Slow Apocalypse

by John Varley

  “Para las cenizas,” the guy said, with a smile.

  “Ashes,” Addison said. “I think he said that bowl is for the ashes.”

  Dave had forgotten that Addison’s Spanish was much better than his, both from two years of classes and from having a few Hispanic friends in school. And it did look like ashes were falling through the holes in the bowl.

  The guy opened the second drum, which was divided into two chambers, both of them filled with wood chips that were rather darker than the chips in the trash can. Addison was concentrating on what he had to say.

  “Something like, the gas comes through the pipe and into the filter,” she said. “It…cleans the impurities so it won’t clog the…something.”

  He could see that the hot gas produced by burning the wood chips would be forced down through the wood chips on one side, then back up though the other.

  “Can you really run a truck on wood?” Addison asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  In response to urging from the crowd, the man reassembled the contraption. He stuffed a wad of newspaper into a hole, and lit it. In a few minutes wisps of smoke curled out of the top of the trash can. The man turned a crank that seemed to get a flow of air entering the fire chamber, running some kind of blower, but he didn’t keep at it long. It seemed that, once you got it going, it would be self-sustaining. Wood chips would fall from the hopper into the fire chamber on their own.

  A second man, much younger, inserted a crank into a slot that hadn’t been on the truck when it left the Ford factory. The truck was old enough that there were no electronics under the hood.

  The younger man turned the crank and the engine coughed, and didn’t catch. With a second crank it coughed again, made a wheezing sound, and then began to turn over smoothly. The whole Rube Goldberg assembly clattered like bedsprings in an earthquake, but it was definitely running.

  Everyone around burst into applause.

  It wasn’t until he got back home and logged onto the Internet and did a search that Dave fully understood the wood-burning truck.

  He hadn’t known that, during World War Two, when gasoline was scarce to unobtainable, over a million vehicles in Europe were powered by wood-burning engines. They were bulky and balky, but they worked. In Denmark, 95 percent of trucks, boats, tractors, and electrical generators were powered that way.

  The process was called gasification, and it worked with wood or coal, peat, lignite, or charcoal. Gasoline first has to be turned into a vapor in an engine. An engine will burn coal gas or wood gas as readily as gasoline.

  For once, it seemed that FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had been on the ball. They published a sixty-six-page booklet, available for free online, that detailed how to make a gasifier from parts you might find lying around your garage. If not, any hardware store could supply you with what you needed.

  Dave wondered about the efficiency of a wood-burning car. It wasn’t hard to find out. One ton of wood equaled about one hundred gallons of gas. That meant that twenty pounds of wood would take you as far as one gallon of gas. Which sounded like a lot, until he found out that gas weighs about six and a quarter pounds per gallon. So you had to carry about three times as much wood, by weight, as you would have carried in gasoline.

  Weight wasn’t the most important factor, though. Volume was the problem. You didn’t shove logs into the gasifier, you used wood chips, which were bulky. And the wood had to be dry. Powering a small passenger vehicle was probably going to be more trouble than it was worth, but there was little problem with a large hopper of wood chips on a medium-sized truck. And the heat from the burner was used to dry out wood for tomorrow.

  It looked like they were headed back to wood- and coal-burning technology.

  Leaving Echo Park, they went down Figueroa and passed the Original Pantry, which had opened in 1924 and boasted that it had never closed since then. It was dark, and a chain and heavy padlock had been threaded through the door handles. Karen and he had eaten there many times during their scrabbling days, and the leftovers would usually feed them for two more meals.

  Nearby was L.A. Live, the entertainment complex that had been built around the Staples Center and the Convention Center. The Nokia Theatre was there, along with a Regal multiplex, the Grammy Museum, lots of restaurants, and the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels. It featured huge electronic signs that were usually bursting with color and noise. Today they were all dark and silent. They puttered through it, almost alone, until they reached Staples. There, the streets were blocked off with plastic barriers. There were National Guardsmen standing by their Hummers and they had their weapons in their hands, but they weren’t stopping anyone from walking through.

  Inside, they saw hundreds of bikes and dozens of scooters all parked behind a long counter. They walked their Vespas up to a female police officer and she tied baggage claim checks to them and showed them where to park, then tore off part of the checks and handed them the stubs.

  “There been a lot of thefts?” he asked her.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t ever leave those things unattended.”

  Dave thanked her for the advice, and she directed them past a tunnel corridor that said it led to Sections 7, 8, 304, 303, 102, and 103. Addison paused.

  “Are the people in there, do you think?”

  “Probably.”

  “Can we go take a look?”

  They came into the arena about halfway between the expensive seats down below and the cheap seats above. Below them was the big rectangle that could be frozen over for Kings hockey games, where they would install the wood floor for Lakers basketball. It was bare concrete now. On the side opposite there were rows of folding tables. Sitting behind the tables were maybe a dozen men and women. Behind them were long lines of people shuffling along with papers in their hands.

