Slow Apocalypse

by John Varley

  “Honey, don’t go in there,” Karen called out. “I don’t like you in there.” She was coming toward him. “We’ll sleep outside tonight.”

  “You want some breakfast?” Addison asked.

  They sat down at the picnic table to a meal of cold canned hash and oatmeal and instant coffee heated over the propane stove.

  Addison brought over a pan of biscuits, which were soft on top and black on the bottom.

  “They’re supposed to be baked in the oven,” she said, looking unhappy. “Maybe I should throw these away and try again.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Addie. We’ll eat our mistakes for now, if we can, and I know we’ll get better. I don’t want to waste any food.”

  “Maybe if I cover them next time.”

  “That should do the trick.” He scraped the worst of the carbon off the bottom of four biscuits and spread boysenberry jam on the tops, and they went down okay. He refilled his coffee cup and drank half of it.

  “Daddy, there’s an area over there to the west I’ve been looking at. It doesn’t look like there’s any fires there. I wonder why that is?”

  Dave got up and went to the edge with his daughter and looked where she was pointing. Sure enough, there was a swath of land that didn’t seem to have any flames in it. It was hard to judge how wide it was, but it had to be at least five or six miles long, reaching to where he estimated Wilshire Boulevard would be. Then he noticed that there were some columns of white smoke rising from that area, as if the fires there had been doused by water. That would be around UCLA, Westwood, Holmby Hills. He thought he could make out the Los Angeles Country Club, sitting on the eastern edge of the fireless area. Could it be that people down there still had enough water pressure to fight the fires? Did the remnants of the LAFD concentrate their equipment over there? North of that area, where he couldn’t see, would be Bel Air. Expensive real estate, all of it, including Bob Winston’s home. So once again the rich seemed to be getting special treatment.

  Then he realized he was wrong.

  “I think a dam might have broken, Addison,” he said.

  “Which one, Daddy?”

  “Probably Stone Canyon. That’s the biggest one.”

  “You mean the water put out the fires over there?”

  “I think that’s what happened.” He didn’t add that the water might have done a great deal more than that.

  The hills were a series of canyons running mostly north and south. The biggest was Cahuenga, where the Hollywood Freeway cut through. Then there was Runyon Canyon, Nichols Canyon, and Laurel Canyon to the east of him. To the west, Coldwater Canyon was a mile away, and just beyond that was Franklin Canyon. There were two dams in Franklin, one small one nearly at the top, and a larger one just above the flatlands. Dave didn’t think there was enough water in either dam to spread as far as what he was seeing, and besides, it would have been a lot closer.

  But three miles away was Benedict Canyon, then Beverly Glen Boulevard, which ran just over the hill from Stone Canyon, which contained a dam and reservoir even bigger than Lake Hollywood. If that dam had collapsed, the water would have roared down the steep canyon walls, sweeping away hundreds of houses and everything else in its path until it crossed Sunset Boulevard and might have begun to lose a little of its force as it spread out over the flatter land of UCLA and Westwood

  Without even thinking about it, Dave dug his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. Then he felt foolish. What were the chances he could get a signal?

  But when he looked at the screen, he had three bars. Could that be right?

  He scrolled through his stored numbers and thumbed the one for Bob Winston. He expected to be unable to get a call through. Surely whatever cell tower was still operating would be overwhelmed.

  He heard it ringing. He counted twelve rings and was about to hang up, when someone answered, sounding suspicious, as if he thought he might be getting a pitch from a telemarketer. It sounded like Bob.

  “Hello?”

  “Is that you, Bob? It’s Dave! I’m amazed I got you. My battery is low, and there’s no telling when we might get cut off. So let’s don’t waste any time. From up here, it looks like the Stone Canyon dam broke in the quake.”

  “The dam did break. The house is damaged, but standing. We didn’t get the worst of it. We got a five-foot wall of water. The first floor flooded. Outside, the street is full of debris. We moved up to the second floor and watched the trees and parts of houses flow by. When the water went away we had six inches of mud covering the first floor.”

  Bob lowered his voice.

  “There’s a dead body half-buried, almost in my front yard. We haven’t even had time to take care of him yet. We’ve got his ID, license, credit cards, so when somebody comes looking…”

  He couldn’t go on. He took a deep breath.

  “How did you—”

  “The house held up,” Dave said. “Lots of broken glass, some cracks in the wall, but basically solid. We have at least three dead that we know of, probably two more.”

  “Lord, I haven’t even had time to see about the neighbors,” Bob said.

  “At least the fires around you got put out.”

  “Mark wants to go south a ways, see how far this mess goes, but I’m not happy about that idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ve heard gunfire from down that direction the last few nights. Even during the daylight, yesterday. I don’t know who’s shooting at who. I’m worried about mobs forming, coming in here because they think the rich people still have food. The thing is I do have food, but I doubt my neighbors stockpiled as much as I did. What I’m afraid of is hungry people looting houses. All the stores have already been cleaned out.”

  Dave heard Bob sigh heavily.

  “So, are you still planning to head north?”

