Ring of Fire

by David Agranoff

  They shared a look.

  Goodwin tipped his head nervously. “Indianapolis.”

  Rockwell exhaled. He wanted to talk. “Forrest City, Arkansas.”

  Scott smiled. He wanted to lighten the mood as much as he could. “I heard the south in you.”

  A group of soldiers got up from the next table and cleared their trays. Rockwell’s body language eased up as they got further away.

  “I only ask because I wondered if you had family here. You see, my brother and his family live right here in San Diego.”

  The two young men shared a look, it looked like Rockwell cringed.

  “What is really going on here?”

  Rockwell stood up. “Classified.” He walked off to dump his tray, leaving Goodwin to stare at him.

  “Tell me Goodwin.”

  “Goodie!” Rockwell stood at the trash can.

  Goodwin stood up. “Get your family out. They’re letting this city burn.”

  ***

  Robbins watched the window for twenty minutes. He listened to the screams of the wild men running in the street get further away. His hearing was not the best, but it seemed like they had gone back in the direction of downtown. Even the banging on the doors of the houses decreased as the street emptied. It seemed long enough to feel safe.

  He only had to go a few blocks, but he needed a weapon. He walked around the house. The man who owned the gun, it was possible he had another. If he had to he would go up and wrench the one of out his cold dead hands, Charlton Heston couldn’t argue with his need.

  He opened the door to the garage. There were two sets of keys hanging inside the door. Right next to four baseball mitts hanging on hooks. He took one ring off of a hook. He saw the key for the SUV out front. It had been so long since he drove a car he dismissed the idea right away. Then he found what he thought was the house key. It was his key now. The back wall was loaded with tools. A plastic name plate read Roger Murphy and a #1 Dad coffee mug sat next to it. There was an Oakland A’s trash-can that was filled with baseball bats. He pulled an aluminum bat out that felt hefty in his hand.

  His eyes scanned the wall and found the glass cabinet. Two shotguns were upright and a Glock pistol sat along the bottom locked inside. He could see the spot where the revolver had been home until this morning. He could look for the key, but decided to do his best Barry Bonds instead. The glass snapped into a thousand pieces. Robbins reached through carefully. Thankfully, Roger Murphy had two 10 round clips loaded and sitting next to the weapon.

  It had been years since Robbins went to the range. In the 90s the revolution had shaped up for him. He had convinced himself that they needed a Black Panthers-like group for defending the earth. He believed they needed to be a guerrilla army. As he slapped the clip into the pistol, it was hard to think he was wrong, considering what was happening outside.

  He stared at the pistol in his hand. They had a saying in the movement ‘There are people destroying the earth and they have names and addresses.’ Robbins always carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and felt the need to personally stop the destruction. He never picked up arms in the past realizing there were not enough bullets to end the lives of those profiting from the destruction of the planet. He had long ago decided his book was the best weapon he had.

  He grabbed a holster out of the cabinet and hooked the gun onto his belt loop. He stepped back into the house and grabbed the note he wrote Austin. He left space open for the address since he had to look outside to get the house number. He had a marker and t-shirt ready to tie over his face. He had to make it quick or the smoke would burn his eyes.

  Robbins put his hand on the door handle. He only had a few minutes of safety and didn’t want leave it. He had to get this note to Austin. He edged open the front door and looked for the house number. 3822. He wrote it down before turning and locking the door. The smoke came over him like a ghost tapping him on the shoulder. The burnt smell was stronger than he remembered. He ran down into the haze. The screams were distant and faint but the pounding inside houses increased as he ran through the street. They could smell him.

  He followed the yellow line straight down the middle of the street. It was the only way to see where he was going. He had asked Austin to look for him here, but he hoped she found somewhere else safe to get out of the nasty air. He took this risk for her, but the fear crawled up in him. Why were they fighting at all?

