“Did Adam drink the water?”
She didn’t respond. He was hopeful. Kristen used to yell at him for giving soda to Adam. The boy didn’t like to drink straight water. Orange juice and soda but it had been a struggle to get the boy to drink clear water. They had compromised with Vitamin Water, which they bought by the case. Now that frustrating quirk might have saved his life.
Her chest stopped heaving. Her eyes froze open. He had spent the last couple months angry at her, but they had good years. She was beautiful, the mother of his son and he had put her through hell. He thought about checking her pulse, but he was afraid to touch her. Then he had a paralyzing thought.
What if it was airborne?
He stepped back. He heard the stomping of his son down the steps. He couldn’t let Adam see this. He ran into the living room and caught Adam. He had on a Finding Dory backpack and his blankie over his shoulder. Andrew opened the backpack and smiled. He had done a good job, underwear, socks, two pairs of shorts and shirts.
He was six but not stupid and saw his father’s tears.
“Mommy coming with us?”
What could he say? His heart broke for his little boy. Andrew stood up, blocking his view of the kitchen and pushed him to the garage.
“She is going to meet us. We are going with Jake and Vic. You know Damian from school, right?”
Adam nodded. Andrew pushed him into the garage and turned on the light. His tools and workshop were just how he left it. He went to his landscaping supplies. He moved the giant spray bottle of round-up and saw what he was looking for. The package of paper masks. He used one when he sprayed the lawn. There were four still in the package.
He put a mask on and it fit snugly. The problem was the elastic string was too big for Adam’s head. Andrew put it on and tied it.
“Why do we need a mask, Daddy?”
“We’re going for a little walk, son.”
“Mommy said it is not safe outside.”
“We don’t have far to go. Just Uncle Jake’s house.” Andrew faked a smile. “You wanna go for ride in Daddy’s helicopter?”
Adam’s eyes got wide. Everything forgotten for a moment.
Andrew reached up and hit the automatic garage door. It roared up and let in the smoke. Adam gasped and planted his feet at the edge of the garage. Andrew pulled his son into it. Andrew jumped at the sound of a feral scream. It was close. He spun to look, his eyes burned in the smoke. He cursed himself for not having Jake come get him. They were going to die out here. The scream again. It was close but muffled by walls.
“Mommy!”
Andrew looked back at the house. He could just barely make her out through the haze. Kristen was savagely hitting the window from the inside. There was no reason, only madness in her behavior, a desperate drive to come after them.
Father pulled son into the smoke. He tightened his grip and pulled him. He ignored his calls for his mother. Adam begged and cried. They couldn’t see more than a few feet. Andrew got them to the curb and he followed, taking them around a few parked cars. Adam kept sobbing, and saying mommy under his mask. Andrew prayed that he would stop. He wanted nothing more than for him to live to feel the trauma of this day.
***
Victoria sighed when Damian and Tiffany had both overloaded their backpacks and awkwardly came down the stairs. Jake watched his family debate what to take and not take out of the corner of his eye.
He had loaded a duffle bag with canned food and a second bag filled with bottled water and juices. He left a shirt tied around his neck and pulled it over his face, grabbed the food bag and walked towards the door.
“But I need that for my hair,” Tiffany pleaded.
“We’re in a crisis. Forget about your hair, sweetheart,” Victoria said.
“Where are we going?” Tiffany asked
“When are we coming home?” Damian added.
Jake was almost at the door. Victoria looked at him with a silent, ‘Yeah Jake where and when?’
He stopped. He had not thought that far ahead but no one would accept that answer.
“We’re going to your brother’s place in Laguna.”
Her wealthy brother had a summer house near the beach in Laguna Beach. Tiffany and Damian cheered at the idea. Victoria gave him a stern look. She knew it was a load of shit. But honestly, he was going to try, it was as good a plan as any other.
The lights flickered and suddenly they snapped off. The power was gone, even the street lights outside. They were instantly in total darkness.
