Текст книги "Poisoned Soil"
Автор книги: Tim Young
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
Clint said nothing. He walked over and looked at the large street map on the wall of Rabun County. The older fireman walked over to him. “You ought to go home yourself ’for it gets real nasty out there. After this storm passes the town will get the roads cleared, but a lot of towns are gonna be a mess for a while.”
“Thanks,” Clint said, and then walked out the door to his car.
He sat in the car and looked out his window at the amount of water standing in the parking lot. Leaning over the steering wheel, Clint looked through the sheet of water on the windshield trying to see the mountain peaks around him, peaks that were hiding in the cover of low hanging clouds. He tried to visualize the sheer volume of water that could funnel down those mountains if it kept raining like this. A loud clap of thunder shattered his concentration. He put the car in gear and started south on 441, heading for home and out of Rabun County. And heading right into the direction of the approaching storm.
• • •
Blake stared out the sliding glass door, barely able to see anything as the water pelted the glass and formed a thick, foggy sheet. The sky brightened with a terrific burst of light, followed almost instantly by a thunderous crash. Instinct thrust his right hand to shield his eyes as the lightning struck something close by. A series of pops rattled through the house as the television snapped off. All electric lights were snuffed out except for two small emergency lights that were plugged into outlets that came on when the power was out.
“Wow, did you see that?” Blake said.
The girls screamed and jumped into Angelica’s lap, knocking the Connect 4 game on its side, spilling its pieces. “It’s okay, girls,” Angelica said as she pulled them closer. “Just nature throwing a little party.”
Blake looked over at her. Most women—hell most men for that matter—would be scared out of their wits in these conditions, but Angelica seemed calm, at ease. As if she had long ago surrendered herself to nature, to God, and was now going through life as if watching a movie. Watching it happen and enjoying most parts, tensing sometimes at the scary parts. But this part, this torrential rain and lightning—this part didn’t seem to scare her.
Angelica got up and walked to the closet. She pulled out two kerosene lanterns and lit them with a match from a kitchen drawer, adjusting the wick to get the light the way she wanted before placing one light on the kitchen bar. She took the other light with her to the living room. The girls’ rosy cheeks glowed in the light as the flame entranced them the way only fire can hypnotize a child.
“This is how my grandparents lit their house,” Angelica said to the girls, omitting the fact that they only did that for fun once in a while. Blake realized that if the storm knocked out all the power and it never returned, Angelica would be one of the very few happier people. No gas, no electricity, no telephones. Just the sun, the moon, family, God and nature. He walked over and sat on the sofa with Angelica and the girls. One of the girls moved over and jumped in his lap the way she would have jumped in her father’s lap if he had been there. She curled up and laid her head against Blake’s chest.
Angelica looked at Blake and smiled broadly. Blake clumsily reached his arms around the child as if he might break her. Angelica laughed. “Just hold her and love her,” she said.
Blake did. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the child, the love of the child. She wanted nothing from him other than protection and love. She wasn’t chasing him, taunting him, or pursuing him. Instead, she needed him. He pulled her close and stroked her hair as Angelica moved close to him and pulled a blanket over the huddled family.
The howling wind and pounding rain continued through the night.
***
Clint awoke Friday morning, but thought it was still night. Rain pummeled the driveway at his Sandy Springs home under skies as dark as soot. Looking at the clock to see it was 7:30, he was a little surprised that the power was on at all. After he got up, brushed his teeth, used the bathroom and went to the living room, he flipped on the television and turned to CNN.
The video footage on the screen was horrific. At first Clint wasn’t sure if he was looking at a weather segment or a nature channel commercial. The camera angle was from the air, presumably from a helicopter flown by a brave pilot. The eye had made landfall over twelve hours prior, but the winds were still gusty. It looked as if the pilot was over the open sea, but debris was littered near and far. The caption read that the pilot was hovering over what had been Ossabaw Island, where the eye had crossed as the Category 4 storm made landfall just south of Savannah. There were hundreds...thousands of dead bodies floating in the water. Bloated, black bodies drifting aimlessly. Clint leaned to peer closely and realized that they were all pigs. The camera zoomed into a group of twelve piglets that were actually swimming toward the roof of a building. Clint watched as the piglets made it. They climbed up and joined at least a hundred other pigs stranded on the roof.
One of the reporters came back on and described what had happened. A twenty-eight-foot storm surge had hit the coast. Ossabaw Island, at only three feet above sea level, was wholly submerged, as were several other islands on the Georgia coast.