  “Delaying the inevitable, Robbins,” he told himself. Each step he took further into the haze he was more nervous. The more he felt the urge to talk to himself. “Nowhere to hide and you know it. This mass production of civilization. This is the price, right here right now. The fucking bill is past due.”

  Out of the haze, he saw the edge of the tunnel. He pulled off a strip of duct tape and affixed the note with her name on it to the abandoned sewer pipe that had been his shelter so many nights. He looked down the length of the tunnel. Someone was laying in his old spot. They were coughing, and sounded ill. In the past, he would have been mad, wanting them out of his spot.

  He had a home today. With his note in place, he turned and ran toward it.

  ***

  “Moooom!”

  Tiffany yelled from the top of the stairs. Victoria ignored her for the moment and felt stupid trying to fashion rabbit ears on the back of the modern HD TV out of aluminum foil and spoons. Stuck between the wall and the TV, Victoria couldn’t respond right away. She knew a louder yell was coming.

  “Moooom!”

  Victoria stepped back from the TV and wiped sweat from her brow. Damian had Legos dominating the surface of the couch, playing. She tried not to yell too loud. “You have something to ask me, come down here.”

  They had six remotes in a basket under the TV, now that the cable box was useless, she had a moment of frustration trying to figure out which one came with the TV. She found the right remote. The ghetto antenna was the best she could do. They needed better news. She had to dig in the basement to find her old alarm clock, the same one she bought when Jake moved in with her. It flashed midnight, and after all that work she spun the dial and all it brought her was the tired and frustrated voice of Will Goldberg. What he was reporting was not encouraging.

  “If you are north of highway fifty-four, stay put, honestly just don’t move around unless you have to. The emergency responders need the roads clear. From what we are hearing. . .” He paused. “The bulk of the city is now boxed in. The fires are being whipped up by the winds, so the freeways are no barrier. The safest thing, if you’re not directly in the path of the fire is to hunker down, have an emergency kit ready and bags packed in the cars if the fire gets close, but in the meantime. . .”

  Tiffany stomped down the stairs with as much melodramatic force as she could. Victoria wanted to be mad at her, but she melted as she often did when she saw her daughter. Damian’s many health challenges often meant he got the bulk of the attention. Most of her life she accepted that reality.

  She threw down a copy of a book that Victoria didn’t remember buying for her on the table. The smack of the book startled Damian who was in a Lego haze.

  “You finished a book?” Victoria laughed.

  “I’m bored and hungry.”

  “I’m hungry too, Mommy,” Damian added.

  She had been so focused on the fire she had forgotten about dinner. She looked out the window. The haze still took on a gray glow from the sun, but not for much longer. Dinner time was coming and she never really got them lunch either.

  “I’ll make dinner. Go do something with your brother. ”

  The two siblings looked at each other. “Yeah, right,” Tiffany said before stomping into the kitchen.

  Victoria never expected having kids to be this hard. Her friends made it look effortless with their children. She had lots of ideas of what made a good parent and every intention of following those. She would never let her kids act this way in theory. She turned on the TV and crossed her fingers for a signal.

&
nbsp; Nothing, but blaring static. She quickly turned the sound down. Just loud enough that she could hear it. She reached behind the TV to adjust the foil and for a second she thought the static broke up. The sound was so similar to the static she almost missed it.

  The flow of water from the kitchen sink. The kids were upstairs when the news came out about the polluted water.

  “No!” Victoria ran into the kitchen and saw her daughter at the sink filling glass of water. “Stop!”

  Tiffany didn’t stop. Victoria reached out and slapped the faucet handle down. She grabbed the glass out of her hands.

  “Mom! Why are you freaking out?”

  Victoria held the glass under her nose. Like mildew, different from earlier but bad. She held the glass up to her daughter’s nose.

  “Ewww.”

  “Drink a bottled water from the garage, or get a soda.”

  Tiffany smiled. “A soda? Really?”

  They were only allowed soda on special occasions, and they were kept in the garage fridge. Damian jumped up off the couch.

  “Me too?”

