Crawford Kilian - Icequake - A Prophetic Survival Thriller

Before the end of February, the rise in eustatic sea level was noticeable all over the world. It was only about eighteen centimetres at that point, but it was enough — with the help of hurricanes and storm tides — to knock out of over half of the world’s major ports. London was partially evacuated; so were large areas of Belgium and the Netherlands. The oil ports of the Persian Gulf were flooded. Hundreds of airfields, built on low ground near the sea, became tidal marshes. As relatively warm water poured into the Arctic Ocean, its ice cap dwindled to a few bergs.

March brought violent weather to both hemispheres. Unseasonably early frosts struck southern Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand. In the northern Hemisphere the jet stream swung wildly out of its usual path, carrying warm air into the Arctic and blizzards into the American Midwest and South. All over the planet crops withered and livestock perished as ultraviolet pierced the endless clouds. Blind and starving, great herds of cattle frenziedly invaded crop lands; in some parts of the American Southwest napalm had to be used to stop them. With transport systems in ruins, livestock couldn’t even be slaughtered to feed the hungry cities; by June beef was up to $150 a kilo in the US — while the dollar itself had lost three-quarters of its value in six months.

Frustratingly, details were scarcest in the most recent newspapers. North America, as Colonel Chase had said, was locked in a suicidal civil war. After the failure of Washington and Ottawa to cope with the disaster, ‘local councils’ had taken over large parts of the US and Canada. Confrontations had led to gunfights, then to guerrilla skirmishes, and at last — with the desertion of whole battalions to the rebel side — to full-scale military campaigns. Battles were fought for control of oil fields and refineries in Texas and Alberta, coal mines in British Columbia and Kentucky, even for suburban supermarkets. One New Zealand paper, in June, reported a rumour that tactical nuclear weapons had been used to halt a rebel offensive against Chicago.

Still less was known, or at least reported, about the Communist countries. The Soviet Union was believed to be evacuating its Black Sea coast and Arctic ports. The Chinese had abandoned Shanghai to the sea, and were refusing to accept any more refugees from Hong Kong and Macao North and South Korea were either at war or cooperating in relief operations. Indochina was silent. Eastern Europe was, perhaps, breaking free of Soviet domination, but no one knew for sure.

Cut off from their northern markets, the industrial nations of the southern hemisphere failed rapidly. South Africa’s whites were surrendering most of the country and withdrawing to a coastal strip from Cape Town to Durban: ‘Blankestan’. the Africans jeeringly called it. South America was a continent in anarchy. The disintegration of Indonesia seemed, at any rate, to have spared Australia the threat of an invasion. Chase had been right: New Zealand was better off than most of the world, though only relatively.

“‘An estimated six hundred million people have perished as a result of the disasters of the past year’.” Penny read from the Wellington News . She looked up and met Steve’s eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s only a guess. They could be doubling the real figure — or halving it.” He looked almost like a parody of the man who’d made love to her in the greenhouse: the world was again conforming to his vision of it, but now he took no pleasure — not even Schadenfreude — in the fact.

They heard a pounding on a door down the hall, and the voice of the sallow young man: “Power goes off in ten minutes. Power off in ten minutes.”

Steve doused the lights. The windows still glowed with the rain-softened light of street lamps. Penny went to a window and looked down at the empty park: the statue was just visible, a white blur in the darkness. She felt Steve come up behind her and put his arms around her.

“That’s Scott down there in the park.”

“Really?”

“His wife carved it.”

Someday he’ll see the sun again, in a thirtieth-century summer as the ice groans and breaks around him, and Wilson, and Bowers. Someday. For some reason she remembered the seeds she’d brought from the greenhouse. Somewhere she must find another sheltered place for them, plant them and hope that they would grow.

It felt good to be together in bed, listening to the shouts and laughter of friends down the hall.

“What’ll we do, Steve?”

“Go where we’ll do the most good, I guess.”

“Where — the States, or Canada?”

“I don’t think so. They don’t seem to need science writers or seismologists just now.”

“That’s not all we’re good for, is it? And they’re our countries.”

“They don’t seem to be countries at all. We could choose factions, but even if our side won, it wouldn’t bring back the country we’d left.”

“There you go, being cold-blooded and rational again.”

He turned on his side and put his arm around her.

“ We’re different too, you know. We’re new. If this really is a new Ice Age starting, we’re the first people who’ve had to live in it. If we owe loyalty to anyone, it’s to the people who come after us. The more we learn, the better prepared they’ll be.”

“So what do we do — stay here?”

“For now”, anyway. They’ll be able to use what we’ve learned and put us back to work learning more. This time next year we could even be back in the Antarctic.”

The eagerness in his voice would have enraged her once, or made her laugh. But she understood him at last, and knew what he was seeing beyond the rain-streaked windows.

The power went off, killing the street lamps below. The rain fell harder than ever, drumming on the windows and hissing on the empty street, the dead river. Penny remembered the darkness of the crevasse where Will had dangled, and her arrogant, crazy boast that the ice could never kill them. She saw the surge beginning on Beardmore Glacier; she saw the Shelf, glowing blue under the moon and stars. As she put her arms around Steve and felt the reassuring warmth of him, she felt a hunger that was his as well: a yearning for the cold, for the wind, for the high dark sky and the blinding sun, and the ice.

© Crawford Kilian 1998

Crawford Kilian has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in 1998 by toExcel, a division of Kaleidoscope Software Inc.

This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.