Global Warming Fun 5: It’s a Dry Heat

by Gary J. Davies

Chapter 3

  LAX?

  Snake finally appeared with several bottles of water and tiny bags of stale potato chips. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. Meanwhile the flight continued on and on. On the seatback displays in front of them Ed and Mary caught glimpses of flat featureless countryside far below them through occasional breaks in the clouds, moving slowly by. On his flight years ago Ed remembered seeing green irrigated circles and squares when flying over the Great Plains, but now there was only a dull brown landscape to see. Most irrigation and farming had stopped when the aquifers were depleted and the rains decreased.

  The Rumsfelds tried to relax and enjoy the flight. The technology of flight had always amazed Ed. He and Mary were in a huge metal machine probably weighing over a hundred tons hurtling through thin atmosphere seven miles above the Earth at approximately two times the speed of sound. What could be crazier than that? As Mary dozed next to him Ed tried to think of such mundane things instead of thinking of being hijacked by people that threw other people out of airplanes.

  After almost two hours of flight there was finally perceptible slowing and gradual decent. The jagged mountain tops far below gradually loomed closer and closer until Ed was worried that they would fly into one of them. Then abruptly they were coming down fast. Signs of humans on the planet surface below such as roads and buildings were becoming easy to see but too rare for what used to be America's second largest city. There were surprisingly few signs of human habitation. So far there were merely a very few isolated roads and houses, and nothing that looked like even a small town. Ed also looked in vain for irrigated farmland in the valleys but saw no big dark green irrigated circles or squares.

  They seemed to be flying over a totally flat, drab gray/tan/white featureless valley with mountains in the background that were too damn close and tall for the LA area. And where the hell was the Pacific coastline? There was supposed to be a dull dry tannish mountain and desert landscape with a several mile wide strip of greenish hills near the coastline but there was no strip of green or ocean to be seen. Why? LAX was very near the ocean, but the forward view camera wasn't showing any ocean at all!

  More to the point, where the hell was the City of Angels? Even if most of the big city's houses were abandoned, this close to LAX they should be seeing countless thousands of houses built along hundreds of streets among valleys and hills. Miles and miles of city! In the old days there would have also been hundreds of water-filled swimming pools in backyards behind many of the houses, gleaming in the sun like blue gemstones. There were none. No pools, abandoned houses, or even roads!

  They continued to rapidly descend. They were definitely going to be landing very soon someplace that definitely wasn't LAX!

  Sure enough, the airplane gently touched down, further decelerated rapidly, and with a roar of engines came to a complete stop. The seat-back displays showed that there was a flat desert-like landscape outside, a huge decrepit hanger nearby, and mountains several miles distant stretching high under bright clear skies. The mountains were much too tall to be the hills along the coast near LA.

  "Where the hell are we?" Ed asked Snake.

  "You weren't expecting LAX, where you?" Snake replied. "What kind of hijacking would that be? You aren't where you wanted to be, that's just how these hijacking things go. Welcome to China Lake."

  "What's China Lake?" Mary asked.

  "It used to be a Navy aviation test and research center. Los Angeles is becoming a Mexican refugee crap-hole anyway; you wouldn't have liked it."

  "Are we at least in California?" Mary asked.

  "You're in the new heart of California more than a hundred miles inland and north of LA."

  "Are you from one of those biker gangs that runs part of Southern California?" Mary asked.

  "Close," said Snake. "We're the gang that runs those gangs that control most of Southern California."

  The airplane rolled for a short distance before coming to a complete stop. The display and everything else in the airplane abruptly turned off and the whine of powerful jet engines faded away to nothing. The silence and lack of motion was blissful but the sudden darkness inside the windowless empty cargo hold was foreboding. Fortunately a few emergency lights soon came on, including little green-glowing arrows built into the floor that pointed towards likely exits. Nice safety touch, Ed thought. Otherwise there was total darkness.

  "Up and out!" ordered Snake. "The day is still young!"

  Indeed, local time here was almost an hour earlier than when they left New York; it wasn't even noon yet. The sky was clear and the sun was high overhead when they exited the forward hatch. "Holly shit it's hot as hell out here!" exclaimed Mary as Ed helped her to climb down stairs that had been wheeled to the aircraft by the ground crew.

  The ground crew was made up of big, tough looking heavily armed tattooed men and women that wore denim or leather vests covered with ornate sewn-on patches. Snake clones, they appeared to be. After living for many years with sentient telepathic ants and intelligent rock-creatures Ed only now felt like he was among aliens. It was a band of mixed race aliens though, he noticed, as it included blacks and Latinos. Apparently Snake's crew of murderous killer bikers at least weren't racists. Whoopee!