  “Just one!”

  They raced to the garage. Victoria backed into the kitchen past the trash can with the bad chicken she found in the freezer. It had defrosted now. She popped the can lid with the foot switch and the smell that came out was enough to let it shut right away. She reached into the freezer and pulled frozen ground beef, a rack of ribs and another kind of chicken. She dumped all three in the sink with a thud. She held the frozen brick of beef up to the light first. She had to look closely, but moving slowly in the package like ants in a glass ant farm something barely visible moved. She felt a tiny tickle as she turned the package over. It was so small she could have missed it. Something crawled on her finger.

  “Ahhh!” She screamed and shook her hand. Did it go on the floor or the counter? She didn’t know. She pictured it crawling on the hard wood floor or up the cabinets to the marble countertop. She would never find it. Victoria reached under the sink and grabbed the yellow dish gloves.

  She was going to wash her hand first but stopped with a hand on the faucet.

  “Fuck.”

  She had a small bottle of Purell hanging on her purse. She squirted a drop and rubbed her hands together. She felt better almost instantly. In the next room she saw Damian and Tiffany. He was showing her one of his Lego creations and god bless her she was pretending to be interested.

  Victoria put on the gloves and tipped the prime rib up. It was infested worse that the beef. Now a dozen or more crawly things were in the sink. She quickly grabbed the three frozen foods and threw them in the trash. She pushed up the faucet, washing the crawling things down the drain but steam rose off the water. The smell hung under her nose making her twitch.

  Victoria turned back to her freezer. If the packages couldn’t hold the crawlers out? She opened the freezer slowly. She grabbed a factory-sealed unopened package of hash browns from Trader Joes. Infested. She put it in the trash, took the top off and pulled it toward the freezer. She pulled everything out. The vegetable packs, the veggie burgers, the green beans, microwave meals for lunches.

  Tiffany appeared in the door. “What are you doing? Then she gagged at the smell. The empty freezer was moving. It crawled with those little things. Victoria screamed at the sight and slammed the door shut. She reached up to the main part of the fridge but her hand froze inches from the handle. She felt Tiffany watching from behind.

  “Back up.”

  “Why?”

  Victoria didn’t have a good answer, she just felt the kitchen was unsafe now. She pulled the door open just enough to click on the internal light. In the small crack she saw the crawly things infesting the wall at the back of the fridge. She slammed the door shut, opened the trash can and tied the bag of trash up.

  She opened the back door letting in the ash and smoke while she fumbled with the lid of the trash can outside. Victoria pulled the door shut and tried to catch her breath. Her kids stared at her. They were hungry but afraid to ask again.

  “Find something canned you want to eat.”

  ***

  Jake waited just inside the door. Twenty-two minutes passed in the stairwell that emptied to the roof. It was silent enough to make him nervous. He checked his phone almost every minute. Still no signal, no messages. Nothing to distract him. He thought of ways he could avoid the reality of what was happening to his body. Tried to convince himself that he was not dying, tried to focus on this crisis in the moment and getting his family to safety. Waiting was tough, but he needed to talk to Andrew.

  He heard Sky 7 coming but didn’t see it until the last second. The sky beyond the helipad was thick with ash. This spot was normally a beautiful view from inside the skyline. The helicopter hovered for a long time over the roof clearing the air. The night lights were already on to direct Andrew to his spot.

  They hit the roof a few seconds before Andrew expected, but he landed them safely. Jake relaxed a little. He knew how nervous Andrew was landing on this roof in the best conditions. They were barely on the ground before Carly ducked and ran towards the stairwell door.

  She saw his face in the door window. Jake used a key card he stole from Andrew’s desk to open and hold the door. She smelled like an ashtray having been out in the free air. Maybe everyone did at this point.

  “Thank you.” Carly didn’t slow heading to the elevator. She turned to look at him waiting for the car to arrive. “Why are you still here?”

  “All hands on deck, right?”