  They went down to the floor and were directed to a table at the end. The line there was a little shorter than the others. They got at the end of it. These were the people volunteering to take in the homeless. They didn’t have the exhausted and frightened look of the people in the other lines.

  Eventually they sat in metal folding chairs facing a woman Dave judged to be in her mid-fifties. She had white hair, slightly disheveled, and a kindly face. She reminded him of his third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wyatt. She removed a form from a clipboard and replaced it with a fresh one. She looked up at them and smiled tiredly.

  “I’m Polly Sessions,” she said. “I’m a welfare case worker for the city of Los Angeles.”

  “Dave Marshall, and my daughter, Addison.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Dave, Addison.”

  “We wanted to see about taking in someone who is homeless from the big fire,” Addison said.

  “Well, bless you. It’s a great thing you’re doing.”

  “It was Addison’s idea,” Dave said, and she blushed.

  “You must be very proud of her.”

  “Couldn’t be prouder.”

  She turned the clipboard around and handed him a pen.

  “What I need for you to do first is fill out this form. And I’ll need to see some identification from you, Mr. Marshall.”

  “Why don’t you do this, Addie?” he said, and dug in his pocket for his wallet.

  “We will of course have to run a routine check on you. We can’t legally place children in a home without checking the criminal databases. I’m sure there will be no problem.”

  Dave hoped they didn’t do a credit check. He didn’t want Addison to know just how deeply in debt they were. He didn’t see what bad credit would have to do with their ability to provide shelter for a homeless family, but with the bureaucracy you never really know.

  Addison finished the form and handed it to Polly. The social worker scanned it, and then frowned. Had he missed something? Were they deficient in some way?

  “The confirmation process is running slow,” she said. “Normally, we would be able to approve you and send some people out
to you that very day. But we have a problem. Not your fault, I assure you. But you live in the hills.”

  “Why is that…”

  “Transportation. With the fuel situation there’s very few buses, and there are none that run anywhere near your home even when they are running. Almost no cars, most of our clients are on foot. We don’t expect you to provide food for your guests—though we hope you would share your cooking facilities—which means they will have to come into one of our emergency food-distribution stations every few days. There are no stations within five miles of your zip code. The children would need to go to school, and many of the parents would need to get to work.

  “Mr. Marshall, we’ve placed over five thousand people so far, and we have about ten thousand to go. So far, we’ve been able to place most of them on the flats, and much closer to their old neighborhoods. I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to do that. The public response has been good, but already some are beginning to suffer from what we call ‘sympathy fatigue.’ People are realizing that this temporary situation could go on for a long time.”

  “Like it did in New Orleans.”

  “Exactly. We’re also starting to see an attitude of ‘every man for himself.’ Fewer people are coming in to volunteer. What I’m going to do is put your names on a waiting list. Some of your neighbors in the hills are already on it. If and when we run out of suitable homes down here, we will call you. Okay?”

  Addison said okay, but he could see she was frustrated. Dave had to admit that he had mixed feelings, himself. He truly did want to help out. But he was not as starry-eyed as his good daughter, not eager to share his home with strangers, and most of all, he was feeling the ‘every man for himself’ syndrome more with each passing day.

  Addison wanted to see more of the relief operation, so when they were done they walked around Staples to the Convention Center behind it.

  There were several large tents erected in the small plaza along Figueroa Street. The odors of cooking came from inside, and a long line snaked from the Convention Center entrance and into the tent. On the other side, tables had been set up, and they were jammed with people eating. As soon as they were through, they were hustled along to dump their paper plates and plastic sporks into overflowing Dumpsters. People eyed them suspiciously as they passed.

  “Are they angry with us?”

  “Angry with the world, I suspect,” Dave said. “I think it’s starting to sink in that this may last a long time.”

  “How long, Daddy?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Addison had lost her enthusiasm for exploration. Dave knew how she felt, as if they were gawking at these people’s misfortune, but he wanted to see inside the Convention Center before they went. He thought most residents of the city still didn’t know just how bad the situation was, and he wanted the best information he could get.

  They climbed two flights of shut-down escalators, walked across a terrazzo floor that had constellations inset against a blue night sky. A glass atrium crisscrossed with massive white girders towered over them. It was his first time in the center, and he realized it was huge. There was lots of trash swept hastily into piles against the walls.

  At the end of the atrium were rows of doors, all of them standing wide open. People were coming and going in both directions, and they saw lines leading into the restrooms. They could smell the restrooms, too, and dirty diapers, and the odor of stale human sweat.

  They went through the doors and were in a vast, high-ceilinged room. There was no way for them to get a real idea of just how many people were in there, because some of the moveable walls that were used to separate exhibitors when a large convention was there had been placed to form small rooms. Elsewhere blankets and sheets had been draped over lines tied between these walls. It gave a little privacy, but not much.