“Dad!” Tiffany begged first. Before he could even form a plan the lights came back on. The clock on the oven beeped requesting to be reset. Jake was already sweating, his nerves were already tattered but without power? They just had to get out of San Diego. He grabbed the bag of priceless, framed family photos and documents with his open hand. Victoria opened the door and he ran past her into the smoke filled air.
He stopped for a moment and listened to the sounds coming from downtown. It sounded like the Fourth of July, more than just simple gunfire and ferals. It sounded like a battle. He didn’t have time to think about it just set the bags down beside the back of Victoria’s minivan. He kicked the hands free switch and the backdoor opened slowly. He dropped the bags in. He froze when he heard a scream, then another. He looked back at the house and saw Victoria in the silhouette of the door, holding Damian close to her side.
He breathed heavy but was relieved the scream didn’t come from his house.
“Jake!”
Jake turned to see Andrew pulling his son through the smoke. Another moment of relief. Jake gave a big bro-hug to his friend. Andrew swung his son’s backpack into the back hatch of the van.
Another scream, a feral scream. Jake followed the sound to the Johnston house just a few feet away. He stared at the window. Flash and thunder. Two gun shots inside, the screams continued but twisted, by pain. Another shot. Adam cried over the sound.
“Get in!” Jake yelled at Adam and Andrew. Victoria and the kids ran at the van. They jumped in the back.
Jake pushed the door shut when Victoria put up her arm stopping him. “You have to make sure they’re OK?”
“No you don’t, Jake!” Andrew pleaded. “You have seen those things.”
He had seen them and understood why Andrew didn’t want him to go. There was a gun shot and in the real world it wasn’t normal to move toward that sound. He and Bryan were neighbors and friends. They talked in the driveway several times a week. They talked about their children and work. Bryan was a good man, one he cared about. Michelle and Joey were just kids, and he would want Bryan to help his kids if he could. He handed the keys to Victoria.
“Give me five minutes. If I don’t come back, get out of here. Shut the door.”
Victoria put her hand over her heart, as the door shut.
Jake looked around. A shovel still sat in the yard. He left it there Saturday when he got a phone call. He was glad he had forgotten and left it leaned up against the porch. He was a suburban kid, never had weapons in his life. Jake kicked the end of the shovel to bounce dirt off and swung it around so he would be ready to swing it.
He bounced up the front steps and tugged on the door. The handle turned. It was unlocked.
“Bryan? Steph? Anybody here? It’s Jake.”
He pulled the shirt down to his neck. He could hear sobbing. Jake walked into the living room. The TV was on. It was muted but playing static. The radio was playing somewhere in the house. It was faint but loud enough for him to hear Will Goldberg yelling. Jake squeezed the shovel handle and walked through the dining room to follow the sound of crying.
The table was set. Picked clean ribs and chicken bones remained on the plates each with a halo of flies. Each place at the table had water glasses, all of them empty or half empty. Tiny insects were crawling on every inch of the table. Jake reflexively stepped back from the table and saw her. Stephanie Johnston’s eyes were open. She had the red eyes of a feral but frozen open. Anot
her inch to the right and he saw past the edge of the table to the knife buried in her chest.
Jake looked away, his mind protesting the sight.
“Don’t come in here, Jake,” Bryan said in a shaky voice in the kitchen.
“What did you do, Bryan?” Jake stepped closer, wondering where Bryan got the gun. He never seemed like the gun type.
Outside, the van horn honked. He needed to go, but a part of him had to understand what he was seeing. Jake stepped closer to the kitchen, smelling Stephanie’s body which was similar to the smell of the dirty water. She had bite marks all over her body and her clothes were torn to shreds. Now he saw Bryan. He was backed up against the sink. Both of his children were face down bleeding in front of him. He had his revolver right to his temple. He squeezed the trigger over and over. It clicked and spun but he had no bullets left.
“What happened, Bryan?”
