Part 2 (1/2)

Then things became, we might say, curious.

I missed my regular pilgrimage to the dam Monday morning. Old man Keefer was practically hemorrhaging in the kitchen. Gasping, he agreed to be healed.

That took most of the day. But how happy I was about that--not only to have healed Keefer, but to think that (if things took a normal course, which I saw I could not always count on) he would be a living example of what nan, properly used, could do.

For that reason I set off early on Tuesday along the Inter state. The sky was filled with dark clouds; it had rained all week, it had snowed all winter. The river next to the Interstate was already creeping onto the flood plain, a month early, they said.

Musing along, thinking in equal parts of Keefer, Mildred, and Don, I didn't really pay much attention to my surroundings until I was almost at the dam. I had hiked down the frost-heaved exit and taken the utility road simply as a matter of habit.

Then I noticed someone climbing the metal stairs next to the locks.

I was less than half a mile away. I stopped, curious. By the way he moved, I realized that it was Don.

I began to run.

It took me five minutes to reach the base of the dam and the overflow sluice into the locks hid the sound of my footsteps, which were as loud in my ears as my pounding heart.

He stopped climbing at the first lock and pulled something from within his coat.

His arm reached out. He twisted his wrist.

I wasn't sure exactly, as I stared up at him, so astonished I couldn't move, what sort of nan he poured into that lock. It was a rather good bet that he didn't know himself. But whatever the effects, they could easily be blamed on me. I remembered my ransacked jars. No telling. Nan was in the final lock, and would be in the water supply system within twenty minutes.

I turned. I jumped into the fringing woods, and crashed through the saplings.

As I ran, those silly line drawings rushed across my vision, everyone rus.h.i.+ng from Columbus because of the false rumor of the breaking dam and I thought Yes, Don, Yes! That's the answer! I'll get everyone out of town just like in the story. I'll tell them the dam has broken!

I was drenched with sweat when I reached the outskirts of Columbus, the farmhouse of Sally Cabriello, and I knew that she had a phone.

I shoved the door open and yelled, ”The dam has broken!”

She turned pale. ”No!” Her light brown hair was held back with a bandanna. She held her blond baby and another four-year- old boy rushed to her side and said ”Mommy what's wrong?”

”Can I use your phone?” I asked.

She nodded, as she grabbed a pack and tossed bags of beans and grains into it.

As I told John, the operator, and exhorted him to tell everyone Plan 2 was in effect, wherein they were all to go to the high ground enclaves which had been prepared, Sally bundled up her children, utterly calm, and led them outside. She set the boy in the wagon, put the baby in the bike seat. Then she paused, looking in through the window, staring at me think ing, I knew, what about her?

”Go!” I yelled, and motioned frantically. She looked doubt ful, then turned back toward her children and jumped on the bike without a second look.

Meanwhile, John said something really strange.

”Don told me you would try this,” he said.

” What?”

John's voice was flat, without affect.

”He said you might try something like this. Pretend that the dam broke so that everyone would agree to be inoculated. He's pretty smart, you know.”

”You don't understand,” I said, wis.h.i.+ng he was next to me so that I could tear his throat out. ”Everyone has to get out of town. Now. There's no time--”

And then the phone was wrenched out of my hand.

Don covered it up and said, panting, ”I saw you. You spied on me.”

”You idiot,” I said. ”Tell John to get everyone out of town. You have no idea what you've done.”

He just grinned and yanked the phone line out of the wall.

”You're going to tell me exactly what to do to fix everyone. Let's go.”

Fine, I thought, as he shoved me ahead of him onto the road. I don't care who gets the credit. It's my chance to inoculate the whole d.a.m.ned town.

There were several things neither of us took into account.

One, Sally. She was just as good as a siren.

Two, the fact that when we got back to town, the clinic was mobbed.

And three, the dam really did burst.

It was old. The spring runoff, after all that snow, had been too much for it.

We heard it the first minute after coming into the clinic.

We saw we couldn't get in the front door so we came in the back way. It was packed. People were shouting at Mildred, demanding antidote nans to take with them to the Survival Bunker. People are funny, aren't they? Children were crying, many of them, adding to the general G.o.dawful cacophony. Mildred was pretending she didn't know where the nan was, unsure what I would want, I suppose.

”They're up on the top floor--come on!” hollered brave Don, as Mildred stared at him, then at me. I just nodded and she yelled ”Wait now, be calm, just line up over here--”

Then we heard the dull explosion.

Everyone knew what it was. They thought the dam broke before, even though they heard nothing, which had probably made them feel safe, like maybe it's not broken, maybe it's just a small fissure and we have time to fool around.