Kismet

by Beth D. Carter

  “We meet up with Hyde first, and then we’ll go that way.” He emphasizes with a point northward.

  “You’re not hearing what I’m saying.”

  “Oh, I’m hearing you,” he tells me. “I’m just not listening to the bullshit.”

  I let out a puff of exasperation. While he’s arguing with me, the premonition starts repeating like a broken recorder. God, I hate this! I grab his hand, and in my frustration, yank him hard enough to cause him to stumble.

  “Fine!” I say with a snarl. “I don’t have time to stand here and fight like we’re in high school!”

  I let go of his arm and stomp away in the direction my vision is leading me. At this point, I don’t really care if he follows me or not. Stupid, arrogant, obstinate man! Does he think I made this up for my own amusement? That I came to Los Angeles for the fucking scenery? I don’t need this aggravation; I have a little girl to save.

  Though I manage to tune him out while I wind my way down broken streets, I know he is trailing after me. The vision begins to spin faster, and I start to run because it’s only a matter of time. Kris’s boots pound behind me, and he pulls on my arm, stopping me in midstride, and the momentum swings me around so I trip into him.

  “What are you doing?” I bark, yanking my arm free. I turn to resume my run, but he grabs the back of my shirt, leaving me flailing like a helpless rabbit. I open my mouth to cuss him like a professional sailor, but Kris holds up a hand, and his attention is fixed on a spot too far for me to see. He hauls me down behind some rubble, pointing, and then holds up two fingers. Ah, I finally get it. Two people are up ahead.

  “She’s a hunter, the one who led the raid last night that ambushed me and Hyde,” he replies rather harshly, holding up a pair of small binoculars to look through. Where had those come from? “It’s why we split up.”

  I reach over and pluck the binoculars from his hand and look through them, seeing the redheaded woman from yesterday. This time she sits on a dirt bike. “I’ve seen her before, when I first got here. She’s talking on a walkie-talkie.”

  Kris plucks his binoculars back from my hands and looks through them. “Mm,” he replies. The sound of the dirt bike revving up reaches us.

  “Let me see,” I demand. I hold out my hand and wait. He turns away from the hunters long enough to give me this disbelieving look, like I’m going to wait around while he makes his observations and ignores me?

  I see this twisted little grimace on his face before he hands them to me with obvious reluctance. I refocus on the two people we’re avoiding. Today it is just her and one other man, a very muscular man with a sledgehammer over his shoulder. And just as I suspected, he is the man in my vision. His arms are draped around his weapon like a prop, but he has a firm grip on the handle, ready to swing it.

  I mean, really? A sledgehammer?

  I watch the redhead tell him something, and then she gets on a motorbike and leaves.

  By this point my head is ready to explode. I bring my elbow back sharply and clip him in the nose. He lets me loose with a curse as he stumbles back, and I take off running. My concentration is fixed firmly on that overgrown hammer, and even from this distance, I can see the faded bloodstains trailing down the wooden handle. I wonder abstractly how many people it has killed.

  My vision starts to play in real time, real life, the man and little girl oblivious. It’s exactly as I saw the events unfolding. Yet right behind that thought is the fact that I will never make it in time to save the girl; Kris has made me waste too much time. I stop my frantic run and drop to one knee. Some distant part of my brain is cursing the fact that I left my bow behind, because my gun is going to make one motherfucker of a bang.

  In one smooth motion I flip the safety off and line him up. I focus all my attention on the asshole at the end of my sight, and just as he swings up that sledgehammer, I fire. Immediately, another gun fires off to my left, and I know this is Kris acting as my backup. I watch as the bad guy falls back, both bullets finding their marks. I see the older man throw himself over the little girl and try to find some type of cover, but already I am sprinting forward.

  “It’s all right!” I call out. “I won’t hurt you! I saw him; I saw that man try to hurt her, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

  The man poked his head out from his protective shell. “Por favor no, nos lastimes! No tenemos dinero! No tenemos nada!”

