He cursed again, under his breath, and threw the car into a turn that almost toppled it. Then he was heading back, into that awful sound.
"There he is," the child shrieked. "Tommy! Oh, Tommy!"
"Get in," he commanded, when he had stopped the car by the boy.
"Get in, Tommy," his pa.s.senger added.
The boy hesitated; the driver reached past the little girl, grabbed the boy by his shirt and dragged him in. "Want to be drowned, you fool?"
He had just shifted into second, and was still accelerating, when another figure sprang up almost in front of the car-a man, waving his arms. He caught a glimpse of the face as the car gained speed. It was the sneak thief.
His conscience was easy about that one, he thought as he drove on. Good riddance! Let the water get him.
Then the horror out of his own childhood welled up in him and he saw the face of the tramp again, in a horrible fantasy. He was struggling in the water, his bloodshot eyes bulging with terror, his gasping mouth crying wordlessly for help.
The driver was stopping the car. He did not dare turn; he backed the car, at the highest speed he could manage. It was no great distance, or else the vagrant had run after them.
The door was jerked open and the tramp lurched in. "Thanks, pal," he gasped. "Let"s get out of here!"
"Right!" He glanced into the mirror, then stuck his head out and looked behind. Through the haze he saw it, a lead black wall, thirty-or was it a hundred?-feet high, rushing down on them, overwhelming them. The noise of it pounded his skull.
He gunned the car in second, then slid into high and gave it all he had, careless of the tires. "How we doing?" he yelled.
The tramp looked out the rear window. "We"re gaining. Keep it up"
He skidded around a wreck on the highway, then slowed a trifle, aware that the breakneck flight would surely lose them the questionable safety of the car if he kept it up. The little girl started to cry.
"Shut up!" he snapped.
The Nisei boy twisted around and looked behind. "What is it?" he asked in an awed voice.
The tramp answered him. "The Pacific Ocean has broken through."
"It can"t be!" cried the driver. "It must be the Colorado River."
"That"s no river, Mac. That"s the Gulf. I was in a cantina in Centro when it came over the radio from Calexico. Warned us that the ground had dropped away to the south. Tidal wave coming. Then the station went dead." He moistened his lips. "That"s why I"m here."
The driver did not answer. The vagrant went on nervously, "Guy I hitched with went on without me, when he stopped for gas in Brawley." He looked back again. "I can"t see it any more."
"We"ve gotten away from it?"
"h.e.l.l, no. It"s just as loud. I just can"t see it through the murk."
They drove on. The road curved a little to the right and dropped away almost imperceptibly.
The b.u.m looked ahead. Suddenly he yelled. "Hey! Where you going?"
"Huh?"
"You got to get off the highway, man! We"re dropping back toward the Salton Sea-the lowest place in the Valley."
"There"s no other place to go. We can"t can"t turn around." turn around."
"You can"t go ahead. It"s suicide!"
"We"ll outrun it. North of the Salton, it"s high ground again."
"Not a chance. Look at your gas gauge."
The gauge was fluttering around the left side of the dial. Two gallons, maybe less. Enough to strand them by the sunken sh.o.r.es of the Salton Sea. He Stared at it in an agony of indecision.
"Gotta cut off to the left," his pa.s.senger was saying. "Side road. Follow it up toward the hills."
"Where?"
"Coming up. I know this road. I"ll watch for it."
When he turned into the side road, he realized sickly that his course was now nearly parallel to the hungry flood south of them. But the road climbed.
He looked to the left and tried to see the black wall of water, the noise of which beat loud in his ears, but the road demanded his attention. "Can you see it?" he yelled to the tramp.
"Yes! Keep trying, pal!"
He nodded and concentrated on the hills ahead. The hills must surely be above sea level, he told himself. On and on he drove, through a timeless waste of dust and heat and roar. The grade increased, then suddenly the car broke over a rise and headed down into a wash-a shallow arroyo that should have been dry, but was not.
He was into water before he knew it, hub high and higher. He braked and tried to back. The engine coughed and stalled.
The tramp jerked open the door, dragged the two children out, and, with one under each arm, splashed his way back to higher ground. The driver tried to start the car, then saw frantically that the rising water was up above the floorboards.
He jumped out, stumbled to his knees in water waist-deep, got to his feet, and struggled after them.
The tramp had set the children down on a little rise and was looking around. "We got to get out of here," the car owner gasped.
The tramp shook his head. "No good. Look around you."
To the south, the wall of water had broken around the rise on which they stood. A branch had sluiced between them and the hills, filling the wash in which the car lay stalled. The main body of the rushing waters had pa.s.sed east of them, covering the highway they had left, and sweeping on toward the Salton Sea.
Even as he watched, the secondary flood down the wash returned to the parent body. They were cut off, surrounded by the waters.
He wanted to scream, to throw himself into the opaque turbulence and get it over. Perhaps he did scream. He realized that the tramp was shaking him by the shoulder.
"Take it easy, pal. We"ve got a couple of throws left."
"Huh?" He wiped his eyes. ""What do we do?"
"I want my mother," the little girl said decisively.
The tramp reached down and patted her absent-mindedly. Tommy Hayakawa put his arm around her. "I"ll take care of you, Laura," he said gravely.
The water was already over the top of the car and rising. The boiling head of the flood was well past them; its thunder was lessening; the waters rose quietly-but they rose.
"We can"t stay here," he persisted.
"We"ll have to," the tramp answered....
