Jack McDevitt - The Moonfall

"Yes. What is it?"

"You've got a call. Man named Feinberg."

"Patch him through, pilot."

Some clicks in his earphones. And then Feinberg's rasp: "Mr. President?"

"Hello, Wesley. You'll be interested in knowing we've just lost Washington."

"Mr. President, don't do it."

"Don't do what?"

"Don't nuke the Possum."

Henry looked down at the drowned city. "I think we've had enough, Wesley."

"No! If you persist, you'll only make things worse."

They were the last words Henry heard. He was about to reply, to ask how he could possibly make things worse, to observe that he was by God going to take the Possum out of the game, when someone screamed, the inside of the cockpit blurred, fire broke out, and the chopper's nightlights died. He was half-conscious, trying to find Emily in the dark, and he knew he was falling.

"The loss of power in the middle of the presidential press conference is the final straw in the assault against the public nerve. Probably never before in the history of the republic has the entire population stayed up all night. Millions have been driven from their homes, people have died in vast numbers, families are swept away in full view of TV cameras, and property damage mounts, God help us, into the trillions.

"The American people were surprised to see a presidential press conference only hours after two presidential addresses. If they were expecting Mr. Kolladner to announce Armageddon, they were carried along by his unexpected spirit of confidence and optimism. His clear goal of calming the nation might have been obtained had he not suddenly disappeared from the world's screens. In a hundred languages around the globe, voices explained that the transmission had been lost temporarily at its source, and that the telecast would continue momentarily.

"That news was followed, a few minutes later, by an announcement that a tsunami had struck Washington and continued all the way to Front Royal before exhausting itself against the Blue Ridge. The whereabouts of the president, as of this moment, are unknown. This is Judy Gunworthy with the Transglobal News Service, at the National Weather Service Office in El Paso." Micro Passenger Cabin. 5:43 A.M.

"Charlie." It was Kerr again. But his voice sounded strange.

"Yes, Al. What's wrong?"

"Charlie, we've lost the president."

Charlie Haskell's heart began to speed up. What had Harry Truman said on hearing of FDR's death? It was like a load of bullshit got dropped on me.

Sunday, April 14

Manhattan. 5:45 A.M.

The effort to loot the local grocery store failed. Marvin and one of the accountants tore down a double-sized door to use as a raft, but their combined weight was too much and it capsized several times, dumping them into the flood. The accountant lost heart, and everybody else, including Larry, decided the smart thing would be to wait for the Guard. Finally Marvin set off alone. He came back an hour later, complaining that the store Louise had described was completely underwater. But he'd gotten off the raft, forced his way inside, and nearly drowned. He looked as if the story were true. He now joined those recommending they simply wait until help arrived. An unaccustomed whine had come into his voice, and Marilyn decided he didn't look as good this morning as he had last night. Never start a romance with somebody, she thought, until you've seen him in a flood.

Louise's refrigerator emptied out in a hurry, and the bottled water disappeared, despite all efforts at rationing. Her guests began to suggest that maybe they should make another effort to get canned goods out of the submerged store. "You can't tell how long we might be here," one of them said. Marv said he would not try it again under any circumstances.

A stock analyst who'd done a year at medical school pointed out that anybody going into the water, which was choked with corpses, risked typhus or some other ungodly disease. "Marv's right," she said. "We should wait."

They were cut off from the rest of the world. The batteries in the TV had died, and there was nothing to do now but gaze out over the city, gray and forlorn in the morning light. A stench had begun to creep into the air.

Larry tried to play the role of defender and provider that he must have felt was expected of him. He assured Marilyn everything would be okay, asked whether she was all right, and gathered her into his arms when she got teary. He didn't quite fit the part: Larry looked more at home in an office than in a crisis. But she felt it was nice of him to try.

She knew her husband would never have gone inside a submerged grocery store. But she also knew that, if he had, he wouldn't have come back and whined about it.

There was sudden commotion behind her: people pointing to the northwest. A helicopter, several helicopters, were coming in from over the Hudson, flying in formation, staying low. They penetrated the concrete valleys and divided into pairs as they approached the Central Park area.

There were other people atop other buildings, and everybody was waving. One of the choppers came in close and hovered directly overhead. It was olive-drab. Military. A voice spoke through a loudspeaker: "Folks, please clear the roof." Backwash from the rotors tore at her hair.

A soldier leaned out and gazed down at her. "How many of you are there?"

Quick estimate. "Thirty," Marilyn said, but the words were blown away. She spread both hands three times. Somebody behind her was saying, "Tell them fifty, get as much as you can."

The soldier signaled okay. The man who'd wanted to claim fifty muttered, "Dumb bitch." He was a little fat man with tufts of hair over his ears, framing a bald head. Larry heard the remark and went after him. The fat man started swinging wildly, and punched a woman who didn't get clear quickly enough. Then the circle of bystanders closed in to separate the two.

Marilyn felt proud of Larry at that moment. Not only because he'd defended her; but because the fat man was a department manager or some such thing at Bradley amp; Boone. Larry's job had just disappeared. For him, it had been a more courageous act than braving the flood to find his wife.

She hadn't felt this good about her marriage since the day she'd walked up the aisle.

The chopper came down until it was only a few feet overhead. Four cartons tumbled out. "Anybody need medical help?" asked the loudspeaker.

They glanced around at one another. "I've got a back problem," shouted a thin, weak-eyed man Marilyn didn't know. He didn't look like the type who would readily consent to ride in a helicopter.

"Can you walk, sir?"

"I think so."

"Good. Stay off your feet. The rest of you stay put. We'll be back."

The chopper lifted away. Larry made another lunge at the little fat man, and somebody told him to calm down. Marilyn could see that, under the indignant mask, her husband was quite pleased with himself.

"This is Angela Shepard at Camp David, Maryland. An army helicopter carrying President Henry Kolladner was reported down minutes ago outside Washington. The president had been evacuated moments before a sea wave swept over the capital, and was en route here, where a command post had been set up to coordinate the government's response to the ongoing lunar crisis. The helicopter was apparently struck by lightning. Official sources are telling us that rescue units have been sent in, and that they still hold out hope.

"I talked to a member of the president's staff who was on board an accompanying aircraft, and who asked not to be named. She was in tears, Don. She said the president's helicopter caught fire and, in her words, 'fell like a rock.' She added that she doesn't believe anyone could have lived through it." Micro Passenger Cabin. 5:48 A.M.