He struggled to speak. “They we’re sick, and crazy.” He pulled the trigger again, despite knowing it was empty. Jake couldn’t imagine what he felt, but Bryan was probably praying for god to make a bullet appear.
“They were eating her. . .” He could barely speak. Jake didn’t need him to say it. He saw it with his own eyes. The bite marks were across her body. Jake used the end of the shovel to hook little Joey’s shoulder. He lifted the body enough to see his face. His mouth was covered in blood.
Jake felt what food he had in his body struggle to come back up.
“Kill me. . .”
Jake looked up at his old friend. His skin was gray, his pupils bright yellow marbles floating in saucers of crimson. He lifted the shirt over his face. No cure, he told himself. I wouldn’t want to be like him. Could he beat his neighbor to death with a shovel?
Outside, the sounds of silence broke when he heard the roar of a motorbike. It was coming closer each second. Jake looked back outside. The horn of the van honked again, twice this time.
“I have to go,” Jake whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Noooo!” Bryan yelled. “Kill me!”
Jake ran back out the door in time to see a motorbike turning to a quick stop just behind the minivan. The rider wore a fireman’s jacket and a gas mask. Jake held up the shovel and was ready to attack.
The rider took off his mask and Jake couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Scotty?”
He didn’t have time to feel shock or express the anger he felt over the years toward his brother. A feral scream cut through the night. The sound of feet shuffling on pavement followed. Half a dozen ferals came out of the haze and ran at Scott.
The ferals were almost on him when Jake jumped down the four steps and swung his shovel like he was a swordsman. He knocked one feral back. Scott jumped off the bike letting it fall. He pulled the pistol he had grabbed at spike camp and fired. He aimed for the closest feral’s head, but got the bullet in the chest. Enough to topple it. Jake swung the shovel again but it slipped from his hands. It didn’t slow the ferals.
Victoria opened the sliding van door. “Get in here!”
Jake pulled on Scott’s left arm. He shot two more rounds, one clipping the shoulder of a feral. They fell into the van. They hit seats and everyone screamed in the chaos. Jake’s foot hung out of the door as a feral tried to grab his ankle. It was a woman, with burning red eyes she opened her mouth to bite down on his leg like corn on the cob. Victoria pushed the door shut but Jake’s leg was still in the way. Scott pointed his pistol at the woman’s head. The thunderous sound would deafen them all.
“No!” Jake put his arm up, and kicked at the woman’s face. She let go enough that Jake pulled his leg in.
The door slammed shut. Andrew put the van in reverse. The ferals crowded along the windows on all sides. They screamed loud enough to shake the windows. The children all screamed back. Jake put his thumbs in his ears trying to block the sound.
“Drive!” Victoria screamed at Andrew. He barely heard her, but he didn’t need the order. He was already in motion.
He hit the gas. The engine wheezed a bit to push back the ferals and knock Scott’s motorbike out of the way. In a few seconds they were in the streets. They were pulling away and the ferals screamed louder than ever. Jake turned and looked out the back window. Bryan Johnston, now totally feral, ran with speed and drive he never had before. He chased the van reaching out for it. Jake kept watching even as they made distance.
The children cried and the adults were too stunned to talk. They drove into the haze through silence.
Chapter Seventeen
The gunfire increased for several minutes in the distance. Robbins had avoided going upstairs, not wanting to see the dead Murphy family. Even with the door shut just the thought of them dead in the bathtub bothered him. He hoped to get a better view from the master bedroom. The room had a large window. Of course he was not high enough to see over the smoke.
It was more than the gunfire and screams of the rabid people. It sounded like a full on battle was happening across downtown. If he had to guess it was in the bay.
He heard the wild call nearby.
Robbins ran back down the stairs and watched a dozen crazies run in the haze, just barely visible they looked like ghosts. He pulled up a chair and watched out the window. He had the Glock and eleven rounds Mister Murphy so kindly left for him.
