“Did it work?”
“Not yet. Another eight, ten months maybe. The point is, the people in Washington were really hot to get it developed, because as far as they could tell we were going to be strapped for oil by this summer. Really strapped.” He waved at the burning slick. “Now look what we have to contend with.”
“Well, if the fuel shortage is going to be that bad, your outfit ought to have top priority.”
“Sure, in theory. But it’ll take weeks to reorganize. My people will be applying for disaster loans and pumping out their basements, instead of working in the lab. The government’s going to be scrambling around with a million other things on its mind.”
They plodded on over the bridge, trading disaster stories and gossiping about mutual acquaintances. Don was glad to have company; as he neared home he was beginning to be afraid of what he might find.
It was late in the afternoon when they reached the eastern shore of the bay. The bridge slanted gently down to where the toll plaza had been, between the mud flats and the Army Terminal; now the shoreline was a broad tangle of wreckage. The seiches had jumbled trees, logs, cars and shattered concrete blocks into a low barrier almost a kilometre wide, from the water to the far side of the freeway.
Many of the people who had walked across the bridge seemed to give up at the sight of the obstacle before them. Some turned back towards San Francisco; others erected crude shelters and even started campfires on the pavement. A few abandoned whatever they had been carrying and began to clamber through the wreckage zone. Don and Dennis watched them working their way through the zone and followed what looked like the easiest path.
Over an hour later, the two men reached what was left of the East Shore Freeway. Its eight lanes were choked with overturned cars, uprooted trees, mud, stones, and even houses wrenched from their foundations. Corpses lay half-buried in the mud, and rats skittered among them.
Speaking very little, they went on north to the University Avenue off-ramp. It was hard going for the first kilometre inland, over mud banks and across big, water-filled holes gouged in the pavement.
At the intersection of University and San Pablo stood two black policemen in orange ponchos. They motioned to Don and Dennis.
“Where you fellas headed?” the older policeman asked. They told him. “Better hustle. Curfew is at seven. Lasts until seven tomorrow morning.”
“Curfew?” Dennis echoed. “Who ordered it? The governor?”
“The mayor. Haven’t heard from the governor all day, far as I know.”
“What if you stay out past seven?” asked Don.
“If you’re lucky, you get thrown in the can and you stay there till we remember to get around to you. If you’re not so lucky, you get shot.”
The two men went on up University; at Sacramento, Dennis shook Don’s hand and turned north. Alone, Don broke into a slow jog. He wanted to get home quickly.
The streets going up into the hills were deserted, though he saw many faces peering out into the twilight from darkened windows. Two blocks from home, he heard a gunshot and saw a tiny patch of sidewalk in front of him suddenly explode as the bullet ricocheted into the gloom.
Don sprang to his left, into the street, and ran for the cover of a parked car. Bent over, he scuttled on to the next car, and then dashed for the corner. The shot was not repeated.
He ran the last two blocks, and bounded up the steps from the sidewalk to the steep front yard of his house. The living-room curtains were drawn, but a sliver of light showed through. The door was locked; he fumbled for his keys and unlocked it, hoping the chain wasn’t latched.
The door swung open. He heard a gasp, and saw Kirstie lying fully clothed on the couch; two candles burned on the coffee table in front of her.
“Don? Oh Christ, but you frightened me!”
“You scared me too.” He shut and locked the door, and went to her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I must have fallen asleep the moment I got home.”
They talked while they improvised a dinner of sausage and stale bagels. She was horrified when he told her about the turbidity current; he shook his head and groaned when she described the fight in the drug room.
For a long time they sat in the kitchen, with a single candle, drinking room-temperature beer and talking quietly. Then they went upstairs and looked out the bedroom window.
“What do we do now?” he wondered.
She turned and looked at him, surprised. “Are you asking me? After all these years of telling me?”
“Kirstie — I’m damned if I know what to do next. After all we’ve gone through in the last six months with UV and flares, and then this. Did you know the cops are shooting people for breaking curfew? And I didn’t even get around to telling you — someone shot at me just down the street as I was coming home.”
