by John Varley
“Jenna,” Dave said. She hurried over to them.
“If we don’t come back, I’m trusting you to take care of Addison.”
“With my life.”
“That’s what I had in mind.”
He turned the key in the ignition, sat on his scooter, and puttered down the drive with Karen close behind him, thinking that, for once, he’d delivered a pretty good exit line in real life instead of on the pages of a script. It wasn’t up there with “I’ll be back,” but it would do.
The reason for the argument with his daughter was this expedition out of the safe zone of Doheny. That it was dangerous Dave did not doubt. But one of the reasons he felt that he had to do it was to get some idea of how dangerous.
He had no kind of military experience, but he had bought some books about military strategy and tactics. He had learned some things, many of which seemed obvious, but not things he was used to thinking about and applying to his daily life.
One rule was to occupy the high ground. In most situations it was better to be up high firing down than down low, firing up. Exception: when you were surrounded by enemies and could be starved out. Of course castles had fallen, many times, but Doheny now had allies to the north, east, and west.
Another rule was that before you committed everything to a move, you had to know what you were walking into. You needed intelligence. They had a little of that from the police officers and the Vega family, but not nearly enough. You needed to reconnoiter, you needed someone to actually go there and scout out the situation.
Karen had argued against his going alone. Two were safer than one, each could watch the other’s back. In the end, Dave had relented.
Another of the military principles Dave had pondered was that the map is not the terrain. Among the little bit of luggage he and Karen were carrying in the small panniers strapped to the back were both a Thomas Guide to Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and a Garwin detachable GPS unit. He knew it was ironic that in the midst of a complete power blackout, with landline telephone, cell phone, cable, and Internet service all nonexistent, this little gadget still worked perfectly. All the Global Positioning System satellites were still in place, still sending out their signals. But neither the book nor the GPS was going to warn him of collapsed bridges, buckled pavement, or washed-out roads. That was the purpose of the trip, to find out just how much had changed, and if there were in fact any routes out of Los Angeles.
Two people Dave didn’t know rolled the dead Cadillac out of the way at the barricade. There had been a brief discussion between them as to whether they should do it. One of them seemed to think that Ferguson should be notified that someone was leaving. Dave had to point out that no one had ever said a thing about people leaving, only about letting people in. And besides, they intended to return and would share information about all they saw. Still one of them resisted, saying that maybe Ferguson would want to ask them to look for specific things at specific places.
Dave didn’t want to lose his temper, and was about to continue the argument in a controlled tone, when Karen spoke up.
“This isn’t a prison, damn it. We can come and go as we please. Now roll that damn car out of the way so we can go about our business.”
The two men looked at each other, and one of them shrugged. There was something in Karen’s voice, when she wanted it to be there, that was just hard to argue with. They did as she told them.
“Nice one, babe,” Dave said, as they puttered down the last yards of Doheny.
“I won’t tolerate that kind of treatment,” she said.
They turned east on Sunset, intending to check out the Cahuenga Pass into the San Fernando Valley.
There was no automobile or truck traffic going by on Sunset. They cautiously pulled out onto the street and looked around.
The liquor store on the corner had all its windows broken out. Dave didn’t think it was earthquake damage, it had the look of looting. All the shelves inside were empty, but they hadn’t been knocked over. On the other side of the street the Citibank had a crack in one wall. There were several safe-deposit boxes on the sidewalk that had been hammered open. Two men squatted out front with safe-deposit boxes stacked beside them. They were smashing a hunk of concrete on one of the boxes. They were putting valuables into canvas bags. Papers fluttered away from them on the slight breeze. Deeds, insurance policies, worthless bearer bonds, and other papers that used to be important. What they were obviously going for was gold and jewelry. They didn’t seem in the least worried. One of them glanced up as Dave and Karen rode by. There was a rifle on the sidewalk beside him. The man looked back down and resumed his work.
“I don’t like this,” Karen said, when they were past.
“If somebody starts shooting at us, we’ll fire back, but we’ll turn around, okay?”
“Okay.”
They each had a shotgun tied to improvised scabbards on the handlebars. Dave was wondering if they should actually be holding them in one hand and steering with the other. He decided he would rather not appear that hostile unless someone showed hostility toward them.
Most of the buildings they passed were still standing, though most had cracked walls and all of them had lost glass. But one in maybe twenty or thirty had suffered much more damage. Where the old Whisky a Go Go had been there was now only a pile of brick. Where the Red Rock Bar had been there was just a big hole now. It had slid down to Holloway Drive.
As they approached Sunset Plaza they came upon brightly colored clothing scattered on the street. Much of it was still on hangers. It had clearly come from the expensive boutiques that lined that part of the Strip. Outfits that had gone for thousands of dollars lay abandoned in the gutters, some of them run over by large truck tires.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Karen said. “What good is this stuff to anybody now?”
“Maybe some women just wanted for once in their lives to wear things they never could have afforded.”