  “No deseamos su dinero,” I reply, holding my hands up in a friendly manner. “Estamos aquí para ayudarle.”

  “What did he say?”

  I look at Kris in surprise. “You can’t speak Spanish? But the majority of people in LA are, you know, Hispanic.”

  “Your point?”

  “I just assumed they would put men who can speak the native language into the areas where that would come in handy.”

  “It’s not like there’s an overwhelming abundance of soldiers tailor made for each mission,” he answers, slightly testy. “I can’t speak Spanish but I can speak German and French.”

  I don’t point out that accomplishment doesn’t really help us, and I let the matter drop. We have other important things right now. “He wanted us to know he didn’t have any money, and I assured him we didn’t want any. We don’t want any, do we?”

  “Of course not,” Kris replies, falling in step beside me. “Tell him I’m Sergeant Kristian Seek with the Western Division Ground Troop 281. And that we need to get him and his daughter to safety. The sound of our guns is bound to attract attention.”

  I translate and wait. The man hesitates for only a moment before he starts talking rapidly in Spanish. He points behind him, gesturing urgently, and I hold up my hands in order to get him to calm down.

  “Hable despacio, por favor!” I understand Spanish, but not rapid-fire, out-of-breath Spanish. Luckily, the man obligingly obeys me.

  “What’s he saying?" Kris asks me.

  “He’s part of an underground hideout, located at Pershing Square,” I reply, trying to listen to the man with one ear as I translate. “It’s actually in the metro system… Cuál metro? Ah”—I nod—“the subway.”

  Kris looks around our parameter. “If my GPS was working, I could lead us there in minutes.”

  “Qué camino vamos?” I ask the man.

  He leads us, taking his daughter’s hand and heading west of our current position. Kris and I take up the rear behind them, our guns drawn with safeties off. Our gazes constantly wander all around making sure the redheaded bitch and her minions aren’t ambushing us. It would be easier to slink around in the shadows as we hightail the few blocks to the hideout, but there simply isn’t any way to do that. The rubble prevents anything even remotely stealthy.

  “Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Kris asks in low tone.

  “Louisiana,” I answer, equally quiet. “My stepdad liked hunting, and he liked taking potshots at me, until I decided it was time to take potshots back at him. And then he didn’t mess with me too much.”

  “Jesus,” Kris mutters.

  “Listen,” I say evenly. I’ve seen pity in many people’s eyes, and each time it’s like a kick in the guts. “I had a shitty childhood, but I have a great life. I survived the virus, and I have a gift to help people.” I shrug. “There is nothing I would ever trade.”

  He doesn’t say anything more, and we make it to the blocked entrance of the subway system. I stand there with my mouth twisted as I bite the inside of my cheek, looking for a door or a hole or something that screams “entrance,” but nothing jumps out at me.

  “Este camino,” the man says to me, and the little girl pulls my hand. They lead us away from the very obvious blocked-off entrance into the underside of a nearby building. The first two levels still remain intact, but the top half is completely gone. The man beckons, and we duck into the dark, gloomy interior and follow him down an even darker and gloomier hallway. Surprisingly, it’s clear of any rubble or debris. At the end of the hallway, there’s a bolted door, and the man stops
to knock three times. At this point I'm wondering when I entered the Twilight Zone and if now was a good time to turn tail and hike it back to the outside world. But the door swings inward, and two guards stand at the threshold with matching AR-15s. Not my weapon of choice, but I have to wonder if these people even have choices. The man starts talking rapidly again, way too fast for me to keep up.

  After what I assume has been a tale of how he met us, he grabs his daughter’s hand, and in a blink of an eye, disappears. I suppose if you live like rats long enough, then you learn how to move like one. Creepy.

  “You’ll have to see the commander,” one of the sentries warned.

  Kris nods. “All right,” he agrees. We both still hold our nines, but I’m betting there’s a helluva lot more firepower aimed at us. And it’s no surprise when the sentry takes our weapons.

