Los Angeles
Page 21
Candles lighted up. People moved in their round glimmers. They had not cheered or applauded. They were, Glenn knew, terrified. But resolute. Everything they owned, life, loved ones if such they had, human destiny, itself, depended on their courage. So there was no need to cheer or applaud, but need, only, to be brave.…
Three Board members happened to be in L.A. on the night of the Celebration.
In the rose-and-gold studio where the VIPs sat on gilded chairs in front of and above some two hundred special guests, Glenn looked over that elegantly clad and often near-transparently gowned audience and listened absently to the speeches. He watched a small monitor, as the audience could watch on a huge one, where, in full color and grandeur, other cities were parading their VIPs and performing their same ceremonies. The hook-up was nation-wide, reflex, with ample power at appropriate stations to cover the world, thrice around.
Glenn knew he was tense, pale and so, visibly uneasy. He had finally found himself in a situation where his will and control were inadequate for his purposes. He could hope that his state would be attributed to this, his first national exposure as “himself,” not, as the mere executive head of the media, shown as that. But though it was the interpretation plainly put on his jitters, and though he was kidded about that loss of cool, Glenn felt in himself some deeper anxiety that he could not name.
As the ceremonies progressed, as bands played, as incredibly agile damsels from Seattle-Portland performed the most acrobatic and sexual ballet he’d ever dreamed of, he kept sending the worried searchlight of his mind over his concealed plans, people, events.
Nobody had betrayed the Freedom Fellowship.
The national exit scheme was, surely, known in every group and all groups were now at or near their exit-points.
The police-military weren’t out in unusual numbers, though they were out in rare quantity, for security reasons; plainly, a common precaution, nothing more.
Yet the night was frantic within Glenn.
When, at last, he reached the code words of his own, amusing, bright, “thank you” speech, Glenn was soaked in sweat. Still, he delivered the command in a calm, clear tone: Saluting with elegance, he cried, “Service!”
Then he heard a click and the man nearest him, as he started towards his seat, collapsed.
Glenn knew it all, then.
They had been betrayed. Perhaps from the start. But how? By whom?
Leandra?
She’d be at his place, the new one, the “palace” he lived in, watching on the Super-TV. He found himself thinking that he had to see her, and as he thought, he was taking measures against any second lethal weapon-click. He stepped behind Mayor Bob Baker instead of going on to his chair. So the next shot missed him but brought down a guard who had rushed up behind the VIPs on the platform. Bob whirled and Glenn slugged him. Bob folded and Glenn then had a shield that got him safely out of the studio and its instant pandemonium.
Bob was heavy but Glenn was strong.
He used his shield to get from the building, in another way. He yelled at nearby guards, “I’m getting the Mayor to a hospital! He’s been shot!”
That achieved a better result than he’d expected. A police speed-van rolled up and took Bob and Glenn inside. It started for the East Gate hospital. But it did not get there. Instead, the van soon disgorged the two policemen, both victims of a weapon Glenn had grabbed—and the vehicle sped on toward Glenn’s “palace.” It was guarded, but the police van was not expected to be hostile, so both guards died, unaware of why or how.
In one of the “female visitors suites” he found Leandra where he’d expected to.
She was dead.
He left his shimmering miracle-abode by a rear door and found the van was already in police possession. On foot, by circuitous streets and alleys, he reached his own, designated point of exit. He saw some two hundred or more men and women had gathered there—pale, stunned, pinned by guards’ weapons. So Glenn knew that this exit had been discovered and stopped up. So had all the others, he was sure. He checked his position and crept back into shadows, barely in time. From a distance, two trucks howled toward this place, a small plaza, mouldy and desecrated by graffiti, dirty, no likely site for a mass exit, yet, a main one. Useless.
The first police vehicle blasted lights on the cowering group of Fellows. The second, skidding to a stop beside the first, was only an ominous silhouette to Glenn, but one that soon growled with a deep, brazen sound which fell lower but became more painful as it descended to inaudibility, where its waves began to affect the freedom-seekers.
