August 15th
7:07 a.m.
Black Rock Dam, Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina
The dam sat there, immutable, gigantic, the one constant in Wes Yardley's life. The others who worked there called it "Mother." Built to generate hydroelectric power in 1943 during the height of World War Two, the dam was as tall as a fifty-story building. The power station that operated the dam was six stories high, and Mother loomed behind it like a fortress from some medieval nightmare.
Wes started his shift in the control room the same way he had for the last thirty-three years: he sat at the long half-circle desk, plunked his coffee mug down, and logged into the computer in front of him. He did this automatically, without thinking, still half-asleep. He was the only person in the control room, a place so antiquated it resembled a set from the old TV show Space 1999. It had last been remodeled sometime in the 1960s, and it was a 1960s version of what the future might look like. The walls were covered with dials and switches, many of which hadn't been touched in years. There were thick video screens which no one ever turned on. There were no windows at all.
Early morning was normally Wes's favorite part of the day. He had some time to himself to sip his coffee, go over the log from the night before, check the electricity generation figures, and then read the newspaper. Often enough, he would pour himself a second cup of coffee about halfway through the sports pages. He had no reason to do otherwise; after all, nothing ever happened here.
In the past couple of years, he had taken to reading the want ads as part of his morning ritual. For seventeen years, since computers had come in and the control room had gone automated, the big brains at the Tennessee Valley Authority had talked about controlling this dam from a remote location. Nothing had come of it so far, and maybe nothing ever would. Nothing had come of Wes's want ad perusals, either. This was a good job. He'd be happy to go out of here on a slab one day, hopefully in the distant future. He absently reached for his coffee mug as he leafed through last night's reports.
Then he looked up-and everything changed.
Along the wall across from him, six red lights were blinking. It had been so long since they blinked, it took him a full minute to remember what those lights even meant. Each light was an indicator for one of the floodgates. Eleven years ago, during a week of torrential rains up north, they had opened one of the floodgates for the better part of three hours each day so the water up top didn't breach the walls. One of those lights blinked the entire time the gate was open.
But six lights blinking? All at the same time? That could only mean…
Wes squinted at the lights, as if that might help him see them better. "What the..?" he said in a quiet voice.
He picked up the phone on the desk and dialed three digits.
"Wes," a sleepy voice said. "How's your day going? Catch the Braves game last night?"
"Vince?" Wes said, ignoring the man's banter. "I'm down in the box, and I'm looking at the big board. I've got lights telling me that Floodgates One through Six are all open. I mean, right now, all six gates. It's an equipment malfunction, right? Some kind of gauge error, or a computer glitch. Right?"
"The floodgates are open?" Vince said. "That can't be. Nobody told me anything."
Wes stood and drifted slowly toward the board. The phone cord trailed behind him. He stared at the lights in awe. There was no readout. There was no data to explain anything. There was no view of anything. It was just those lights, blinking out of unison, some fast, some slow, like a Christmas tree gone a little bit insane.
"Well, that's what I'm looking at. Six lights, all at once. Tell me that we don't have six floodgates open, Vince."
Wes realized he didn't need Vince to tell him. Vince was in the middle of speaking, but Wes wasn't listening. He put the phone down and moved along a short narrow hallway to the observation room. It felt as if his feet were not attached to his body.
In the observation room, the entire south wall was rounded, reinforced glass. Normally, it looked out on a view of calm stream, flowing away from the building, turning right a few hundred yards away, and disappearing into the woods.
Not today.
Now, before him, was a raging torrent.
Wes stood there, mouth agape, frozen, numb, a cold tingle spreading across his arms. It was impossible to see what was happening. The foam sprayed a hundred feet into the air. Wes couldn't see the woods at all. He could hear a sound through the thick glass, too. It was the roar of water-more water than he could possibly imagine.
Ten million gallons of water per minute.
The sound, more than anything, made his heart thump in his chest.
Wes ran back to the telephone. He heard his own voice on the phone, breathless.
"Vince, listen to me. The gates are open! All of them! We've got a wall of water thirty feet high and two hundred feet wide coming through there! I can't see what the hell is going on. I don't know how it happened, but we need to shut it down again. NOW! You know the sequence?"
Vince sounded eerily calm; but then again, he hadn't seen all that water.
"I'll get my book out," he said.
Wes went to the control panel with the phone wedged in his ear.
"Come on, Vince. Come on!"
"Okay, I got it," Vince said.
Vince gave him a six-digit sequence of numbers, which Wes punched into the keypad.
He looked at the lights, expecting them to be off; but they were still blinking.
"No good. You got any other numbers?"
"Those are the numbers. Did you punch them in right?"
"I punched them in just like you said them." Wes's hands started to shake. Even so, he was starting to feel calm himself. In fact, more than calm. He felt removed from all this. He had once been in a car crash at night on a snowy mountain road, and as the car spun around and around, banging off the guardrails, Wes had felt a lot like he did at this moment. He felt asleep, like he was dreaming.
