Slow Apocalypse

by John Varley

  After breakfast of oatmeal with reconstituted milk, brown sugar, and some walnuts, the three of them went into the basement and looked over the piles of stuff they would be leaving behind. They needed trade goods, so they tried to figure out what people would be looking for most urgently. There were two extra kerosene lanterns. He hated to part with them, but they already had two. Kerosene, he had learned, was usually refined from crude oil, but it could also come from coal, oil shale, and wood.

  They all agreed he had bought too much Spam, since none of them liked it. He had chosen it because he thought it had a high protein content, as it was made from pork and ham. He should have read the label. Most of Spam’s calories came from fat. It was heavy with cholesterol, and had an amazing amount of salt.

  “I should point out,” he said, “that when food is in short supply, you have to look at it differently. Fat is a bad thing when the supermarket shelves are stocked and the main thing you worry about is gaining weight. But when your circumstances are different, when you aren’t getting your twelve hundred calories per day, fat is a good thing. It concentrates a lot of energy. I’ll bet that cavemen fought over the fattiest meat.”

  “And we’re still taking quite a bit of Spam with us,” Karen pointed out. “If we get to the point of living in caves and hunting bears, I’ll eat all the fat you bring home. Meantime, we’ll eat the canned meat sparingly.” Good enough.

  They unpacked the Escalade, then had a brief dispute about who should go to Burbank to look for a horse trailer. He suggested just Addison and himself, while Karen stayed behind to organize things. She wouldn’t have it.

  “You’re a screenwriter, Dave. What always happens just after somebody says, ‘Let’s split up’?”

  “Somebody dies. You’re right. We’ll all go.”

  She had some more good advice, too.

  “I think you should bring a gun.”

  He thought about it, then went back inside and got the Smith & Wesson from the safe, where he had stored it. He started back to the car, then turned around and got the Remington shotgun and a box of shells. He put the revolver in the waistband of his pants, where it felt uncomfortable, alien. He supposed he could get used to it, but he wished he’d bought some sort of holster for it.

  Outside, he handed the shotgun to Karen through the window.

  “You remember how to use this?”

  “I think so.” She thumbed three shells into the magazine.

  “You know how to shoot, Mom?”

  “My father insisted all his kids learn how to shoot.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Addie. I didn’t always live in the Hollywood Hills.”

  It was Karen’s first look at how spooky the city had become.

  “Somebody broke into that store,” Addison said.

  She was right. It was across from the huge Guitar Center on Sunset. Broken glass was strewn across the sidewalk, and a few caved-in guitars. A man was sitting in a folding chair in front of the store with a rifle cradled across his lap. He watched them go by, and he didn’t smile.

  They passed several other stores that had obviously been looted, but this wasn’t the mass anarchy that prevailed during the Rodney King riots. It looked more opportunistic. Dave figured it was people breaking in at night, knowing the police would be putting a low priority on property crimes. They didn’t see that any fires had been set, either. These seemed to be pragmatic looters, without the rage that prevailed after the King verdict. They saw several more guys that he assumed were owners, patrolling their closed shops with weapons prominently displayed.

  There was more activity at the Equestrian Center than he had expected. Horses having recently become a much more valuable asset, the Center had been turned into a clearinghouse and trading post dealing in feed, tack, and the animals themselves. He parked the Escalade and they drifted through the impromptu bazaar. A bale of hay was going for three times what Addison had paid for the stuff in the garage, and there wasn’t a horse there selling for less than the price of a good used car.

  Luckily for them, there wasn’t much of a market for horse trailers. There were a few dozen of them sitting around. Some of them had price tags, and phone numbers.

  They looked at several of them, and settled on a no-frills Delta, with wood-slat sides and a canvas top. The metal fenders had quite a bit of rust and the canvas had seen better days, but the tires and axle looked okay, and that was all he really cared about.

  Addison opened the back and wrinkled her nose.

  “We can hose it out at home,” Karen said.

  The trailer had been marked down from $750 to $500. Dave had $400 cash in his pocket and he’d be happy to get rid of it.

  He got out his phone and punched in the number on the trailer. He got two rings, and then a man answered.

  “Calling about your horse trailer for sale,” he said. “Would you consider $400?”

  “No sir, I wouldn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t take hardly any amount of greenbacks. If I need to start a fire, I can use newspapers. Where are you, sir?”

  “I’m standing beside the trailer.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  He made it in three. He shook hands with Dave and introduced himself as Irving. He was a short man wearing a knit shirt and designer jeans, not at all the picture of a cowboy. He looked more like an accountant.

  “I was going to take that sign down,” he said. “I’ve got more paper money at home than I can use, and money in the bank that’s probably worthless.”

  “But is it still for sale?”

  “For swap, I’d say.” He stared for a while at the line of trailers, some of them capable of carrying eight horses, as big as city buses with living quarters in the front. “I guess it’s no secret that these damn things aren’t worth too much these days. Who has the gas to pull them?” He looked over at the Escalade, then back at Dave, implying a question, but he wasn’t going to talk about gasoline.

