by John Varley
“She’s right. My daughter’s not sleeping on the floor. You get in bed with your mom, and I’ll go downstairs and sleep on the couch.”
“I wish you’d stay, too, Daddy.”
In the end Dave set up a cot a few feet from the bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but he felt immensely comforted to have both his wife and his daughter sleeping so close. To his surprise, he fell asleep almost at once, and slept soundly through the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When Dave got up at sunrise the next morning he looked at the little battery-powered weather station that had survived the quake undamaged. It was reading 85 degrees. The wind gauge was no longer working, but when he stepped outside he could feel the hot, dry breath of a Santa Ana blowing down the canyon to swirl the dead leaves around on his patio. He wouldn’t be surprised if the mercury topped a hundred later in the day.
He spent half an hour painting the scooters.
He had a choice of red or black, from some spray cans left over from a project he didn’t even remember. He went with black, wanting to decrease their visibility as much as possible. When he was done they looked awful, full of drips and smears, but at least neither one of them looked pink. He kept worrying about that possible APB: Be on the lookout for a blonde on a pink Vespa and a man on a white one.
“Great job, Dad,” Addison said, when she saw the results. “You just turned two nice rides into eyesores. No self-respecting thief would dare steal those. He’d die of shame, driving around.”
“That was the idea.” Dave wasn’t so sure. Any ride at all with gas in it might be desirable now, a clapped-out Ford with a full tank better than a Rolls with no gas.
That she was speaking to him at all he regarded as better than he might have hoped. But she had never been one to bear a grudge for long.
He had often found that doing things that didn’t require a lot of thought were the times when he came up with his best ideas for new stories on the TV series. What he usually ended up doing was the quintessential Los Angeles activity: driving. He had driven as far south as San Diego, west to Santa Barbara, east to Palm Springs, always on the freeways so he didn’t have to give any thought to where he was going. Inching along or tooling down the highway at eighty-five, it was all the same to him. He would plug his iPod into the stereo system and let it shuffle at random through the hundreds of selections he had stored there, from Bach to Beyoncé. About half the time he would arrive back home with at least the seed of an idea and would summon his posse to his office in the guesthouse, where they would gorge on deli takeout he had brought up the hill from Canter’s on Fairfax and toss out ideas for plot developments and jokes.
But when he was done with the painting, he was no closer to a decision than when he started. At noon he left the house for his shift at the barricade, and suddenly everything changed.
Dave arrived at the barricade on his bicycle a little after eight. Art Bertelstein and a woman he didn’t know were already on duty, hot and out of sorts. The woman was introduced as Peggy Wysocki. She looked to be around forty, and was dressed in Iraq War desert camo gear. Ferguson was there, too, looking bad. He was drenched in sweat, his skin was grayish, and his hand shook as he mopped his face with a towel. His eyes were hollow and haunted.
“Marshall, where have you been? You’re ten minutes late.”
Dave didn’t feel he owed anyone an explanation, though an apology was in order. Where had he been? Taking care of his own business. He hoped Ferguson wasn’t forgetting that guard duty down there was voluntary. He hoped the man wasn’t letting himself turn into a petty general. He wondered if the man’s deterioration was the result of the heavy strains of leadership—which Dave could easily understand, feeling overwhelmed to be responsible just for his own family—or the fact that he, like many others, had run out of a medication he needed.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
“You’ve got a visitor,” Ferguson said, jerking his head toward the other side of the barricade. Dave looked there and at first didn’t see anybody, then spotted a young man sitting on a curb in the shade of a tree, drinking from a plastic water bottle. He wore spandex cycling clothes, a yellow jersey with a Nike swoosh and black shorts with blue racing stripes and bold letters that said PINERALLO. A bicycle that looked very high-tech was resting on the grass beside him. He was in his mid-twenties, with buzz-cut blond hair and a pleasant face that women would find irresistible. He had the lanky, wiry build of the long-distance racer. He looked up, smiled, and sprang to his feet, walking easily to stand a few feet away from the barricade.