  They walked along the edges of the vast temporary indoor city, looked down the lanes between rows of rooms. They couldn’t see the ends of the lanes. People were doing laundry in buckets and hanging it out to dry on poles, which probably accounted for the dank humidity in the place. It smelled worse in there than it did outside. He saw some chess players and of course there were children playing, but most of the adults were just sitting around with very little to do.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. Addison nodded. Her eyes were moist with tears.

  They reclaimed their scooters and drove away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Dave was eager to get home, but they still had some daylight left and since he didn’t expect to be coming down off the hill very frequently, he decided to take a different route home. So they detoured through Chinatown and over the Los Angeles River—all but dry, as it always was in the summer—and onto San Fernando Road. Things were much the same on this side of town as they had seen elsewhere: gas stations guarded by the military, no automobiles, a lot of bicycles and pedestrians, and a few motor scooters. They turned down Los Feliz and crossed back over the river and then made a right into Griffith Park.

  Immediately they heard the roar of chain saws.

  There were city trucks parked all along Crystal Springs Drive, the main road through the park. The gas-powered chain saws were being used to bring the trees down. Once they were on the ground, other workers moved in and began cutting the branches into manageable lengths. There were men splitting chunks of wood, and several wood chippers howling as the downed trees were fed into their hungry mouths.

  “Daddy,” Addison shouted, “they’re ruining the park!”

  “I know, honey, I know. It’s just something we’re going to have to get used to.”

  They came to a line of white sawhorses and not far beyond them was a huge flatbed truck, the kind used to carry big cranes to construction sites. A section of chain-link fence had been taken down and a second huge truck had been driven over the dirt and set up with hydraulic braces out at the sides to keep it from tipping over. On the truck was a crane big enough to lift a locomotive. And that’s exactly what it was doing.

  They were just north of Travel Town, the outdoor railroad museum. It was another place his family had gone when Addison was younger. It was a collection of old railroad equipment: about a dozen engines from various eras, and maybe twice that number of rolling stock—freight cars, passenger cars, and the like. Most of it had seen better days, with wood crumbling, glass broken, metal rusting.

  A man noticed them and came in their direction, smiling. He was in his seventies but walked with a spry step. He was wearing denim pin-striped overalls and a matching hat with the SANTA FE logo on it, and looked the very picture of a railroad engineer.

  “Afternoon,” he said, with a tip of his hat.

  “Same to you,” Dave said. “What’s going on here?”

  The smile grew even wider.

  “You could call it a resurrection, I guess. We’re just about ready to load old Number 3025 onto this truck and bring her back to life.”

  “No kidding?” Addison said.

  “I wouldn’t kid you, young lady. And what’s your name?”

  “I’m Addison.”

  “Nice name. I’m Burt Henrikson.”

  Dave introduced himself and shook the man’s hand.

  “The last time I was here,” Addison said, “I remember that all the engines looked kind of…rusty.”

  Henrikson laughed.

  “More than kind of. There’s holes in the boilers and the fuel tanks and just about everywhere else. But holes can be patched, and we figure we can probably get seven or eight of these old ladies back on the tracks.”

  “These are wood burners?” Dave asked. “Coal burners?”

  “Some of them started out that way, but they were converted to oil a long time ago. But there’s nothing to stop us from converting them back. One of the jobs we hope to do when these engines are working again is hauling coal. Did you know that Los Angeles gets half its electricity from burning coal?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did know that,” Dave to
ld him.

  Henrikson eyed him narrowly.

  “Not many people do. You’re been doing some research, I’ll bet, because those idiots on television aren’t talking about things like that. I’ve even called them up, tried to tell them some of it, and they say they aren’t interested.”

  “Some people think they’re being censored.”

  “Could be. Would you like to see what we’re doing, little lady?”

  “I sure would!”

  “Well, come on, there ain’t nothing secret about it. Watch your step.”

  It was quite an operation, getting the old locomotive off its dead-end siding and onto the waiting flatbed truck. There were a dozen men working at it, and the crane operator moved it very slowly.

  “Old Southern Pacific Number 3025,” their new friend said, with satisfaction. “Built in 1904, over a hundred years old. She came here in 1952. Considering all that time in the sunshine and rain, she’s in pretty good shape. Seventy feet long, 115 tons.”

  People seldom realize just how gigantic the old steam locomotives were until they stand next to one, and this was a behemoth. She looked even larger, somehow, dangling at the end of massive chains.

  “Those four driver wheels are some of the biggest ever made, eighty-one inches high. With a full head of steam, she could hit a hundred miles per hour on the coast route to San Francisco.”

  “I gather you’re a railroad man, Mr. Henrikson.”

  “Just Burt’s okay. Yeah, I’m a retired engineer, but I never got a chance to handle anything like this baby. Luckily, we still have some old-timers around who know steam; otherwise, we’d never try to repair those boilers.”