Suddenly, Rourke held his fingers to his lips, signaling silence. The speaker for the radio was the focus of his attention. He heard a voice coming from it. Ever since he had gone forward to the cockpit and begun trying to decipher the controls, the radio-on every band he'd tried-had been nothing but static. Ionization, he'd believed was the cause. But now there was a voice.
'Excuse me, Mrs. Richards,' Rourke said, moving forward and dropping into the captain's chair, then putting the headset on and working the radio controls. 'This is Canamerican 747 Flight 601-reading you with some heavy static. Do you read me? Over.'
He waited a moment, then the static broke and the voice came back. 'This is Buck Anderson-ham operator out of Tombstone, Arizona, Captain. Over.'
Rourke smiled. 'I'm no captain kid-just a fella flyin' the plane. Captain and copilot bought it with flash burns. Is it possible for you to relay our signal and get us some professional help-maybe from Tucson?'
'There is no Tucson,' the voice came back. Then there was a long pause.
'Buck,' Rourke said, 'you still reading me? Over.'
'I'm still reading you. But there is no-no Tucson. Everything to the west has either gone into the sea like California did or been flooded. We're on an island out here now.'
'Yeah,' Rourke cut in, 'yeah, I knew your area-was there for Helidorado Days.'
'But the water,' the boy's voice went on, 'it may be rising-not sure if it's stopped. Everyone is dead-I'm sick- the bombs that hit Tucson and Phoenix just wiped them out. As far down as Bensen.' There was a little restaurant in Benson that Rourke had liked. It had made the best pizza he'd found in Arizona. 'What's your source for the West Coast thing?' Rourke asked. 'Over.'
'Ham operator-a girl I knew. We were on when the bombs started failing and she kept on. Somehow I was still getting her. Then she started describing it-horrible.'
'Tell me,' Rourke said, his voice low. 'Over.'
'Oh. Mother of God-the buildings started shaking, the ground-from where she was she could see the ground starting to open, and then she went off. After that, I picked up another commercial flight. Told me they were watching from the air-huge cracks in the ground-lava coming up, and then suddenly it all slipped away and there was a giant wall of water. I lost the transmission after that. The pilot said the turbulence was getting bad and cut off, kind of funny.'
'Any word on Flagstaff, Buck?' Rourke asked. 'Over.'
'No-nothing since a Civil Defense broadcast over an hour ago-the whole area around Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon had an eight-or nine-point earthquake, and there were bombs still failing.'
Rourke just shook his head. 'Kid,' he said, 'you gonna make it?'
'I don't think so-I'm starting to throw up blood-vision is already blurry. I think its radiation sickness.'
'It is, Buck,' Rourke said.
'That's what I thought.'
'I'm sorry,' Rourke said.
'I wish I could help you get your plane down. But I can't. Maybe you're better off just crashing-it's hell down here. The air is bad, the water's rising now-I can tell, and-' The voice cut off.
'Buck?' Rourke said.
The boy's voice cut back in. 'My generator handle pulled out-sorry.'
'Anything on New Mexico? Over.'
'Can't make out-' Then there was static.
'Did he die?' It was Mrs. Richards, sitting now in the copilot's chair beside Rourke.
'No, Mrs. Richards-we just got into different air space and out of his frequency. No, he didn't die-yet.'
'Maybe the boy was right,' Mrs. Richards said. Rourke looked at the woman.
'Now, as long as we're alive,' he said, 'we've got a chance. Once we give up and lie down, that's it.'
'My husband was in California,' Mrs. Richards said.
'I have a wife and two children back in Georgia,' Rourke replied.
'But they could still be alive. I know my husband is dead. Maybe that boy was just a liar,' she started. 'A liar- he was just lying because he didn't know-it couldn't have just fallen into-'
'I don't think he was lying, Mrs. Richards,' Rourke said, quietly.
'Do you think my husband could have survived?' she asked softly.
'Honest?' Rourke queried.
'Yes,' she said.
'No-I don't. Even if he was on the right side of the fault line, the tidal wave would have gotten him. I had, I guess, a friend in San Diego-told me once that if the San Andreas fault ever went, he'd be okay. His office and his house were on the continental side. I didn't have the heart to remind him about the tidal wave. See, when those mountains slipped off and all the land on the other side, the impact and the added mass, as well as the slipping motion itself-all that figured in to create a tsunami and then flood the lowland. I don't know where the new coastline will wind up.'
'Why should I live?' she moaned. 'There's nothing left. Nothing to live for. Why live now?' She said it like a chant.
