Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (37 page)

"Yes—the woman in the lime-and-teal
sweatshirt in the back. What's your name?"

"Bev. Look, this gal beside me doesn't know
'Kumbaya.' Could you sing it?"

"If you help me, sure."

"I—uh—I don't remember. Mostly it's
'Kumbaya' over and over again isn't it?"

"That and other vastly
more complex concepts," Terry said.
"Such
as—someone's sleepin', prayin', laughin', cryin'—pretty
easy, huh? It's the melody that makes it—and
harmony."

"I used to do harmony in church," another
lady said. "Before they decided choirs weren't cost effective and
the money could be better spent on retreats to Vail, Colorado, and
such."

"Church harmony is really
appropriate for this song," Terry told her. "It's a lullaby, but it
was once used in church work by
missionaries to Angola. These songs have a lot of power, you
know. This one, as some of you remember, gained power in
the sixties—like a lot of African-inspired songs,
it chants well, can be sung for hours, and you can feel its spirit
building until
you know it can move
mountains."

At that point a sharp scream split the air,
and the floor moved beneath their feet as the house rattled and
shook all the collector's plates down from the wall.

* * *

James Francis Farnham had his hand on the
door when a new voice spoke to him inside his head.

"You'll need to give this one a miss,
Jimbo," the voice said in an accent that was half Southern drawl
and half like some detective on the PBS programs Farnham used to
enjoy in the old days. Perhaps the mystery shows weren't exactly
factual, but Farnham found them inspiring.

"Wha—you're new, aren't you?" He didn't like
the ambiguous tone of the voice. The other voices had been deep and
commanding—reassuringly male. This was somewhere between a tenor
and an alto, and he wasn't sure. He didn't want to take any more
orders from female voices.

"Bright boy."

"I want to finish up this
mission first. The other voices told
me to
get Terry and the old broad."

"We changed our mind, Jimbo. Here's what
you're to do instead—"

James Francis Farnham
listened, and grinned, and ran his fingers up and down the flat of
the blade as the voices spoke to him. He nodded and smiled and
laughed with growing ex
citement, his lips
leaking a
little
drool, which he licked happily
from
his chin. The voices put a finishing touch on their message, and he
laughed ecstatically. The earth moved.

* * *

When the roaring died down, Barry and Molly
switched on the portable radio they kept in the cellar, along with
the kerosene lantern Barry lit to save the flashlight batteries. He
also needed it to find the can opener. He kept canned peaches down
here for emergencies, and it wouldn't be any fun at all to have an
emergency if he didn't eat some of them.

The dial was set on the
university station and had to be
wiggled a
bit to get something other than static, though the broadcasting
station was less than three miles away.

"We have a late bulletin on the tornado
damage in the west end," a familiar baritone voice said.

"That's Mark," Molly said.

"What's he doin' announcin' news?" Barry
asked. "He's s'posed to be general manager. Honestly, that boy.
He's always letting people take advantage of his good nat—"

"Shush!" Molly said.

". . . and flood waters are rising," Mark's
voice continued. "The west end, completely cut off by the collapse
of the bridge, is being evacuated by boat and helicopter. A
temporary refugee camp is being erected in the park, and listeners
who are in need of temporary shelter or who have shelter, blankets,
or foodstuffs to offer may call this number—"

"Oh, shit," Molly said. "We gotta get out of
here."

"I'm sure it must still be a little windy
out there," Barry said. The truth was, he was pretty sure he knew
the sound of his house blowing away when he heard it, and he didn't
think he was quite ready to look yet.

"Yeah, I bet it is," Molly said grimly. With
resignation Barry set down his peaches. There was no arguing with
Molly when she was determined.

"I guess it
could
be we ought to get
ourselves above ground
before the flood
waters get this far," he allowed.

"Oh, that," she said.
"Maybe so. But way before
that
I need to be at work. There'll be all kinds of
clients applyin' for emergency assistance, and the department will
be swamped."

* * *

The New Madrid Fault was
the dubious pride of New Madrid, Missouri. It ran from somewhere
around Little Tree, Arkansas, up through New Madrid in the boot
heel of Missouri, up to Cairo, Illinois, and the Kentucky-Tennessee
border. There had been only a few minor tremors in recent years,
but in the 1800s, legend and history had it, the fault had provided
the entire area with the biggest earthquake recorded in the United
States. Lots bigger than anything they'd ever had before or since
in Los Angeles or San Francisco. So big, it was said, that the
Mississippi River backed up and flowed backward for four hours,
causing humongous floods. Why, for weeks afterward citizens walked
around carrying board planks to throw across the crevices, just to
get from one place to
another. Of course,
the only reason it wasn't world famous was because the area was
sparsely populated back then. Still,
seismologists were very interested, and so were the citizens
of
New Madrid, some of whom sported the
T-shirts found in the hopeful New Madrid tourist trap, saying "It's
Our Fault."

The area was far more heavily populated on
that late spring night when the Earl of the Earthquakes busted
loose with his tornadoes and jiggled the fault, which provided a
quake so bad it was felt from New Madrid clear across Missouri to
Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and into Oklahoma.
There it caused a tidal wave from the rush of the Arkansas River
into the gap left by the Mississippi just before the Mississippi
came gushing back down its bed in a huge wall of water that sent
the Arkansas curling right up on itself, wreaking devastation all
across Arkansas and up into Oklahoma to far northwest of Tulsa.

Where the Canadian River
ran into the Arkansas, it too
backed up to
cause flooding all over Texas. The Weather Devil
was ably assisted by the Flimflam and
Misinformation Depart
ment, who had been in
charge of the media for some time now. Despite a national emergency
in several states, no state of National Emergency was declared, and
the regions were left to struggle through on their own.