  “I can’t at the moment, Bob. Our street is cracked wide open just a few houses down from me. I guess I’m lucky it didn’t crack right under our house. I haven’t even been down as far as Sunset, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more obstacles on the way. It may be a while before we can leave.”

  “I’d put it off as long as I could, if I were you. I’ve got a feeling this is just the beginning. I think we’re on the edge of anarchy. I’ve been listening to my CB radio every chance I get, and I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

  Dave felt like kicking himself. Why hadn’t he thought of buying a Citizens’ Band radio? It had never occurred to him. It was an old technology. People had grown so used to e-mail, Skype, and most of all, cell phones.

  “I had to dig the damn thing out of a box in the attic. There’s a lot of talk out there. I tell you, Dave, I’ve swept the AM and FM bands from one end to the other, and there’s not much out there. No FM, and only two AM stations I could find, and they don’t have a lot of information. No television at all, that I can find. No cable down here. Have you tried to connect to the Internet?”

  “Not yet. I don’t see how it could still be operating.”

  “Dave, my friend, I’m scared. I feel so isolated. Thank God most of my family is here. I picked up a man broadcasting out of San Diego, and it felt like I’d contacted Borneo. Our world is contracting, day by day. We’ve retreated to the second floor, because it’s more defensible. My family is…we’re standing watches, Dave. Armed watches. This morning I put up a sign in the driveway that said trespassers would be shot. And I meant it. Or, at least I thought so. But I can’t picture gunning down a hungry family. I just can’t picture it. Gangs of looters? Yeah, I think I could shoot. But women? Children? What has the world come to?”

  “I’ve thought of that, too, Bob. It wouldn’t be easy even to send them away. But I have to feed my family, too, and I have a finite amount of food.”

  “How is your situation up there…I mean, about defending yourself?”

  “I’m armed, like I told you. The neighborhood may be coming together. There’s supposed to be a meeting down the hill soon. I th
ink the guy organizing it is thinking about things like that.”

  “Listen, if you don’t feel safe, my offer still stands. You can come join us down here. The more people we have around us, the better I’ll feel. So if—”

  The signal was gone. Dave looked at the screen, and the battery was dead.

  He told Karen about the call. She said she would feel safer there in the hills, at least until they had a better idea of what was going on down below. Dave agreed. They decided he would go alone to the meeting down the hill while his wife and daughter tried to set up something to live in. He got on his bicycle.

  But he was only a short way down Doheny when he saw a computer-printed notice stapled to a palm tree. It said the neighborhood meeting had been postponed until noon the next day, because most people needed more time to get their own houses in order, as best they could.

  The three of them spent the rest of the day assessing the damage and figuring out what to do about it.

  “I suggest that we move out of the main house and into the guesthouse,” Dave said. “The main house is too damn big. I’d like us all to be closer together. Also, there’s less area for me to board up.”

  “I like that,” Addison said.

  Karen shrugged, then nodded. The guesthouse had two rooms upstairs: a bedroom and a front room, which Dave had never quite figured out a use for. There were couches and chairs in there. It was a good place to sit and look out over the basin, but you got the same view from the big room downstairs which he had always used as his office. There was a stairway that led to a railed balcony, about ten by fifteen feet, and under that area was a galley kitchen with small refrigerator and stove. Dave didn’t recall the stove ever being used, and there was nothing in the fridge except bottled water and some beer. He and Addison went around picking up all the useless stuff that had fallen and broken, putting the soft items in black plastic garbage bags, the hard and jagged stuff in the wheelbarrow to be carted to the most distant corner of the lot and dumped there. Before long they had a mountain of debris.

  While Dave and Addison excavated their new home, Karen started a salvage operation in the old one.

  She retrieved anything useful and undamaged that they had elected to leave behind when they planned the Oregon trip. Sheets and blankets, towels, bath soap, lots of extra clothing. She brought it all down and set it on the patio. Toilet paper and paper towels, pots and pans and silverware and other basic kitchen equipment, what food and spices were still left in the kitchen. She was like a survivor on the beach salvaging the remains of a shipwreck. You never knew what might come in handy, and she took everything that might have even the slightest use, since she had a whole guesthouse to put it in, didn’t have to pack carefully, and she intended never to go back inside the wreck of her old home again once she had finished.

  The three of them struggled to bring an undamaged mattress down to the patio, intending to put it in the guesthouse for Addison. But once they were down there, Karen looked at both buildings and shook her head.

  “It’s not going to rain tonight,” she said. “I don’t want to sleep inside.”

  “I know what you mean,” Dave said.

  “The ash is still falling, Daddy.” It was true. The many fires had released a storm of gray ash into the air, and it had been slowly drifting down. Though it was nothing like it had been in the first hours after the quake, all three of them were filthy just from standing around outside.

  “I’ll set up the tent. We’ve got cots down in the storage room.”

  The girls followed him down the narrow steps to the small threshold of the underground storage room.

  It wasn’t as bad as he had feared. Most of the food he had bought was in metal or plastic containers. Stacks had tumbled and boxes had split open, but they didn’t lose very much. Karen looked at it all, a bounty she would have scoffed at as a foolish waste of money not very long ago, and put her arm around Dave’s waist.

