To Kirstie it was like the day of the waves, a sudden shift from routine to a world of dust and blood and people screaming. They worked much of the day, trying to find and rescue neighbours trapped in the wreckage of their homes. Fires started in many of the houses and spread into stands of eucalyptus; smoke was thick in the air.
Late in the afternoon, Einar Bjarnason came up the road. He looked tired and gaunt.
“The executive sent me to find you,” he told Kirstie. “They want us to take Rachel to Monterey Bay as soon as possible.”
Kirstie laughed bitterly. “At this rate, that’ll be a year or two.”
“I think they mean tonight or tomorrow. They need fuel right away to cope with all this.”
“Well, in that case we may have to go without Don. He lost his sunglasses, and he’s been doing rescue work outside all day without them. Now he’s snow blind.”
Chapter 13
Allison woke up suddenly around seven in the morning — the dead of night on Escondido Valley time. The bed was shaking. He snapped at Shauna to be still, but she didn’t answer, and the shaking got worse. Downstairs, something shattered on the kitchen floor.
“Oh shit,” Allison muttered. He rolled out of bed and strode to the doorway into Sarah s room. The curtains were parted a little; he could see her sleeping, curled up with her knees under her and her thumb in her mouth. The windowpanes rattled, and Allison hesitated. The doorway was a safer place to be, if the quake got worse, but he didn’t want to rouse her needlessly. Almost any surprise seemed to set her off into hysterics these days.
“Bob?” That was Shauna, awake at last.
“Daddy?”
He walked casually into Sarah’s room and picked her up, just as a windowpane cracked.
“What’s happening?” She clung to him, warm in her flannel nightie.
“Just a little earthquake. See — it’s going away already.”
He carried her into the other bedroom, where Shauna lay curled in bed. Allison turned on a battery lantern rather than open the curtains. In the white electric light, Shauna looked drawn and pale despite her tan.
“All over, see? You guys slept through the best part of it.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” said Shauna. “It was a big one.” As she sat up, he was struck by how much thinner she’d become. Her collarbones, framed in the neckline of her nightgown, jutted; the bones of her face stood out sharply.
“Let’s go get some breakfast,” Allison said as he carried Sarah downstairs. “Hope the kitchens not too messed up.” Why wasn’t Shauna eating more? They had plenty of food, most of it canned but still perfectly good. Something must be bugging her; when she was ready to talk, he’d be ready to deal with it.
The kitchen was a mess: pots and pans still swung on their hooks above smashed bowls and plates that had cascaded from the cupboards. The big refrigerator was all right, but the little one had toppled. In the dawn twilight, filtered through the curtains, it all looked depressing.
Bert came in from the D’Annunzios’ quarters in the old bunkhouse, wearing jeans and carrying a .45.
“Jesus, if it ain’t the sheriff,” Allison bellowed clownishly, trying to relax Sarah. “Put down your shootin’ arn — we give up.”
“Getting to be second nature,” Bert said, putting his pistol on a countertop. “Man, some shake. The twins are screaming their heads off.”
Allison matter-of-factly got milk — powdered but palatable — out of the big fridge, and cut a slice of corn bread. Smeared with margarine and cherry jam, it was Sarah’s favourite breakfast. She settled down to it, oblivious of the mess, and Allison began to cheer up a little. At least she wasn’t freaking. He lit the Coleman stove and made instant coffee as others began coming in: Hipolito and Lupe, Ted and Suzi Loeffler, Diana Marston, and Sergeant Hoops — a sergeant major now, just as Odell Mercer was now a colonel. When the babble got too loud, Allison banged a spoon on the coffee pot.
“Okay! We got some clean-up and maintenance. Bert, check the fences and booby traps. Burk might try to take advantage of the uproar.”
Ted Loeffler rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Something the matter?” Allison asked quietly.
“No, kemo sabe. I just wish you’d get over Frank Burk.”
“You think I might be getting paranoid? Got any doubts about my judgment?”
“No, no. You just come on like the Sheriff of Nottingham waiting for Errol Flynn.”