* * *

Julianne hitched a ride from one of the
ladies at the quilting bee and borrowed the woman's phone. The
phone at the Curtis's house beeped the continual out-of-order beep
in her ear, as did the Randolphs'. She burrowed in her knapsack and
emerged with the other contact number, that of Morgan and LeeAnn
Richards. LeeAnn answered the phone, and Juli, who realized
suddenly she had been holding her breath, exhaled.

"Are you okay?" she asked LeeAnn. "I
couldn't get ahold of the Curtises or Randolphs."

"Well, Ellie told me she
and Faron were going up to see their instrument-maker friends. But
I don't know where Molly and Barry could be. They have to work
tomorrow and—oh, my lord!" Juli heard the TV blaring in the
background. "Oh, Juli, I can't talk now. I just saw—I'm sure it was
the Curtises' street—" There was a catch in her voice, and to one
side her
voice said urgently, "Morgan,
Morgan, wake up! I think Molly
and Barry's
street was hit by the tornadoes—I can't talk now, Juli
honey."

"No, LeeAnn, wait! Where are these friends
Faron and Ellie went to see? I want to see if they're okay."

"They live up in Arkansas someplace—"

Morgan mumbled into the phone, "Mountain
Home. Callie and Aldin—don't know the last names, in Mountain Home,
Arkansas. Call us when you hear from them, okay? Leave a
message."

"I will," Juli promised, and hung up.

"I've got to make one more call," she told
her hostess, who stood in the doorway looking anxious and a little
bit shocky. "I'll give you some money for the bill."

"Never mind that," the woman said.

She dialed again and asked for Mountain Home
information. "May I help you?" a real person, the man on the other
end, asked.

"I hope so. It's an emergency."

"Right now everything is," the man said
ruefully. "I hope we can help you before lines go down here
too."

"I need to find a couple named Callie and
Aldin. They're instrument makers. I know I should have the last
name and the street, but please try—"

"No problem. Aldin used to work here on the
computerized equipment before he got on with the new GTE lab. Nice
guy. Here's the number."

"Wait! Listen, can you give me the address
too? In case the phone lines go down before I can reach them? It
really is an emergency."

"Sure. Four-point-six Mile County Highway.
Look for the mileposts. Mailbox shaped like an accordion."

"Did you find them, honey?" asked Juli's
hostess, a regal, gray-haired woman with beautiful green eyes. Juli
thought her friends had called her Helen.

"Yes, ma'am. Now I just need to figure out
how to get there—they're in Mountain Home, Arkansas. I guess I'll
hitch."

"Don't do that, honey. It's dangerous out
there now. Look, why don't you take the truck? My husband drove it
before he died, and now my son just uses it once in a while when he
comes in from St. Louis and needs it to help me haul stuff."

Juli hugged her and accepted the keys. "You
are a doll. I promise to get it back to you as soon as
possible."

She drove kitty-corner across the lower
eastern corner of Missouri, detouring for flooded banks, her hands
clutching the wheel as tornado warnings and reports of damage
blared over the radio. All the way she sang. No particular song,
just everything she could think of. Gospel songs figured
prominently in her repertoire, particularly ones with reference to
the River Jordan and waters parting, that sort of thing. She was a
Universalist Mystic by affiliation, if she was anything, but
childhood training was very comforting in this kind of
situation.

The ground bucked and quaked beneath
her like a believer in a fervor of religious ecstasy at a tent
revival. Finally she found Mountain Home. The town was completely
dark. No stoplights or streetlights lit the way, but County Highway
ran right through town, and she followed it until her lights picked
up the accordion-shaped mailbox. She had to leave the truck beside
the mailbox and stumble through the yard to the house. Dim light
emerged from within. Behind the house were pastures, and horses and
cows were charging back and forth across the pasture, mooing and
neighing with alarm.

Juli was scared too. She
could scarcely think for the noise
in her
head, psychic alarms clanging all around her in a world
gone wrong and besieged by disaster.

Eyes peered out from under the peeling white
board that skirted the porch, and as Juli knocked on the front
door, she heard a plaintive meow from under her feet.

She fell to one side as the earth bucked
under her feet and the front porch flipped from side to side like a
tilt-a-whirl. From the back of the house came the sound of
shattering glass, and the screen door twisted on its hinges as Juli
opened it, the frame crunching against the rest of the porch and
splintering into an S-curve.

"Anybody home?" Juli
called out, and presently
heard
what sounded like a human voice; then with
another tip of the
porch a front window
split, and a woman peeked out of it.

"Callie?" Juli asked. "I'm Julianne Martin.
My friends the Randolphs were going to see you about making an
instrument. Have you seen them?"

"No," said the little
round woman, plucking glass and plaster from her short blond bob.
She came to the front door. A tambourine was in one hand. "But I've
just been cowering beneath the table saw, mentally designing new
instruments. It's all I can do with the power out. Come on in and
pull up a
blanket. Aldin's still gone.
This was his night for volunteer fireman. I do it on
Thursdays."

"You mean the Randolphs didn't make it here
yet? Their friends said they left hours ago."

"Sorry," Callie said. "They probably stopped
off somewhere, I hope. It's dangerous out on the roads now. You
shouldn't have been driving around either."

"I know," Juli said. "But, well, we've been
through a lot together, and I needed to make sure they were
okay."

"As soon as Aldin gets home, we'll go try to
find them, okay?"

"I guess."

"Come on in and have a cup of tea or coffee
or something. I've turned off the gas, and the power went out about
nine-thirty tonight, but I set up our camp stove."

Juli followed Callie
through the workshop, which had once
been
the living room. The table saw, ban saw, router, sander, and
string-winder filled a room otherwise appointed with built-in
cabinets full of china and crystal and an ornamental fireplace with
a wood stove hooked up to it.