Downtown Savannah was a disaster. Video footage of when the 148 MPH winds hit the city showed every billboard being flung into the wind like a sheet of tissue in front of a fan. Skyscrapers stood, but nearly all of the glass windows were shattered or had altogether vanished in a rain of glass. Weaker buildings, especially along the river, collapsed completely. The helicopter flew over a swath of house walls that had been stripped of their roofs. Over eighty percent of Savannah was flooded. Roofing, sticks of lumber, tires, boxes, and bodies floated. The scene was too much for any human to take in, the destruction and loss of life and property too much to contemplate.
A chart displayed the track of Hurricane Isabel as it churned from the Bahamas and rapidly intensified, making landfall immediately southeast of Savannah. It spun its destruction northerly, just to the west of Augusta and the east of Athens. The eye of what was now Tropical Storm Isabel cast its destructive gaze upon Clayton, as the storm had slowed its forward progress. Record rains had fallen and were still falling in northern Georgia, eclipsing the effect of Tropical Storm Alberto in 1994, which had dropped over twenty-seven inches of rain in some places.
“Some parts of North Georgia will receive in excess of thirty inches of rain from this system,” the reporter said, almost not believing his own words. “The devastation on the Georgia coast is unimaginable, but the flooding and damage in the mountains could be equally horrific,” he added.
A panel of experts sat to discuss the impact of the storm. As with any hurricane, most of the attention was on the storm surge and the coastal impact, but a geologist on the panel spoke up and asserted himself. “I don’t think we should underestimate the effect this storm will have on the Appalachian Mountains,” the geologist, Michael Hammons, said. “Northeast Georgia and western North Carolina will be looking at major debris flows.”
The moderator probed further. “Michael, can you explain debris flows?”
“Debris flows are very dangerous,” Hammons said. “You’re looking at a mass movement of soil and rock down steep slopes.”
“Like an avalanche?” the moderator said.
“Sort of,” Hammons said. “But with an avalanche, only the surface material moves, as in the case with packed ice and snow. With a debris flow, the earth underneath detaches as well. They have far more force than an avalanche...there’s no stopping them. Anything in the path will be deeply buried.”
As the geologist spoke, an animated sequence played on the screen that depicted the sides of mountains essentially washing into the valleys below.
“What triggers them?” the moderator asked.
“Very heavy rainfalls in short periods of time,” Hammons said. “Just look at Hurricane Camille in 1969. It stalled over Virginia and dumped twenty-eight inches of rain in about eight hours. We recorded almost 4,000 debris flows that wiped out houses and killed over 150 people in one county alone.”
“In Macon County, North Carolina, the county that borders Rabun County in Georgia, a 2004 debris flow detached material from Fish Hawk Mountain and it flowed over two miles.”
The moderator was momentarily speechless, so the geologist summed up. “It’s reasonable to expect the debris flows from this storm to be much, much worse than those.”
***
For most of the night Ozzie slogged through wet leaves and standing water with Isabella as he tried to lead her to Hal’s cabin, but the ferocity of the wind and rain drove them to seek refuge under the overhang of the granite outcropping in the pine cathedral. Even though it was almost noon, there was barely enough light to see deep inside the forest. Still, Ozzie was able to make out the body of the man who had shot at him.
Evidently the coyotes had gotten to him. He was dragged several yards away from the boulder, and what was left of him lay chest down on the forest floor. His head was completely removed, evidently chewed off by the coyotes. Ozzie scanned through the downpour but saw no sign of the head. Shane’s arms and back were exposed, but virtually all the flesh was gone. A metal stick...a shotgun lay in the muck beside him.
Ozzie and Isabella jumped to their feet as the mountain roared beneath them. They looked quickly to the right to see an entire hillside begin to move slowly, impossibly. A tree lost its footing and fell backwards. Then another. The speed picked up and the entire slope behind them gave way. They ran out to their left, retracing the same path that Ozzie had fled that day that seemed so long ago.
Without knowing why, Ozzie stopped at the precise spot where he had been shot and looked back. The hillside flowed down like lava from a volcano. The huge granite outcropping split the flow and sent it to each side of the boulder. It rejoined on the other side and laid waste to everything standing in its path. Ozzie squinted to see the mountain swallow Shane’s distant remains. Isabella and Ozzie turned and plodded in the direction of Hal’s cabin and away from their life as the oppressed.