  Carly and Victoria were hired the same year. They acted friendly, but Vic hated Carly’s guts. He assumed Carly felt the same. She looked different today. Checked out. Nothing wrong with being frightened, he thought about saying. He assumed she didn’t want reassurance from him.

  The helicopter was winding down and the blades slowed. Jake leaned on the stairwell door. He stepped into the foul air, feeling it kick around. The wind almost knocked him off his feet. It made his stomach jump, you could not see the skyline and worse you could not see the railings. If he didn’t know better, he would never have guessed he was fifteen floors over the city. Felt almost like walking on clouds.

  He got to the cockpit and saw Andrew laying back in his seat with his eyes closed. He did that after stressful flights. Jake knocked on the window causing Andrew to jump out of his skin. He got a middle finger but Jake pulled the door open enough to squeeze in.

  Andrew had his headphones around his neck. The engine had cooled enough for them to talk.

  “Dude, you scared the shit out of me.”

  “My bad.” Jake tapped his chest. “How does it look out there?”

  “Sugar coated or honestly?”

  “Best policy please.”

  Andrew thought about his answer. “The fire is bad. The worst I have ever seen.”

  “Shit.”

  “Oh, that is not the worst part.”

  “Worse than the fire and the sewage spill on the coast?”

  “Sure, it is debatable, but I would say people killing each other and military gunning them down in the streets is the worst part.”

  “What?”

  “You see Carly on the way out?” Andrew didn’t wait. “Looking like she just came back from reporting in Syria. Because that is what it looked like from La Jolla to the border.”

  Jake was nervous to ask his good friend. “We have to get out of here.”

  “There are checkpoints and roadblocks everywhere, entire chunks of the 5 and 8 are blocked with burned out cars that people left behind.”

  Jake nodded. “I wasn’t talking about driving.”

  Andrew grinned. “Oh, you want me to drive.”

  Jake nodded again. A few things didn’t need to be spoken. Their families were coming, Andrew’s son Adam lived with his mother only a few blocks from the Rivers house in North Park. Jake looked around the helicopter. Andrew knew what he was thinking.

  “Tight fit, but we can do it.” Andrew smiled. “NBC will be pissed,
but I don’t care anymore. Just one problem. North Park might as well be the moon right now.”

  Jake nodded. “Visibility is shit right now. So we take alleys and side streets. We gotta try.”

  “I know just the alley, it can get us as far as 26th.”

  Jake knew the area near the golf course. “Let’s go.”

  Andrew took off his flight helmet and grabbed his backpack. “This flight almost killed me, you’re driving.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Scott pulled out his phone and looked at the time. She was fifteen minutes late. The forest service van was parked close enough to the landing zone that it shook when helicopters took off and landed. The door opened and Annie stepped into the back. She only wore a paper mask to cover her face. She dropped the mask as she closed the door.

  “Let’s make this quick, they are going to wonder where I went.”

  “The general see you leave?”

  Annie waved off the question. “First things first. You’re right, they don’t want to stop this fire. They did at first, everything changed a little while after noon.”

  “What happened?”

  Annie snorted. “Orders changed. Drop flights got re-routed, they slowed deployments to fire areas and the roadblocks started popping up. Redcrow is in that office and on the phone a lot. Some of his men say he is talking to Washington, but who the hell knows. The question is why?”

  “I learned a thing or two. I talked to the grunts that brought us back from the fire-line. It wasn’t just some random crazy person they shot.”

  “We have had three crews we know of attacked and more signals have gone dead than I can count. The police and military are engaged in live fire. They called them riots but...”

  Scott was shocked. “Any of our crew?”

  Annie shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “They have shoot-to-kill orders. They call them berserkers and ferals.”

  Annie leaned back on the bench. “I saw a map. I wasn’t supposed to see it, but Redcrow set his iPad down just long enough. It had red dots showing fire hotspots. There were black dots showing some kind of outbreaks throughout the city even downtown. Probably your crazies.”