“You’re Dave Marshall,” the man said. “I recognize you from pictures my dad sent me over the years.”
Dave suddenly grinned.
“You’re Teddy Winston!”
“Guilty. Dad sent me over here to talk to you. But…” He extended a hand to indicate the barrier and the armed people on the other side.
“Let him through,” Dave said. “I know him.”
“Doesn’t sound like it to me,” Ferguson said. He was frowning. “How about we see some identification?”
Teddy didn’t miss a beat, his smile didn’t falter.
“Sure. It’s back in my saddlebag. Can I bring my bike up closer?”
Ferguson grudgingly nodded, and Teddy hurried back to his bike and walked it back to the barricade.
“I’ve got a pistol in here,” he said, as he opened the flap of a canvas pannier.
“Reach in and take your hand out very slowly,” Peggy said.
“Sure thing.” He did as he was told, and brought out a wallet. He thumbed a California driver’s license from it. He passed it over to Peggy, who studied it and seemed satisfied.
“Says Ted Winston, all right.”
“He’s the son of one of my best friends,” Dave explained. “I’ve never met him. He lives in San Diego.”
That got everyone’s attention, almost as much as if he had said Teddy had just arrived from the moon. Peggy handed Teddy’s ID back to him and gestured for him to come around the barrier.
“Sorry about that. Can’t be too careful these days.”
“Believe me, I know where you’re coming from.”
Then they all wanted to know what things were like in far-off San Diego, but Dave took him aside.
“We’re going up to my house and talk it over. I’ll tell you all about it later.”
Ferguson was frowning.
“I don’t think you should desert your post.”
“Desert my post? I’m sorry, Richard, but if you remember, this is volunteer duty. I’ll take someone else’s shift, but you’ll have to find a replacement for me now.”
Things felt a little tense for a moment, and Dave wasn’t sure which way things would go, but he felt he had to establish some boundaries.
“Sure,” Art said. “Richard, you stay here for a few minutes, and I’ll go find somebody to take his place.”
Ferguson didn’t like it. He stalked off toward his home.
“I’m worried about him,” Peggy said.
“For more reasons than one,” Art agreed.
Dave got on his bike and pedaled off up the gradual slope of the hill, with Ted Winston at his side.
Dave made it halfway up the hill before Ted diplomatically suggested that they get off and walk the rest of the way.
“This bike isn’t geared for hills, anyway,” he said. Dave had no doubt that Ted could make it up the hill in any gear and hardly break a sweat, but was grateful the younger man had offered the old fart a face-saving way of avoiding a heart attack.
Nevertheless, he was still exhausted and dripping sweat when they finally made it to the gates of his home.
Ted’s arrival triggered Karen’s hostess gene. Ted politely refused the offered food, and Dave wondered if that was going to be the new paradigm, not accepting such offers for fear the host really couldn’t spare it. But he did accept a glass of iced lemonade.
But there was no stoppin
g Karen. While everyone else sat around the table in Dave’s office, she bustled around her makeshift kitchen preparing a tray of snacks. She arranged saltine crackers around the edge of the tray and opened a pot of cheese spread and a can of smoked mussels and another of pineapple chunks. When it was all out there everyone at first tried to resist, but such modest treats had already become such a novelty that soon someone would reach for a cracker with a dollop of sharp cheese, thinking they would have just one. Before long everyone was noshing, including Ted.
“My father says you want to get out of Los Angeles,” he said.
“We were intending to. I had decided we would leave today or tomorrow. But I’ve been wrestling with that decision all night. We took a trip yesterday, reconnoitering. I’m no longer sure it’s a good idea.”
“Where did you go?”
“South. We were thinking of San Diego.”