  “What do you want to trade?” Dave asked.

  “What do you have?”

  Karen stepped up. “What do you need?”

  Dave faded away quietly as Irving and Karen began to dicker. Addison took another look at the trailer, opening and closing the squeaky gate.

  “You think Mom can make a deal?” Addison whispered.

  “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about your mom, Addie. She’s been paying retail for years, but when you were young and we had to stretch a dollar, she could outdicker an Arab rug merchant.”

  The final deal included all the Spam they had brought, with some other items thrown in. Irving looked happy, and Dave felt happy, too.

  It had been a while since he towed a trailer, and he didn’t like the jerky motion as he started out, but he got used to it quickly. The trailer squeaked and rattled, but it seemed sound enough.

  Thirty minutes later he was backing it up the driveway toward the garage. It took him four tries to get it right. With any luck he wouldn’t have to back it up again until they got to Oregon.

  Addison got Ranger into the trailer easily enough.

  “There’s room for half a dozen hay bales up there, Daddy. Should we pack them? If they’re too heavy, or something, we could just take some grain and then we can stop and let him graze along the way?”

  Since he wasn’t optimistic about getting the horse to Oregon, it didn’t matter too much if they pulled a little extra weight for a while. He was pretty sure they would have to swap him somewhere along the way, for gas if possible. But he didn’t tell her that, he just said she could pack the bales. She backed the horse out of the trailer and returned him to the garage, then got the hose and a bucket and some soap and started cleaning.

  While she did that Karen and Dave got busy loading the Escalade again.

  The day had been hot, and they were all dusty, sweaty, and thirsty when the sun went down that evening. With any luck, it would be their last evening a
t the hilltop house, and tomorrow would be their first day on the road.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He had put off calling the posse until he was sure they would be leaving, but it was time.

  Roger’s number went to voice mail, and he didn’t leave a message, figuring he’d call back later. He wanted to say good-bye, if he could. But Jenna picked up.

  “Hi, Jen. How are you doing?”

  There was a long, heavy sigh with a hint of a tremor at the end.

  “Not so good, Dave.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, we haven’t had the fires and all that here in the Valley, but food is getting scarce. Real scarce. The gangs are running wild, all of them trying to expand their territories. I hear gunshots every night, and I haven’t seen a police car in three days. I think they’ve all gone home. You want more?”

  “No, that’ll do. I called because we’re taking off for Oregon tomorrow morning. We’re carrying everything we can, but we don’t have a truck, just the Escalade, and maybe enough gas to get there. What I’m saying, we have more food than we can take with us, and I’d like you and Bob and Dennis and Roger to have what we have to leave behind.”

  “Jeez, Dave, that’s so…I don’t know how to thank you. But there’s a problem. I have exactly zero gallons of gas for the car, and no idea where to get any more.”

  “Do you know anybody who has a car and can help you?”

  She thought about it.

  “There’s this guy I’ve been dating. Nothing serious, or at least it wasn’t serious until everything started going to shit. But I’ve been reevaluating some things. I’m worried that a single girl is going to be at a big disadvantage in the days to come, you know what I’m saying?”

  “I think I do.”

  “The world is changing, Dave. I never needed a man to protect me before, but that was when there was a cop five minutes away, all day and all night. We’re falling right into anarchy here, people are looking sideways at each other, I see people walking around with pistols in their belts and rifles in their hands. Pretty soon it’s going to be every man for himself…and where does that leave a single woman?”

  “Looking for somebody to protect her, I guess.”

  She sighed. “Okay, Dave, thank you again, thank you a thousand times. I’ll be there tomorrow. I hope it’ll be in a car with this dude driving. I’ll have to split it with him, but it’s better than nothing. But one way or another I’ll be there, even if I have to walk and take what I can carry in a backpack.”

  That would be a walk of maybe fifteen miles, one way, much of it up and down steep hills. Dave didn’t think much of that idea.

  “Hang on a minute, Jen. I need to think about something.” He found Karen in the living room, catching up on the news.

  “Karen, I’ve been talking to Jenna, and she’s in bad shape. No food at all, and it’s getting violent in the Valley. She’s got no gas for her car, so she may not be able to come and take food back to her place, like we talked about.”

  “Why take it back?” she asked. “This is about to be a big, empty house. Tell her to bring what she can carry of her stuff and just stay here. It couldn’t be any worse than that awful apartment she lives in.”

  Dave smiled at his wife, and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Jen, why don’t you pack a suitcase, whatever you can carry, or get that guy to give you a ride over here. And then just stay.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “You mean live in your house?”

  “It’s going to be empty. Why not?”

  “If you’re serious, then yes, I’d love to do that. I’ll be there tomorrow, even if I can only carry a change of clothes.”

  He told her how to find the semiconcealed entrance to the basement, and where he would be leaving his spare key. She thanked him again, and they hung up.

  He got Dennis on the first ring. He was not as bad off as Jenna, but just as thankful to take him up on his offer of free food. He still had enough gas in his car to get to Hollywood from his home in Glendale, and probably enough to get back home.