  Another guard appears and beckons us, so we follow down a long flight of stairs into a dimly lit corridor. I look around and see long florescent lights lining the top of the tunnel, some burned out and some spots empty of bulbs altogether. Briefly I wonder how there is electricity, but soon my attention is caught by a tall, beautiful black woman, hair cropped short, and wide almond eyes staring somberly down her M-16 rifle. The only thought going through my mind at this point is where the hell she got a hold of a fully automatic rifle in this dredge of a city.

  “Who are you two?” she asks us in a surprisingly singsong voice, though her tone warns us to be honest.

  “I’m Sergeant Kristian Seek, Western Ground division 281 of the newly reassembled military,” he introduces himself. “The United States government is processing people from this disaster area to Wyoming, for relocation throughout America.”

  “Really,” she states, obviously unimpressed. “Relocation? We have no use for the US government anymore.”

  “I must insist on evacuation,” he stubbornly monotones back to her. “It’s in your best interest.”

  All I can do is blink at his emotionless, colorless words. And that’s all they are, really, just words. This relocation thing might be news to me, but I can tell he’s losing the interest of this woman, and that is a bad thing.

  “Another earthquake is coming,” I speak up, cutting through the bullshit and hitting the nail squarely. I can feel Kris’s frown next to me, but we don’t have time for his protocol. “Devastation strength. Enough power to destroy everything.”

  And it works, because the woman goes from mild nonchalance to snapping attention in a blink of an eye. “Excuse me?”

  Behind us I hear the whispering start.

  “Sometime in the next four to six days, all this”—I wave generically around—“will be reduced to a pile of nothing. An earthquake is coming, worse than the one that hit six years ago, only this time around you have a warning. And you have a way of getting out of here.”

  The woman, the obvious leader, cocked her head. “And you are?”

  “My name is Evie Rhoton, civilian, here to help,” I answer. I see other shapes emerge from the tunnel, bleeding from the dark to hear what I have to say. “You have two choices—stay and die in this fuck-hole or listen to this man and get rescued. This isn’t something you can stop or divert or hold us hostage for negotiations,” I say. “This is cold, hard truth.”

  The woman frowns at me now, and I hope I haven’t pushed too hard by calling her home a fuck-hole.

  “You two,” she snaps, “come with me.”

  We are led from the empty, dark tunnel through a steel door and into another tunnel that is the complete opposite of where we just were. A full community is spread before us, including lights, running and laughing children, laundry on clotheslines, and little bands of people clustered together doing odd hobbies from chess games to shuffle boarding. Homes have been made from all types of available material. Some are tents, some are made with sheets of aluminum, and some are even sheets of painted Sheetrock.

  “Wow,” I say in complete awe, swinging my head back and forth as I tried to take it all in. I feel Kris beside me go into shock. Who would have thought this society lived underneath the desolate streets of LA?

  “You still stand by what you say?”

  We turn around to see the woman behind us, her rifle slung over one shoulder and her hands on her slender hips. She wears dark fatigues, and a scowl mars her perfect skin.

  “Yes,” Kris replies. “How many people do you have living here?”

  “Close to a hundred,” she answers. “My name is Shalana Shelton, and I take in people who need to get away from the gangs that run topside. They take people and make them fight in the arena as entertainment. Or worse.” The last was said with slight bitterness.

  “You’ve done all this yourself?” Kris asks.

  “Me and others,” she said with a nod to some men behind her. “And now you tell me our society is going to be obliterated.”

  “Please,” he asks quietly, humbly, “let me explain it all to you.”

  Shalana gives a small, reluctant nod, and while Kris takes a walk with her around the perimeter, I listen. How the government is more militaristic, even the new president is a former SEAL. Everything is run by a martial-law kind of thing, leaning toward a socialist society.

  This place thoroughly amazes me. I have never, in all my traveling, seen togetherness such as this. This is more than the family communities of the South or the gathered cities of the East. People of all walks of life mingle here, and though they more or less stare at me like I’m a circus freak, I understand their wariness and unease around me. I came here to take this away, and I have a suspicion many would deny what Kris and I say. I silently hope that he can convince Shalana to meet the transport lifts out of here to save all these people. How odd that his mission has now become my own.