“Ted — we’re not in the movie business any more, okay?”
Allison assigned jobs, asked questions, demanded answers. He authorized two hours’ generator time and two gallons of gas for Hoops’s jeep, so he could run down to Carmel to see how things were. The radio was out of action; judging by the static, Allison guessed that another solar flare had hit overnight.
When the impromptu meeting broke up, Ted caught Allison’s eye: “Can you give me a minute, Bob Tony?”
Ted sat down and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and hands folded almost prayerfully before his face.
“Okay, for openers I’m sorry about the wisecracks. In the old days, I thought you were maybe off base, a joke or two and you’d see what the problem was. Not now, and I realize it’s the wrong way to deal with what we’re facing. If I wasn’t so frazzled and uptight I’d just say, ‘Hey, do whatever’s right,’ and — instead, gee, I’m ready to — ”
Allison waited in silence while Ted composed himself.
“I — I guess I feel like we’re operating under false pretences.”
“False pretences,” Allison nodded. “Want to expand on that?”
“Bob Tony, we’ve gotten to be a sovereign fucking state. You noticed that? We tax people, we feed people, we shoot a hell of a lot of ‘em. I don’t know if that’s what Suzi and Ken and I signed on for.”
“Ted, none of us did. It was just one damn thing after another.”
“Hey, I know it. But I don’t know if we’re really coping.”
Allison raised his eyebrows. He waved a hand at the room, at the women’s bustle and clatter as they cleaned up the kitchen. “We’re a running organization. No small thanks to you.”
“Oh, sure, Bob Tony. But what’s it doing to us?”
Keeping us alive and well, Allison wanted to shout. Instead he said, “Tell me.”
“Not only can’t I sleep, I can’t get it up. Never before. I’ll spare you the details. And it’s not like I’m confessing, okay? I’m just starting with me and Suzi. Who is sleeping fine, on Demerols. And Ken has nightmares and goes two days at a time without talking to anybody.
“Then there’s Bert. See the way he loses his temper? Man, remember how he blew away that kid in the Trans Am, the night we left L.A.? That was just for openers. Bob Tony, he’s killed five people so far. That I know of. For diddlyshit things. Holding back on a case of powdered milk, for God’s sake, so he shoots the family’s oldest boy.”
“Does Mercer have the details on that one?”
“Mercer’s got the details on everything.”
“I know where you’re coming from. Okay, how about me?”
Ted looked at him. “Want it straight, or funny?”
“Straight.”
“Bob Tony, you haven’t been out of this house in over three weeks. You won’t let us even open the curtains. You’ve lost what, fifteen pounds? The more you try to run things, the less you look like you’re doing it.”
“Anything else?”
“Shauna’s sicker than hell, and nobody’s done a thing about it, because she doesn’t talk about it and neither do you.”
“Everybody’s got skin troubles, Ted. And the runs, and flu, and we got typhus and typhoid in Salinas and Watsonville. All the doctors are working their butts off.”
“Jesus, Bob Tony, call one in for a day and have him just take a look at her, would you? She’s lost twenty-five, thirty pounds. She coughs all the time, she hardly ever talks, and she’s doing some kind of drugs.”
“Shauna is a big
girl; if she’s really feeling bad she’ll tell me. And she’s not taking drugs.”
“Was I ever wrong in the old days? You used to say I saved you a fortune just by keeping the dopers out of the company. Anyway, Sarah is not a big girl, and she’s really fucked up.”
Allison leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms and legs. “I don’t want a lecture about Sarah. She’s had a hell of time, sure. But at least she’s safe and secure.”
“You know she shits her pants? She walks around holding onto Lupe’s skirts, with her thumb in her mouth. She — ”
“I said she’s had a hell of a time. She’ll be fine. Don’t say anything else about her.”
Ted rubbed his face. “Sure, Bob Tony. Hey, if I said anything out of line, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Listen, I need you to be up front with me. Now I’ll be up front too. I’m taking you off the Leadership Committee. Like a holiday.”
