Eric Flint: Time spike

Karen was heading for the door. "So it won't hit St. Louis. Big deal.

That part of the United Statesis populated. And not by illiterate villagers or semiliterate fishermen." Richard had already made up his mind. "I'll come. I think two of us will be sufficient." The others looked relieved, although they were trying their best not to let it show. They were quite bold people, actually, in their own way. But theirs was not the sort of temperament you find in tornado-chasers.

Neither was Richard's, for that matter. But he didhave military experience-the only one of the group who did-and so he felt a certain odd sort of obligation. There was the advantage, with Margo driving her beat-up SUV through Minnesota back roads, that Richard figured the most dangerous part of the expedition would be over with by the time they got to the airport. If they got to the airport. But all he said was: "I believe the fishermen were from Boston." "Yeah, they were.

Like I said. Semiliterates." Richard was tempted to point out that Boston had probably the highest concentration per capita of universities of any city in North America. But, having once fought his way through a heavy Bostonian accent, shortly after his arrival in the United States, he was not inclined to pursue this argument either.

Chapter 3 The prison's generator coughed, sputtered, and fell silent. The walls shook. The ground heaved upward, toppling chairs and tables and people. Captain Andy Blacklock slid beneath the combination melamine and steel conference table as one of the twelve-foot long light fixtures broke free at one end and then crashed to the floor.

From where he lay he could see Kathleen Hanrahan. She was wedged against the glass doors, her eyes wide with fear. He tried to move, go to her, get her away from the glass, but couldn't. He was plastered to the tan colored tiles, unable to lift his head or even his hand. The dull white walls took on a silver sheen, then dimmed to gray. The metallic blue bars looked almost black. The cream colored, airport style X-ray machine seemed to flatten out, and then regain its shape.

His ears popped and the whistling eased, eased a little more, and then was gone. He could breathe again. Could move. The colors returned to normal and the room erupted in shouts as people scrambled to their feet. Few of them were able to take their first few steps without hanging onto walls or tables. They seemed to have lost their equilibrium. Kathleen struggled to her feet and then made her way to one of the white, plastic chairs close to the payroll office. She was flushed red and her breaths came in shallow gasps. Her dark eyes were wide with terror. Andy's radio came alive with status reports.

Maintenance, zones A through D, the infirmary, communications, psych units: within minutes every sector checked in. The guards sounded calm, but Andy knew they weren't. They couldn't be. The prison had a disaster plan for every problem that could be thought up, but it mostly involved just locking down and waiting it out. Staff families were expected to fend for themselves during these emergencies. The gates were now on manual. The electrical locking system would be nonfunctioning. That was going to slow the guards down. Chits, sign-out sheets and keys. But it didn't matter. All inmates were locked away. When the electrical locking system went out, it went out in the locked mode. That was one of the few things inside the prison that was actually fail proof. Captain Greg Lowry hurried toward him, his face pale. For a second Andy was afraid the man might have a stroke. Greg was in his mid-sixties, just months from retirement. He was fifty pounds overweight, and rumor said he had some major health issues. Andy liked Greg. He was one of those men who kept his head and his temper. He also kept his own council. He didn't join in with the gossip and backbiting common to this type of work. "If there's ever a disaster, we're going to be in a bind, Andy," Lowry had told him at last week's staff meeting. "The disaster plans are written as though we're fully staffed. When was the last time you worked with a full crew? We need a plan that's for us, not the politicians in Springfield." Greg came up alongside him and whispered, "We might have gotten lucky. There's a wall integrity breach; it's small and it's outside the confinement area. But we have to find out if we have others-there could be breaches inside the cells." Andy nodded. He turned the volume down on his radio-loud enough for him to hear the reports coming in fast and furious, but low enough that if something private came through, it would remain so. "You're right, Greg." With both the afternoon and night crews present, they were still a dozen guards short for what needed to be done. He rubbed his head, trying to think clearly. The dull ache he'd acquired earlier was now a full-blown headache, pounding behind his eyes, across the top of his head, and through every sinus cavity he owned. "What was that?" Rod Hulbert was on his feet, looking around, trying to get his bearings.

"At first I thought it was an earthquake. I figured the New Madrid fault line had let go. Now, I don't know." The last time the New Madrid fault line had a major slip was back in the early 1800s. But everyone who lived in the area knew that the one hundred fifty mile long fault line was overdue. They also knew that when it went, it would be a national disaster that would make the New Orleans hurricane fiasco look like child's play. Over seventy-five percent of the buildings in the quake zone were older buildings made of unreinforced masonry. Buildings like that wouldn't survive an earthquake measuring a 6.3. on the Richter scale-and the last time that fault line slipped, it was a lot stronger than that. Nobody knew exactly where the New Madrid earthquake would have registered on the Richter scale, of course, since it had happened almost two centuries earlier. But the three quakes that had flattened thousands of acres of forests, changed the course of the Mississippi River, and formed new lakes. Those three quakes had been part of a series of two thousand quakes taking place over a two-year period. They were the largest earthquakes the continental U.S. had ever experienced in the historical record, and had been felt as far away as Canada. They'd even caused the church bells in Washington D.C. to ring. Andy looked around the entry area.

The personnel closest to the metal detectors were going through the process of entering the prison. They were being patted down by nervous guards. The interiors of their lunch buckets were being visually inspected, since the X-ray machine wasn't working. Andy gave a small sigh of relief. The entry routine was helping. No one had panicked, but quite a few were close to it. "Go inside, Greg," Andy said. "Joe and I will put together a couple of teams to walk the perimeter outside the walls. You get the interior checked." He waved in the direction of the parking lot. "Divvy them up. Send them around to the backside. Make sure everything held." By the time Andy was done talking, Greg had already cut through the line and was at the first set of iron gates separating the prison from the main room. The one blindingly good piece of luck involved in the disaster was the timing-thirty minutes later, the afternoon shift would have been gone entirely. Andy would have had to deal with the situation with only forty-two people. Andy looked at Joe and shrugged. "What a way to start a shift." He looked around at the stunned faces. "Don't let anyone else in. Get them outside, walking the perimeter. That's our first priority. Then radio Lowry. I want No-Man's-Land walked."

No-Man's-Land was what they called the killing zone: an eight-foot strip of open ground between two fifty-foot cement walls topped with razor wire that encircled the prison. A few minutes later the entry area was empty except for Kathleen who was stationed at the gates with orders to let no one enter or leave until Joe or Andy okayed it. The rest of the guards were outside. Their flashlights were on and Joe had passed out one radio to each team of three and sent them to check the walls on the east, north, and south sides of the prison. Hulbert and a half-dozen guards had already gone around to the west end of the facility. Andy was looking at the administration building. He checked the windows first; none of the glass seemed broken. The bars were all in place. And from where he stood he could see no cracks in the mortar between the brown blocks that made the walls. Everything looked good.