One of the rescuers raised a hand, motioning for the other diggers to stop. They were all firemen. Despite the cold, some of them had taken off their heavy yellow coats and were working in shirtsleeves. They’d just pulled a man from beneath the wall. He was completely covered with mud. Atkins watched as a big, red-faced fireman with a thick beard wiped mud from the man’s mouth and nose and, kneeling next to him, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Another man hurried over with a canister of oxygen. They put the mask over the bricklayer’s mouth.
The big man got up, picked up a shovel, and went back to work along the wall. He already knew the outcome. After a few more minutes, an EMS technician covered the bricklayer with a green poncho and helped carry the body to an ambulance.
Spectators had gathered, hundreds of them. They were watching the show in hushed silence, pushing in as close as they could. The cops tried to keep them back, but it wasn’t easy. There weren’t enough of them, nowhere near enough.
That never changed, Atkins thought. Gawkers always turned out in force after an earthquake. So did looters. In Mexico City he’d seen a man break a dead woman’s fingers to get her rings off.
“Well, it looks like all your observations were right on target,” Atkins said. “Even down to the animals.”
Jacobs had actually anticipated the quake. True, it wasn’t an exact prediction—he didn’t give a time or a precise location or a probability, all key ingredients. And yet Atkins thought his friend still had reason to be proud. So much of their science remained highly intuitive. Jacobs thought conditions were ripe for a quake and had been proven right. That was about as good as the science currently allowed.
“I’d say so,” Jacobs said. “We haven’t had a temblor that strong since the one I was telling you about back in the 1890s. We were sure overdue.”
MEMPHIS
JANUARY 10
4:50 P.M.
THE TWA 737 BANKED LOW. THEY WERE approaching the Memphis airport from the south at twilight, for Elizabeth Holleran always a beautiful time of the day when the light was strange and soft. Staring out the window, she saw the Mississippi curving south in a wide, caramel-colored crescent. Large parts of the city were dark, still without electricity twelve hours after the earthquake. Then the plane banked again, and she noticed the fires. She counted at least ten of them.
Holleran had flown from Los Angeles to St. Louis, then caught a connecting flight to Memphis after a three- hour layover. She’d traveled light, with a few pairs of slacks, shirts, and sweaters in her garment bag, and her laptop. Several times during the forty-minute trip, the captain had provided updates about the earthquake. More than thirty people were dead. Traffic was a mess. Hospital ERs filled to capacity.
They were lucky, the captain told them in a drawling accent. The quake hadn’t knocked out the airport’s runway lights; otherwise they would have had to shut down Memphis International.
Holleran remembered his comment about the snarled traffic an hour later after she got a rental car and slowly merged onto Airways Boulevard. The woman at the rental counter had warned that driving anywhere would be difficult—especially at night. They were issuing radio reports every ten minutes, telling people to stay at home. She advised Holleran to check into one of the motels near the airport and wait until morning. But Holleran was eager to get to the University of Memphis and try to track down the head of their earthquake center, Walt Jacobs.
She’d finally remembered his name and where she’d met him. It was in San Francisco for a seminar on the Northridge quake of 1994. She doubted he’d remember her. He’d presented a paper on the New Madrid Seismic Zone, and she’d asked a few questions. She’d spent the better part of the day trying without luck to reach him by telephone. She figured this was one night he’d be working late and hoped to find him at the university. She’d brought Otto Prable’s data. It was loaded on her laptop.
Ever since she’d heard about the quake, she’d been wondering if he’d made an incredibly lucky guess. Or, more troubling, was there something potentially valid in his data that needed to be examined?
Prable had predicted a major quake a few days either side of January 20. He’d missed it by about a week.
Holleran was inclined to think her old mentor had made a remarkably good guess partly based on a few scientifically solid details, including the rate of ground deformation. That’s what she wanted to talk over with Jacobs. If he’d even see her. She wasn’t so sure he’d have time to talk about Prable and his admittedly bizarre theories. She still remained highly skeptical, but at the very least, the quake had made her less inclined to write his work off quite as easily as before. She was willing to let someone else examine his data. She owed him that much.
She quickly regretted not taking the advice of the woman at the airport. She hadn’t gone six blocks before she hit her first detour. The facade of an old building had collapsed, spilling a deep pile of bricks into the street. Following a single lane of traffic around the obstructions, Holleran had to make a right turn and immediately ran into another detour. Most of the streetlights were out.
Holleran hunched over the steering wheel, straining to see the street signs. She had no idea where she was or in what direction she was going. Fewer cars were on the road. She suddenly realized she was in an inner-city neighborhood, block after block of single-story, low-rise apartment buildings, many with boarded windows. Dozens of people were walking in the street or milling on corners, mostly young men. A few had flashlights or ghetto blasters with the volume cranked up.
The car in front of her lurched to a stop and tried to turn around. Men swarmed around it, rocking the front end up and down.
Stunned, Holleran cut the wheel in a tight circle and floored the gas pedal. Something slammed against the roof. A hard metallic sound. They were throwing rocks at the car.
She turned up another dark, narrow side street. She still had no idea where she was and switched on the high beams. More public housing apartments loomed ahead. More people were out. It was a party atmosphere— blaring rap music, laughter, shouts. She saw someone carrying a torch.
Off to the left, the sky glowed a dull orange. A big fire. She started heading in that direction. There were bound to be firemen and police there. She was angry with herself for being so foolish. She should have listened to the woman at the car rental agency and not tried this at night.
She made sure the doors were locked. She had to slow down again when a car cut in front of her. A slender youth smiled at her from the sidewalk. He wore baggy pants and a baseball cap with the brim bent up. She passed two more men, wearing hooded sweatshirts. One of them gave her the finger.
Don’t panic, she told herself. Whatever happens, don’t get out of the car.
Something heavy banged against the front bumper of the Taurus and careened off to the side. They’d hurled a trash can at her. Holleran smashed through some more cans and kept going.
They were trying to close the street, lining up side by side and forming a human wall. She punched the accelerator and headed straight for them. A few had to dive out of the way. She heard their obscene shouts.
Gripping the wheel, she sped through an intersection. Missing a turn, she backed up and went down another street. She was trying to get closer to the fire. The flaming sky was brighter, but she was lost in a maze of side streets and cul-de-sacs.
She saw headlights up ahead. Two cars with their doors open were sideways in the street. Six or seven men and women were standing there, arguing. Holleran slowed down.
More rocks hit the car. A man put his grinning face up to the window and shouted, “Stop, bitch!”
Holleran banged up on the sidewalk. As she went around the stalled cars, more rocks rained down on the roof and hood. When she tried to turn back onto the street, the rear tires got hung up. They’d dropped into an open drain. The tires spun, burning rubber. She threw the gears into reverse and began rocking the car back and forth, trying to free the tires.
The man who’d screamed for her to stop had a brick in his hand. He tried to smash the driver’s window, hitting the glass again and again. It shattered but didn’t break. Holleran buried the gas pedal. The tires spun free,