Far, far behind them, the mountainside awoke with a fury. The steep slope behind Ozzie’s former home, his prison paddock, was among the first to seek its revenge for the painful oppression perpetrated on its soil. The slope erupted in a thunderous burst and washed down the mountainside. It devoured the curing sheds and the fences, burying their sins deep into its soil. The surge continued and spread as it slugged through hundred year old trees, swallowing them whole and mixing them with mud, leaves, and rocks in mountainous piles over makeshift roads and abandoned logging roads. A black sea of muck rolled over an old F100 pickup, burying it and Blake’s sins forever from human eyes.
Ozzie’s monster was finally laid to rest.
***
Hal shivered inside his cabin. His campfire had gone out early in the morning and his thoroughly soaked blankets were no match for the wind-driven rain. The only thing warm on his body was the back of his neck. If Only Rex was big enough to cover my whole body, Hal thought, I’d be fine and dandy.
The sounds around the cabin were deafening. Branches snapped loudly and crashed to the ground with increasing regularity. Hard, driving rain pounded the ground unmercifully, and the little stream that normally flowed peacefully fifty yards from his front porch now raged over his front steps.
Hal stood at the door and knew this was his moment. He had come out here to die alone, to be a burden to no one. Now death swirled around him, encircled him and tightened its icy grip until Hal had only the doorway to stand in. And now that it was here, it terrified him. He walked back inside and peered out the small window he had cut to see behind the cabin.
To the left of the garden lay a large Sycamore tree that had fallen the year before. Through the torrential rain, Hal peered at a red blob near its root ball. He stared pensively until he was sure he could make it out. Tammy lay on the ground and slept contentedly, riding out the storm and at ease with her survival instincts. Hal thought about how he had lived five years in the woods alone but, unlike Tammy and Ozzie, he was utterly at the mercy of nature. He needed shelter. And, he realized, perhaps too late, he needed companionship.
A bolt of lightning lit up the forest and blinded Hal just as if sunshine had reflected off a mirror into his eyes. He shielded his eyes and jumped back in the cabin as an earth shattering sound of thunder shook the cabin. A moment later he felt a bone rattling thud and saw a giant oak crash across his porch, ripping a third of his roof off in the process. His bed flew off the floor and crashed back down as Rex dug his claws into Hal’s neck.
Hal shook uncontrollably, drenched and overcome with terror. He thought about Tammy, how she was a creature of nature and knew how to survive. He thought of Ozzie and figured he was just as safe...hoped he was just as safe. Mostly, he though of Connie, picturing her face as he shuffled his feet to what was left of his front porch and allowed the rain to wash away his tears and his pain. He had come to forest to die, to put an end to his suffering. He found that now, just as when he had come five years earlier, he couldn’t embrace death. When push came to shove he realized what he wanted was to survive.
He stepped out of the cabin into rushing knee-deep water knowing that he had discovered that too late.
Chapter 33
Lonnie sat at his desk in the sheriff’s office surrounded by his deputies eight days after Hurricane Isabel hit Savannah and a week after it dumped thirty-two inches of rain on parts of Rabun County.
“Well, all righty then, anything else before I head out with my church to Savannah?” Lonnie asked. No one spoke. Lonnie surveyed the expressions and paused as he became, for the moment, Pastor Lonnie. “Let us say a prayer before I leave,” he said. Everyone bowed their heads and interlocked their fingers, none even questioning if an elected official could ask them to pray. Even the atheists and agnostics among them felt the loss and suffering that surrounded them and knew this was the time to remain quiet.
“Father–thank you,” Lonnie began. “Thank you for reminding us of what we have. For showing us what we all can be by being here for one another in each of our greatest times of need. For allowing us to remember that we are here, Lord, not to enrich our own lives, but to serve you and our fellow man. Please be with us, Lord, as we set out to do that, in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”
“Amen,” was shouted as men cried in the office, some uncontrollably. The losses they had witnessed first hand that week were permanently etched in their visions, as if a video game image was burned into an old television screen that was finally turned off. The vision would linger, forever.
Lonnie grabbed a bag and walked to the door. “I’ll see y’all in a couple of weeks if all goes well,” he said as he walked out the door.
“Oh...Sheriff,” Freeman shouted, and walked to the door.
Lonnie stopped. “Yes, Freeman?”
