by John Varley
“If he’s not, we won’t be going with him. Like I said, you’re with us now.”
Ted had overheard part of the conversation, and now broke in.
“Listen, Jenna,” he said, “if I hadn’t found you here, my next stop was supposed to be your apartment. Now I’ll be heading over to Glendale to Dennis and Ellen Rossi’s house, then I’ll try to find Roger Weinburger. One thing Dad made clear to me is that he regards you all as family. You’re all invited.”
Jenna had to turn away. She walked to the edge of the drop-off and stood gazing out over the ruined city.
“Dad has tried to convince a few other friends to come, too,” Ted went on, in a lower voice. “So far, no takers. So believe me, Dave, you’re not only welcome to come, we really need you. You and Jenna and Dennis and Roger are people he trusts absolutely to watch his back while he’s watching yours.”
“Teddy, you’ll never know what a load you’ve taken off my back.”
“Not all of it, surely.”
Dave laughed.
“No, I’ve got a feeling we’re all going to be carrying a big load for a long time. But it just got lighter.”
“I don’t know you, Dave, but Dad has always spoken highly of you. I know you understand that we’re all going to have to expect a lot from each other. We’re all going to have to do things we never expected we would have to do. You have a child and a wife. My brothers and sisters have children. I don’t think I need to say a lot more than that.”
“You don’t,” Dave agreed. He and the younger man shook hands, Then Ted put on his helmet and was off down the street, headed for the wilds of Glendale.
It didn’t take them long to get on the road. They loaded the Escalade since it would make sense to use the trip to transfer some of their things to the Winston house. If it turned out they wouldn’t be going with the Winstons, they could always bring it all back.
They told Jenna to use a bicycle to join them if things got hairy. She insisted she wouldn’t have to. They left her on the street, holding her shotgun, and Dave watched in the rearview as she hand-cranked the metal gate back in place over the driveway.
“Are you sure we should leave her behind?” Addison asked. She clearly still had separation anxiety.
“Addie, I don’t like leaving her, but I don’t think she’s in much danger up here.”
“Okay.” She was clearly still unhappy about it.
He drove cautiously over the slope where he and others had filled in the crack in the road. It was steep and rough, but the big SUV was up to it. He took it slow down the hill, never getting over fifteen miles per hour.
They pulled up to the barricade. Luke Petrelli and Sam Crowley and his son, Max, were on duty, and they didn’t look happy to see the Marshall family. They made no move to roll the gate car out of the way. Dave turned off the engine and got out of the car, noticing that Karen had her shotgun where she could fire through the windshield if she had to. Her other gun was on her lap.
“What’s the matter, guys?”
“It’s Dick Ferguson,” Petrelli said. “He had a heart attack not long after you went back to your house with that guy. We just sent him over to Cedars to see what they can do for him.”
Not much, Dave thought, but kept it to himself.
“I’m sorry to hear that. So, can you move that car and let us through?”
“What’s that you have in the vehicle?”
“My family, and stuff that belongs to us.”
Petrelli didn’t like that, but he didn’t pursue it. At that moment Dave didn’t give a damn whether he liked it or not. He didn’t like the whole situation. From the corner of his eye he saw Karen shift slightly in her seat.
“We’re talking about tightening things up around here,” Petrelli said. “Some people weren’t too happy about that friend of yours who just left.”
“What are you saying? That we can’t have visitors?”
Petrelli looked even more sour.
“Never mind. So, are you leaving us?”
“I don’t see how that’s your business.”
“Because some people have been saying we should all pool our food and fuel, share and share alike.”
Dave really didn’t like the way the conversation was going.
“Like I said, it’s nobody’s business but our own, but we aren’t leaving. Not yet anyway. We expect to be back tonight. Do I need a hall pass for that?”
Petrelli clearly didn’t like Dave, but apparently he didn’t think he had enough support to institute new rules on his own. He made a face, and gestured to Sam Crowley.
“Roll that thing back, would you?”
Sam got in the car and released the brake, and his son shoved it out of the way. Behind him Dave could see the car being moved back into place.
“Gee,” he said. “I thought that went well, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure you should have told him we’re coming back,” Karen said.
“I was thinking the same thing. Sorry.”
“Well, who expected that we’d get that kind of problem from our neighbors?”
I did, Dave thought. Maybe not so soon. But adding it up he realized it had been two weeks since the quake, and months since the stores ran out of food. Maybe things were worse than he had expected, sooner than he had expected.
“What about Jenna?” Addison asked from the backseat.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Dave admitted. He looked at Karen. “Do you think we should go back and get her? Do you think someone will think our stuff is unguarded?”
“We might just have the same problem getting back through the barricade. Then getting out again. I think we should see Bob, unload, and come back up the hill.”
“I hate to leave her up there.”
“Let’s go back,” Addison said.
“Addison, that’s your father’s decision to make.”
“I don’t get a vote?”
“Sure you do. But he gets a veto, which overrides everything. Until we get somewhere safe, anyway.”
“Mom, we’re never going to be safe again,” Addison muttered.
