by Rod Rayborne
Now free of its weight, she moved with the litheness of a gazelle. As she ran, her massive breasts swung heavily beneath her thin sweat soaked blouse, barrel chest heaving, breath coming in strangled sounding gasps. The last time she had run like this was in her Phys Ed class in high school thirty-four years and two hundred twenty eight pounds ago. She was young again. As her body systems shut down and numbness crept along her stubby limbs, she smiled. For the first time in years, she was proud of herself. Miguel would be too.
She collapsed on the corner of 23rd and Ohio Street. Patient eyes had been following her progress, hackles raised along taut spines, bodies quivering with anticipation. Now they launched themselves from an adjoining corner near the Sav-Mor building on Ohio, circled once and then settled down around her prostrate form. As they began to tug, Constanza looked up at her Miguel and smiled. Miguel smiled back.
Chapter Eighteen
T he sky flared orange and yellow, occasionally belching flames outward that were subsequently swallowed up by roiling black smoke. At those times, the air tingled with current, smelled of ozone and a low grumble would roll across the horizon, rattling the windows, those few that had unaccountably managed to retain their glass.
Crimson reflections played silent havoc over Sofia's glistening skin but went largely unnoticed, her attention instead riveted on the spilled merchandise from the jewelers shattered front window, it's contents, mingled with the glass, spread generously across the sidewalk before her. Potential was all around her.
It had only been a matter of a few short miles walk from the corpse of the building where she had spent the last two years of her life scratching for a dollar to Rodeo Drive, the world famous embodiment of modern unbridled greed and hedonistic excess she had only dreamt about in her other existence as she was already imagining it. Then, but two days before, her life had been hard, grunt work for pay hardly better than slavery, supporting her sister on poverty wages from ungrateful bosses with no chance to better herself. She couldn't earn a living and go to school at the same time, something she deeply though quietly resented.
Mara, her sister, a patient of Downs's syndrome, was often the focus of that resentment though she would guiltily reprimand herself when she realized where her thoughts were leading. Since her father had been snagged in a raid targeting illegal aliens and her mother had, in that time of fear and weakness, succumbed to the charms of forgetfulness via a new cocaine addition and later, run off to live with her supplier, Sofia had been the sole caretaker of both herself and Mara.
She loved her sister, that couldn't be denied, but she was also keenly aware that her life had changed the day she became her only support. Not for the better. That was three summers ago. Now she was twenty.
Thoughts of Mara brought tears to her eyes once again. What had happened to Sofia's life, her world? We're her parents still alive? Her friends? Something horrible had occurred. Maybe a terrorist had blown up her city. Or something underground had leaked, a gas line possibly. The streets were still now. If there were anyone else still alive besides her, they were gone now. Only the silent remained.
She had to get out of LA. She had other friends around California who would help her until she could get back on her feet. Stay with one or two while she got her life in order. That was going to take money though.
She coughed as she pulled off her pack and throwing back the flap, tossed food and drink into the street. Then she knelt and picked up those things she thought most valuable of the items the missing store window had spilled onto the sidewalk; rings, bracelets, diamonds and gold jewelry and dumped them into the pack instead, dropping a few of the gaudier necklaces over her head. When she had done so, she pushed what food and drink she could still fit inside back in the pack and pulled it on once again. Then she made her way further down Rodeo drive.
At the next store, she peered through the missing pane. Inside the darkened interior, more of the same. Diamonds, gold, statuary and original paintings, some centuries old. Further down, watches, brand name purses, high-heeled shoes and other leather goods. All for sale, now gifted to her by the hand of Providence. Perhaps she was meant to have these things. If not, why had she survived when so many other people littered the streets around her? It didn't take a genius.
She coughed, the sudden acrid smell of burnt things choking out her curious reflections. Coal black smoke drifted through the air past her, obscuring her view of the shops and their spilled goods. For the first time, doubts about the survivability of her current situation crept into her thoughts. Stepping over a body, she dropped her pack to the ground again and pulled out a delicate frippery she had nabbed earlier in the day. Bunching it into her right hand, she pulled the pack back on and then held the garment over her mouth and nose.
Sofia continued down Rodeo Drive, sizing up the various stores she passed with a jaundiced eye. So many choices, just one pack. It was the ultimate shopping spree. She had to be selective. She didn't think she could carry more than thirty pounds for any great distance and a lot of that weight was already taken up by a few cans of Coke resting at the bottom of her pack. It was a quandary.
She thought about other modes of transport. A car would be ideal of course, but she didn't how she would be able to get one around the city with so many other vehicles, chunks of asphalt and scarred roads in her way. Damn, she thought, staring at a black Jag that had somehow survived the shitstorm almost intact, covered only with a layer of fine white ash. She walked around it looking inside, running her fingers along its glossy teak wood steering wheel through a missing side window. Tsk.
She had considered finding a grocery cart somewhere to carry her take but knew she had have no easier time trying to push its small wheels around the cracks and holes than driving the larger wheels of the Jag over it. Even a bicycle would be impractical. She doubted she could keep her balance, riding top heavy with thirty pounds of additional weight hanging on her shoulders. In the end, she knew if she was going to get out of the city, it would have to be on foot or not at all. On foot then.