He watched for Austin. He believed in his heart that she was coming. She didn’t want to admit it but she inherited the spirit, if not the focus, of her mother. It was painful to see Austin hate on the mother she lost. Austin’s older brother always hated their mother when she was still around. He always wanted to be normal. That was impossible for Valerie.
Valerie was as hardcore an activist as San Diego had ever seen. She spent the summers before Isiah was born at the Earth First rendezvous, which were held in ground zero for environmental battles. One year in Oregon trying to stop a clear-cut, maybe Arizona the next summer trying to block a coyote kill.
Robbins was always excited when Sister Valerie would return from her travels to talk about their battles. They met through copwatch, policing the police was their slogan. She was the first white woman to become active and involved. When they met Robbins was still a graduate student in chemistry at state. His motivation for being an activist was not to be killed in a driving while black incident, to see his family survive a day, a week or a year without feeling the sting of racism. He didn’t care about trees, the air or the water. He ate cheeseburgers and had no idea you could eat collard greens without bacon grease.
In 1991 they were set to have a meeting about a community policing project in the immigrant neighborhood of City Heights. Valerie explained that she was done. That she didn’t want to devote time to any human rights issues. Her focus was the survival of the whole web of life. Robbins was stunned and asked her to explain.
“The earth is dying. What happens in one neighborhood doesn’t matter anymore unless we stop the destruction. Five billion people can’t share the planet and live like this. At some point, we will go too far, and frankly nothing else matters. I will do anything I can to protect the planet for my children and future generations.”
Robbins said he understood, but Valerie knew he didn’t. So a few days later she left a copy of the book Green Rage by Christopher Manes in his mail box. He read it and was never the same again. The earth is the only planet we have to live on, it is a closed ecosystem and it filled him with anger and terror to think about what they were doing to the planet.
With his eyes open, he could no longer just see a cheeseburger. He saw the wrecking ball of an industry that made the burger, the wasted grain, the pollution in the rivers from runoff, and the staggering numbers of animals marched to their deaths. He couldn’t just see a plastic bag. He saw the remains of them floating in the giant island in the pacific. He couldn’t just see a baby and smile. He thought of the lifetime of things that child would consume.
His book was his only escape. He worked on Tipping Point hoping one day he would be able to exp
ress his feelings and the world would listen. When he suggested the book to Valerie in the late 90s she laughed at him.
“We don’t need any more books. We need you burning down the bastards where they work. Don’t forget, Robbins, the people doing this have addresses.”
She always said that. They have addresses. Maybe she would be here today if she didn’t have their addresses. Maybe Austin would have a mother. Maybe half a dozen activists would have avoided years in prison.
Robbins just hoped Austin made it to him, so he could repay his old friend for opening his eyes. He always looked out for Austin. He owed her that.
***
He stepped out of the command trailer without a mask. He wanted to breathe the acrid air that his fire created. He took a deep lungful, and it didn’t faze him. The cigars had already battered his two lungs enough to leave them looking like steaks forgotten on a grill. They could name this disaster after him and it didn’t matter. They could write reports about what he did wrong. They could talk to him on 20/20 or Sixty Minutes and put a mountain of blame on him. He was the perfect man for the job because a few months from now he would have no remorse or guilt left to feel.
He ignored the warning signs and only went to the doctor on base when he was ordered to do so. Not many could order him around, but he had only two stars on his uniform. The doctor hung the X-ray of his lungs up and it didn’t take a medical degree to know what he was looking at. He would not live long enough to collect his pension.
Daniel Redcrow was given this task because he was already a dead man walking. The clock was ticking and time was short.
The night was not black. The horizon glowed orange. The fire operated just as they had drawn it up. This plan was a few years in development, but new to him. Only a small circle of people knew, but as cancer rates soared, as the pollution collected off the shore, and as the air grew toxic hanging over the city, all the reasons came together. Price of civilization was one this city could no longer afford.
Ring of Fire Page 20
