Peter Hernon: 8.4

The Chinese had long relied on animals to provide warning signs for earthquakes. In one famous example, in February 1975, a magnitude 7.3 quake hit the city of Haicheng. More than ninety percent of the homes collapsed. Earlier that same day, officials had warned the population that a big quake was imminent. Despite bitter cold, most people moved outdoors. Only a couple hundred people died, and this in a country where it was common for bad quakes to kill thousands. The Chinese partly based their prediction on reports of unusual animal behavior.

Atkins had always been skeptical about using animals as earthquake predictors. And yet the phenomenon interested him and was hard to discount. Maybe animals could sense subtle changes, say, in magnetic fields or feel pressure building up in other unknown ways.

After his encounter with the rats, Atkins was willing to admit he’d been scared, but he still wasn’t ready to believe the rodents somehow sensed an earthquake was imminent and were scurrying to get away. He wasn’t about to make that kind of intellectual leap. Some other explanation for what he’d seen was possible, but he could talk that over with Jacobs.

He reached Kentucky Lake shortly after 11:00 A.M. He still had plenty of time to drive fifty miles into neighboring Tennessee for their meeting.

THE lake was impressive. Set between steep, forested ridges that had once formed a spectacular valley, it was 135 miles long, the largest reservoir in the world. There were actually two lakes, separated by a slender finger of land about three miles wide that was called, appropriately, the Land Between the Lakes. The other reservoir, Lake Barklay, was only slightly smaller than Kentucky Lake. Both had been created in the 1930s when the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Tennessee River. Roughly 170 miles from St. Louis to the northwest and 140 miles from Memphis, the lakes were a popular tourist attraction.

Admiring the view, Atkins understood why. He turned off the road at the marina, which was near the northern end of the lake. A small bait and tackle shop and a restaurant were on a floating dock that formed a T in the water.

After parking in a gravel lot, Atkins descended a flight of wooden steps to the dock. He entered the empty restaurant and took a stool at the counter. Moments later a middle-aged woman with striking red hair entered. She wore a gray-and-black-checked flannel shirt and was wiping her hands on her jeans.

Surprised to see a customer, she apologized. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you pull up. I was out back checking the bait tank.”

Atkins ordered coffee and a piece of cherry pie. The sign behind the counter said it was homemade.

“I guarantee you’ll like it,” the woman said. “I baked it this morning.”

Atkins guessed she was in her early to middle fifties. She had an attractive face and a warm, engaging smile.

He introduced himself, and the woman reached across the counter and shook his hand. “I’m Lauren,” she said. “Lauren Mitchell.” Serving the coffee and pie, she asked what brought Atkins to Kentucky Lake. “Don’t take this as an insult, but you don’t exactly look like you came here to fish,” she said.

When he explained that he was a geologist with the USGS, Lauren’s face brightened.

“Everybody’s been talking about all the weird stuff the animals have been doing,” she said, freshening his coffee after he took a few sips. “Personally, I don’t believe in that. You usually hear the cockamamy animal stories after the quake, not before. This time it’s different.” She wiped up some spilled coffee with a white towel. “Do you think we’re gonna have one?”

Taken aback by her blunt question, Atkins said, “I don’t know.”

“You live in these parts, you get used to the ground shaking and the animal stories,” Lauren said. “We usually get a shaker once, maybe twice a week. Nothing really big although we’ve had those, too. I remember a magnitude 5 we had six or seven years ago not too far from here. Rocked this boat dock like a bobber.”

Atkins mentioned the rats he’d just seen. The memory still made the back of his neck tingle.

Lauren stared at him over the counter, her dark green eyes narrowing. “That’s a new one,” she said. “That’s one for the books. You hear all kinds of stories out here in the country, especially about earthquakes. It’s part of the local folklore. Heck, when I was a little girl, my grandpa told me stories about the big one back in 1896. How the ground shook like jelly. How waterspouts opened up in the fields. How the dogs were barking in the middle of the night just before the ground started shaking. You hear all kinds of queer stories. But I’ve never heard anything like the one you just told me.”

“Have you noticed anything unusual?” Atkins asked. He liked Lauren. She was salt of the earth just like his mother and her people. Farmers mainly from upstate New York. Real people without any pretensions, people who liked to work with their hands and who had roots that went a long way back.

“You mean have I seen any animals doing crazy stunts? No, nothing like that. But I’ll tell you one thing—this lake sure has been acting up.”

“What do you mean?” Atkins swiveled in his stool, so he could look out through the curtained windows at the lake. It was three or four miles wide, the far shore shrouded in haze.

“It’s been real choppy,” Lauren said. “We’ve been getting waves running two and three feet. I can’t ever recall anything like that before. Some days you’d think it was the ocean with a storm blowing.”

“How long has it been like that?” Atkins asked.

“A month or so,” Lauren said. “It’s quiet right now. But yesterday afternoon, it was kicking up whitecaps like I’ve never seen. This dock gets bumped around pretty bad in rough water. Come spring, I’m gonna have to retighten all the couplings.”

Moments later, Atkins heard footsteps pounding on the gangplank that connected the dock with the shore. The door slammed open and a young boy ran in, carrying his backpack.

“Grandma, you’ve got to see this,” he said excitedly. “They’re all dead.” Then he turned around and ran back outside.

“Bobby, what’s the matter with you?” Lauren asked, calling after him and stepping from behind the counter. She turned to Atkins. “That’s my grandson. His mom and dad were killed in a plane crash just after he was born. My son was his father. It was a rough time. My husband died about then. I’ve raised Bobby myself. He’s twelve.”

Atkins watched him out the window. The boy was tall for his age, almost six feet. A good-looking kid. He wore a blue jacket, jeans, and red Reeboks.

“You’ve got to see this,” Bobby shouted from outside. “They’re dead.”

“What’s dead?” Lauren asked. She didn’t know what he was talking about.

Puzzled, she and Atkins went for the door.

“There must be hundreds of them out there,” yelled Bobby. He was so excited and breathless he could barely get the words out.

“Bobby Mitchell, come here this minute and tell me what in the world you’re talking about.”

The boy looks scared, Atkins thought.

“Here, see!” He brought over a plastic bag and emptied the contents on the decking—half a dozen good-sized frogs and a three-foot-long bull snake, all frozen stiff.

“What on earth… ?”

“They’re down by the lake, Grandma. You’ve got to see.”

He was pulling her by the hand. Lauren slipped her coat on and started to follow him.

“You mind if I tag along?” Atkins asked. He wondered what the boy had seen.

“No, come on,” Lauren said. “This is one time when I could use some company.”

They crossed the gangplank and climbed a short flight of wooden steps to the parking lot. Hurrying along a tree-lined path, they followed the boy along the shore of the lake.