She walked along slowly, window shopping as though it were a cool spring day, twilight gazing into the ebony store interiors with avid, though wary interest. Wary because of the smell. Though she was becoming somewhat used to the sickly sweet odor outdoors, enclosed areas were another matter altogether.
Unless she found compelling reason from the sidewalk to enter the now squalid depths of one of the fine luxury establishments, she preferred to move on down the street to the next store. There were plenty to choose from. Each store brought its own excitement and money was burning a hole in her pocket. So to speak.
She wondered if she were the last person alive in the city of Los Angeles. Certainly she'd seen no one alive since she quit the superstore where she'd awoken. Well, that wasn't quite true. She knew there were a few still alive here and there, but not in a condition she could do anything to improve.
On entering Harson's fine art and antiques store, the roof stove in and a light breeze running through, she was met with dollops of cash spread in mounds across the floor. Her heart jumped and her initial reaction was to fill her pack with it, an idea she soon discarded. The most she could expect to fit inside wouldn't buy her a home in Watts, much less a villa nestled amongst the granite cliffs that overlooked the ocean in Capri.
If she was going to do this, she was going big. Besides, maybe rich companies like Harson's marked their money like a bank. They made so much of it, she wouldn't be surprised. If she tried to spend it once she got out of LA, the police would swoop down and charge her with Grand Larceny. She wasn't a fool. She kicked the bills out of her way and walked into the store.
She had loved fine art since she was a child. Her parents had walked into a fancy antiques store one day with her in tow to dream about a better life.
She remembered how the white store owner had hovered nearby, looking somewhere else when they glanced in his direction and then back again when he thought the wetbacks had turned away. She
hadn't turned away though and when she told her father about it, he said the man was watching them to make sure they didn't walk out of the store with something they didn't pay for. Because they were poor Mexicans.
She glared at the man after that, but her parents were enjoying themselves so much, she relaxed with them and decided to ignore him. Still, she did remember to stick her tongue out at the old man when they were leaving, his wrinkled face creasing even more deeply when he saw her. Those were the days before Mara and the doctor's bills and the affairs and the Coke, when they were still a young family. Happy and free. As free as poverty would allow, at least. Happy anyway.
On a wall near the door, still resting in its glass case, Sofia saw a glittering plaque behind which lay something she couldn't quite make out. Approaching, her mouth fell open in delight. An old set of pearl handled gold pistols inscribed with a delicate filigree of eagles and vines winding around the body of a reclining woman holding up a pennant with a star inside. A well-worn leather belt with similarly decorated holsters, complete with a ring of silver bullets encircling the belt, made her heart skip a beat. She reached through the case and took out one of the guns. It was too dark to make out the finer details, but Sofia knew instantly that she had to have the weapons. She removed the other pistol and the belt and took them outside to examine more closely.
She turned them this way and that, watching the occasional flashes from the sky highlight their tiny details and then, pushing the guns into their holsters, she lifted the belt and buckled it on its tightest setting around her hips. It was heavier than she had imagined and still far too loose. She dropped it slowly to the ground and stepped out, lifting the whole again and carrying it back into the store. She set it on the counter and hunted around for something she could use to make another hole in the thick leather.
In another section of the store, she found a few old wooden handled tools on display and among them an awl. She snatched it up and walking to the belt, carried it back out to the street for better light. There she held the belt tight around her hips, pulling it through the buckle and marking a place for a new hole with the awl, then removing it, knelt and gently worked the point of the awl back and forth until she had made the hole. Smiling, she stood back up and wrapping the belt around her once again, pulled it through the buckle.
Now it fit perfectly, sitting just loosely enough to hang rather jauntily on her hips she thought, one side a little higher than the other. Like a real cowboy. Walking back to the pack, she grabbed it and pulled it on. Then, a new spring in her step, she continued on down the street.
Chapter Nineteen
S ince leaving the grocery store, Gordon had moved with renewed caution. He recognized the neighborhood, turning in a direction opposite that the soldiers had taken. Some blocks ahead on Radford was a Big 5.
Crossing the street, he made his way stealthily from doorway to doorway, looking back over his shoulder the way he had come almost as often as the direction he was going.
The rain grew stronger, lightening coursing the sky in sudden flares, thunder following behind, echoing again and again the catastrophe that had made low the great city just days before. One one thousand, two one thousand. It was close. Breathing deeply, Gordon pushed on.
As he walked, he thought about the soldiers. They were all outfitted in camouflage pants, dog tags and tall black boots. They also cradled identical weapons. The implication was clear. They were military. Were they from a local base, a National Guard unit perhaps? He hadn't noticed any insignia, come to think of it, but then they'd been shirtless and he hadn't really been looking for it anyway, his attention instead being riveted on the tragedy unfolding before him. And trying to stay hidden behind the car. No doubt if they had seen him, he'd be lying face down on the asphalt next to the other man right now, twitching as well. Despite the heat, he shivered.
