The mayor was directing traffic as various department heads tried to keep operations going. They were basically stringing tin-cans together and taking the technology back to the Stone Age. Still, nothing seemed to work.
“Martin?”
Martin looked up. He didn’t even realize that he lost focus. Mitchell, the city’s main tech advisor, Lisa from communications and one of the FEMA agents were all that were left in the room. The mayor had a raised eyebrow. He waited for Martin’s attention.
Martin cleared his throat. “Yes, sir?”
“City Works thinks they can restore the network of cell towers that AT&T set up for Comic-Con downtown.”
Martin smiled. It was a project the mayor’s office got slammed for in the local media. 10 million dollar upgrade to an independent Wi-Fi network downtown. It was a big ticket to boost bandwidth for basically four days a year. The traffic of comic book nerds posting selfies with cosplayers was so drastic they had to create an independent system. It included a satellite uplink.
“Our priority has to be emergency services.” Martin leaned forward. “It would help ease the minds of the general public if we could get 911 functioning.”
“Our dispatchers are waiting.” Lisa nodded.
“We need our TV stations back on. People need information”
“Won’t happen.” Mitchell wiped sweat-soaked hair off his glasses. “People with the on-air signal, sure. The cable companies depend on fiber optics and . . .”
Martin knew what he would say. “NBC is the only station in tower range. We might have to send a tech.”
“Stop! Get down!” Someone yelled from the office. Lisa ran to the door. When it swung open, Agent Shea had a gun under Stephen’s chin and pushed up against a wall. Stephen had his dress shirt off, traded in for a UC Fullerton sweatshirt, a Padres hat and sunglasses.
“On the floor!” Shea yelled.
Stephen slid to the floor. The mayor stepped from the meeting room into the main office. He had his hands raised.
“Easy, easy.” The mayor had his hands up.
“Kurt, you gotta help me! This psychopath won’t let me leave.”
The mayor looked at Martin. Stephen had not called the mayor by his first name since election night. Shea didn’t move away, still standing over Stephen.
Stephen dropped his head into his hands. He wept.
“We’re fucked,” Stephen yelled, accidentally spitting. “Please let me get back to my boys.”
Shea didn’t holster his pistol. Martin had never heard of FEMA agents being armed. He turned slowly to the exit. He pointed at it.
“Too late to leave,” Shea exhaled. “The streets are closed for a good fucking reason. I am sorry to inform you all that you are included in that closure.”
Martin kept his eyes on Shea, Mitchell slipped back into his office. Shea tracked him with his eyes. He didn’t seem to mind. He was still working on the phone lines. The rest of the remaining office staff watched Shea pace like a hungry lion trapped behind glass at the zoo.
The mayor whispered just loud enough for Martin. “I don’t think he is FEMA.”
Stephen looked up through teary red eyes. “What are we doing here?”
Shea pointed the pistol to the reinforced door, tapped it with the barrel. “Trust me, there is nothing you can do out there.”
Martin prayed inside. Please, God, are you listening? Help us out here. Anything please? He leaned down. He put his arm around Stephen. He looked up at Shea. The FEMA agent swiveled to clear the path back toward the conference center. Martin helped him up. Martin could tell Stephen had a fever, he was burning up.
He heard the mayor defending his staff, advocating for Stephen. Martin helped him into the chair.
“What the fuck are you thinking, Stephen?”
“My boys need me,” Stephen whispered.
Stephen made two fists. He dug them into his eyes and tears rolled out over the fists. It was a striking sight. Stephen was the most confident member of the staff, a young hardcore republican who never admitted to getting anything wrong. Martin pulled up a chair next to him, reached out and pulled him into a hug. The tears flowed. Stephen dropped his head on to Martin’s shoulder.
“We can’t handle this.” Stephen wept.
Martin squeezed his old friend close. He smelled it again. It was faint, but familiar. The smell when he turned on the sink in the bathroom. Martin reached into his pocket. The handkerchief he had used today. He held it under Stephen’s dripping nose. A strange mucus dripped on to the rag. He fought the urge to gag. That was it, the same smell. He looked at the discharge and wondered if he could see the little crawlers in the light.
Martin pushed off from Stephen who just let out a defeated sounding sigh. Martin ran to a lamp and held the snot rag in the spotlight. He could see the little creatures, just babies compared to the one he saw earlier. How long had these creatures lived inside him? Martin threw the snot rag in the trash can.
“Why us?” Stephen lifted his head. His eyes were changing color, his right shifted slightly in the socket. “Why would God do this to us?”
***
“Were back on San Diego’s sports . . .” Will paused allowing a few ticks of dead air. Normally, Alex would be losing his mind in the booth over the dead air. Will almost took off his headphones and threw them. It was habit, saying the station’s name. They were forced to say the station’s name and tag line as many times as possible in the broadcast. Station policy.
