The Leviathan Effect (43 page)

Mallory watched in Room 321 as a dowdy-looking, short-sleeved scientist explained the phenomenon using a split screen that showed two live feeds.

Mallory switched the channel. He watched footage of the storm’s outer bands ripping into the North Carolina and Virginia coasts, submerging coastal resorts. Power outages, downed trees. More than half of the traffic signals on the North Carolina coast not working. Record high tides of seven feet above mean low water reported.

He heard a car door slam and looked out, saw Blaine running through the rain and felt a surge of adrenaline. He let her in and helped her out of her windbreaker. They held each other for a long time, Blaine breathing heavily, her hair wet against the side of his face. Mallory poured coffee into two motel water glasses. They sat on the bed and sipped coffee and looked at each other.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.” She shook her head unfamiliarly, staring at the carpet. “I don’t know. It was just … It was strange, when I was driving here.” Her voice trailed off. She looked at her coffee.

“What.”

“I was thinking about something Dr. Sanchez said to me. He said natural disasters were all adjustments. That if a severe weather event happened in one part of the world it would affect weather in other parts of the world.”

“Like the Butterfly Effect.”

“Kind of. I don’t know. I just feel something really scary is going on.”

Mallory nodded. “I know,” he said. “Don’t think about it.”

She turned to him and her eyes searched his.

“Let’s go find your son,” he said.

W
HEN IT OPENED IN
1952, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge was the world’s largest continuous over-water steel structure. A second, three-lane span was christened in 1973. Nearly thirty million vehicles cross the five lanes of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge every year now. But bridges are vulnerable to high winds and occasionally, during hurricanes, they are closed to traffic. At 1:30
P.M.
on Friday, October 7, the State Transportation Administration closed both spans of the bridge indefinitely because of gusts attributed to Alexander—one of which had slammed a small car into a side rail of the bridge, seriously injuring two children.

The White House had given Maryland State Police the location where Blaine’s son, Kevin, might be—a beachfront condominium owned by the parents of his girlfriend, Amanda. They were en route to checking it out. If they found him, they’d drive across the bridge and Blaine would meet him at the western terminus. Motion felt better than doing nothing. And Mallory wanted to be with her.

“I know we shouldn’t be out in this,” she said, as they plowed through an empty, rain-soaked road in Anne Arundel County, toward Highway 50, the east-west route that spanned the Bay Bridge.

“Well, no,” Mallory said. “But on the other hand, it’ll give us a chance to talk.”

Blaine laughed. The wipers beat back and forth. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Everything I forgot to ask you.”

“Oh.” She looked at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not.”

“All right. Go ahead,” she said “Ask.”

“Your son’s father, for starters.”

“Oh. He’s living in San Francisco. Remarried. He left me nine years ago. I was too career-oriented. I’m difficult to get along with, he said. I’m not seeing anyone at the moment, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It is.”

“What about you?”

“Ditto.”

“Why?”

“Similar reasons, I suppose. I was living with someone. It became complicated.”

They listened to the rain. “Although to be honest,” she said, “I think I’m becoming a little bit infatuated with you. I’m not sure that’s something I should have said.”

“No. I’m glad you did.” He watched the wipers, beating manically.

“How about you?”

“I like career-oriented girls,” he said.

Blaine smiled, he could tell. They talked about their pasts for a while, then, answering questions as Mallory plowed on toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Figuring it kept them from thinking about her son or from paying too much attention to the lightning that was illuminating the distant landscape. Nature was acting out, like a child having a temper tantrum, it seemed; or, perhaps, an animal in its final death throes, lashing out at what had killed it, nature’s revenge.

A cluster of police cars had set up a roadblock in front of the Bay Bridge toll plaza, blue lights arcing through the rain over wet pavement. Blaine got out and identified herself. Mallory stood beside her. The troopers asked that they wait at a convenience store several miles down the road. They would bring them the news as soon as they had any. Blaine lowered her head and hurried back to the car. She was silent as they drove back against the rain.

The store was the only place open for miles. Its front windows were boarded up.
NO WATER
and
NO BEER
signs taped on the front door. Five people sat on lawn chairs inside, wrapped in blankets: two women, three men. Everyone was watching the nineteen-inch television set mounted behind the check-out counter.

“You should see this, son,” said the proprietor, a short, square-built
man with a ruddy face and close-cropped white hair. “Did you see this? Seven people fried on the street.”

The video of the lightning in Frederick.

Mallory turned away. He took a quick inventory of the store. The shelves and coolers were nearly empty. He stood with Blaine by the screen door and held her, looking out toward the bay, rain glittering in the streetlights below the black sky.

“We got beer, son,” the man said, a few minutes later. “We’re just not advertising that right now. Day like this, I won’t even charge you. Go ahead and get a cold one here, if you’d like.”

He opened an ice chest behind the counter and showed them. Mallory looked at Blaine. She reached in and pulled out a Bud Light. Thanked him and returned to the front door, breathing the rain.

“Planning to ride it out?” Mallory said to the proprietor.

“Yep.”

“Probably shouldn’t.”

“Been through all kinds of storms, son.”

“Not like this one you haven’t.”

“Well.” He made a snorting sound and rubbed his crotch. “What can I tell you?”

“Don’t know. Probably not a lot,” Mallory said. He stood beside Blaine, who passed him the beer. Waiting. Holding her from behind, watching the rain. Eventually, they saw a set of lights misting through the rain. Growing brighter. A state police trooper, returning with news. Mallory watched the car park, the man emerging, walking toward the store. Taking off his hat. Blaine going outside to meet him.