“I—I heard from the medical examiner this morning,” Freeman said. “He said it’ll be at least a week, maybe more, before they get results on the dental records from that head– uh, the remains of that head that washed up down on Warwoman. They think it’s a young man but they’re not completely sure yet.”
Lonnie turned his head away. “Well,” he said with a quivering lip, “when you hear something, you call me and let me know, no one else.”
“Understood, Sheriff. Good luck down there.” Freeman reached to shake Lonnie’s hand but Lonnie pulled him for a hug. Then the sheriff walked through the door and drove with members of his church to help victims begin rebuilding in Savannah.
***
Clint sat alone in the conference room at the USDA building on Alabama Street as the meeting ended. His supervisor, Clarence Green, walked back into the meeting and sat beside him.
“Clint—I’m sorry, but you got nothing on this guy,” Clarence said.
Clint fumed and bit his lip. He shook his head as he felt his blood boiling. He threw his eyes at Clarence and then checked the door to make sure no one else was coming back. Clint grabbed Clarence’s arm. “I know this guy is guilty, Clarence. I know it.”
“You know what, exactly?” Clarence asked.
“I know he sold tainted meat that wasn’t inspected. Hell he butchered those animals himself. I know he’s responsible for those deaths and illnesses!”
Clarence shook his head. “Clint, we’ve been over this, and we’ve been over this. You−”
“Anthrax doesn’t just come out of the air, Clarence! It comes from the soil, unless we’re talking about a biological weapon. And we’re not. What we are talking about is infected, tainted meat that wasn’t inspected and was served to an innocent, unsuspecting public. That’s a clear violation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act!”
Clint paused, before continuing. “People died, Clarence!”
Clarence removed Clint’s grip from his arm. “Maybe you’re right, Clint. MAYBE. But there’s a difference between thinking something and knowing something. You don’t know it, you think it.”
“Ya but—”
“But WHAT, Clint? But you went up there to see him a few days ago and found, what? Oh, that’s right, you found nothing. Absolutely nothing! A man living in a small house on a small piece of land where he couldn’t possibly have raised and butchered a bunch of pigs.”
Clint jumped to his feet. “You know good and well there’s thousands of acres behind him that—”
Clarence stood, looked Clint in the eye and interrupted, “That has a bunch of trees in it. That’s all I know. Most of ’em laid flat by that storm last week. Face it, Clint, you don’t have anything on this guy. And we don’t have any resources for you to go after him chasing a hunch. Hell, it’ll take us months to figure out when all the restaurants and retailers are safe to reopen near the Georgia coast.”
Clint looked down and tapped the conference table loudly with his fingers. “So that’s it? We don’t have the resources so we just let this guy slide?”
Clarence furrowed his eyes and pointed his finger directly at Clint. “L-E-T it go, Clint. You just focus on what we do know.”
Clint looked up at Clarence and caught his stare.
“We do know that Nick Vegas served all the meats,” Clarence continued. “And we know that the meat was, in fact, tainted with anthrax. Those are the facts.”
Clint exhaled and dropped his shoulders.
“That’s your target, Clint. Nick Vegas.”
***
Nick sat in the plush leather window seat and stared down at the sights of Atlanta as the 767 climbed. Turner Field and the Peachtree Plaza hotel led his eyes to Buckhead. His sprawling home, which seemed so big to him, was lost down there somewhere. The Delta pilot flew over Stone Mountain and the flight attendant brought Nick another Jack Daniels once the chime indicated they had reached 10,000 feet.
Nick pulled the envelope out of the brief case in front of him that his lawyer had sent over that afternoon. “Just look this over this weekend and let’s meet Monday to strategize,”the lawyer said. Nick had glanced it over. He had seen the $30 million class-action civil lawsuit carefully drafted by IBM’s team of high-priced lawyers who had nothing better to do than to go after Nick. To make him a poster child for wrongdoing while making themselves look good to the public. Enhancing their image as sticking up for what they thought was right.
More than anything he wanted to stay and fight and clear his name, but everything transpired against him. Nick slugged the Jack Daniels and asked the flight attendant for more. To his way of thinking he had done nothing wrong. He really believed that. Mostly he wanted to break Blake in half for what he had done to him. For what Blake had cost him.
Yes, Nick wanted to stay and fight. But he’d lose and he knew it. So he transferred what money he could to banks in Barcelona. He’d lay low and fight the battle from there, hopefully holding on to the house and the restaurants but, if not, getting as much cash out as he could. And keep his freedom.