Dave was itching to hear about Ted’s journey north, but the younger man wanted to hear their story first. Dave told him, with help from Karen, leaving out the part they had agreed no one else should hear. They had talked it over and decided there was no point in shielding Addison from hearing about the violence around the warehouse. She couldn’t be protected from everything. She needed to have a more realistic picture of what was out there. She would be fearful, but also more alert. They would keep from her only the fact that her parents had killed.
Addison was hearing that story for the first time, and her eyes were wide but she seemed steady again. No doubt she was reflecting on just how much danger her parents had been in. He didn’t mention the dead bodies, but he was sure her imagination could fill them in.
“So, aside from that food riot, you didn’t run into any other trouble?”
“We saw some…signs of gang activity in Koreatown. We saw some kids who might have been thinking about robbing us, but we—”
“I’m sure they were going to rob us,” Karen said, with a straight face.
“But we got away from them.”
“You were lucky,” Ted said, flatly. “Things like that can happen anywhere. Some places are worse than others, but there are roving bands, too.”
“You know this for sure.”
Ted nodded. “I’ve been out almost every day, and some nights, scouting around. I’ve seen some roving gangs, mostly on motorcycles, some on foot. Every once in a while there’s a car full of them. I’ve been shot at.”
“What did you do?” Addison asked.
“I ran like hell,” Ted said, with a smile. But the smile didn’t last long. “Three times I’ve had to shoot back. I won’t lie to you. At least twice I hit somebody. No telling what happened to them. I didn’t stick around to find out.”
“You do what you have to do,” Karen said, not looking at Dave.
“Yes. You do.”
Dave wanted to get off the subject of things you had to do. Addison’s eyes had gotten even wider while listening to Ted.
“At any rate,” Ted went on, “there aren’t nearly enough cops around. I’m sure some were killed in the quake, and transportation from their homes has been a problem. Some have been killed in the line of duty. And I’m sure some simply resigned, informally, when they saw how dangerous things were getting out there. They have to think of their families, just like everybody else. For whatever reasons, you’re largely on your own out there. Does that fit in with your experience?”
“I’d say so. We saw cops around the police station, and some around the hospitals. It’s not complete anarchy, but it’s not good.”
“Yes. My dad, my brothers…we’ve all agreed on several things.
“Number one, anywhere else is better than Los Angeles now. Sure, we know there are other places, like the Texas oil patch, that are completely uninhabitable, but they’re out of our range, anyway. But elsewhere, in California or Nevada or Arizona or Oregon, no matter how hard the lack of fuel, food and water shortages, they don’t have the worst natural disaster in American history on top of that. Nobody has said anything officially, so far as we know, about casualties from the quake, but I think tens of thousands have died. Los Angeles is a dying city. Do you agree with that?”
“From what we’ve seen, I’d have to,” Dave said. “Somebody has been plowing routes through the wreckage, but we didn’t see anything like rescue activity going on, except for neighbors helping neighbors.”
“Okay. With a lesser disaster, I’d say it would make sense for you to stay holed up here in the hills. It’s easier to defend than our house is. But we feel that no place in Los Angeles is going to be really habitable in the long run. People are planting gardens, but it’s going to be hard or impossible to find the water to grow the crops, and it takes more time than we’re likely to have before you get a crop.
“You can’t grow rice here. I don’t see wheat fields happening anytime soon. People are planting corn, but it takes months to get a crop. The important thing to remember is that Los Angeles was built in a desert. It’s going to become one again. The aqueduct is not flowing anymore.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“We don’t know why. Probably the quake, though there are rumors that the people up north have turned off the faucet.” He looked at Dave. “I guess I’m telling you some things you already know. After all, you’re the one who laid it all out for Dad, just how bad it could get…”
“I want to know everything you know, and everything you’ve figured out.”
“Bottom line, we feel we have to leave.”
“We saw some people on the 5 freeway,” Karen said. “Not a lot of them.”
“That could be because of the rumor that the San Onofre nuclear plant has suffered a meltdown.”
