by William Oday
The average driver of a four-wheeled vehicle would never understand. And she couldn’t blame them. The typical commute for them meant being trapped in a slow-moving inchworm. Part of the spine humped up and a section of cars raced forward. Then that part came back down and ground to a halt. Over and over again until the driver made it to work or home.
Talk about soul-crushing.
It was something else altogether for riders. Sure, it could be risky. It frequently was. Those same drivers would do bonehead moves like accidentally weave into the next lane as they slept through the interminable journey. Or they’d wake up and rage at the futility of their entrapment. And that inevitably resulted in the driver whipping into the next lane the instant half a car-length of space opened up. Of course, it achieved nothing. They got to wait in that lane, too.
What it did achieve though was putting her and other riders in instant and mortal danger. She’d be cruising along in the space between the lanes and a car would jerk across the dashed line. No signal. No declaration of intention. No effort toward even verifying anyone might be entering the space they were hell-bent on overtaking.
Then she’d slam on the brakes so hard her front fork nearly dug channels in the concrete. She’d had a few close calls, but always managed to avoid the sickening crunch of metal and bones.
She’d even had a few run-ins with bullies who thought it’d be fun to weave toward her with their three ton rides just to see her panic. Of course, she panicked. A six hundred pound bike was like putting a flyweight in the ring with a heavyweight. The knockout punch could only go in one direction.
That said, the last time a jackass tried that move, she dodged the weave, then accelerated by and kicked the guy’s side mirror off before flipping the bird and leaving him in the dust.
It was a stupid move. One she’d never told Mason about because he would’ve flipped out. But it was satisfying. Eminently satisfying. All that said, she knew the ride she was about to take wasn’t going to make the daily commute look like a cakewalk.
“I’ll be careful,” Beth said.
“I’m not worried about what you’ll do,” Mason said.
She smirked. He might be if he knew about the side mirror incident.
“What?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Different world. How’s this radio work?”
“The distance to the zoo is too far for your portable unit or my handheld. So, Juice wired up a way to relay transmissions through his higher-powered setup. He’ll basically be receiving your message and relaying to me and vice-versa.”
“Good friend to have.”
“The best.”
Mason tightened the last strap and turned on the unit. He unclipped the microphone and pressed the side button.
“Juice, this is Mason. Over.”
The speaker crackled.
“Sarge, Juice here. Transmission is five by five. Ready for relay. Over.”
Mason handed the corded mic to Beth, and then clicked on his handheld unit. “Say who you’re speaking to and then your name. Over lets the receiver know your transmission is finished and the channel is open for return communication.”
Her husband loved his protocols.
“Moonbeam, this is Flowerchild. Can you hear me now?”
Mason slanted an eyebrow down at her. “Now is a great time to make jokes?”
She laughed and then cut it short when he didn’t share her mirth.
“And you have to release the transmit button when you’re finished speaking.”
“I’m not an idiot.” She pressed the button. “Mason, this is Beth. You look grouchy. Over.” Her voice came out of the speaker of his handheld.
“Beth, this is Mason. I am. Over.”
Juice’s voice broke in, “Annoyingly cute married couple, this is Juice. The relay looks good on my end. How is it on yours? Over.”
“All good here. Over,” Mason responded.
“Okay then,” Juice said. “I’ll be monitoring communications and tweaking the relay if needed to keep the signal strong. Otherwise, I’ll be like Uncle Sam. It feels like you have privacy, but you don’t. Over.”
Mason chuckled despite his somber mood.
“So he gets a laugh, but I don’t, huh?” She didn’t really care. She was just happy to see a ray of light in the usual darkness of his blue eyes.
“Thanks for the warning, Sam. Over,” Mason said as he checked Beth and her bike over. He’d set her up like she was going for a trip into the wilderness. Food, water, a tarp for shelter, extra ammo for the Glock holstered at her hip, fire starters and kindling, binoculars, and more. It should’ve been going overboard, but it wasn’t.
He was right. She was about to ride into the wilderness. Alone.
The radios were crucial to making it happen. Mason wouldn’t have let her go without them. However, they wouldn’t make him magically appear if she ended up needing help. They’d gone over the back-up plan several times. If she got into trouble, she was to immediately transmit her location and then find a safe place to hole up and wait. Mason would jump in the Bronco and fight his way through heaven or hell to come get her.
It wasn’t a great plan.
But it was the best they could come up with. Assuming things went fine, he’d have checked out the house next door and hopefully have them moved in by the time she returned in the afternoon. The sun would set with them having the meds they needed for Clyde and potential future injuries, and also having a solidly defensible position from which to get a good night’s sleep.
Considering the circumstances, they had to make it work.
Mason pressed his forehead to hers. “Stay safe,” he whispered.
“You’re not the boss of me,” she whispered back as his lips touched hers.
The ocean breeze filled Beth’s lungs with a pungent, lively scent. She rode south on the Venice Beach boardwalk heading down to Ballona Creek. From there, the plan was to cut in and head east. That would take her almost ten miles inland. She would then have to navigate a few miles of city streets before dropping into the LA River and following it the rest of the way to the zoo.