Dave hoped that wasn’t so, but in the short run he couldn’t deny it, so he said nothing. Keeping the lies to a minimum.
Ted had given them directions for the easiest route to Holmby Hills, avoiding the biggest obstacles. Dave took them down Doheny, then west on Sunset into Beverly Hills. Sunset was blocked at Hillcrest by a shift in the earth that had elevated one side seven feet above the other. No bulldozers had come along to make a ramp, so they turned south on Arden, then west again on Carmelita. All along the way the massive trees that lined most residential streets in Beverly Hills had been uprooted, falling every which way, some of them onto the very expensive mansions.
Addison gawked at it all, and stayed silent. She knew these wide, peaceful streets, which never carried a lot of traffic. She had cycled over them with her friends, some of whom lived there. When they passed one such house, seemingly undamaged, she broke her silence and pleaded with her parents to go check on her friend Brionny. Dave parked the Escalade and led the way up the path to the two-story faux-Tudor house. The front door stood wide open. Dave waved at Addison to stay back and held his shotgun at the ready as he approached the house. He knocked on the doorjamb.
“Hello inside. This is Dave Marshall and Addison Marshall. Anyone home?”
Addison looked up at the second floor.
“That’s where her bedroom is,” she said. She cupped her hands and yelled. “Brionny, it’s me, Addison. Are you there?”
There was nothing but silence.
“Can we go inside and look?”
“I don’t think that’s wise, Addie. Let’s go around back.”
They followed the concrete drive. Dave kept his eyes on the upstairs windows, looking for any movement. He saw nothing.
There was a four-car garage in back, off to the side of the big, empty pool that was already coated with dirt and leaves at the bottom. All the g
arage doors stood open, and there were no vehicles inside. But as they got closer to the pool they saw that someone had driven or pushed a black Rolls-Royce into the deep end. It sat down there with a smashed grill and broken springs. No one was in it.
“Why did they do that?” Addison wondered.
“Maybe it was somebody having fun. I think this place has been looted.”
“I guess we better get out.”
“Addie, we’ll assume they got out and have moved to someplace safer, okay?”
“I will if you will.”
Their path took them past the home of another friend. This one was long and low and modern, mostly concrete, and everything but the walls had burned.
Addison didn’t ask to get out and look as they drove slowly by. And she didn’t suggest they visit the addresses of any of her other friends.
They turned south again on Rodeo Drive. The first block was residential and had suffered about the same amount of damage as the other streets they had driven. That took them to the long, linear park bordering Santa Monica Boulevard. It was covered with ragged tents and shacks built from wreckage probably salvaged from the ruined homes to the north. Many of the shacks were empty, already collapsing. The reason seemed to be the exodus of people walking down Santa Monica.
None of them looked violent. Most looked too exhausted to be any trouble to anyone. They were of all races and probably from all walks of life. On the north side of the street National Guard troops were stationed every hundred yards or so.
“What do you think?” Karen asked.
“I don’t know. They’re going west, so maybe some rescue efforts are going on in Santa Monica. Refugee camps, something like that. What do you want to do?”
“I’d like to find out where they’re going, but I’d really like to drive down Rodeo Drive, too.”
“Down Rodeo?”
“I know it sounds silly. But I spent a lot of time there before…before all this. You know I’ve been regretting that. I know those days aren’t coming back again, and I don’t want them to. I was just hoping that we could come this way so I could…I don’t know, lay all that to rest. Does that make any sense?”
Dave wasn’t sure it did, but he was willing to try anything that would bolster Karen’s retreat from “those days.” What would it cost him? A drive across the street and down two blocks out of their way. A few minutes. And he was a little curious to see the legendary street himself.
The center of the shopping mecca of downtown Beverly Hills was only two and a quarter blocks long. There were many other serious contenders in Los Angeles for its prized role of most expensive street, but Rodeo Drive was where the tourists wanted to come and walk. If you were on a tourist bus the odds were that there was nothing, not even a scarf or a pair of sunglasses, on those two blocks that you could afford.
The street was devastated. The entire west side of the first block had burned. On the east side there was not one pane of plate glass intact. There had been a fire there, too, but it had spread to only a few of the buildings. The streets had been strewn with rubble and merchandise, but something had come through and pushed it all onto the sidewalks.
It was colorful rubble. In there were the remains of dresses that would have cost the entire yearly income of the average American family. Karen watched in silence as they passed some designer shops whose logos had survived, though nothing else had. Galerie Michael, Cartier, Valentino, Tiffany, Bulgari, Celine, Ermenegildo Zegna, Van Cleef and Arpels, Chopard…most of them names Dave had no real knowledge of, except that some of them had appeared on his credit-card bills in years past.
All of it gone now. Broken, looted, burned, crushed, the bright, useless guts tossed out into the street by nature and by looters who had no use for a ten-thousand-dollar gown unless there were diamonds to tear off it.