“The silly bastard shot at me too.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! You should have told me.”
“So should you.” She gave him a gentle hug. “I think I like you when you’re a little less confident than usual. Makes you almost human.”
“Belt up. The point is that it’s getting too dangerous here. I think we ought to go back to Vancouver.”
“What? After swearing you’d never darken your grandfather’s door again? And all the moaning about how there’s not enough work for us there?”
“At least you don’t get shot at. Well, what do you think?”
“We can’t, not yet. I’ve got Sam’s case to see through, and we can’t just walk away from all those thousands of casualties and homeless people. I’d feel terrible if we did. Let’s tough it out a little longer. All right?”
Reluctantly, he nodded. They went to bed and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Two hours later, light glared in their eyes. Don sat up and saw Kirstie squinting and blinking. Her face and throat were sunburned.
“What — ?”
“Power just came back on,” he said. “I’ll go turn things off.”
The refrigerator hummed reassuringly. Don shuffled about, turning out lights and checking the locks. A drunken voice down the street called out: “Happy New Year!” Five or six shots rattled suddenly, and a dog barked frantically.
When he returned upstairs, the bedroom was dark again.
“I turned out the light when they started shooting,” Kirstie whispered. “Christ almighty, we can’t let all this stuff just go on.”
“No.” Standing back from the window, he looked out at the bay again. San Francisco was still dark; street lights burned blue or orange all over Berkeley, and many windows glowed yellow. The air was sour with smoke, and the sky still pulsed orange from the fires.
The street lights brightened suddenly, then dimmed and went out.
Chapter 7
“Bob Tony, it’s the end of the world.” Ted Loeffler stared past the clicking windshield wipers at the crowded freeway.
“Yeah. Ain’t it a bitch?” Allison slumped a little lower in the seat of Ted’s station wagon. Rain drummed on the roof and pooled on the pavement. The Hollywood hills were grey-brown blurs on either side as the car crawled through Cahuenga Pass from the San Fernando Valley. “You see Long Beach when you were coming in?”
“No, but I sure as hell saw Malibu.” Mile after mile of mud and wreckage and an occasional house somehow spared by an accident of topography, and above the wave line the rusty beige of the dead chaparral on the mountainsides.
“Half the industry. Bob Tony. Half the fucking movie industry, wiped out in two minutes. Christ, you’re practically the oldest filmmaker left in California.”
“How’s Suzi?” Allison asked. “And Ken?”
“Okay. Scared shitless, but okay. The flooding, the slides, you should see it on TV. Suzi nearly went out of her tree when you called, she was sure I’d get washed away before I ever got near the airport. Ken was pissed off ’cause I made him stay home. He wanted to see the sights.” Ken was the Loefflers’ thirteen-year-old; Allis
on was fond of the boy, who reminded him of himself.
“Is that what all these people are doing — sightseeing?” Allison wondered.
Ted laughed, showing big yellow teeth. “Looking for an open gas station so they can gas up and go looking for a quart of milk. Absolute chaos. Thank God they got the power right back on. We got three freezers full of stuff, another day and it would’ve been garbage.”
“Listen, Ted. We have to suspend The Longrangers. For the duration.”
“This is not a shock.” They were passing the Hollywood Bowl, and it was raining harder than ever.
“No. And it’s going to be a long duration. Maybe years.”
Ted’s long, homely face twisted. “Looks that way, kemo sabe.”
“You know, Ted, this is no standard California disaster. This is it, the big one. By the time the government gets a grip on things again, a lot of people will be dead. Any looting here?”
“Sure. Watts, Compton, all the black areas.”
“What happens when they get hungry again? And other people get hungry? Blacks aren’t the only people with a little enterprise. And no food in a city of eight million people?”
“I’ve got a gun.”
“Every son-of-a-bitch in L.A. has a gun except me, and I’m working on it.”