Their living s.p.a.ce grew smaller, hardly thirty feet by fifty. They were not alone now. A coyote, jack rabbits, creepers, crawlers, and gnawers, all the poor relations of the desert, were forced equally back into the narrowing circle of dry land. The coyote ignored the rabbits; they ignored the coyote. The highest point of their island was surmounted by a rough concrete post about four feet high, an obelisk with a bra.s.s plate set in its side. He read it twice before the meaning of the words came to him.
It was a bench mark, stating, as well as lat.i.tude and longitude, that this spot, this line engraved in bra.s.s, was "sea level." When it soaked into his confused brain he pointed it out to his companion. "Hey! Hey, look! We"re going to make it! The water won"t come any higher!"
The tramp looked. "Yes, I know. I read it. But it doesn"t mean anything. That"s the level it used to be before the earthquake."
"But-"
"It may be higher-or lower. We"ll find out."
The waters still came up. They were ankle-deep at sundown. The rabbits and the other small things were gradually giving up. They were in an unbroken waste of water, stretching from the Chocolate Mountains beyond where the Salton Sea had been, to the nearer hills on the west. The coyote slunk up against their knees, dog fashion, then appeared to make up its mind, for it slipped into the water and struck out toward the hills. They could see its out-thrust head for a long time, until it was just a dot on the water in the gathering darkness.
When the water was knee-deep, each man took one of the children in his arms. They braced themselves against the stability of the concrete post, and waited, too tired for panic. They did not talk. Even the children had not talked much since abandoning the car.
It was getting dark. The tramp spoke up suddenly. "Can you pray?"
"Uh-not very well."
"Okay. I"ll try, then." He took a deep breath. "Merciful Father, Whose all-seeing eye notes even the sparrow in its flight, have mercy on these Thy unworthy servants. Deliver them from this peril, if it be Thy will." He paused, and then added, "And make it as fast as You can, please. Amen."
The darkness closed in, complete and starless. They could not see the water, but they could feel it and hear it. It was warm-it felt no worse when it soaked their armpits than it had around their ankles. They had the kids on their shoulders now, with their backs braced against the submerged post. There was little current.
Once something b.u.mped against them in the darkness-a dead steer, driftwood, a corpse-they had no way of knowing. It nudged them and was gone. Once he thought he saw a light, and said suddenly to the tramp, "Have you still got that flashlight you swiped from me?"
There was a long silence and a strained voice answered, "You recognized me."
"Of course. Where"s the flashlight?"
"I traded it for a drink in Centro.
"But, look, Mac," the voice went on reasonably, "if I hadn"t borrowed it, it would be in your car. It wouldn"t be here. And if I did did have it in my pocket, it"d be soaked and wouldn"t work." have it in my pocket, it"d be soaked and wouldn"t work."
"Oh, forget it!"
"Okay." There was silence for a while, then the voice went on, "Pal, could you hold both the kids a while?"
"I guess so. Why?"
"This water is still coming up.. It"ll be over our heads, maybe. You hang onta the kids; I"ll boost myself up on the post. I"ll sit on it and wrap my legs around it. Then you hand me the kids. That way we gain maybe eighteen inches or two feet."
"And what happens to me?"
"You hang onto my shoulders and float with your head out of the water."
"Well-we"ll try it."
It worked. The kids clung to the tramp"s sides, supported by water and by his arms. The driver hung onto~-the tramp where he could," first to his belt, then, as the waters rose and his toes no longer touched bottom, to the collar of his coat.
They were still alive.
"I wish it would get light. It"s worse in the darkness."
"Yeah," said the tramp. "If it was light, maybe somebody "ud see us."
"How?"
"Airplane, maybe. They always send out airplanes, in floods."
He suddenly began to shake violently, as the horror came over him, and the memory of another flood when there had been no rescuing airplanes.
The tramp said sharply, "What"s the matter, Mac? Are you cracking up?"
"No, I"m all right. I just hate water."
"Want to swap around? You hold the kids for a while and I"ll hang on and float."
"Uh. . . No, we might drop one. Stay where you are."
"We can make it. The change"ll do you good." The tramp shook the children. "Hey, wake up! Wake up, honey-and hold tight."
The kids were transferred to his shoulders while he gripped the post with his knees and the tramp steadied him with an arm. Then he eased himself cautiously onto the top of the post, as the tramp got off and floated free, save for one anchoring hand. "You all right?" he said to the tramp.
The hand squeezed his shoulder in the darkness. "Sure, Got a snootful of water."
"Hang on."
"Don"t worry-I will!"
He was shorter than the tramp; he had to sit erect to keep his head out of water. The children clung tightly. He kept them boosted high.
Presently the tramp spoke. "You wearing a belt?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Hold still." He felt a second hand fumbling at his waist, then his trousers loosened as the belt came away. "I"m going to strap your legs to the post. That"s the bad part about it; your legs cramp. Hold tight now. I"m going under."
He felt hands under water, fumbling at his legs. Then there was the tension of the belt being tightened around his knees. He relaxed to the pressure. It was a help; he found he could hold his position without muscular effort.
The tramp broke water near him. "Where are you?" the voice was panicky.
"Here! Over here!" he tried to peer into the inky darkness; it was hopeless. "Over this way!" The splashing seemed to come closer. He shouted again, but no hand reached out of the darkness. He continued to shout, then shouted and listened intermittently. It seemed to him that he heard splashing long after the sound had actually ceased.
He stopped shouting only when his voice gave out. Little Laura was sobbing on his shoulder. Tommy was trying to get her to stop. He could tell from their words that they had not understood what had happened and he did not try to explain.