Three To Get Deadly

by Lee Goldberg

  Beth didn't really want to leave LA any more than he did. Their careers were here. And the more time that passed between quakes, the more abstract the threat became.

  It wasn't abstract any more.

  Home. He had to get home. But at the rate he was going, it would take him a week. It was already half-past three, and he was only four miles west of downtown. The Cahuenga Pass was about five miles northwest. He had to make better time or he wouldn't get to the valley by dark—and he certainly didn't want to be here when the sun went down.

  His shoulder throbbed, his shirt sticking to his gunshot wound, becoming part of the scab. Marty could feel blisters rising on his heels. His entire body was drenched with sweat, making him stink even more, which he didn't think was possible without decomposing. He could only imagine what the smell was like without the protection of a dust mask.

  He walked briskly up Beverly Boulevard, which no one would ever confuse for the western end that ran through the center of Beverly Hills. While the other end was paved with upscale boutiques, fancy restaurants, and pricey antique stores, this stretch catered to an entirely different clientele. Emilio's Discount. Pepe Ranchero. Mercado Latino. Catalina Carniceria. Not merchants that usually came to Marty's mind when someone mentioned Beverly Boulevard.

  Marty glanced down the residential avenues that branched off the boulevard. The streets were lined with classic Victorian, Craftsman, English Tudor, and Spanish colonial houses with broad front yards, that would fetch upwards of $2 million each if they were in Beverly Hills, Hancock Park, or Pasadena. But these streets were ceded long ago to the tide of immigrants from Mexico, South America, and Asia who didn't have the means to maintain the properties in their original style and grace.

  Long before the earthquake, decades of neglect, economic hardship, and destructive improvements had taken their toll on the homes. Whatever architectural charms they once had were lost to iron-barred windows and cut-rate remodeling, cyclone fencing and junked cars parked on dead lawns. The once elegant porches were cluttered with old couches and Pontiac bucket seats, or closed in with chicken wire, transformed into open-air storage units.

  Marty's Calabasas neighborhood would never end up like this. It was against the rules of his gated community. No additions or remodels were permitted without the approval of the architectural committee, which never approved anything. Flowers planted without the consent of the landscaping committee were immediately yanked out of the dirt. Cars not garaged at night were ticketed. Basketball hoops, motor homes, and boats were forbidden.

  That was how you maintained property values. Put a wall around it and appoint committees.

  But in this neighborhood, just a few miles west of downtown, it was hard, except in extreme cases, for Marty to discern what was earthquake damage to these homes and what was just lingering wounds.

  Whatever their state of decay or damage, the houses now shared one thing in common. They were all empty. Entire families had fled their homes, dragging their TV sets and stereos, mattresses and clothes, iceboxes and recliners out onto the streets, setting up encampments in their front yards. They built impromptu shelters, stringing blankets, garbage bags, and tablecloths from the roofs of their cars to the tops of their cyclone fences, covering the sidewalks underneath with bedding.

  Marty averted his gaze, afraid it would be met by one of the sad eyes in those shabby shelters, and he definitely didn't want to be drawn into anything there.

  People were already mobbing the handful of small, earthquake-ravaged "Mercados" and "Supermercados" along the boulevard, picking through the rubble, searching aisles strewn with spilled and splattered merchandise for any surviving canned foods and bottled water.

  As he passed the stores, he was stunned to see that the people, despite their desperation and fear, were still dutifully lining up at the registers to pay for what they found, fought over, and wrestled out of their neighbors' hands.

  Marty didn't share their desperation, he still had enough food and water in his pack to make it home, where he and Beth had plenty of supplies stashed.

  For a brief and satisfying moment, Marty once again felt like he'd conquered the quake with his cool head and superb preparation. The only itsy bitsy problem was the walk home. But in a few hours, that would be behind him and he'd be firmly in charge of the situation.

  The important thing now was to learn from his recent mistakes and stick to his plan. Think only of getting home as quickly as possible. Think only about Beth and how much more she needed him than anyone else along the way.