Mallory stepped into the rain and watched. He could tell from the look on the trooper’s face. It wasn’t good news.

Blaine turned to Mallory, who was standing ten feet behind her. He saw her face sink.

“T
HE CONDO WAS
empty,” he said, driving back on the flooded highway. “Which just means that he’s somewhere else. It was one of any number of possible locations.”

But Blaine was silent most of the way back, checking her phone frequently, listening to Mallory as he offered up stories about his life. Talking to be talking. At times, the drive was scary, the wind blowing
the car off the road or lifting water out of the fields, the rain so heavy he had to pull over and park.

They returned to Room 321, where Blaine took off her clothes and took a long, hot shower. Mallory did, too, then. Afterward, they slipped under the covers in bed and warmed each other. Thunder rumbled as they slowly made love, and occasionally the room lit up with lightning. They were going to devise a plan, they agreed, just not right away.

Then at 5:34, the power went out.

“Just hold me,” she said. “There’s not much else we can do now, is there?”

“Not much,” he said. She seemed to fall asleep as he held her and Mallory lay against her with his eyes open, thinking some of what he’d been thinking earlier. About the family he’d had and the one he didn’t have. About the ways he had led his life and the ways he hadn’t, the decisions he had made that had somehow steered him to this room, with Catherine Blaine.

“What are you thinking?” she said, turning her head slightly, surprising him.

“Oh, nothing.” He lay his head down beside hers and tried to sleep.

Later, Mallory heard something else and opened his eyes. Saw Blaine reaching for her cell phone in the dark. Heard a sharp intake of breath, and in the glow from of the phone he saw her face transform.

D
R
. J
AMES
W
U
waited until two minutes past six to contact the Oval Office. To his surprise, President Hall took the call directly.

“Sir, I’m getting ready to go.”

“All right. Any change?”

“Nothing appreciable. Dr. Clayton will continue monitoring for another couple of hours.”

“All right. We’ll have a team here overnight, downstairs in the woodshed.”

“Sir, can I talk with you before you go?”

“Of course.”

“In person, I mean.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be right over.”

T
HE FIRST THING
C
ATHERINE
Blaine heard was music in the background. A group that she vaguely recognized. The Killers, maybe, or Radiohead. Or Blink 182. One of them.

Then she heard Kevin’s voice.

Saying,
“Mom?”

Blaine listened to him breathe, waiting for him to speak, to explain himself. Anger tempered by joy.

“
What’s going
on?” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Mom?”

“Honey? Can’t you hear me?”

“Not well.”

“Can you hear me now?” She stood in the open doorway, watching the driving rain.

“Sort of. We have, like, a bad connection?”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course.”

“Honey? I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. Why haven’t you called?”

“I
tried
,” he said, with his customary bristle. “My phone was out. Then the electricity went. Right? I can’t believe we just now got reception back.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in—I guess, Delaware? We’re in, like, a big house. We’re safe, Mom.”

“Who’s we?”

“A bunch of friends. Amanda’s here.” After a moment, he said, “Where are you?
I’ve
been worried, too, you know.”

“I know.” Blaine looked at Mallory and shook her head. Then she gave him a thumbs up. “Do you realize what’s coming, Kev?”

“What?”

“Do you know what’s coming?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of what?”

“I mean, our electricity just came back, right? I saw the report from the Weather Service and stuff. Sounds like the usual overreaction.”

“No, honey, believe me. It’s not overreaction.”

She heard someone screaming in the background.

“What’s going on there, Kev? Are they all right?”

“Nothing.” A woman shouted his name urgently. “It’s just a hurricane party, Mom.”

“Honey, this is a serious storm. You need to get away from the ocean. Right away.”

“What?”

He said something else, but she could only hear a few words. He was breaking up.

“Kev?”

“Bye, Mom. I’ll call you in a while.”

She pulled the phone away. Her gaze met Mallory’s.

“Hurricane party,” she said. “Can you believe it?”

Then she looked at her phone and retrieved the message she had just missed. To her surprise, it was from White House Chief of Staff Gabriel Herring.

“What is it?”

“A YARI call. That’s odd.”

“What’s YARI?”

“Your Attendance Required Immediately. I’m being summoned back to the White House.” She shared a long look with him. “Want to drive me?”

T
HEY TOOK
I
NTERSTATE
270, a connector route to the Capital Beltway, back to Washington. The roads were virtually empty now except for police and emergency vehicles. Twice they were stopped at
checkpoints and told to turn around. Both times Blaine showed her government identification and they were waved through.

At the White House gate on Fifteenth Street, Blaine was informed that Mallory did not have clearance to enter.

After a confused several minutes, the President’s voice came on the gatehouse phone line.

“Cate, what’s going on?” he said.

“Charles Mallory’s here, sir,” she said. “He helped me figure all of this out. I’d like him to come to this meeting.”

“Who?” he said. “Hold on.”

The President passed the issue on to Gabriel Herring. Another uncertain interval followed, during which Mallory was asked routine background questions, and finally was issued an entry badge.

The others were standing as they entered the Data Visualization Center, hovering around the two scientists. DeVries. Bill Stanton. Herring. The President nodded a greeting, glancing at Mallory.

“I hesitated to convene this meeting, Cate. I don’t know if it’s worth much, but Jim Wu and Dr. Clayton here are telling me it warrants at least one more briefing before we close down the circus. So here we are.”

“All right,” Blaine said.

“Basically, we’re seeing a small shift in the storm,” the President told her, “which may or may not be attributable to our mitigation efforts.”