Slow Apocalypse

by John Varley

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Dave could see the man was genuinely shaken, and he thought a little bit better of him. The feeling didn’t last for long.

  “We’re having a meeting tomorrow morning,” he went on. “Some of us feel like we need to make some changes.”

  “Oh? What sort of changes?”

  Petrelli didn’t say anything for a few moments. The blistering Santa Ana winds blew his unruly hair around his face. He was about Dave’s age, but looked a lot older. When he did speak it was without any warmth.

  “Where have you folks been?”

  “Visiting friends.”

  “When you left you had a whole bunch of stuff in back, under a tarp.”

  Dave still held his tongue.

  “Some of us would like to know what it was, and what you did with it?”

  And do you have any more? Dave said to himself.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Lucas,” he said. “It was a whole shitload of none-of-your-business, with a little bit of go-fuck-yourself on top.”

  He heard Karen shift in her seat. He glanced over at her, and saw that her shotgun was pointed at Petrelli. Petrelli’s rifle was still cradled in his arm, pointing at the ground. There was a sour look on his face as he also glanced at Karen. The man shifted slightly on his feet, and Karen moved again.

  “I’d stay real still if I were you, Mr. Petrelli,” Karen said. Dave didn’t look over at her, but he moved his hands off the steering wheel and leaned back against the seat. He didn’t relish the idea of a load of shot passing a few inches in front of his face, but he knew Karen would fire if she had to.

  Petrelli stood very still. Dave wondered if he was thinking about making a move. He looked beyond Petrelli at the other two. Crowley seemed angry, but he didn’t have a weapon in his hands. Charbonneau looked ashamed. After a moment, he turned and walked slowly away from the car.

  “Dad, you might want to cover your ear,” Addison said from the backseat. “This shotgun is near your ear, and it will be real loud when I fire it.”

  Petrelli looked in the back, and scowled.

  “Well,” he said. “Go on then.” He gestured with his head, and Dave started to take his foot off the brake.

  “Sleep well tonight,” Petrelli added.

  Dave had a momentary wild urge to take the pistol out of his waistband and shove it into the man’s face and pull the trigger, and pull it again, and again, and again. He felt the savage anger rise in him, and his hand actually started to move.

  No, some part of him said. Have we come to that? Former neighbors killing each other over a few scraps of food? And he knew he hadn’t.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “I like that,” Karen said. “ ‘A whole shitload of none-of-your-business.’ ”

  “Good one, Dad.”

  “Well, I am a comedy writer.”

  He looked over at Karen as he drove up the hill, and saw she was stifling a laugh. His glance was enough; she burst out, helplessly. From the backseat, he heard Addison joining in. He found himself smiling. It felt like the first time he had smiled in months.

  “You women can certainly be cruel.” That got them laughing harder.

  “ ‘A little bit of go-fuck-yourself,’ ” Addison snorted. “That one needs a little work, Dad.”

  “Yeah, it was the best I could do on a moment’s notice. But it’ll do for television.”

  Dave could see Jenna’s face in the upstairs window, one that he had partially boarded over for defensive purposes, as they came up the street. He was surprised to see her there. From that vantage point she could cover almost all the street. She waved at them, and he could see her shotgun in her other hand. Then she disappeared.

  He parked the car on the short approach to the gate, got out, and tugged on it before remembering that he had instructed Jenna to keep it padlocked. They all waited a moment and then heard Jenna working the key. The gate started to roll, and Dave grabbed it and helped her push it open.

  “Hurry, hurry, get inside,” Jenna said in an urgent whisper. Dave looked quickly all around him. The street was deserted, but that didn’t mean much. A man with a rifle could be hidden in a dozen places quite close by.

  He drove through the gates and the women pushed the gate shut behind him. Jenna snapped the lock back in place, and finally seemed to relax a bit.

  “What happened, Jenna?”

  “Well…a few hours after you left I heard some people talking outside the gate. I went down there, quietly. One of them said he didn’t like the way those windows had been boarded up, with the openings for rifle fire. He said they’d be sitting ducks if anybody was up there. The other one said there was nobody up there, he’d seen you guys leave, and would he for chrissake hold on to the fucking ladder, so he could get over the gate and unlatch it. They didn’t know I was here, and they didn’t know it was padlocked. But I heard their ladder clang against the gate and I shouted out at them not to come over.

  “They talked some more, too low for me to hear, and then one of them shouted out, asked me who I was. I told them I was a friend of yours.

  “ ‘You’re lying,’ one of them said back. ‘You’re there to get the food.’ Then he said he was coming over, and we could split it. I fired the shotgun into the air, and I heard the ladder fall. ‘We’ve got guns, too,’ one of them said. And he stuck a pistol barrel through that little gap there, where the gate meets the post. He fired a shot—you can see where it hit the house, over there—and I about wet…Well, I sure didn’t want to get into a shoot-out with them, so I backed up and got behind the corner of the house and I told them that if either one of them stuck his head over that gate, I’d blow it off. They talked some more, and then I heard them moving off. I went up to that room at the corner and I didn’t see anybody. And I’ve been up there ever since. And now, I really, really need to pee. Can you hold this?” She handed the shotgun to Dave and hurried away to the latrine.