“Nobody gives a crap what station this is anymore. We are on the air and after scanning the dial this asshole is who you find? Look, I am going to do my best to keep you informed, but in the last few minutes we have been having trouble with our landlines which are just giving us busy signals. Sat phones are working. We have a few of those we stole from the news department down the hall. As for our troops, they still have sat phones and radios – god bless ‘em. Seriously, thank you to our men and women who are out and about town to protect us. Stay inside, folks, I can’t say it strongly enough. Stay inside. I’m sorry, I need another break.”
Alex came on the air. “I’ll replay your interview with Sky 7.”
Will heard the interview start. He dropped his headphones. He walked out of the studio. Alex met him in the hall. The lights were now off on the sales floor.
“Who’s left?”
Alex laughed under his breath. “Pretty much us.”
“Pretty much, or just us?”
Alex shrugged. “Us.”
Will looked down the hall at the almost empty vending machine. “Look, we need to get back on the air, I get that. I’m starving. We need some food. “
Alex walked down the hall. “Jeff always has stuff hidden in his desk.”
Will turned to walk back in the studio.
Alex screamed “Oh, what the fuck!”
Will ran down the hall and pushed up the door. Jeff laid on the floor. He was on his side. A short trail of bright red vomit trailed from his mouth and was short of an overturned trash can. The large man was wheezing. His skin pale, eyes the same red as his the liquid on the floor.
“Hey, buddy,” said Will nervously.
“He looks pretty bad,” Alex whispered. “We can’t call 911.”
Jeff reached up towards them, but he was too weak to even speak. Will pulled the door shut.
“I guess we get on radio and ask for help.”
***
Robbins turned off his radio and pulled out his earbuds. Sports radio was the only station still transmitting. He rolled up the headphone cords and put the radio back into his backpack. He didn’t know where the radio station was at. He wanted to go there, maybe try the TV station again. He swung his backpack onto his shoulder and backed up the hill on the eastern edge of downtown. He had hoped he could have gotten out of the nasty air in the library.
Alone and frustrated, he talked to himself as he walked.
“Oh, we know better, Mister Robbins. It don’t matter that you have a degree
because you done lost your damn mind. You was a scientist.” He clapped his hands. “But you see, I didn’t lose nothing. Look around. No way for an informed person to keep their sanity in this mess of a world. You got it all backwards, I am sane. Painfully sane, motherfuckers. That is you. You call this earth mother. You all motherfuckers that is you. . .”
The paper mask was hardly working anymore. The dreadlocks popping out of the back of his hat were getting dirty. He was only a few blocks from his tunnel. A long abandoned sewer pipe that was on the edge of a quickly gentrified part of East Village. It might be his only option, so he hiked his way there. Tall enough to stand up, over a 100 feet long.
The smell and the acrid feeling of the air seeped through his mask. His breath had weakened the thick paper over time.
The ash had collected in the street, looked like a light snow fall. Having lived in San Diego most of his life it was an odd sight. Even hours after it started he couldn’t get used to it. He turned a corner and saw tracks from a car that had gone down this street.
Robbins stopped. Just beyond the haze he saw the tail of a car. Fading red tail lights. He stepped closer. He walked on to the first residential block outside of downtown. His pipe was only two blocks deeper in the neighborhood. He passed the houses and walked toward the crashed car. The Honda was smashed into a light pole. The engine was spitting flames and adding to the smoke in the air.
Most of the houses were lit. He could faintly make out the light, but not the shape or size of the homes. One after another, he heard pounding on doors. Robbins spun. He had a moment of doubt in his sanity. It sounded like fists banging on the doors. He walked onto the side walk closer to the house on his right. The door was shaking violently in place. Like someone was desperate to get out but locked inside.
Screams from the homes became a chorus of guttural anguish. One scream, louder more immediate. He followed the sound to the crashed car. Robbins ran to the driver’s side. A Latina woman laid across the steering wheel. Her head dripped blood, it looked like her head hit the wheel when she crashed.
“Hold on, lady!”
Robbins opened the door. The woman turned and screamed at him. It was blood curdling, and caused him to step back. Her eyes burned red with the same color of the water in the treatment plant. She jumped out like a cat and hopped unnaturally toward him. Robbins turned and ran feeling her reaching for his legs and ankles.
His lungs burned harder as he tried to get into a gear he had not ran in since college decades ago. The woman burst into another wild scream. She was catching up. He couldn’t outrun her. He swung his backpack, heavy with all his belongings, at her. It toppled her. She scrambled to get back up. He couldn’t see any humanity in her eyes. She was simply crazed. He sung the pack again, this time he failed to knock her back.
She was about to overtake him. He kicked at her leg slowing her briefly. She reached up and hugged his leg like it was a lifeline. She drooled as she opened her mouth to bite into his leg. Robbins reached into his pocket and pulled out a blade. He carried it his whole life and had never cut anything but boxes.
The crazy woman tried to bite his leg through his jeans. Robbins swung the blade down into the top of the woman’s skull. It went easier than he expected. He still had to push to get it past the skull. It went into the brain and she let go of his leg. He reached for his knife but it was too deep in her skull.
The woman banged her head into the pavement. She was dying, but slower than a person with knife in her skull should have. Robbins picked up his backpack when he heard a crash. The door of a house across the street broke open.