  "The heat isn't too bad today; only about a hundred," remarked Snake. "Fall has thankfully arrived. Some summer days here get to be well over a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit, but it's a dry heat."

  "Like an oven," Mary noted.

  "Just be thankful that it's almost October," said Snake. He followed his captives down the stairs carrying Wheels in his folded configuration. Behind them the equally cheerful fellow that they met at the departure gate at La Guardia carried their duffel bags. Behind him were more biker thugs with handguns held to the heads of two men that wore Air Force uniforms. The two real Air Force men appeared to be unhappy but unharmed. Ed did a quick crew-count telepathically and still came up with nine.

  "So you didn't throw any of the Air Force crew overboard either?" Ed noted, as he unfolded Wheels and Mary sat down in the Stone-Coat wheelchair.

  "No," replied Snake. "That was a ruse to get you to talk. You can't simply open the hatch of a pressurized aircraft at forty thousand feet to throw people out of it anyway; you should know that if you're really either a school teacher or a Government agent. Besides, technology-trained people including pilots are hard to come by. These two will be treated well. We'll try to win them over to our cause if we can. "

  "And if you can't?" asked Mary.

  "Then maybe they'll accidently get killed or at least deported," Snake said with a shrug. "We have too many mouths to feed already. Everyone here has to earn their keep."

  "A good practical philosophy," Ed agreed, mostly to be sociable. The killing option mentioned bothered him. "Speaking of food, we don't mean to be a bother but we could sure use some. Not that the potato chips weren't greatly appreciated."

  "And some air conditioning," added Mary. "The heat actually felt good for a short while after that refrigerator-cold airplane, but I'm already starting to wilt. Plus I need to powder my nose."

  "Air conditioning is an outsider luxury," said Snake, "but now we're going to a nearby slightly cooler place to meet with my brother. It will be a Shangri-La of food and water and rest rooms for nose powdering or whatever."

  Before they went anywhere everyone that had arrived in the aircraft was hand-frisked and electronically scanned with hand-held scanners by the swarming ground crew. A pair of German Shepard dogs was also brought in by the ground crew to sniff all those who had arrived. Then curiously enough those that had arrived turned things around by scanning and frisking the ground crew. "You can't be too careful," Snake remarked, as Ed and Mary watched. It was a curious ritual, thought Ed. Most people greeted each other by simply shaking hands rather than feeling each other up.

  The Air Force men were led away towards the nearby hanger by the ground crew, while Ed and Mary were escorted by Snake across old sunbaked asphalt
to a nearby waiting assemblage of a dozen bikers and their ornate ancient looking motor cycles, half of which had side-cars. Ed, Mary, Wheels and duffel bags were placed in separate side cars, while Snake exchanged high-fives, slams on the back, cuss words, hugs, and other forms of greeting with his fellow bikers.

  Several bikers were female, Ed noticed with surprise, though they tended to be big tough looking woman with tattoos and scars like the men, and also wore vests with multiple patches. Snake exchanged a big hug and lingering kiss with the cutest of them by far. Ed was already beginning to feel more comfortable with being among this gang of rowdies. Actually this gang's comradery, muscles, and patch covered clothing reminded Ed of the Tribe warriors back home. They wore different clothing and patches, but displayed much of the same kick-ass attitude and warm comradery.

  "SO FAR THEY SEEM LIKE A FRIENDLY ENOUGH BUNCH," Ed told Mary via implants as they were escorted to separate side-cars, in an effort to comfort her. The muscular young man that sat on the motorcycle attached to her sidecar couldn't have been older than twenty, but he was as massive as a football lineman and as unsmiling as Snake.

  "I THINK THAT YOUR DRIVER LIKES THE CUT OF YOUR JIB, ED," Mary replied, after she glanced back at him.

  Ed hadn't until then even noticed that his own driver was a trim curvaceous young blonde-haired female that was openly gawking at him. It was the extra-cute one that had kissed Snake! She looked to be perhaps thirty, was a head taller than Ed, and her arms rippled with muscle. She was built like a gymnast, slim but strong. Ed judged that she could easily kick his ass without even working up a sweat, even here in the desert heat.

  "Well ain't you the fancy cream-puff!" she told him, when she caught Ed looking at her. "You don't look like you have the makings for a Stormtrooper; you better be real smart or Hacker will feed you to the pigs."

  Ed hoped she wasn't serious about the pigs. She had no telepathic abilities so he couldn't tell. "Who is Hacker?" he asked. "Oh, and by the way I'm Ed, and the lady is Mary." He reached out to shake her hand but she didn't reciprocate. Just as well maybe, he figured; she would have probably crushed his hand in hers.