They came to the end of the street, where Wilshire angled by them and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel stood on the other side. At least some of it stood. The entire east wing of the building had fallen down, crushing the ornate stone façade that stretched the length of the block, spilling rubble to block the south lanes of Wilshire, knocking down the trees in the median. The trees had been cut and shoved aside to clear the north lanes, where another straggling line of pilgrims were trudging toward the west. Like the ones on Santa Monica, many of them were pushing carts or pulling wagons. Most of the stuff was wrapped in tarps, but Dave could see some of it. There were bottles of water, but most of what he could see would fall under the category of family heirlooms. There were framed photos and albums, some of them damaged. He spotted a few small porcelain figurines in one wagon. There were boxes of paper, marked with legends like “2002-2008 TAX INFORMATION” and “MORTGAGES AND DEEDS.” He took it as a sign of optimism, that these people hoped such things would someday be valuable again.
“Let’s get out of here,” Karen said, flatly.
“Did it help at all?”
“No. It just made me feel stupid. Maybe that’s a good idea.”
Dave made a careful right turn and crept along with people walking on either side of him. They passed a watering station. There was a tank mounted on a flatbed truck and two folding tables set up on the sidewalk. It reminded him of the stations they set up for the Los Angeles Marathon, but there was no Gatorade and the paper cups were not being discarded onto the street but reused until they were falling apart.
“Let’s pull over there,” Karen suggested. “I’ll just be a minute.” She left her shotgun pointing down toward the floor and got out of the Escalade. Her Smith & Wesson was still tucked into the waistband of her jeans. Dave twisted around to watch her, but couldn’t see much with all the cargo in the back. He opened his door and stepped out, looking back over the roof. He saw Addison trying to look back, but unable to do so.
“Dad, can I—”
“You stay where you are.” His tone of voice brooked no argument, and she obeyed him, although with a deep sigh and crossed arms.
Karen had struck up a conversation with a woman in torn jeans with a Red Cross badge pinned to her dirty white shirt. No one seemed too concerned that Karen was armed, including the National Guardswoman who stood not far away. The woman talked as she filled paper cups with water and passed out some scruffy-looking oranges and apples. There was a pot of soup simmering on a grill with a few hundred people waiting in line, most of them sitting on the curb.
Karen was back in a few minutes.
“Drive,” she said. Dave eased back into the flow of pedestrians and cyclists.
“She says people who want to leave are being evacuated. She hasn’t seen it for herself, but they say there’s an aircraft carrier parked just off the coast.”
“Those things are nuclear powered, they’re supposed to be able to run for ten years or more without refueling. Did she say where they’re being taken?”
“She didn’t know. Most people think it’s to the Bay Area.”
They talked it over for a while as Dave inched along, and once more came to the stark realization of how little they knew, and how easily what they thought they knew could be nothing more than wild rumor.
“Maybe we can get on that aircraft carrier,” Addison suggested.
“I wonder if Bob and his family know about it?” Karen said.
“We’ll soon find out. Hell, maybe it’s the smartest thing to do, but I doubt we’ll be able to take this car, and I know we wouldn’t be able to keep all this food. If we get on that ship, we become part of this mass of refugees, totally dependent on others for everything in life. I don’t like that idea much.”
Karen scowled.
“Neither do I. But we might be safer than striking out on our own.”
“Daddy, I can hardly stand to see these people. They have nothing but what they’re pushing in their carts.” Tears were running down her cheeks. “But I don’t want to get out and walk, either, unless we have to. I’m so ashamed.”
“Addie, we’ll get to Bob’s and talk it all out. This breaks m
y heart, too, but I don’t want my family walking into a refugee camp unless there’s no other option. I’m sorry, but I’m not ashamed, and you shouldn’t be, either.”
“Amen to that, Addison.”
They were coming to the intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire. The street would have been impassable had bulldozers not come through at some point and heaped up the glass and stone and brick that had shaken off the tall buildings on both sides. They were one of the few private vehicles on the road, and he caught several people casting covetous or even angry looks at them. He very much wanted to get out of this crowd.
“Mister. Mister! Can you please help me?”
Dave was startled, and reflexively reached for his pistol. Then he saw it was a young woman walking along beside the Escalade a few feet away from him.
“I’ve been asking everybody, and nobody can help me.”
She was small, thin, with bedraggled blonde hair and a light summer dress. It was impossible to tell what she had been before the quake, but now she was homeless, dirty, and desperate. She was holding a tiny baby in a pink blanket.
“I have to have some formula,” she said. Her eyes were dry but desperate. Dave suspected she was all cried out, too tired for tears. “She can’t tolerate my milk, she keeps throwing it up. I have got to find some formula.”
“I’m so sorry. There’s nothing we can do for you.”
“Dad, maybe some condensed milk?”
Dave gritted his teeth. He didn’t want anyone there to know they had food. If he thought condensed milk would help the baby, he would have pulled over and found some, but he suspected that was no good, and the girl proved him right.
“No, I tried that, she spits it up, too. Do you know anyone who has any formula?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Really, I’d help you if I could but…”
He realized she was swaying, starting to stumble. He stopped quickly, at the same time reaching out with both hands to grab the baby’s blanket. He had her, but then she began to slip. He managed to get a grip on the baby’s arm as her mother’s legs went out from under her and she collapsed to the pavement. The baby was naked, and weighed almost nothing.
