below the crest. It was patched successfully, but by the time Mitch and the others had returned from Fort Providence, a new leak had appeared. It was some seventy-five feet down from the first. It started as a gigantic wet spot like the dam itself was beginning to sweat. And within thirty minutes, that spot of perspiration became heavy seepage which seriously undermined the integrity of the structure as a whole. The material began to slough and water ran freely from the cleft as erosion opened up the original leak until it reached the right bank to the dam embankment itself. Less than forty minutes later, the dam failed completely and collapsed.
The four-mile Black Lake Reservoir which was overspilling to begin with, released some forty-million tons of water into the narrow Black River Valley. Boiling with debris, uprooted trees, and a mountain of earth, the flood wall was sixty-feet in height when it struck Slayhoke Penitentiary and the result was devastating. As 4^th Battalion of the 1^st Air Cavalry Division, bolstered by the Wisconsin National Guard, were still attempting to restore order at the prison, the tidal wave of water hit with explosive force, obliterating the high razor-wire topped walls and smashing its way through the tall brick cell blocks which utterly collapsed, the upper stories completely sheering off. The high smokestacks fell and outbuildings were smashed, their wreckage?indeed all the wreckage of Slayhoke including trucks and cars and gravel piles, thousands of human beings and tons and tons of rock and brick?were swept along with that churning wall of water.
The Fort Providence Military Reservation was next in the path.
The water pushed right through, stripping the base flat, turning hills to valleys and scooping up millions of tons of sand and rock, and kept right on rolling, leveling everything in its path. Between Fort Providence and Witcham there was a nearly unbroken belt of forest and wooded hills some four miles thick. The flood wall, cutting its own channel as it roared towards the city, hit the forest and turned hills to mudslides, cutting down acre after acre of prime woodland?sugar maple, red oak, hickory, and birch, hemlock, jackpine, and spruce. But this forest significantly slowed the rampaging flood wall which would have completely destroyed the city.
When it reached Witcham?a rushing torrent of oily, muddy water inundated with millions upon millions of tons of grinding debris?it crested at nearly thirty feet. It hit the outlying areas first, dissolving hills and shattering bridges and turning homes to kindling, then it rolled right into Elmwood and Crandon following the path of the Black River, a tidal wave that smashed its way through Bethany and River Town and East Genesee. It swept everything before it, houses and factories and bridges. Water towers fell and buildings collapsed, telephone poles were torn up by their roots and mobile home parks turned into graveyards of sheet metal. Buildings that had stood a hundred years or more fell into themselves as did mills and foundries.
All the rubble and mud and debris were sucked into a massive whirlpool centered in the old Black River floodplain. River Town and Bethany were ground zero.
From above it looked like a wall of frothing brown water rushing into a city of sandcastles that simply disintegrated and were washed into a dirty foam. At the southern tip of Crandon, rows of high elms went down like bowling pins and blocks and blocks of houses simply vanished in the deluge. Others were crushed and some torn up from their foundations and carried off. Chatterly Park was gutted straight down to the bedrock. In River Town, those historic brick streets beneath the flooding fell right into sewers below. The Wiscon natural gas refinery went up with a booming explosion and plumes of yellow-white flame mushroomed above the city. Fuel tanks exploded into spirals of greasy, black smoke that the pouring rain dropped right back onto the city. At ground-level, that great rumbling wave of water shattered windows long before it physically reached them and when it did, walls and foundations were ruptured and roofs peeled free. The sound of that tidal wave was deafening, like a thousand bombs detonated simultaneously, their noise echoing and echoing and never seeming to die out. As the streets sank and structures fell, the water raged and sprayed and splashed and shot up into the air in great gouts.
And then, backflooding.
The water crested outside of Witcham and flooded right back, carrying trees and rubble, asphalt and concrete, glass and metal, cars and trucks, and thousands of bodies. It swept back into town, but its force was spent. In Witcham, the debris caught fire and became a river of flame that reached some sixteen city blocks. Houses and buildings that had stood the onslaught of water promptly ignited and the inferno burned and burned and burned, the pouring rain slowly bringing it under control. Survivors floated on scraps of building materials and the trunks of trees. Several hundred became entangled in miles and miles of barbwire from the WireWorks and if the waters finally did recede, it would take days to cut all those corpses free.
But for now, there was devastation.
The air was thick with a dusky haze that was part smoke and part fog and part suspended residue that slowly fell back into the flooded streets. The water was a bubbling stew of slime and waste, garbage and dead bodies.
The city had been on the verge of its grave for many days, but now it had finally found it and fell right in.
So by 6:00 p.m. that day, Witcham was a cemetery.
20
Alive.
By God, they were all still alive.
Mitch was looking out over the wreckage of the city which was so utterly complete that it left him breathless. Houses were gone, entire blocks were gone, but through it all, they had survived. It was enough to make you believe in a higher power. And if Chrissy had been there with him, he just might have.
When the rumbling started and that wave came rolling through the valley picking up speed and force, devouring Slayhoke and Fort Providence as appetizers and heading for the main course with slavering jaws, it was Tommy and Harry who had gotten everyone organized. They had no idea what was happening. With that rising noise and the ground trembling, maybe there was an earthquake or somebody had finally detonated a nuke out at the Army base like many had prophesied for so many years now. Maybe that was what was happening and that deadly shock wave was heading right at them.
There was no earthly way to know.
But they gathered up the Zirblanski twins and Deke Eriksen, Mitch and Wanda and Chuck Bittner. Got them together as the volume was turned up and the house shook. They didn’t know what was coming but they knew it was going to be bad beyond belief. They had organized things, but it had been Wanda who told them what was coming.
“Dam went,” she said, almost calmly. “Tidal wave coming.”
They had about ten minutes to take action. Tommy got Rita and Rhonda, Chuck and Deke up onto the roof using a ladder and Harry had carried Wanda up there, even though she said she did not want to go. Mitch came up last. But before he went up, Tommy came down and they grabbed lanterns and flashlights, blankets and bottled water, three five-pound bags of salt and their guns. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had time for.
Sitting up on the peak of Wanda’s roof, there hadn’t been time to do much but hold onto each other and hope for the best. The water hit with devastating force, peeling the siding from the house, taking the rain gutters, and Tommy’s truck as a souvenir. The rumbling and roaring were so loud, you could not have even yelled above it. Trees went down and power lines followed. Mitch watched in absolute horror as the Zirblanski’s house literally crumbled into jackstraw and took the Blake house with it. Arland Mattson’s ranch was engulfed and then Mitch’s red brick two-story simply fell apart. All those houses just sank into the swirling, foaming waters and were seen no more.
But when it finally ended, Wanda Sepperly’s was still standing.
And they were all still alive. Petrified and shocked and overwhelmed, but certainly no worse for the wear.
Other than that, Kneale Street had been pretty much decimated. If he squinted his eyes through the misty drizzle, Mitch could see the shells of a few houses, but they were pretty much gutted. The Chambers’ chimney still stood, but nothing else. The Gendrou’s garage was still there, but the house wasn’t. The Procton house was still standing, though everything around it was missing…garage, trees, everything.
Devastation.
Good God, the devastation.
Mitch just watched that silent yellow river of contaminated water passing by Wanda’s house. It moved with a