The rationale was to minimize her time on surface streets where she was more likely to run into others and where there was less space to maneuver in response. Riding a cruiser through creeks and rivers would’ve sounded like a fool’s plan to most people. But the Ballona Creek and the LA River were not creeks or rivers as people in the rest of the country understood them.
Few things in LA were.
Both were actually wide concrete channels with vestigial waterways trickling down their centers. They were constructed to carry flood waters out of the city and into the ocean where they could disperse without threatening the ever more expensive real estate.
Through the padding of her helmet, Beth heard the muffled sound of the rushing wind. She’d never taken her bike on the boardwalk, much less ridden it at thirty miles per hour. It was thrilling and melancholic at the same time.
The boardwalk wasn’t packed with its usual spread of eclectic citizens. There were no tourists with cameras pinned to their chests and white sun cream streaked on their cheeks. No young girls wearing skimpy bikinis lazily cruised down the path on longboard skateboards. No aging hippies in makeshift booths hawked homemade trinkets and visions for a better tomorrow. No muscled behemoths strutted around in loincloths showing off their enormous slabs of shredded beef. Why they were proud of that look, Beth never understood.
There were no crowds circled around dancers performing feats of physical prowess so astonishing you’d happily toss a dollar and maybe two into the hat.
Even the guitar-playing, inline-skating guy that rolled around wearing white robes and a turban was nowhere to be seen. She missed him most of all. He’d been a fixture on the boardwalk for so long that some thought he was a vampire. People assumed he’d been there long before everyone else arrived and he’d be there long after they’d gone.
But he wasn’t there. He’d gone too.
>
Beth’s heart ached remembering the time she’d paid the guy twenty bucks to serenade Mason with five straight Jimi Hendrix songs. She knew it would drive him crazy. It did, only not in the way she expected. By the end of the third song, he’d dragged her to her feet and made her join him dancing like hippies at Woodstock.
That was all gone.
Despite the evidence of human life scattered and gathered in piles everywhere she looked, the life that created that debris was missing. She didn’t even see any bodies here like there’d been on some of the neighborhood streets. There were marks in the sand here and there that looked like something had been dragged across the pavement. But that could’ve just as easily been the ocean breeze blowing patterns into the sand.
The roar of the surf off to the right combined with the rumble of the motorcycle lulled her into a daze as she continued south through the once-expensive oceanfront properties of Marina Del Rey. The small community that had once been an elderly haven of the wealthy one percent. She used to wonder what they would’ve done if a tsunami came their way. They were trapped between an ocean of water and an ocean of humanity.
Apparently, she’d been concerned with the wrong apocalypse.
A small dog, a terrier of some kind, darted out from behind a corner and ran right across her path. She cranked the brakes down and the rear wheel locked up. It fishtailed out to the side as she fought to keep the bike upright. Despite her efforts, the tiny granules of sand drifting across the pavement won out. The bike crashed down to the side throwing her into a sand bank headfirst. She rolled into the impact and watched the bike skid off into the bank further down.
She dropped her head and tried to breathe. The impact had knocked the breath out of her. She knew what had actually happened was that the impact had temporarily paralyzed her diaphragm and that the condition would dissipate in a minute or two.
The knowledge only helped a little in fighting the panic that clawed at her mind. After a minute of ceding ground to the terror, a small breath trickled down her throat. Another few breaths and the thumping in her ears began to subside.
GRRRR.
Beth was going to kick that stupid dog. Did it seriously have the nerve to growl at her after knocking her down?
GRRRR.
The pitch wasn’t right. It was a lower vocalization than a small terrier could make. A chill crept up her spine. She pushed herself up and scanned for the source.
A freakishly muscled pitbull had its flews curled up and its teeth clenched tight. It was crouched low to the ground and tensed for action.
GRRRR.
Beth jerked her Glock out and fired a round into the air. The dog bolted back between the buildings from where it had come. The terrier was nowhere to be seen. Which was a good thing since she wasn’t sure if she wanted to help it or shoot it.
She struggled up and limped over to the fallen bike. It didn’t feel like she’d broken anything, but she’d be sporting some serious bruises tomorrow.
Idiot dog. Both of them.
The radio Mason had strapped to the bike was busted on one side. She clicked the power on and off and got no response.
Great. So much for communication.
She kicked the kickstand out with more force than was strictly necessary. She then shoved her backside against the bike’s frame dropped into a squat. She grunted and pushed with all her strength. Instead of the bike rotating upright, her boots sank down into the sand.
Nice. Fantastic spot to lay down a bike.
After her boots seemed to have settled enough to find harder ground, she heaved again and the old Kawasaki pushed over and settled upright on its kickstand. She blew out a big breath and jumped when the bike started to tip over to the other side.
The kickstand was slowly tunneling into the surface of the sand.
No!
She grabbed the handlebars and slung a leg over the seat and strained to get it back up. It hung in the air right where the force of the downward pull of gravity exactly equaled the force she exerted to bring it back up.
