"Yeah. They haven't found anybody answering your wife's description,
not that the driver knew about anyway. She'll be all right."
"Sure. Thanks." The trooper with the shotgun turned and walked back.
His partner sighed and moved on to the car at the head of the line. It
was stretched out of sight again.
* * * * *
"You want me to stop for any of this?"
The photographer said, "Nope. I'll wait until we get in the town. But
jeez, it's pretty beat up, isn't it?"
Jay Haggarty nodded and concentrated on his driving. One of the beat-up
elements of the landscape was the road they were on. Water had scoured
gravel out from under the surfacing in places, and there were potholes;
water had rushed across the road in a flood in other places, and left
mud and debris.
A man in a leather windbreaker yelled at them to slow down, and
Haggarty obediently put his foot on the brake. He followed the
man's instructions and they crawled across what had recently been a
four-million-dollar toll-bridge. It seemed to be vibrating as they
crossed it, Haggarty had to remind himself that they wouldn't have been
allowed on it if it weren't safe. The river was within two feet of the
surface of the roadway, and there was an uneven thudding as flotsam
rammed into the accumulated tangle on the upstream side.
They passed between the empty toll booths and headed for Hebertown.
Haggarty said, "I was here just before the war, Vince. Nice, quiet
little town. It doesn't look as if it's been built up much since then."
Ruffino said, "Who the hell would want to build a house around here?
You wake up some morning and you're under water. Give me Passaic."
There was a second roadblock just before the sign that said:
ENTERING HEBERTOWN. Haggarty showed his card and leaned out
of the window to ask where the emergency relief headquarters was. The
directions turned out to be pretty complicated: It's straight down
Center Street, only you can't get through there--trees across the
road. So turn left on Maple, but you won't be able to take the bridge
at White Street because it's blocked off; go three blocks further and
cross on the highway bridge. Then you'll have to watch out for soft
pavement on Locust....
Ruffino said, unbelievingly, "Jeez, Jay, it's worse here than it was
down by the river. Do you mean that little creek had enough water in it
to do all this?" He stared at the little gray stream that flowed under
the highway bridge, and at the twisted, half-collapsed warehouses and
storefronts that were easily five feet above water level.
"It's the little streams that do the damage," Haggarty told him. "Once
the water gets into the rivers it's all right. It can flow away. But
you see how close these buildings are set to the creek here? As soon
as the water came up a couple of feet it clobbered them."
He stopped, because the photographer was opening the door of the parked
car and no longer listening. It was as good a place to get started as
any. Haggarty pulled over to the curb, locked the ignition and got out.