  Dave, Karen, and Addison watched her go, then looked at each other and for a while they said nothing. Dave was regretting leaving her behind. So what if looters had found his stash, down in the basement? Was it worth putting Jenna through that? Tiny little Jenna, already suffering from the horrors she had been through.

  Karen put her hand on his arm.

  “She volunteered, David,” she said.

  “Still.”

  They walked over to the pool and stared at all that water.

  “Too bad we can’t take it with us,” Addison said.

  “I was sort of hoping to take a last dip in there,” Karen said. “Sort of like old times. Couldn’t do that before, because we were using it for drinking.”

  “You can,” Dave said. “We can sit in it and cool off a little. What do you say?”

  “I say, where’s my bathing suit?” Addison said, and grinned.

  They did that as the evening waned. It was glorious, the first time any of them had had a real bath in a long time. The water was clean, though no longer potable, since the chlorinating had long gone out of it. They took turns swimming, two at a time, since Dave wanted someone always on watch at the corner on the second floor.

  When darkness had fallen completely, they used the faint light of kerosene lamps to load the Escalade with more food and bottled water. Dave attached the horse trailer and they put in all the hay and oats they had left. Dave tied the scooters on the sides and the bicycles on the roof. They would look like twenty-first-century Okies.

  Then they all spent an hour going through every part of the house and guesthouse and basement, looking for things that might be useful, anything they might have forgotten. They would not be coming back, and it was all too easy to see themselves by the side of the road wishing for that one little item they had forgotten.

  Then they ate a meal of beans and Spam on tortillas, which was surprisingly good. Dave decided he was getting used to Spam.

  They agreed that someone should be on watch all night. Thieves were likely to be more bold under
cover of darkness. Karen took the first watch. It had been a long, long day, but Dave didn’t expect to have an easy time falling asleep. With any luck, this would be their last night on their own as a family, the last night in their old home, and his last night as the sole protector and decision maker.

  He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  Outside, the wind that had been blowing all day was whipping itself into a frenzy.

  “Wake up, dear. Wake up.”

  Dave struggled into a state of semiconsciousness from a particularly bad dream. There had been dogs in it, and that was all he remembered, and he was grateful for that. He wondered if he would ever feel the same about dogs again.

  “I’ve made some coffee,” Karen said. It would be that instant stuff, but it would do. Right then, chewing on coffee grounds out of yesterday’s filter would probably do. Spooning Taster’s Choice granules right into his mouth would probably do.

  “I know how exhausted you are. I drank so much coffee I’m worried about getting to sleep. But it’s twelve midnight, sweetness, and I am officially off duty.”

  “I’ll wake up, don’t worry.”

  He gulped the warm coffee from the cup she handed him, felt a little jolt from it, took a deep breath, and watched her kick off her shoes and lie down on the slightly sweaty place on the bed he had just vacated.

  “Not even a sheet tonight,” she said. “Just my clothes. God, when will that damn wind stop blowing? It drives me crazy, not to mention the heat.”

  “I know. I feel edgy, too. Even more than usual.”

  Woolgathering again, he thought, and leaned over to kiss his wife.

  “Sleep tight,” he whispered, and left her there on the bed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  For the first two hours he was okay. It was best if he kept moving. He prowled restlessly from one vantage to the next, looking out over the dark street, seeing the same two lanterns in the same two windows in the same two houses. He knew he could do this, he knew he could stay awake his entire shift. No problem.

  He was jerked back awake by the sound of his gun hitting the floor.

  His heart hammered as he groped around in the dark, found the steel barrel, and carefully picked it up.

  He was dripping sweat. He used the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe his face, and then looked blearily out the window. It was getting light out there. An orange glow was started to creep over the horizon.

  What he needed was more coffee. He got up from his lawn chair and was halfway across the room before it struck him.

  Something was wrong with this picture.

  He went back to the window. The wind was blowing straight into his face, as it had been all day, from the north. He thought it might be thirty miles per hour, gusting even higher. It was loaded with grit, which made him squint, but the problem was clear even if the view wasn’t. Since when did the sun come up at the northern horizon?

  As he watched, a tiny tongue of orange-white flame licked over the top of the most distant hill. Dave was instantly wide-awake. He stood there a moment longer and, sure enough, there was another flame. This one writhed into the air, and it didn’t go away. He realized he had been smelling smoke from the moment he woke up. He hurried down the stairs, then out of the ruined main house and onto the patio.

  “Karen! Addison! Jenna! Wake up!”

  In a moment Jenna’s face appeared at the window of her room upstairs in the guesthouse, just a pale shape in the darkness.

  “What is it?” She sounded scared, and who wouldn’t be after her experience earlier in the day?

  “Get Karen and Addison up and have them come outside. Take it slow and easy, stay calm, don’t panic.”

  “I’m already panicked. What’s wrong?”

  “Tell you when you get here.” Her face vanished, and he immediately thought of something else.

  “And Jenna!” When she stuck her head out again, he spoke in a normal voice. “I’m going to be shooting the gun a few times. Don’t worry, nobody’s coming after us. Tell Karen there’s no need to lock and load, okay?”