  “You’ve taken good care of us,” she said, quietly.

  “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “You got the early warning. I screwed that up.”

  “I think the best idea is to forget about that, okay? I’m not angry. Addison’s not angry. Addison, are you angry?”

  “I’m not angry, Mom. And I think Dad’s right, let’s just not dwell in the past, we have enough to do to deal with the future.”

  Night had fallen before they were through. It was a starless, moonless night, the sky seeming blacker than any sky had any right to be. Living in the city with its constant glow had not prepared any of them for such inky darkness. They turned on a battery-powered camp light, which only made the shadows seem to press in closer. Dave didn’t want to use the lamp any more than he had to, so he took his ax and broke up a few dresser drawers brought out from the main house.

  “Pretty expensive fire,” he commented. “How much did we pay for that dresser?”

  “Too much,” Karen said. “I wish we’d bought gasoline instead.”

  “Me, I wish we could burn than flat-screen plasma TV. At least the dresser is useful now. What is it, sixty years old? Seventy, something like that?”

  “I don’t recall. It does make a nice fire.”

  Huddling near the fire was much different from sitting around the harsh light of the fluorescent camp lantern. They were all glad when that was turned off. The darkness was still just as intense, but the flickering shadows cast on the walls of the house and the perimeter wall seemed comforting rather than threatening.

  They opened a can of corned beef and one of refried beans. Karen improvised a flat griddle over the fire, and made tortillas out of cornmeal and flour. They folded beef burritos with a little salsa spooned from a big plastic jar, with a side of canned corn. Dave was so hungry he ate three, chiding himself, knowing they were going to have to go on short rations sooner or later. But Addison downed two of them herself, and so did Karen. No one talked. Dave felt like they were a real family for the first time in too many years. It was a good feeling.

  They looked out over the basin, where fires still burned, but not nearly so many. Most of them had finally encountered some obstacle and were guttering.

  Dave barked his knuckles twice setting up the tent, and didn’t feel he’d done a very good job of it, but it would do for now. In the morning, when he could see better, he’d straighten it out.

  Karen put the empty cans in the fire and scorched them clean.

  “No trash pickup,” she said. “Even if we bury this stuff, if might attract raccoons. Or rats.”

  “Good idea,” Dave said. “There’s something else I want to talk to you both about. I do intend to bury our garbage, and I’ll tell you why.” He paused.

  “This is hard, but I might as well just say it. Karen, Addison, I don’t want our neighbors to know how much food we have.”

  He let them digest that. He was pretty sure it wasn’t going to go down well with his daughter, and also pretty sure that Karen, newly practical again, would understand his reasons.

  “I’ll throw it open for discussion,” he said, “but my feeling is that the old rule of ‘share and share alike’ doesn’t apply when survival is at stake. The plain fact is that some of us here on the hill have a lot of food, and some of us surely don’t.”

  He waited for a reaction. Addison was looking down at the picnic table. This was the girl who wanted to open their house to strangers, who would have been on the serving line at the soup kitchen at Staples Center if Dave had let her.

  “Won’t food be coming in again, when they get those big train engines going again? The ones we saw in the park?”

  “I hope so, Addie. I really do. And maybe it’s coming in already. We’ll find out more as the days go by. But things were bad enough before, and they’re likely to be a lot worse with this earthquake. I imagine the roads and rails are torn up. What I want to ask you to do is, if anyone asks you if we have any food, you tell them to come talk to me. Can you do that?”

  Addison d
idn’t say anything.

  “Addie, please, can you just do that?”

  “Okay. I guess I can.”

  Dave decided not to push his luck on that point. He didn’t know enough himself, though he hoped to learn more at the neighborhood meeting the next day. There must be others who had CBs or ham-radio equipment. He had a feeling that would be their best source of news for the time being.

  The fire had burned down to embers, and the three of them entered the tent and got as comfortable as they could on the cots. Dave was so tired he expected to drop off quickly, but it took at least an hour.

  The sun never quite made an appearance the day after the quake, either, but there was a bit more of a sense that it was up there somewhere. There was a light breeze from the Pacific, which blew off some of the lingering black haze, but the air was hot and close and tasted bad. The ashfall had lessened, but with any breath of wind, ash that had already fallen stirred up and covered everything.

  Dave ate his breakfast of bottled orange juice and canned corned beef hash standing up, looking out over the devastation.

  Karen was trying to bathe in a few gallons of water. They had a large amount of water in the pool, but it wasn’t infinite. The cover would slow evaporation, but could not stop it. Water was the thing that worried Dave the most. You could live a long time without enough food. Without water, you were dead in days.

  Karen had strung a rope at about her chin height in a corner of the patio, tying it to the fence on one side and the frame of a sliding door on the other. She had hung a blanket over the rope. Dave could see her head and her feet in shower clogs as she dried herself off. He set his dirty plate on the picnic table and went to meet her as she pulled the blanket back. She was dressed in a clean blouse and pants, and was tying her hair back. She smiled at him.