  “How are things out there?” Dave asked him.

  “Tense,” he said. “I’ve heard gunfire at night, coming from the direction of Forest Lawn. There’s a couple neighborhoods just a few miles from them that are Mexican gang territory. On the good side, we’ve got a neighborhood watch going. I was surprised to find out how many of my neighbors have guns.”

  “Do you?”

  “I didn’t, but you got me worried and I found somebody. I bought a piece-of-shit .32 automatic. But I fired it once, and it works, and I feel a lot better having it.”

  “Be careful, coming over.”

  “Oh, I will. We’ll be there before sunup, if at all possible. I don’t feel like I dare leave Ellen and Dylan behind.”

  “I think that’s wise. And you might think about not going back home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He explained the deal they had offered Jenna, and said it was open to his family, too. Dennis thanked him, and said he would talk it over with Ellen.

  Another call to Roger was as fruitless as the first one. He called Bob’s number, got a busy signal, called again and got an eerie whistling noise, like some sort of message from deep space in a cheap fifties sci-fi flick. The third time Bob picked up.

  Bob listened to Dave’s offer.

  “I think getting out of town is probably your best bet,” Bob said. “I think you’re going to need a lot of luck, but it’s still the best option for you. As for your offer to split up the things you’re leaving behind, I’m very grateful, but the fact is I was about to call you and make a different offer.

  “My guess is that I have more food and fuel than you do. I thought a lot about what you said that day, when you laid out your fantastic story. By the time I got home I’ll admit I had pretty much dismissed it.

  “But I woke up in the middle of the night with the sudden conviction that everything you said was true, and that I’d better start doing something about it.”

  “I’m glad I convinced somebody.”

  “You didn’t, actually. I think it was my paranoid subconscious that did the trick. And I’ll also admit that when I got up the next morning the strength of my conviction had faded somewhat.”

  “The harsh light of day will do that. Believe me, Bob, I had the same problem.”

  “In the end, I did what I should have done before even going to bed that night. I told the whole story to Emily.”

  Bob’s wife, Emily, was one of Dave’s favorite people in the world. She and Bob had been married for over forty years. They had started out with nothing but a car and a typewriter, drove to Los Angeles from some little town in Alabama, and Bob started freelancing. He hit it big with two sitcoms and a cop show in the seventies, another hit in the eighties, and his last big one in the nineties. They had bought their house in Holmby Hills, invested well, and had six children. Somehow, Emily had managed to remain down-to-earth in spite of her neighbors. When Dave was in doubt as to how to handle a crisis with Addison, he had often turned to Emily.

  “Emily asked me if you seemed crazy,” Bob continued. “Like had you gone off the deep end. I said no, you seemed sane enough to realize that what you were telling us sounded crazy.”

  Dave had to laugh at that one.

  “So she asked me what’s the downside of acting as if what you said was really happening? What’s the worst that could happen? We’d end up with a basement full of canned food. If it turns out you’re nuts, come Christmastime we donate it to the Salvation Army. Tax deductible. So I’ve laid in truckloads of stuff.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Well, I owe you, Dave, because it’s already worse than I ever thought it could be, and something tells me we haven’t seen the worst of it yet.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “So that’s why I was going to call you to say that your family is welcome to come down off that hill and stay w
ith my family. Lisa is here, and Mark, and Marian, and we expect that Teddy will make it here from San Diego on his bicycle soon, and still we have spare bedrooms. I want to tell you that the invitation stands, and is open-ended. For however long this madness lasts.”

  “I don’t know quite what to say, Bob. I’m incredibly grateful.”

  “But you’re going to Oregon.”

  “I think that’s our best bet.”

  “I do, too. And we may end up following you. The family has voted, and so far we’ve decided to stick it out here. Of course we will wait for Teddy. But after he gets here…the more I think about it, the more sense it makes to move to the Pacific Northwest.”

  They wished each other luck.

  He tried once more to get Roger, with no luck. He decided to try him once more in the morning, then to tell Dennis or Jenna or Bob to try to make contact with him.

  They managed to crawl into their separate beds a little before eleven. Dave wanted to be as rested as possible for an early start the next morning.

  He was startled by his bedroom door opening. Karen was standing there. The faint reflected glow from the hall lamp they always left on all night outlined her body beneath her nightgown. She was still as slender as she had been on their wedding day. His breath caught in his throat. How long had it been since he’d seen his wife like this?

  “I can’t stop crying,” she said.

  He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  “Don’t get up,” she said. “I want to get in bed with you.”

  “I’d love to have you here with me,” he said. “I’ve been lonely.”

  “I don’t want to make love, okay? I just want you to hold me.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  She closed the door behind her. The only light in the room came through the high window from a distant streetlight. She was a pale ghost floating toward him. At the side of the bed she shrugged out of her nightgown, put one knee on the bed on the side opposite him, and slipped under the sheet. He got in with her and she came into his arms. It was impossible for her not to notice his arousal.

  “Maybe this was a bad idea,” she said.