Glenn had seen it, once, on tape.
Now, he saw it, live.
The group of human beings, their majority male and yet at that, a bare majority, so near to victory, faced failure and death palely, silently, helplessly. When the roar went below audible-sensing they began to tremble, to vibrate, as if shaken, shaken rapidly, a centimeter or so each way, and thus, they died.
When they were down and motionless, the terrible machine slowed and reversed its scale till its sound rose from bass toward an ear-shattering baritone. Then it stopped.
Glenn had no more plans.
Leandra had not betrayed them.
Probably, he thought, as the grinding roar grew bearable and diminished, “they,” the Corporation, had always known. Probably, he guessed, and he felt, correctly, all the “bugs” had never been turned off and they’d heard of the rebellion when he, Glenn, first had heard … from Leandra.…
Everything was lost now—except a soon-doomed memory of love.…
Glenn found, as the “subson” rose toward a final pitch and then diminished, that it wasn’t unfamiliar, as sound. And he realized he was now sitting, not standing. Moreover, it was daylight, not night in a dark corner of an alley.
The noise was a departing sort—as a huge, triple-trailer bellowed into the distance.
He stretched, yawned, thought of his nightmare and then tried to shake it off.
A few people had left the Rest Area. Others were entering.
His taperecorder was humming. He shut it off: better finish dictating at the office.
But as he regained the road he found he couldn’t drive with his usual speed. The haunting dream kept his attention from any concentrated effort at driving.
And as he neared Los Angeles he found certain ordinary sights made him slow even more, to look. Factory chimneys streaming smoke gave him a strange sense of anguish. A dry brook-bed with the bleached trash it had brought to this point, in wet weather—shocked Glenn. So did a suburban street, slummish, tawdry and crammed with too many people—that, slowed and dazed Glenn.
Finally, topping the last mountain, Glenn found he needed to stop just to “regroup” as he often put it—to gather his wits and regain some degree of composure. Pulling off the road, he got out and saw, in the ditch, a copy of one of his own papers, today’s, the October 15, 1971 edition—something thrown from a passing car from one of the endless multiple, two-way streams of vehicles, hurled into a deep layer of cans, bottles, packaging material, trash, the usual pavement-side paving of everywhere—USA.
It was late enough and smoggy enough so that Greater Los Angeles was lighting its lamps. A sea of acrid, slow, stirred and stinging mist half buried the vast prairie of lights, so that those along the far coast were dimmed almost completely. But their position still showed where the land ended and the Pacific began.
Glenn coughed a little, looked at the trees amidst which he’d walked and saw they were dead trees, smog-murdered. Then, trying to recover from his nightmare, he gazed with a sort of hope at the immensity of the lighted city below.
It was silent. And soon the incessant sound of traffic seemed to die out, strangely. Silence fell.
Then, the city screamed.
From millions of throats came a death scream, death-groan, a howl and bellow, all mingled into a single orgasm of agony, as if Los Angeles, with every city on earth, was dying by torture, soon to be voiceless and still.…
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About the Author
Philip Wylie (1902–1971) was a prolific writer whose work spanned a range of genres from men’s adventure and detective stories to science fiction and social criticism. Several of his novels, including When Worlds Collide, Night Unto Night, and Los Angeles: A.D. 2017, as well as the Crunch & Des stories, were adapted as movies and television shows, and his novel Gladiator is considered one of the inspirations for the iconic character Superman.
Wylie was also a commentator on American society. In 1942 he published Generation of Vipers, a bestselling book of essays that attacked the complacencies of the American way of life. His novel The Disappearance presents a dystopia in which men and women vanish from the perception of the opposite sex, allowing Wylie to explore the issues of women’s rights and homosexuality. Wylie recognized early the potentially catastrophic effects of pollution and climate change and wrote both fiction and nonfiction on those topics.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1971 by Philip Wylie
Cover design by Jesse Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-4532-5386-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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