That remark was met with a brief silence.
“By meltdown, do you…” Dave stopped himself. “Wait a minute. If you came from San Diego…”
“I had to pass by it, right. Only I didn’t.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I had no choice. The interstate is closed at the southern end of Camp Pendleton, and I presume at the north, too. And San Onofre is—”
“—right on the north end of Camp Pendleton,” Dave finished for him.
He had driven that road many times. Bounded by the exclusive communities of San Clemente to the north and Oceanside to the south, Camp Pendleton was 125,000 acres of barren land and twenty miles of unspoiled coastline, virtually empty except for scattered Marine Corps structures. It extended almost twenty miles inland, into the hills. One had only to look at the suburban sprawl to the south and to the north, to imagine the many hundreds of billions of dollars those miles of shoreline would be worth if the Marines ever decided to abandon it.
About five miles of the northern stretch was the San Onofre State Beach, and smack in the middle of that were the twin containment domes of the Southern California Edison nuclear plant.
“It’s kind of far from here, isn’t it?” he asked.
“That was our thought, too. But the Marines who turned me back said the area was unsafe. I knew how to ride around Pendleton; I’ve done it before many times. I also knew how to stay off the highways as much as possible. There are bike paths, and some trails that you can manage with an off-roader, which is what I was riding. So I passed about fifteen miles to the east of the plant.”
“Which way was the wind blowing?” Karen asked.
“Well, that has me a little worried. It was coming from the west, and blowing pretty hard. If those plants did crack open, I might have been exposed to some serious radiation.”
Karen reached across the table and squeezed his hand. He smiled back at her.
“I’m not worrying too much about it. If I had it real bad, I figure my hair would be falling out by now, diarrhea, vomiting, the whole nine yards. Maybe I got just a little dose, won’t show up for years, if ever. Or maybe I got no dose at all.”
Dave saw that Addison was crying. He took her hand. She wiped her tears away with the other hand.
“It
seems like it never ends,” she said, sounding very young again. “The bad things just keep on coming.”
“And we’ll just keep on fighting them, Addie,” he said.
Ted disposed of the rest of his epic journey north in a few terse sentences. He encountered problems along the way, he said, both natural and quake-induced barriers and encounters with people who didn’t wish him well, didn’t want him passing through their territory, or wanted to take what he had. The natural impediments were dealt with fairly easily in most cases by altering his route. The human problems were more complex and worrisome, but he claimed he hadn’t had any major problems. Dave suspected there was a lot more that he could say.
“So,” he said, and took a deep breath. “My family has decided that a trip north is our best bet. Mostly because of the water situation. We’re still months away from the rainy season, and you know how short that can be, even in a good year. Dad wants you to come down and meet with us, see what we’ve done, see if you agree that traveling together is a better idea than traveling alone.”
“I already agree about that,” Dave said.
“We’d like you to come down today, if possible. We plan to leave either tomorrow or the next day.”
“So soon?” Karen asked.
“Look, I can go outside and leave you guys alone to talk it over if—”
“I don’t think we need to do that,” Dave said, glancing at Karen. Ted watched the interchange, and said nothing. “When do you want to get started?”
“As soon as possible.”
A problem soon became apparent. Dave didn’t feel good about leaving the house and all their resources unguarded, and he didn’t feel good about leaving someone behind to look after things. In that regard there was only one option open to him, considering the promise he had made to Addison.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jenna said, before Dave even broached the subject. “I’ll be happy to stay behind and look after the place.”
“Jenna…”
“Honest, Dave, I’m happy to do it. Look, man, I came here to sleep in your house and eat your food and drink your water with nothing but a shotgun, and you had to climb a mountain to get the damn shotgun.” She looked down for a moment. “Actually, what I want is a seat on Bob’s bus when he pulls out of this nightmare town, with you guys following along. Do you think he’ll be interested?”