  “What the hell, Dave?”

  “Just do it.”

  He turned away and hurried to the gate. He was shouldering it aside when he heard a gunshot from far away, then another. Somebody had the same idea he did.

  He went out into the street, pumped his shotgun once, and fired it into the air. Then he did it again, and a third time for good measure. He listened for a moment, and heard two more shots—sounding more like a pistol than a shotgun—from the same direction the first ones had come. Somebody else was awake, and trying to rouse the neighborhood.

  No 911 to call. No telephones to alert one’s neighbors. The neighborhood watch had some walkie-talkies, but he didn’t have one. He hoped someone who did was calling around. He wondered if the fire was even visible from the barricade far down the street. Even if it was, their attention would most likely be turned the other way, to the south, where they all expected any human threat to appear.

  He heard a noise coming from the garage and at first he had no idea what it was. Then he realized it was Ranger, banging around in there. He heard a high-pitched whinny. Even if the human watchmen hadn’t smelled the fire yet, the horse had, and he didn’t like it one bit, being tied down in the dark.

  Good Lord, what am I going to do about that? he wondered.

  Jenna exited the guesthouse first, followed by Karen and Addison. All three had been sleeping in their clothes.

  “There’s a fire over the hill,” he said, making an effort to keep his voice calm and cool, to show none of the alarm he was feeling. All three of them looked to the north, where the orange light was already a lot brighter. The first writhing spire of flame had now been joined by three more.

  “Ranger!” Addison cried. She started toward the garage, but Dave snagged her.

  “Not yet, you don’t,” he said. “Listen, everyone. We should have time if we stay calm and don’t panic. We don’t know if that fire will be coming down this canyon, it might go down to the east, but if it does, the wind will blow it faster than we can run.”

  “I’ve got to get Ranger down the hill, then!”

  “No, first you’ve got to calm him down, and you’re not going in there until I can go with you. I don’t care what you say about being able to control him, you’ve never had to handle him when he’s got his wind up over a fire.”

  She looked defiant, but said nothing.

  “Jenna, Karen, gather up everything we need that we haven’t already packed.”

  “Dad, we have to take care of Ranger. He’ll hurt himself.”

  “We’re going to do that right now.”

  He followed her toward the door leading into the garage. She was waiting there, hopping from one foot to the other. He was about to open the door when he heard another sound from far down the hill. It started as a low growl, then rapidly rose in pitch until it was a scream. He realized it was an old-fashioned hand-cranked siren. He thought he remembered something about someone’s finding one in their attic or basement, probably some shiny brass antique salvaged from a fire department.

  “Dad-dee!” Addison cried, tugging at his arm. “We have to get my horse. Now!”

  “Yes. Come on, and be careful.”

  He turned the doorknob and entered the garage, Addison close behind him.

  Ranger was rearing, but the rope holding him was short enough that he wasn’t able to rise very high. But he was pulling hard, and to Dave it looked as if he might just break free with a few more sharp tugs.

  “Would he feel better if I opened the garage door?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Daddy. Let me just talk to him.”

  Dave was reluctant, but he finally said okay.

  “But you’ve got about five minutes to calm him down. No more.”

  She nodded, and slowly approached her horse. She was talking to him. Dave caught the word “steady,” and that was about all. It was all in a low, soothing voice, l
ike a mother cooing to her child. Baby talk, or maybe horse talk.

  Still the steel horseshoes clattered on the concrete floor. Addison took a few careful steps toward Ranger, and Dave slowly eased his shotgun so the barrel was pointing a little higher, and moved to one side so he could get a clear shot at the animal if it came to that.

  Ranger’s hind legs suddenly slipped out from under him and he sat down hard on his rump. For a moment he was almost still, stunned or surprised. Addison hurried forward before Dave could say anything, and the next thing he knew she was holding his halter with one hand and had her arm around his neck.

  “Addison, get away from him!”

  “It’s okay, Daddy, I’ve got him.”

  Then she was lifted almost off her feet as the horse got his back legs under him, tossing his head as he did so. She held on, and the horse dropped his head again, only to toss it once more. Addison’s weight seemed nothing at all to the powerful creature. She was up on tiptoe, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking on the floor.

  “Steady, Ranger, steady, boy. You calm down now.”

  “Addison, you’re going to have to let him go.”

  “I won’t, I won’t. Open the garage door, Daddy. He’s really got the wind up, I’ll have to walk him for a few minutes.”

  “You’ve got three minutes left, honey. Then we cut him loose.”

  He moved toward the garage door and lifted it.

  “Hurry, Daddy!”

  She had untied Ranger before he had the door entirely up. Now Dave was almost knocked off his feet as the horse charged past him. Addison was being dragged along. She was shouting at him now, and Dave turned to see that she finally got him turned. He was still breathing hard—Dave could hear the powerful snorting, as if he had just finished a race—but he began to trot in a circle. Maybe that familiar activity would calm him down. He couldn’t tell if it was working or not. But Addison continued to hold on, and the horse was no longer trying to buck.

  That was the good news. The bad news was visible behind them, and it was very bad news indeed.