“So maybe this stuff is just the excess. Pick it all over, don’t waste your energy carrying it all away.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
The little white building with the Greek columns on Sunset Plaza had been turned into a guardhouse. Extending from its southern wall was a barricade garrisoned by four men and two women, all armed. They watched as Dave and Karen went by without stopping. They waved, and two of the guards waved back.
Not quite a mile along Sunset they came around a gentle curve and Dave looked up the hill for the Chateau Marmont. It was gone.
They pulled up short of a gigantic pile of rubble. It was all that was left.
Dave had never seen anything like it. All the tall buildings along Sunset that they had passed had survived. That is, they had stood up, though all of them had shed glass and sometimes stone and other ornamentation. But none had collapsed. Yet in an earthquake the size of the monster they had experienced, all bets were off. The Chateau had weathered many a quake, but something must have given out.
In normal times the place would have been swarming with news crews and state engineers looking for the cause of the failure. Now there was just an eerie quiet, as if this might have happened years ago. In normal times the hotel would have been full of guests. Dave doubted very many people had been staying there on that terrible night.
“You know,” Karen said, “ever since that night I’ve sort of felt like we’re living in a disaster movie. But never quite as powerfully as now.”
This was an alteration of the very skyline of their city. This was a removal of a major historic landmark, where Led Zeppelin had ridden their motorcycles through the lobby, where John Belushi and Helmut Newton had died. It was where Greta Garbo had holed up when she wanted to be alone.
He consulted his GPS.
“We can go down Harper then across on Fountain.”
Karen nodded, and they turned their scooters around, and set off down the hill.
Harper Avenue was a mix of private houses and apartment bu
ildings, most of them only two stories high. But many of them were older buildings, and quite a few had come down. Twice they passed groups of people moving rubble with their hands, searching for valuables and sentimental items, Dave assumed. There didn’t seem to be any sense of urgency, and the people looked exhausted. Then the wind shifted and a gust blew their way and he got a whiff of something awful.
“Oh my God,” Karen said. “Is that…”
“I don’t think it’s dead pets.”
On Doheny they had recovered and buried all their dead, except from the house at the end of the road that was so covered in the landslide that there was no point. And he knew the people working here were trying to locate something more precious than a photograph album.
They all looked up as Dave and Karen passed, paused in their work for a moment, but none of them waved. They showed no hostility; it was as if they couldn’t spare the energy for anything but their grim task. Dave was glad to turn the corner on Fountain and get away from them.
They continued on Fountain to Fairfax and turned north. They had seen few people walking or bicycling up to that point, but as they approached Sunset again they began to see more. The west side of the street was mostly apartment buildings, and on the east it was a mix of apartments, small homes, and offices. They saw several people sitting in lawn furniture in the shade, and passed three cyclists going down the hill. On Sunset itself they saw three men pushing shopping carts, which it seemed had become possessions as desirable as cars used to be.
They turned east on Hollywood Boulevard. At Nichols Canyon there was a checkpoint with two armed men but no real barricade. It seemed this canyon, at least, was still connected to the community on the flats between Hollywood and Sunset. They saw many more people than they had been seeing, and it gave them a sense of security they hadn’t had since leaving their own little enclave.
As they approached the corner of Hollywood and La Brea, the western edge of tourist Hollywood, there was a line of people along the sidewalk. There looked to be more than a hundred of them. There were several in wheelchairs, and one elderly woman lying on a cot. Parked at the corner were two vehicles. One was a red LAFD ambulance, its back doors open, stuffed to the ceiling with medical supplies. The other was a large white semi with the WARNER BROS. logo on the side: a grip truck. In normal times these long trailers could be seen parked at curbs all over Los Angeles. It meant a location film shoot was in progress. This trailer had a hastily painted red cross on its side, and had been converted into a mobile hospital. On the now brown and battered lawn of the Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist, folding tables had been set up and men and women in blue surgical scrubs were talking to and treating people.
Dave and Karen slowed down, then stopped.
“This is about the most encouraging thing I’ve seen yet,” Karen said.
“No kidding.”
Dave felt they had been lucky on Doheny. There were cuts, scrapes, and bruises, but they were handled either at home or with the help of Millie the nurse.
Dave had been busy up the hill, and had only heard later about the more serious cases, broken bones and bad lacerations. An SUV that still had some fuel in it had taken them down the hill to Cedars-Sinai, but it had returned with all but one of the injured untreated. The returnees reported that the place was a madhouse, with limbs being amputated in the parking lot. Only the most dire cases were being treated.
An older man had been watching them from his place in line across the street. He ambled over with a friendly smile. He was short, a bit overweight, dressed in khaki slacks and a torn Hawaiian shirt. His white hair was shaved close to the skin.
“Hi, folks. My name’s Nathan. Where you from?”
“Doheny Drive,” Karen said. “Up the hill.”
“Nice neighborhood. I’m from up Nichols Canyon. And the next question people ask these days is, how did your house hold up? Mine got crushed on the south end by a big eucalyptus, but the rest is okay, we can live in it, and my wife and worthless son are all right, thank God.”
“We had only a little damage,” Dave said.
“Many dead up your way?”
“A few. More than I like, less that it could have been.”