“What — ”
“You can stay on here at the ranch. You and Suzi and Ken can do the jobs you’re good at, but without the responsibility of being on the Committee. We’re making some heavy decisions, and it gets to us all, one way or another. So take a break. Give us advice, but let us take the heat. Be a devil’s advocate.”
“Sure.” Ted stared at the wall. “Any objection if we check out?”
“Check out? Leave?”
“Back to L.A. I don’t want to overstay our welcome, and I think I left a tap running.”
Allison stood up. “Please yourself. I just can’t give you any gas.”
*
Couriers began arriving at the ranch around noon; Mercer, in Monterey, relayed news as soon as it came in. The MLZ seemed to have escaped the worst of the quake, though it had been bad enough: scores of dead in Salinas and Watsonville, fires in Seaside and broken water mains everywhere, CB radio reports, through bursts of flare static, gave a far worse picture of cities in the north. The dead in Santa Cruz alone were estimated at well over three thousand. A fragmentary message from Paso Robles, to the south, seemed to indicate that the whole town had collapsed.
Allison sat in the living room, curtains drawn and lanterns burning, while the messages arrived. Bert was in now and then, offering advice or asking questions. At three in the afternoon, Mercer himself arrived.
“‘We are in some trouble,” he said when the room had been closed off. “Half the people in Monterey and Pacific Grove are out in the streets. Lots of houses just came down, bang. Lots more will come down next time somebody sneezes. Most of the MLZ has no water. Ord’s okay. Some of the old barracks are kinda creaky, but the concrete ones are good.”
“Can we move people into them?” Allison asked.
Mercer put his muddy boots up on a Barcelona chair and sighed. “Sure, Bob. But once we got ‘em there we gotta take care of them. Food. Clothes. Bedding. Some way to heat those buildings. They all got electric heat, you know. Even if we had enough generators to heat and light all those buildings, we’d use up all our gas in about two days.”
“Gas. It always ends up with gas. What about that salvage team? They come up with anything yet?”
“Not much. They say they might be able to do somethin’ if the tanker was right side up. But it turned turtle.”
“Shit. I want the leader of that team up here right away, tomorrow. He can show me how he’s going to salvage the boat, or he’s fired.”
“I’ll have him here. But listen: we better face the fact that we just might not get all that good stuff. Then what?”
“Have to go liberate some,” said Allison, rubbing his beard.
“You talkin’ more expansion?”
“No, just some quick raids.”
“Better plan on liberatin’ some food too. We’re running short already, and winter’s comin’.”
“Okay, okay. But we can’t expand any more.”
“Raids are no good. You clean out some place, and their locals will come down here and beat us to death. Come on, man.”
“Hey. We had an earthquake today. Let’s worry later about conquering the world.”
Mercer stared wearily at him. “When the food runs out, you and me don’t have any later.”
That was the trouble with opportunists, Allison reflected: they lost heart when they couldn’t see an opportunity. Somehow he would have to make sure that Mercer never saw a new opportunity arising somewhere else, or the black son-of-a-bitch would sell them all out without blinking.
“We got this far, Odell. We’ll have more later than most people … Off the subject, can you get a doctor up here, the next day or two?”
“Somebody got the sniffles? You think my doctors don’t work enough?”
“By tomorrow afternoon, Odell. You can have him back tomorrow night. Now, let’s get back to relocating all these people. How about putting them in those barracks and not worrying about heat and light?”
“Bob — I just said they’d need food, clothes, doctors. And we’d still need gas and oil.”
“Okay, okay — let ‘em sit where they are. Or come up with a better idea.”
“See what I can do.” Mercer stood up and put on his olive-drab baseball cap with the eagle on it. “Like you said, we got this far.”
*
At ten that evening, Allison took a tray upstairs. Shauna had taken a sleeping pill around noon, and hadn’t even stirred when Sarah had been put to bed at two-thirty. The child was still asleep; Shauna was just waking.
“Hi,” he said softly. “I brought you breakfast in bed.”