“Okay, okay. You got a plan, so tell.”
“I think we can hole up at the ranch and ride this out. We’ve got some resources now, and I’ll be getting more. The neighbours are scattered and pretty self-sufficient, too, and shouldn’t be a problem. Monterey and Carmel are wrecked all to shit, but the army’s already patrolling. Remember Ernie Miles from Fort Polk? He’s the CO at Fort Ord now, and he really moved fast yesterday. Declared martial law from Monterey to Salinas, got his troops out there, and kept things calm. He’s a good guy to know. He had his MPs on duty at the airport, and they didn’t want to let me charter the plane. But I got him on the phone and he personally authorized the flight.”
“I love him, I love him. Well, look, let me talk to Suzi, okay? It sounds like a basically good idea. Not as good as making sixty million dollars, but good.”
Allison turned on the car radio. It already felt like luxury to hear a news broadcast; all of central and northern California had been blacked out since the waves, but Los Angeles still had power. For now.
The waves were already old news; now the stories were about floods in the hills, fires in Long Beach and Watts, the countless injured people overcrowding the hospitals. Most of the news from the east was about governmental determination to cope with the disaster. Tsunamis had also hit several places along the east coast: a hundred people were reported missing on the south shore of Long Island, parts of New York City had been flooded, and Boston’s waterfront was wrecked.
Allison felt a sombre satisfaction at the economic news. Several major banks had suspended operation for at least a week. Gold and silver prices were shooting up, with gold at close to a thousand dollars an ounce — up three hundred dollars in a day. With almost a thousand ounces of gold carefully hidden in his house, Allison had become suddenly richer. The New York stock market hadn’t opened today; a full-scale panic had erupted in the stock markets of Tokyo, Hong Kong and London.
Ted turned south on La Cienaga. Most of the art galleries and boutiques were closed, early victims of the depression, but the street still had some class. In the seven-hundred block stood a four-story block of marble and black glass; Ted pressed a button on the dash, activating an automatic gate, and drove into the building’s underground garage.
“We’re in luck,” he muttered. “Last time the gate wouldn’t open. The flares burned it out.” He parked in his usual slot, next to the company sedan, a new Nissan. Not many other cars were there; fluorescent lights flickered on bare, oil-stained concrete.
“Thanks, Ted. You go on home, look after Suzi. I’m going to make some phone calls. Then I’ll take the Nissan home.”
“What about dinner? You want to come over for dinner?”
“No, no — Suzi’s got enough trouble without me. I’ll eat at home. But I’d like you both, and Ken — all of you — to come over tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock. Okay?”
“Sure, Bob Tony.”
Allison gripped Ted’s hand. “Thanks. See you then.”
The Pontiac growled back through the electronic gate while Allison took the elevator to the third floor.
He took pride in running a multimillion-dollar production company from a six-room office suite. The decor was lived-in elegant, with some lovely Ben Shahn originals hanging above battered Edwardian armchairs. Allison let himself in and walked to his office without bothering to turn on the lights. The office was eclectically furnished: an antique roll-top desk, three wingback chairs, a whole wall of VTR equipment including a large TV projection screen, and a word processor. Rain slithered down the big windows overlooking the street.
The submarine gloom appealed to him. He sat at the roll-top and scrawled a few notes to himself; then he picked up the phone. First the logistics call: for transport, fuel, food and weapons. His contact was hard to reach, and harder to bargain with. When negotiations ended, Allison had promised a half-million dollars in gold for two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of supplies and equipment. For the first time, he felt grateful for gas rationing; without it, black marketeers like his contact would still be dealing in nonessentials like cocaine.
Next he reviewed the mental list he’d made the day before, on the drive back from Carmel to the ranch. The Loefflers were at the top of it, thanks to Ted’s organizational ability; Allison expected them to agree. Two more couples remained to be contacted. From what he’d seen so far of conditions in L.A., they were likely to accept his offer as well. He began to punch the number of the first couple.