“Amen to that. I lost a neighbor right across the street, known him for thirty years, lived through Vietnam, got crushed by a goddam grand piano came crashing down on him and his wife both while they were running for the door. Just came sliding right over the goddam balcony. Broke her femur. Bone sticking right out.” He paused. “She died three days later, right on my living-room couch.”
“I’m so sorry,” Karen said. Dave gestured to the line.
“How long has this been here?”
“A few hours. I’m almost embarrassed to be here, lots of folks have a lot more troubles than I do, but I figured I might as well try. I’m diabetic, but that’s not a problem. I’m eating so little, and so carefully, my sugar’s better than it’s been in years. Thank God I don’t need insulin. But I had a heart attack, and I was about to run out of my pills when this whole crazy oil-shortage mess started and the drugstore ran out. Anyway, this portable clinic was through here four or five days ago, and I came down and they gave me five pills. Five pills, can you imagine? Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but did you ever think you’d see it come to this, in America?”
“I’m still finding it hard to believe,” Karen said, with a glance at Dave.
“Like the kids say, it’s ‘surreal.’ Anyway, the doctor said he didn’t know when we’d see any more of my medicine, but I heard that some emergency supplies came in from down in San Diego, so here I am, hoping heart medication was in that shipment.”
“Do you have any idea how it got here? Train, truck, boat?”
“It might have been by mule train for all I know. Or it might not have happened at all. You hear all sorts of things, most of them turn out to be damn lies.” He jerked his head toward the nurses interviewing people at the tables. “I guess I could just go up there and ask them do they have any of my meds instead of stand in line, but it’s not like I’ve got a lot of better things to do. The Dodgers seem to be out of town, and they don’t make any movies for the likes of me anymore, anyway.”
He grinned, and Dave couldn’t help smiling back. There was really nothing to joke about, but that had never stopped people from joking in bad situations in the past. It might even help you pull through.
Madame Tussauds was still standing, though the sign had fallen into the street. Grauman’s Chinese had suffered some damage: Part of the pagoda entrance had fallen down on the courtyard with the famous footprints and handprints of the stars. Usually that block was thronged with tourists and costumed street performers posing for tips. No one was there now except one man in a Superman suit sitting disconsolately on an overturned plastic bucket. Dave wondered if he had gone insane.
At the Hollywood & Highland Center one of the big rearing elephants from D. W. Griffith’s silent classic Intolerance had disintegrated. Karen stopped.
“Look at that,” she said.
Dave looked where she was pointing, and at first didn’t understand what had caught her attention. Then he saw it. The Center had been laid out so that you could see the HOLLYWOOD sign in the hills when you were standing in the right spot on Hollywood Boulevard. It now read:
HLLYOD
The D and one of the Ls were leaning crazily, one forward and the other back, looking like they could go at any minute.
“Well,” Karen said with a sigh, “I always thought it was sort of tacky.” She sighed, and pointed east.
“Onward.”
They continued up Highland, dodging a fallen tree or strewn rubble here and there, past the Hollywood Bowl. As they entered the darkness beneath the 101 freeway Dave saw motion on the ground. Karen swerved to her left, almost hitting him. There was a man walking in their direction. Behind him were several dozen more, and about as many shopping carts. The man was filthy, wearing a trench coat with so many rips in it that
it almost fell off of his thin frame.
“Dave!” Karen called out.
He reached for his pistol and drew it. He aimed it at the man, who stopped.
“I need a drink!” he bellowed.
“Sorry, man,” Dave called out.
The others back there in the dark were sitting down, apparently just beating the heat, which was already up in the high eighties. It was impossible to tell how many had been homeless before the quake and how many were new on the street. In a few seconds Dave and Karen were back in the sunshine.
“I hadn’t thought about how tough this all would be on alcoholics,” Karen said.
“I guess most of them have dried out by now.”
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t still cranky about it.”
The deserted freeway was ghostly, uncanny, disturbing. He had never seen a Los Angeles freeway with no traffic at all. There was not so much as a bicycle, which struck Dave as odd. They soon saw why. The overpass connecting West Cahuenga and East Cahuenga Boulevards had collapsed onto the freeway. All lanes were blocked, side to side, by huge slabs of concrete, and on the west side tons of dirt had slipped down the hillside and covered the remains of the bridge.
“I didn’t really think we could make it to Oregon, anyway,” Dave said.
“You’re not giving up, are you?”
“No, of course not. But I’m thinking harder about plan B.”
Plan B was a lot simpler. They would go to San Diego. The Doheny group had picked up some broadcasts from the San Diego area. The city had suffered only minor damage from the tremendous earthquake, and one speaker on the radio had even claimed that the residents were actually encouraging Angelenos to come south…to hold off the starving hordes of Mexicans. Dave had no idea if this was really the case, or if it was the ranting of someone with a racist agenda. But it was the only positive news they had.
“It looks like Cahuenga East is still passable,” Karen said.
Dave looked up there, just in time to see half a dozen armed men in uniform appear at the guardrail at the top of the hill. They looked down through a stand of palm trees. All wore desert camouflage fatigues and body armor.