  Just ahead, beyond a curve in the boulevard, Marty could see a column of dark smoke. As he approached, he saw a fissure in the asphalt, a geyser of fire shooting out of it, flames lashing the buildings on either side of the street. All that was left of one blazing structure was its quirky, retro sign—a smiling cartoon character in a tuxedo, waving a chastising finger at a cockroach, distracting the insect from the mallet hidden behind his back.

  The character seemed so familiar. He was trying to place the image when a dead bird smacked into the street at his feet. Marty looked up and saw two more birds plunging right at him.

  He jumped aside, but it was futile. It was raining dead birds. The entire flock that had flown over his head moments ago were falling out of the sky all around him. They hit his body like baseballs, pummeling him to the ground.

  And then he knew where he'd seen that cartoon character with the mallet. On the side of an exterminator's truck.

  The birds were dying because they'd flown into a cloud of poison gas, the same one that was over his head right now.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A King Without His Throne

  3:50 p.m. Tuesday

  Marty scrambled to his feet and fled down the nearest side street, screaming "poison gas" as loud as he could.

  But no one was listening to him.

  For one thing, his words were muffled by his dust mask. For another, everyone was too busy evading the hailstorm of dead birds. The high-velocity, feathered bombs were pelting people off their feet, thunking into parked cars and collapsing make-shift shelters on impact. Compared to that, a lunatic running down the street yelling something unintelligible was easily ignored.

  Marty ran in a panic, stumbling and tumbling over the debris in the street, stealing looks over his shoulder at the brown, roiling cloud of toxic smoke. He ran as if the dark cloud was alive and in pursuit, tendrils of insecticide reaching for him, hungry for his flesh. He ran until he couldn't anymore, until his stomach cramped up and each breath felt like a sword being shoved down his throat.

  He pulled his dust mask down and looked back, relieved to see the noxious cloud was no longer above him but moving eastward, pushed by a gentle breeze. But Marty's sense of relief was obliterated by a body-buckling cramp and the sudden terror that he might lose control of his bowels.

  And that possibility, that Marty might crap all over himself, right there in middle of the street, was more frightening to him than the toxic cloud ever was.

  He didn't worry about whether he'd already been poisoned and this was just the beginning of a gruesome death. He didn't wonder if the horrible cramps were from the pesticide or his Authentic Kosher Mexican Burrito. The only thing Marty Slack was thinking about was finding a working toilet in the next sixty seconds, because that's how long his biological stopwatch told him he had until his sphincters burst open.

  One of his worst nightmares, far more frightening than the Big One hitting, was the fear of losing control of his bowels without a toilet nearby. This nightmare was topped only by the fear of the big one hitting while he was on the toilet.

  Even under normal circumstances, the idea of someone seeing him on a toilet, having a regular bowel movement, made Marty dizzy with terror. Even in his own home he locked the door whenever he used the bathroom—he couldn't face the possibility of Beth walking in on him.

  Marty had already decided, moments after his decision to walk home from downtown, that he wouldn't take a du
mp for the next few days. He was determined to be constipated for the duration of the crisis or until he could find a porto-potty with a strong interior latch.

  So much for his resolve.

  Like every other promise Marty had made himself that day, this one would be broken, and within the next few seconds. His body was rebelling, his intestines twisting into braids. He had to do something.

  Marty couldn't ask somebody if he could use their toilet because even if they said it was okay, he couldn't risk going into a house that might collapse on him. What he really needed was a hiding place.

  He had ten seconds to find one.

  Why hide? Drop your pants and get it over with, right here in the street, or on that lawn over there. Who's going to care? The city is in ruins. There are people bleeding and vomiting and dying all over the place; do you think anyone is going to give a damn about some guy taking a shit?

  Marty couldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. There had to be someplace to hide.

  Then he saw the court-yard apartment building on the corner, and the big, ragged hedge that ran alongside one wall. There was no one near it.

  Clutching himself, Marty hobbled quickly to the hedge and dived into it, scratching his face and tearing his clothes on the thorns. But he didn't care, he wanted to be enveloped by the shrubs, totally hidden from view.