He heard the wild war cry coming from beyond the edge of the haze. Multiple screams. Robbins ran as soon as he saw a family of feral humans running like attacking chimpanzees through the street. Robbins ran down the street as the ferals closed the gap.
Like war drums egging them on, he heard the pounding on the doors of the houses on each side of the street. Every muscle in his body ached as he ran. He almost ran past it. No one shook the door from inside of this two story house. He crossed the yard and hit the door. He could hear the ferals closing in. He closed his eyes and for a second atheism escaped him. Please be unlocked. He turned the knob and jumped inside before spinning and slamming the door shut in time to absorb the impact of the closest feral.
Robbins locked the door and stepped backwards. It was clear they couldn’t open doors but he felt safer with it locked. He spun to look around. It was a nice house and the lights were on. The house seemed empty. He walked past the dining room. The kitchen was empty, but the dishes were piled up. The living room was empty. The TV was muted but playing static.
Outside the feral hit the door a few times but stopped. Robbins went to the window and watched the feral group run back into the haze. They screamed as they searched elsewhere for what they wanted.
The first woman tried to bite me, Robbins thought. He set his backpack down.
“Hello?” He looked up the stairs. “Sorry to intrude, but I was desperate. Hello?”
He walked up the stairs one creaking step at a time. He heard no movement or sounds from the upstairs. He got to the top of the stairs and looked down the hall. At the end was a bathroom. A man was slumped between the toilet and the bathtub. He had a Glock stuck in his dead hand. Bullet holes in a straight line across each temple. Robbins stepped into the bathroom and saw the bullet ended up lodged in the tile.
The smell was strong, too strong, for one busted head. The shower curtain was pulled shut. It was clear and Robbins could see that the man’s family was in the tub and blood covered the walls. He didn’t feel any desire to pull the curtain and see details. He had seen enough. He stepped out and pulled the door to the bathroom shut.
He took off his paper mask and looked back at the stairwell. He was hungry, tired and decided to make himself feel at home. As good as anywhere to ride out the storm.
Chapter Thirteen
Scott found the supply tent empty. He hefted the large tank on his back and put the mask over his face. The horizon was bright red as the fire inched their direction. The mall parking lot had filled up with Humvees and transport trucks. He could think of a dozen places for that fleet of trucks to be if a serious effort was being made. It was only going to get worse. It was impossible to see the sky or the sun, but looking at his watch he knew they only had an hour or two of sunlight left.
The Cobra and the various military helicopters were still in the air. The cargo planes were also doing chemical dumps, but once the sunlight was gone they would be grounded. Scott put in the ear piece from his radio, once the tiny microphone was in place he flipped the switch.
“Annie, you there? Copy?”
“Here and waiting, 32.”
His jersey number back in college when he played football. His call number when they were on coded transmission.
“Copy. You have a transport for me?”
There was a long delay. “Negative, 32, still working those channels.”
Scott had been doing this for enough years to know this didn’t make sense. It was rare a fire command would turn down bodies, well trained experienced bodies. The general was directly ordering them off the line. Now they were blocking them from fighting, he wanted to know why.
“We got a fleet of trucks here in the parking lot and no ride to the scene?”
“Affirmative, 32.”
He spun around looking for trucks that might be leaving, thinking he would jump on board. No one was moving. He cut across the mist toward the lunch tent. Soldiers and firefighters walked in and out. He had to pass two flaps before he pushed his mask to his forehead. It was the size of a basketball court inside. Two dozen men and women sat at tables eating. A few were laughing, joking about something. Surrounded by hell and they were joking.
Riccardi had his head in his hands over an empty tray. He understood what was happening. Scott walked toward his old friend when he saw Goodwin and Rockwell eating biscuits and gravy. He gave Riccardi a pat
on the shoulder as he passed him. Rockwell laughed about something. Goodwin shook his head. They booth froze up when Scott stood over Rockwell.
Rockwell turned back to his buddy. Goodwin looked up at Scott, briefly.
“Hello, gentleman.” Scott sat down. “Can we have a talk?”
The two men said nothing. Rockwell scanned the room for eyes that might be watching them. Everyone in the tent seemed focused on their food.
“I need to get back out to the front, I was wondering if you. . .”
“Hell no.”
“Fighting that fire is why we’re here, come on guys.”
The two soldiers looked impossibly young now. Here in this relaxed moment, Scott could see the acne on his face. He was just a boy. Goodwin spun his fork in his biscuits.
“Come on, take me out after what we went through together.”
“I didn’t do nothing wrong.” Goodwin spoke quietly.
Scott put up his hands. “I know, son. I was there.”
“Orders. Kill Berserkers on sight.”
Rockwell kicked his friend under the table. “Shut up, Goodie”
Scott let that go for a few seconds of silence. So they had a name for what he saw. They had orders. Scott felt like he had just discovered a live wire. A big fear of a wildland fire fighter - coming through the haze and finding a downed power line.
He watched their faces. The confident laughter had faded away.
“Where you guys from? Not your base, your hometown?”
Ring of Fire Page 14