  “One of the men who found us early on was a solar-power engineer in the old life, and he rigged us up generators that provide the electricity,” Shalana told us. “El Toro would love to get his hands on him, so he’s not allowed topside.”

  “El Toro?” Kris asks sharply.

  “Gang leader,” Shalana answers. “The gang leader.”

  “Do many go topside?” I ask, thinking of the man earlier and his daughter.

  She shrugs. “It’s inevitable,” she replies. “There are no natural resources down here, so we need to hunt provisions on the surface. And that’s when we’re vulnerable.”

  Shalana leads us all around her “city,” listening, asking questions, and inviting people into the discussion. I can see the resentment of our being there in some faces, happiness and relief in others, and I wonder what I would have done had I lived here in Los Angeles when the earthquake had hit. If I had survived it, that is. Would I have huddled together as these people had done or would I be the person I am today, standing on my own two feet and surviving on my own? I figure it would take a strong person to do exactly that. I could have stayed in Georgia, or returned to Louisiana and joined a family community, surviving, but my visions have given me the drive to find more, be more, so my nomadic existence has made me stronger. Or so I like to think.

  Our tour and discussion end. Shalana invites us to eat with them, though I can tell this is a bit forced. I have no idea what time it is, but my stomach rumbles, and I realize have to pee. So before Kris can open his mouth and decline the offer, I jump in with a smile and a nod.

  The little girl from earlier, the one I had saved, comes up to me at that point, and takes my hand. Had she been watching us, following us this entire time? I search the many faces for her father but can’t find him. She tugs on my hand, so I follow her.

  “Cómo se llama?” I ask her.

  “Isabel.”

  She chats the entire way to the “bathroom,” which happens to be several outhouses down a narrow tunnel that branches off from the main subway tube. I guess in its day, it had been an access tunnel or even a maintenance port. It’s tiled like the main area, but the walkway is all concrete. Cracks fan out in all directions like a spider web, and I have t
o wonder how safe this little tunnel actually is. The outhouses are crudely built lean-tos with a very strong smell of lye hanging in the air. I wrinkle my nose. Isn’t this stuff poisonous?

  I hold my breath and do my business, making sure not to touch anything, because I don’t see a sink anywhere. When I’m done, Isabel escorts me back to the main room, where the smell of food starts to tantalize the air. My stomach rumbles, and Isabel laughs, pulling my hand and leading me to a home built of fiberglass siding. Her father is in front and gestures for me to sit.

  The food he offers isn’t much, just beans and bread, but it fills my belly. The man chats happily about the rescue, knowing his daughter will be safe out of the terrifying gloom of Los Angeles. I sincerely hope that this family finds a great life somewhere.

  After my meal I thank Isabel and her father and then go searching for Kris. Various people point me in the direction of another side tunnel, thankfully not the one leading to the indoor outhouses.

  I follow the tracks all the way to what I assume used to be a subway platform. There is even a faint flicker of light here, keeping the complete darkness at bay and making me very happy.

  Kris sits on the only usable bench. Most of the walls have tumbled into rubble with the roof caved in by whatever building had been on top, but there is a nice little nook that lends a certain stretch of privacy. I am not surprised that Kris is here, because he is, after all, a loner. Not exactly antisocial or a misanthrope, but a man who has lived most of his life in a shell of his own making without any idea on how to break free.

  He doesn’t look my way, but by the tensing of his shoulder, I know he is aware that I’ve just invaded his sanctuary.

  “What does it feel like?” Kris asks in a low tone. There is a slight echo through the tunnel.

  “What does what feel like?” I sit next to him.

  “Your visions.”

  “Oh. They don’t feel like anything. It’s kind of like a video screen is playing over what I’m seeing, but not hindering my eyesight. It’s very hard to explain.”

  “Like your brain is divided in half?”