  Marty unbuckled his pants, slid them down to his ankles, and squatted in the sharp branches, a mere instant before his sphincters blew. Grimacing, he closed his eyes tight and cowered in the bush, tortured by the cramps, the sounds, the smells, and the overpowering humiliation of his nakedness and vulnerability.

  Intellectually, Marty knew there was nothing shameful about this. He was a human being. He was ill. He had no choice. But there was nothing he could say to himself to ease his embarrassment, which was even greater than his considerable physical discomfort. Marty pulled the dust mask over his nose, kept his eyes closed, and prayed that no one would walk by as his body convulsed, cramped, and purged.

  A wave of heat washed over him, and he was floating, in a fishing boat on Deer Lake, his grandfather holding the rumbling outboard motor with one hand, his eyes on the trolling pole, waiting for a bite.

  It was a hot day made even hotter by the reflection of the sun off the aluminum boat. They were a frying pan drifting back-and-forth across the stagnant water. Nobody built homes on Deer Lake. They parked them and put a picnic table in front of the door and called them fishing cabins.

  "I have to go to the bathroom," Marty whined for the sixth or seventh time, rocking on his bench, sunburned and uncomfortable, his arms wrapped around his stomach.

  His Grandfather, Poppa Earl, held out a rusted MJB coffee can to him. It was full of cigar stubs and ashes, fish guts and peanut shells. "Piss in this. The fish are biting."

  "I can't," Marty smelled like a coconut, sweating off the gobs of Coppertone his Mother made him put on every time he went on the lake. "It's number two."

  "Then you can hold it a while longer," Poppa Earl decided, absently picking dried fish scales off his pants, while keeping his eyes on the line. "We're on top of a school of silvers. They'll be hopping in the boat soon."

  They'd have to. The last fish they caught was three hours ago, and it was a thin, sickly one that probably swallowed the hook on purpose to end his miserable life. They hadn't had a bite since.

  "We can go in for a minute and come right back out," Marty argued. "The fish will still be here."

  Poppa Earl shot him a furious glance. "You can't catch fish with your line in the boat."

  That was Poppa Earl's all-purpose observation on everything in life, from his brother's impotence to the invasion of Grenada, a line of inarguable wisdom that took on even greater, almost religious significance when, in fact, he was actually fishing. When Poppa Earl made that statement, ten-year-old Marty knew no amount of whining, begging, or cajoling would change his mind. So Marty just sat there, staring at the dead fish in the Styrofoam cooler, floating in the bloody ice water.

  When Marty couldn't hold it any longer, when he was sobbing with shame as his bowels emptied into his bathing trunks, Poppa Earl was too busy to notice. He'd gotten a bite. Poppa Earl was standing up in the boat, reeling in the leaded line, giving his standard play-by-play the whole time.

  "It's bending the pole in half, look at that! It's a monster! It's got to be the killer mack, biggest fish in the lake. They're hungry bastards. I once caught a thirty pound mackinaw on ten-pound test line. Did I ever tell you that? Nearly pulled me out of the boat. But I got him. Oh yes, that fish met his match in me. I'm the nightmare of the dark waters, you know that? For sixty years, I've been coming and killing. They fear me. It's instinct in them now, part of their fish DNA. Whoa, this one is fighting! Don't he know who he's up against?"

  And on and on it went, Poppa Earl oblivious to Marty's plight until the six-inch silver, every bit as thin and sickly as the one they caught hours ago, was in the boat and Poppa Earl was back on his bench, yanking the hook out of the fish along with most of his internal organs.

  "Lookee there," Poppa Earl held up the fish's stomach between two fingers. "He's been eating somebody's white corn. Who the hell uses white corn for bait?"

  Poppa Earl tossed the fish into the cooler and the guts overboard, and was washing his hands in the lake when he sniffed something foul. "What the hell is that smell?"

  Marty couldn't look at him. He just hugged himself, trying to become as small as he could, sobbing quietly.