  "I'm China Doll, baby," she said. "Hacker is top dog of the top dogs, along with his brother Snake. The Crew and all Southern California call them the Brothers. Hacker doesn't normally take to outsiders unless they can offer something very special to his Stormtrooper Crew. Snake is a lot friendlier and more sociable than Hacker; but you two probably already know what a friendly fella he is."

  "Well he hasn't kissed us yet," Ed noted.

  China Doll stopped talking and pulled on what appeared to be a white Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet and then a mask that in turn fit snugly over it. The pale-faced mask looked like a China Doll. It was a nice personalized touch, Ed felt.

  Ed was going to ask her some questions about Stormtroopers and Crews but at that point Snake, who had put on a patch covered vest and a black snake-faced Stormtrooper helmet, sat himself astride the lead absurdly ornate black and chrome Harley, then rose up and came down hard on his bike's old-fashioned kick-starter. In moments all the bikes were thunderously alive. Together they were much louder than the jet engines had been, and they spewed out nasty smelling exhaust fumes that given the absence of wind threatened to choke the riders. With a jerk and a roar of engines they were soon all underway, snake-faced Snake in the lead.

  "NO SAFETY HELMETS FOR US?" Mary asked Ed via implant. The Stormtroopers all had on nifty Star Wars helmets, some with masks over-top of them for that nice personal touch.

  "NO ANTI-BUG GOGGLES FOR US PASSENGERS EITHER," noted Ed. "DUCK DOWN IN YOUR SIDE CAR OR A DESERT FLY MIGHT TAKE OUT YOUR EYE OR POP DOWN YOUR THROAT," he advised Mary.

  They probably weren't moving faster than forty miles an hour but for the captives in the drafty sidecars it seemed to be much faster, especially when they left the smooth runway apron and were riding on a bumpy sand and dirt covered path. Traveling in the middle of the pack, Ed and Mary were subjected to the dust kicked up by Snake and several others. Nevertheless Ed poked his head up now and again to try to figure out where they were.

  To each side of the sand/dirt path they followed there were small dry dead-looking bushes, cactuses, and scattered sprouts of dull colored grass-like plants but otherwise the predominately flat landscape was bare desert. Light brown/beige was the color of practically everything. He thought that he glimpsed a big fat rattlesnake sunning itself atop a rock. He reached out telepathically and confirmed that it was indeed some sort of dull thinking reptile. He also sensed countless other small creatures, most of them hidden from sight and from the hot overhead sun. There was much more life here than he expected, though most of it had the sense to hide from the hot sun rather than rush about in it like the silly humans were doing.

  They pressed on to pass a scattering of old buildings, sidewalks, and long dead patches of lawns that seemed to be abandoned based on the encroachment of sand and desert plant growth, and on damage such as broken windows and cracked concrete. They finally pulled in front of a very large and slightly less decrepit faded sky-blue building that said something about being an advanced aeronautics lab on the old sign over the entrance.

  They stopped to park among the couple of dozen motorcycles that were already there. Several of them had side-cars with large guns mounted in them, Ed noticed. Most of the bikes also had what looked like bullet holes.

  The bike gang dismounted, then took off their helmets and hung them on their bikes or belts. "Some used to call this building the blue whale," Snake remarked. "They used to support fighter jets here." He escorted Ed and pushed Wheels and Mary through the front door and past two security guards holding nasty looking automatic rifles. Inside there were still more armed guards and a large room filled with old-time office cubicles. The guards all snapped to attention when they saw Snake, Ed noticed.

  Most of the room was dark and most of the cubicles were empty, but a few held biker people working at desks. These featured desk-lamps, ancient-looking computer work-stations, and small electric fans. The fans made the work-spaces bearable, even though it was nearly ninety degrees inside the building. From the ceiling several ornate models of fighter/attack aircraft hung, from ancient F/A-18s to more contemporary F/A-93s. "WELCOME TO SHANGRI-LA," Ed told Mary via implant.

  Snake led them into a well-lit side office that contained chairs, electric fans that generated comforting breezes, several bookshelves full of books, and a big gray painted metal desk. Behind the desk sat a somewhat smaller, less hairy version of Snake. He rose to stare in wide-eyed astonishment at Ed.

  Ed in return stared wide-eyed back at him. Maybe because he was clean shaven and his brother wasn't, Ed recognized him immediately, even after forty years. "Tod!" he exclaimed. "Tod Williams! And Snake must be your twin brother Jim! I'll be damned!"

  ****