Walter Williams - The Rift

And the heavens answered. Frankland’s hair sizzled as it stood on end. There was a flash, a boom, the smell of ozone. Frankland tottered and fell to his knees, his mind swimming.

A lightning bolt, he thought, from a clear blue sky. What more sign did a man of God need?

He stayed on his knees, clasped his hands, began to pray.

“Thank you, Lord, for letting me see this day,” he said. “Thank you for this destruction out of which Your kingdom will be born. Thank you for giving me my mission.”

Heaven’s lightning rained down around him. He raised his hands in praise.

It was a new world, he thought, and he knew exactly what to do.

The Reverend Noble Frankland had come into his own.

Father Guillaume Robitaille rolled over the Arkansas blacktop at 85 miles per hour, his radar detector alert to the presence of the state police. Traveling throughout his parish, if such it could be called, put at least 800 miles on his old Lincoln every week, and his policy was to spend as little time in the car as possible, which meant getting from one place to another as fast as the machinery permitted.

The words to the old song “Hot Rod Lincoln” tracked through his mind as he squinted through the windshield. Commander Cody, he remembered, and His Lost Planet Airmen. It had been a hit when he was young.

Tonight he would say mass for his tiny congregation in Rails Bluff, all six of them-maybe seven, if Studs Morris had succeeded in raising his bond money.

He raised his 64-ounce Big Gulp and sucked on the plastic straw. The motivation with which he had spiked his Sprite warmed his insides.

Though whisky was his preferred drink, he used vodka when he was on the road. It wouldn’t fill the confessional with telltale fumes.

It’s got a Lincoln motor and it’s really souped up.

That Model A Vitimix makes it look like a pup.

It’s got eight cylinders; uses them all.

It’s got overdrive, just won’t stall.

A cotton wagon blocked the lane ahead, drawn by a rusty old tractor and moving at ten miles an hour. The Lincoln swooped around it as if it were standing still. Father Robitaille drove one-handed, his Big Gulp in the other. He overcorrected, had to straighten out, felt the Lincoln fishtail.

Only one way to fix that. Hit the accelerator.

The big car responded. Robitaille smiled.

Now the fellas was ribbin’ me for bein’ behind,

So I thought I’d make the Lincoln unwind.

Took my foot off the gas and man alive,

I shoved it on down into overdrive.

At first Robitaille thought he’d blown a tire- maybe more than one. The car leaped as if each wheel was trying to go in a different direction, some of them no longer horizontal.

Robitaille lifted his foot from the accelerator, put his Big Gulp between his thighs, grabbed the wheel with both hands. Now he could see it wasn’t just the car- power poles and fence posts were dancing, and branches waved in the air. The cotton fields on either side of the road heaved up in waves.

Robitaille fought to keep the car on the road. At times it seemed it was jumping out sideways from beneath him.

He looked in the rearview mirror, and his heart leaped into his throat as he saw it coming at him from behind.

Behind him, the ground was collapsing. A line was crossing the land, and behind the line it looked as if the ground was dropping ten or fifteen feet, like a stage set with the props knocked out.

The line reached the cotton wagon and its tractor. They both fell- Robitaille saw the arms of the driver rise, an expression of dismay on his face, as the tractor dropped out beneath him, its nose kicking up as it threatened to roll over on him. Behind the moving line, where the land had fallen, was nothing but wreckage. The line was rolling up on the Lincoln’s rear bumper.

A cocktail of adrenaline and vodka surged through Robitaille’s veins. There was only one response. Accelerate!

Robitaille punched the accelerator and felt the big car leap in answer. Duct-taped upholstery absorbed his weight as he was pressed back into the seat. He clutched the wheel with white-knuckled hands, tried to keep the car on the pavement as his speed increased.

He wasn’t getting the smooth acceleration he was used to- the car was jumping so much that the drive wheels weren’t in contact with the pavement half the time, they were just spinning in air. But the speed built nonetheless. Robitaille’s glances at the mirror assured him that though the line was still overtaking him, it was doing so more slowly.

Faster. He mashed the accelerator to the floor. Sooner or later, he hoped, the geology might change, the land wouldn’t be so susceptible to quake.

The Lincoln vibrated like a mad thing under his touch. The engine roared. Robitaille felt it trying to leave the road, become airborne.

He rocketed around a parked pickup, saw the open-mouthed woman behind the wheel staring at oncoming ruin. Faster. The car landed heavily- or perhaps the ground had leaped up to meet it- and the suspension crashed. He felt the oil pan scrape on asphalt. The drive wheels screeched as they dug in and flung the car forward. He saw his muffler and tail pipe assembly bounce free in the road behind him before being swallowed by the encroaching abyss.

Faster. He saw the road arching up ahead of him, the bridge over the Rails River. Exultation sang through his mind. Surely the wave that was collapsing the country behind him wouldn’t cross the river?

Behind he saw the line of ruin recede. He was gaining on it.

The bridge was just ahead. The unmuffled engine thundered like an artillery barrage. Robitaille began to laugh. The Lincoln bottomed again at the bridge approach, then flung itself up the arching roadbed. The laugh froze in Robitaille’s throat.

The far half of the Rails River Bridge was gone, just a fallen rubble of steel and asphalt.

The Lincoln’s wheels spun in air as it launched itself into space. The engine roared.