  "Did you just shit yourself?" Poppa Earl yelled, rising to his feet. "God-damn it, the fish are biting!"

  Poppa Earl picked up Marty under the armpits and threw him into the lake. His grandfather sat back down in front of the outboard, wiped his hands on his pants, and steered the boat back the direction they came.

  "You can't catch fish with your line in the boat," his grandfather said, shaking his head disgustedly as the boat chortled off.

  The water was cold and light as mist. It smelled of pine and hospitals and clean counter-tops. He was swimming in a lake of Lysol.

  Marty opened his eyes and was blasted in the face again with disinfectant. Someone was holding a can of Lysol out of the window above the hedge, dousing the bush with spray. Before he could say anything—not that he could in his present disoriented, poisoned, and disinfected state—the spraying stopped and an old lady stuck her head out, her smile revealing a row of blazingly white false teeth. Around her withered neck, she wore fake pearls the size of jawbreakers and as white as her teeth. It was all hurting his eyes.

  "I hope you're feeling better." Her voice was filtered through a mile of gravel road. "I've got a nice glass of ginger ale and some saltines for you in the courtyard. The gate is open, be sure to close it behind you when you come in."

  She dropped a roll of toilet paper into the bush and disappeared. Marty was mortified, but not so much so that he didn't quickly clean himself off, hitch up his pants, and escape from the bush, carrying the rest of the toilet paper roll with him.

  He tumbled out of the junipers and tried to regain his balance, feeling as if he just got off a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Everything was spinning, but at least the cramps were gone. He wandered around the corner to the front of the 1940s-era, white-stucco apartment building.

  The courtyard was secured behind a wrought iron gate that nearly reached up to the Disney-esque, second-floor turrets on either side of the entrance. Marty went through the gate, closed it behind him, and discovered a lushly landscaped garden, with potted flowers and bird feeders everywhere, the elegant patio furniture arranged around a small pond and a stilled fountain.

  "Over here, sweetie." The old lady was waiting for him in a one-piece bathing suit at one of the tables, her bony legs crossed, nervously shaking one foot, the sole of her house slippers slapping against her heel.

  Her skin was unnaturally weather-beaten and creased with use; it looked like someone had stretched a loud floral bathing suit over the cracked leather driver's seat
of an old car, then strung a necklace of enormous fake pearls around the headrest.

  "Come, sit down, before the ginger ale goes flat in this heat," she motioned to the pitcher and two plastic glasses, which were on the table beside some suntan lotion and a beaten-up John Grisham paperback.

  Marty took a seat and stared at her as if she was an apparition. The air itself was shimmering like a TV signal that refused to come into focus. All he could do was lamely offer her the roll of toilet paper back.

  "You keep it sweetie," she waved her hand at him, each finger ringed with an enormous glass jewel. "In case you have more tummy troubles."

  Either he was dying, he thought, or this is just what the body does after riding a fireball, getting shot, and running through a cloud of toxic gas. In which case, shitting his guts out and losing any sense of physical or mental equilibrium would be totally normal and healthy.

  Marty set the toilet paper down on the table and reached for the pitcher of ginger ale, but had a hard time capturing it because it wouldn't stay still. Nothing would. He finally managed to grab the pitcher and pour some soda into his glass, but he had real trouble getting any in his mouth, spilling half of it down his shirt before he realized he was still wearing the dust mask. He tore the mask off his face and swallowed the tepid, lukewarm ginger ale in one, long gulp.

  It felt good. He immediately filled the glass again, drank it all, then settled back in his seat. The air was rich with the scent of fresh-blooming flowers and a hint of coconuts. For the first time in hours, he felt at peace. Safe. He could stay here forever.

  "It's very peaceful here," he said.

  "Are you feeling better?"

  "Much better, thank you." Enough to feel embarrassed again for what he had done. "I'm sorry about your bush."

  "Bushes are ugly things," she said. "I don't care about bushes."

  "Why did you help me?"

  "We don't get many guests here at the Seville," she took a saltine and swallowed it whole in her huge mouth. "And it's such a nice day."