Atkins said. “You were right back there. Sometimes I can get a little obstinate. The next time, just tell me to count to ten and keep my mouth closed.”

Elizabeth smiled, and Atkins realized how good it felt to be with her. Just sitting next to her gave him pleasure. That feeling—the joy of simply being in a woman’s presence—had been missing from his life for a long time. He was looking forward to getting to know her better.

They pulled off at the Mayfield exit. Atkins rolled up to a railroad crossing just as the red lights started flashing and the metal gates clanked down. A whistle blew far down the tracks. As the train rounded a curve, they saw the bright headlight of the diesel.

“He’s really highballing,” Atkins said as the freight train roared past them, the wheels banging on the rails.

The crossing blocked the main road into Mayfield. The town looked deserted. The rotunda of the courthouse and a church spire loomed in the darkness.

Later, Atkins remembered having had the presence of mind to check his wristwatch when it started. They both heard a deep, low-pitched rumble, the sound blotting out every other noise, even the rolling clatter of the freight train. The noise seized control of their brains, nerves, senses. Invaded them and drove out everything else. Stronger than thunder, the roar seemed to rise straight from the ground.

It was 2:16 A.M. Atkins scribbled the time on the palm of his hand with a ballpoint.

Elizabeth looked at him. They both knew what that sound meant.

“This is it,” she said.

The rumble kept building in intensity. Atkins had heard about the loud ground thunder once before, in Armenia in 1988. A magnitude 7.8 that leveled four cities. Survivors recalled that when the rumbling stopped, a moment of calm followed. It was like the eye of a hurricane before the shaking started.

Atkins tried to break it down into science. The sudden compression in the ground also compressed the air, causing the noise. The stronger, more violent the compression, the louder the sound.

It occurred to him at that same moment that they were much too close to the railroad tracks. He slammed the gear into reverse and floored the Blazer, the tires squealing on the pavement as he backed away.

The train kept passing in front of them, a blur of boxcars, gondolas, tankers. Then with an explosive burst that startled him, Atkins was driven upward in his seat so hard his head slammed into the roof.

“It’s coming,” he shouted to Elizabeth, who was trying to hang on to her seatbelt shoulder strap.

The Blazer was pitched up and down in rapid, bone-jarring movements. The left door sprung open, and Elizabeth almost fell out. Atkins pulled her back inside.

“Oh, yessssssss!” she said. “This one’s real.”

They were shaken from side to side, the heaving ground slamming them together hard, shoulder to shoulder. The Blazer rocked back and forth, then up and down. The entire chassis was swaying.

“This is a magnitude 8 for sure,” Atkins shouted.

Elizabeth said, “More.”

Atkins had backed up about twenty yards from the railroad crossing before the earthquake hit. He realized it wasn’t far enough.

“Get out!” Atkins yelled. They were still dangerously close to the train. Many of the derailed freight cars and tankers had been thrown on their sides. Still coupled together, they were writhing like a dying snake, metal grinding on metal.

Atkins and Elizabeth both staggered out of the Blazer and were instantly knocked down by the wavelike ground motion. Atkins recognized the P waves. Shooting up from the deep earth, the first seismic waves to hit after an earthquake struck, they were capable of traversing both the mantle and crust.

Atkins had experienced strong shaking before and knew it was only starting. They hadn’t seen the worst of it.