Maybe he hadn't noticed their insignia because there wasn't any. A lack of insignia could mean that they weren't true military. Paramilitary, perhaps. Survivalists. That made him even more nervous than he had been before. Survivalists were known to be hotheaded, or so he had been told at least. A kill them all, let God sort them out kind of philosophy. Real or not, they were just as lethal as any Government Issues he might cross paths with.
At Park, Gordon found himself stepping over numerous bodies and surmised that there must have been some kind of event going on nearby at the moment of the explosion. The building was a Radisson, one heavy pane of glass still intact. In the street a tour bus lay on its side, one of the newer, luxury models. Unlike the shock he had felt seeing the senseless murder of the man in the parking lot, the bodies here had a lesser though still powerful impact on his psyche. The man he had seen killed. These people we're already dead. The smell though went a long way towards rectifying that inadequacy however, reminding him that these still forms had once been alive as well.
Gordon pressed his hand against the cloth tied around his head but the smell was too powerful for such a crude filter and he turned to walk around the bus instead. Thoroughly soaked from the rain, miserable and lonely, he pressed forward, stumbling over bodies and broken concrete, his face intermittently lit by ethereal flashes of color he no longer paid attention to, moving forward, walking but forgetting why.
Some time later he found himself standing in front of the Big 5, unable to remember how he had gotten there or how much time had passed. He turned and looked around him but in the hideous twilight there was nothing in the broken landscape that he could easily recognize. He paused for a moment and then turned and made his way into the store, looking carefully first to make sure that the building was empty.
He walked in through a gaping hole in the nearest wall, crunching across shattered aisles, paying no more attention to the sound than if he were walking down a gravel trail in the Sierras. When he reached the gun section, he found them spread out across the floor along with the other merchandise.
He stared down on them narrowly. Then, as he bent to pick up a box of shells, his hands began to tremble. He remembered again that moment when he was three, his earliest memory, walking into his mother's room and seeing her there gagged, tied to the bed, hands and feet. And the men standing over her, yanking at her clothes while she shook. Then she looked towards the door and saw Gordon standing there, screaming for his mother and her eyes wide with terror.
The next was the shots and she laid still while blood gouted from her body through bloody holes. One of the men pointed at Gordon and they ran past him as he cried, shoving him hard out of the way, causing him to fall backward and hit his head against the wall. Then they were gone.
The blast from the gun made his ears ring so loudly that he couldn't hear himself cry. The bright ceiling light. A stain on the carpet. The pain from his fall. That was all. After that, it was just he and his father. A kind and loving man, he took on himself the roles of mom and dad for the two boys. Always laughing before, dancing with his mother. Quiet thereafter.
Gordon dropped the shells. He tripped and fell against a tipped counter and went down in a loud crash he couldn't hear over the sound of thunder coming through the missing windows. And the ringing in his ears. He sat there where he had fallen, propped against a wall, his hair hanging in wet, greasy strands. Head down, tears dripping from his chin, he remained there unmoving for an hour, two, his thoughts a blur, eyes unfocused, a kind of dream-like lethargy pressing him into the floor.
The pack was heavy. He'd dropped in everything he thought he might need, a few packages of freeze dried nuts and a sleeping roll, water purification tablets, a multi-tool and a bottle of basic vitamins. On his feet, a new pair of leather shoes selected, he hoped, for durability. And around his neck, a small pair of binoculars completed his take. He'd looked for a respirator but couldn't find one. That didn't surprise him. He didn't think he could find survival gear in a sports and camping store. He'd have to stick with the rag he had tied around his neck for the time being. He hoped the smoke would clear soon.
> What he didn't take said as much about him as what he did. He'd left the guns behind. He couldn't bring himself to look at them, much less feel the heft on one in his hands. It was impossible. He'd gotten up from where he had fallen and stumbled away.
Now he stood at the entrance to another store, food and water his goal once again. He stepped inside, holding the rag tighter against his mouth, the smell seemingly stronger than he had noticed two days earlier, another empty pack slung over his other shoulder. This time he made his way to the processed food aisle ignoring the bodies laying where they had fallen, hoping to find there, nutritional goods that would last and pack easily without carrying an aroma that could attract attention to him from hungry marauders.
Finding the processed foods, he loaded the rest of the pack as efficiently as he could, leaving most of the space for the water he would pick up next. When he had done packing the nutrition bars, he opened another box and ate as many of them as he could manage, gagging them down after the first half dozen.
He then made his way to the water aisle. Filling the pack the rest of the way with the smallest plastic bottles of water he could find, he threw it over his left shoulder. He grunted under the weight wondering how long he would be able to carry it. The pack felt balanced on his shoulders but his back protested the burden by a spasm that stopped him momentarily before he pushed his thumbs beneath the straps to help support them and keep them from digging into his flesh.
As he approached the entrance, a light flared outside, brighter than any Gordon has seen since the blast and he fell back, carried to the floor by the weight of the pack. He turned and crawled as quickly as he could to the meager shelter of a fallen metal shelving unit, burying his head in his arms just as the boom shook the store. Then came the shockwave, debris seemingly floating high into the air as though by magic. The roar was deafening. He clamped his arms around his head, feeling his hair standing on end as a wave of kinetic energy tugged at his hair, his clothing and his teeth.