No!
Rage gave her the energy to tip the scale and the bike slowly came back up into balance.
GRRRR.
She pulled out her pistol and scanned for the pitbull. It wasn’t going to get a warning shot this time. She glanced behind her. There it was about a hundred feet back.
Only it wasn’t alone.
A pack of mangy dogs of equal or larger size surrounded it in a loose V like a flock of geese in the sky. They all growled and stared at her with unfriendly eyes. As one, they broke into a sprint like a whole quiver of arrows speeding toward their target.
Her.
She couldn’t shoot them all. There were too many and she wasn’t that good a shot. She holstered the Glock and fired up the Vulcan. She cranked the gas and the rear tire spun in place, spitting out a geyser of sand behind.
She let up and tried to duckwalk forward as she gave it a little gas. It edged forward and then the traction broke and more sand spewed out the back.
“Come on!”
She glanced back and the pack had closed half the distance. Only a few seconds before her legs would be shredded jerky. With the last bit of strength in her exhausted legs, she pushed off and hit the throttle.
The pitbull latched onto the heel of her right boot as the bike kicked forward and jumped back onto the pavement. She struggled with the front wheel and gunned it as soon as it pointed forward.
The bike roared and lunged ahead like a greyhound separating from the pack. The pitbull hung on dragging and bumping along the concrete. It rotated around and she caught its eyes as she glanced down.
“Let go!” Beth yelled as she slammed her heel into the engine casing.
Its broad, bony head smacked into the metal over and over. The monster was about to rip her leg off. She leaned down, careful to keep her balance, and tugged the zipper down the side of her calf. She wiggled her foot and the boot came free.
The pitbull smacked hard into a short, wood fence. It rolled to its feet and shook her boot wildly as if it wasn’t dead yet.
Beth refocused on the path ahead. She was approaching the inlet where the Ballona Creek emptied into the ocean. The wind washed over her bootless foot, chilling the skin through the thick sock.
Great.
Hope that doesn’t become a problem.
28
AHMED HASSAD didn’t think his wife would ever forgive him. Perhaps he didn’t deserve such a blessing. For the millionth time since she’d gone, he cursed the weakness in his heart. He cranked the can opener around and around until the sharp metal disk bit through the last of the ring sealing the can closed. He pried out the lid with a knife and began to assemble a lunch for his daughter as best he could.
He cursed himself for not being more prepared, for not taking the necessary action when such action was easy to take. Of course, he had an excuse. And that’s exactly all he ever had. Excuses. Justifications for why he didn’t do what he knew must be done.
He dipped the knife into the can and pulled out a dollop of thick, yellow paste. Hummus. Nalasif would’ve laughed in disdain. His wife made the best hummus in the world always from scratch from a recipe passed down through the generations. He spread a thick layer of what claimed to be hummus on a slice of wheat toast and laid it on a plate next to a few crackers.
Pathetic.
No more than ten days since the outbreak and already he was forced to feed them out of cans and their limited supply of dry goods. He poured out half a cup of water and eyed the nearly empty case of water bottles next to the kitchen sink.
He’d have to go out soon. He should’ve gone out already. But fear for his daughter kept him rooted in the security of their home. She couldn’t go out into the madness. And how was he to leave her here in the house alone?
And so his every thought or action ended in despair. A few more days and their supplies would run out. He didn’t expect that he’d have an answer by then, but then it would be too l
ate to delay any longer.
He scratched at his oily beard and wished he could use one of the remaining bottles to rinse it clean. He hadn’t bathed in over a week and the rank odor emanating from his body disgusted him.
The smell was starting to become so normal he sometimes went hours without noticing it. But then he’d notice a grimace on his daughter’s face as he drew near and the desperate nature of their situation would crash back down upon his shoulders like an avalanche.
He carried the saucer bearing the meager meal upstairs and into the master bedroom. He turned the corner and his heart skipped a beat. His daughter stood across the room peeking through the curtains out the second story window.
“Noor! Get away from the window! It’s not safe!”
She flinched at the sharpness in his voice and stumbled away from the window. Her long black hair swept gracefully around her shoulders just as her mother’s had. Her dark eyes regarded him with a fear that instantly made him regret his response.
“I’m sorry, father. I just wanted to see the outside. To see if anything had changed.”
Ahmed set the saucer down on a wood chest and gathered her up in his arms. “It is I who am sorry. I forget what it must be like at your age to endure such isolation. You deserve to be outside playing with friends.”
“But I don’t have any friends. And now, I will never have any friends.”
He squeezed her tighter knowing the fault was his. Keeping up with his growing business over the years had required them to move internationally, with the latest move being to America. But it wasn’t his business that drew them to this address. All the same, it was yet another move. Yet another occasion where Noor tearfully waved goodbye to the one or two dear friends that her shy manner managed to attract.
And now with the last move here several months ago, she had not had enough time yet to settle in at school and strike up a connection with one of her classmates. His heart broke for her. Not simply because of what she’d already suffered, but also because he had no way of making it end. He looked down and brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb.