An hour later, as the rain began to slacken, Allison made one final call. A child’s voice answered:
“Hello, this is Sarah Allison speaking.”
“Hi, love. It’s Dad. How are you?”
“Daddy! Hi, Daddy! Mommy, it’s Daddy. We didn’t have any lights yesterday,” she told him proudly. “So we had cold hot dogs for dinner.”
“Sounds yummy. Listen, love, can I talk to your mom for a second?”
“Okay. Here’s Mommy.”
Astrid sounded cool but tense. “Where are you?”
“Up at the ranch. I’ve been trying to get through to you guys since yesterday. How are things?”
“As well as we might expect. The power just came on a few hours ago. It’s been freezing cold.”
“Same with us.”
“It must be tough to live in a palace with no lights.”
He would not let himself be baited. “Have you got enough food? Enough money?”
“We have a freezer half full of soggy meat. If the power stays on long enough for me to cook it, we’ll be all right. I don’t know about money. Most of the markets in Santa Monica are locked up tight. The open ones are charging three times what they were last week. And the Honda needs a brake job, so I can’t even get out of here except on foot.”
“Jesus. Okay, listen. I’ll call Ted Loeffler and ask him to get out to you with some money and the office car, the Nissan. You’re welcome to it for as long as you need it.”
“Why, thank you, kind sir. Sarah, be still, you can talk to him in a minute, okay?”
“Anything else? Sarah need anything?”
“She’s fine. Mostly we’ve been playing Fish and Crazy Eights. And eating cold hot dogs.”
“Listen, Astrid, this line is getting worse. Can you still hear me?”
“Perfectly.”
“What? I can hardly hear you. Look, I’ll get in touch with Ted. You guys take it easy, and I’ll try to call again tomorrow. Give Sarah a kiss for me and tell her I’ll have a long talk with her next time.”
“And give Shauna Dawn a kiss for me,” Astrid said. She hung up abruptly. More slowly, Allison did also.
*
By a quarter to eleven the next morning,
all of Allison’s guests were sitting together in a corner of the big living room of his house on Encantada Drive. Rain pattered steadily on the long-unused sun deck outside; across the room, logs burned in the fireplace. The air was pleasant with the smell of coffee.
The conversation, as people had arrived, had centred on everyone’s difficulties since the waves: power outages, shortages of food and gas, looting in local stores, businesses collapsing. Allison let them talk for some time, pleased but not surprised that each family’s problems had alarmed them without panicking them.
“Well,” he said at last, “it sounds as if we all agree that L.A. is a bad place to live just now.”
“What do you mean, ‘just now’?” grinned Dave Marston. He was a solidly muscled man in his late thirties, a professional stunt man who had worked on two of Allison’s films.
“Your point is well taken,” Allison smiled through the laughter. “But I think it’s gotten a little past the stage of putting up with smog and no garbage pickups. In catastrophe theory, we’re at what’s called a cusp, the point where everything breaks down.”
Bert D’Annunzio shook his head. He was a small, dark man, an ex-marine who was now doing well as a technical adviser on war films like Gunship. “This isn’t theory, Bob — this is reality.”
“You’re right as usual, Bert. So for us the question is, how do we tough out the next few weeks or months? Los Angeles is a dangerous place now. We’re going to see riots, serious food shortages, maybe epidemics, and probably a complete economic breakdown.”
“That’s already happened,” said Bert. “The New York Stock Exchange is closed for the rest of the week, at least. My broker says if it ever does open again, everything’s going to crash. He told me to forget about anything we own except gold and silver and food.” He hugged his wife Aline. “I sure hope you love me for my good looks, honey, ’cause there ain’t anything else left to love.” Aline, a quiet, pretty blonde, smiled at him — a little nervously, Allison thought.
“So you’re suggesting we all move up to your ranch in Escondido Canyon,” led Loeffler said. Good, thought Allison, Ted always keeps us moving along.
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