“Oh.” She sat up drowsily. “Put it on the night table. Gotta go pee.” When she returned, she took only the coffee; the bacon and scrambled eggs slowly cooled.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Tired. My head always aches.”
“I’ve been neglecting you. Too much going on.”
“Was the earthquake bad?”
“No. Listen, how’s that sore on your neck?”
“Still there. So what?”
“Can I see it?”
“What the hell for?” She was angry. “You come up here just to stare at my sore?”
“Hey.” He took her hand. In the harsh light of the Coleman lantern, she looked gaunt and haggard. “I worry about you. You’re a tough cookie, you never complain, and you let things go on too long. I should’ve had somebody look at it a long time ago. C’mon”
Grudgingly, she lifted her hair from her shoulder. Allison leaned forward and delicately pulled the band-aid from her neck.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry.” It was bigger: a dark patch the size of his thumbnail, like a big, flat mole. It made a distinct lump under her left ear, extending towards the nape of her neck well beyond the dark patch. A lesion, near the centre of the dark patch, oozed a yellowish fluid.
“Looks like God’s own boil,” Allison said. “Take the doctor about two seconds to clean it out.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I just need some peace and quiet. Peace and quiet. No doctor.”
“Okay, okay. If you don’t want to let him see you, that’s fine.”
*
The couriers kept arriving with more news: casualty figures, damage reports, rumours from outside the MLZ. Allison felt relieved to hear that the Bay Area had suffered the worst of the quake. Maybe it would slow them down a little. The locals were bound to move south on him eventually; it was as logically inevitable as his own move north against them.
Around dawn, Allison took a nap. At nine, the leader of the salvage team arrived. He was a nervous blond man who had somehow managed to avoid sunburn. He went through the three cups of coffee with plenty of sugar and evaporated milk, while describing in detail the problems his team was facing. Allison listened patiently.
“What would you need to do the job?” Allison asked.
“A submersible. One that could drill through that hull and attach a valve to it. Then I could just pump the stuff ashore, or onto a barge.”
> “Where do I find a submersible?” The blond man looked at the floor. Allison glared at him. “Okay, thanks. You’re off the job.”
When the man had left, Allison sat thinking for a long time. Rain slashed against the glass behind the drawn curtains. A submersible. Would the Naval Postgraduate School know where one was? Some ex-employee of some defunct offshore-oil company?
The household was full of comings and goings, footsteps outside the closed-off living room and murmured voices in the kitchen. Someone tapped at the door: Lupe, announcing the doctor from Monterey. Allison went out to welcome him, and sent him upstairs with Lupe to see Shauna. Still thinking about salvage, Allison went back into the living room. He decided to talk to Ted. The guy was a pain in the ass, but he would know how to go about finding a submersible.
“Hipolito! Quiero hablar con Ted. Immediatamente.”
“Si, senor.”
But Hipolito was back in a minute, saying no one answered in the Loefflers’ quarters, and their door was locked.
— Oh Jesus, has he killed himself? And Suzi and Ken?
His Spanish deserted him. “Break down the goddamn door. Quick!” He nearly followed Hipolito outside, into the rainswept courtyard; thoughts of Frank Burk stopped him at the door. Hipolito loped back a few minutes later, holding a piece of paper.
Allison took the note. Bob Tony, you owe me a big one. I’ve called it in. Love, T.
“What the hell is this? — Hipolito, al garaje. Quizas Ted ha robado un automovil.”
When Hipolito returned, by now soaking wet, his face was grim. The Range Rover was gone. So were four jerry-cans of gas and two spare tires. Allison sent for Bert.
“The son-of-a-bitch won’t get far,” Bert told him. “Everybody in the Zone knows that truck.”
“They know him, too. The troops’ll just wave him through. Once he’s out of the Zone, somebody’s likely to wipe out the whole family for those jerrycans.”
“Out of the Zone?” Bert repeated. “Why?”
“I fired him yesterday. Then he asked to go back to L.A. I told him sure, but not on my gas.”
Tsunami: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Page 18