He had no idea how long those floodgates had been open, but six gates at once was a lot of water to release. Way too much water. That much water would overrun the river's banks. It would cause massive flooding downriver. Wes thought of that giant lake above their heads.
Then he thought of something else, something he didn't want to think of.
"Press cancel and we'll start over," Vince said.
"Vince, we got the resort three miles downstream from here. It's August, Vince. You know what I'm saying? It's the busy season, and they have no idea what's coming their way. We need to get these gates shut right this second, or we need to call somebody down there. They have to get their people out."
"Press cancel and we'll start over," Vince said again.
"Vince!"
"Wes, did you hear what I just said? We'll get the gates shut. If not, I'll call the resort in two minutes. Now press cancel and let's start over."
Dutifully, Wes did as he was told, fearing deep down that it would never work.
*
The telephone at the front desk rang incessantly.
Montgomery Jones sat in the cafeteria at the Black Rock Resort, trying to enjoy his breakfast. It was the same breakfast they served every day-scrambled eggs, sausages, pancakes, waffles-anything you wanted. But today, because the place was so busy, he was sitting in a corner of the cafeteria closest to the lobby. There were a hundred early-risers in here, taking up all the tables, gumming up the works at all the food stations. And that phone was starting to ruin Monty's morning.
He turned and glanced into the lobby. It was a rustic place, with wood paneling, a stone fireplace, and a battered front desk that hundreds of people had carved into over the long years. The desk was a mad intaglio of initials with hearts drawn around them, long-forgotten well wishes, and half-hearted attempts at line drawings.
No one was at the desk to answer the phone, and whoever was on the other end of the line was not getting the memo. Every time the phone stopped ringing, it paused just a few seconds, then started right up again. To Monty, this meant that every time the caller reached voice mail, he or she hung up and tried again. It was annoying. Someone must be desperate to make last-minute reservations.
"Call back, you idiot."
Monty was sixty-nine years old, and he'd been coming to Black Rock for at least twenty years, often two or three times a year. He loved it here. What he loved most of all was to get up early, have a nice hot breakfast, and get out on the scenic mountain roads on his Harley Davidson. He had his girlfriend Lena with him on this visit. She was almost thirty years his junior, but she was still up in the room. She was a late sleeper, that Lena. Which meant they would get a late start today. That was okay. Lena was worth it. Lena was proof that success had its rewards. He imagined her in the bed, her long brunette hair spread out across the pillows.
The phone stopped ringing. Five seconds passed before it started again.
All right. That's enough. Monty would answer the damn phone. He stood and creaked on stiff legs over to the desk. He hesitated just for a second before picking it up. The index finger of his right hand traced the carving of a heart with an arrow through the middle. Yes, he came here a lot. But he wasn't so familiar with the place that it was like he worked here. It wasn't like he could take a reservation, or even a message. So he would just tell the caller to try back later.
He picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
"This is Vincent Moore of the Tennessee Valley Authority. I'm at the control station of the Black Rock Dam, three miles north of you. This is an emergency. We have a problem with the floodgates, and request an immediate evacuation of your resort. Repeat, an immediate evacuation. There's a flood coming your way."
"What?" Monty said. Somebody must be putting him on. "I don't understand you."
Just then, a commotion started in the cafeteria. A strange hubbub of voices began, rising in pitch. Suddenly a woman screamed.
The man on the phone started again. "This is Vincent Moore of the Tennessee Valley…"
Someone else screamed, a male voice.
Monty held the phone to his ear but he was no longer listening. Just through the doorway, people in the cafeteria were getting up from their seats. Some were moving toward the doors. Then, in an instant, panic set in.
People were running, pushing, falling over each other. Monty watched it happen. A surge of people came toward him, eyes wide, mouths open in round O's of terror.
As Monty watched through the window, a wall of water three or four feet high swept over the grounds. A maintenance man in a golf cart driving by up a small hill from the main house was caught in the tide. The cart upended, flipping the man into the water and landing on top of him. The cart got caught for a moment, then slid down the hill on its side, pushed by all the water and gathering speed.
It slid right toward the windows, moving impossibly fast.
CRASH!
The cart slammed sideways into the window, shattering it-and a torrent of water followed.
It poured into the cafeteria through the smashed window. The golf cart came through the window, then slid across the room. A man tried to stop it, fell down in three feet of water, and didn't come back up again.
Everywhere, people were falling down into the rising water, unable to stand up again. Tables and chairs were sliding across the room and piling up against the far wall.
Monty got behind the desk. He looked down at his feet. The water was already up to his calves. Suddenly, across the way, the entire thirty-foot window of the cafeteria caved in, spraying great shards of glass.
It sounded like an explosion.
Monty prepared to run. But before his feet could take hold, before he could even scramble over the desk, all he could do was raise his arms and scream as the wall of water consumed him.
