Slow Apocalypse (39 page)

“We’re going up to my house and talk it over. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

Ferguson was frowning.

“I don’t think you should desert your post.”

“Desert my post? I’m sorry, Richard, but if you remember, this is volunteer duty. I’ll take someone else’s shift, but you’ll have to find a replacement for me now.”

Things felt a little tense for a moment, and Dave wasn’t sure which way things would go, but he felt he had to establish some boundaries.

“Sure,” Art said. “Richard, you stay here for a few minutes, and I’ll go find somebody to take his place.”

Ferguson didn’t like it. He stalked off toward his home.

“I’m worried about him,” Peggy said.

“For more reasons than one,” Art agreed.

Dave got on his bike and pedaled off up the gradual slope of the hill, with Ted Winston at his side.

Dave made it halfway up the hill before Ted diplomatically suggested that they get off and walk the rest of the way.

“This bike isn’t geared for hills, anyway,” he said. Dave had no doubt that Ted could make it up the hill in any gear and hardly break a sweat, but was grateful the younger man had offered the old fart a face-saving way of avoiding a heart attack.

Nevertheless, he was still exhausted and dripping sweat when they finally made it to the gates of his home.

Ted’s arrival triggered Karen’s hostess gene. Ted politely refused the offered food, and Dave wondered if that was going to be the new paradigm, not accepting such offers for fear the host really couldn’t spare it. But he did accept a glass of iced lemonade.

But there was no stopping Karen. While everyone else sat around the table in Dave’s office, she bustled around her makeshift kitchen preparing a tray of snacks. She arranged saltine crackers around the edge of the tray and opened a pot of cheese spread and a can of smoked mussels and another of pineapple chunks. When it was all out there everyone at first tried to resist, but such modest treats had already become such a novelty that soon someone would reach for a cracker with a dollop of sharp cheese, thinking they would have just one. Before long everyone was noshing, including Ted.

“My father says you want to get out of Los Angeles,” he said.

“We were intending to. I had decided we would leave today or tomorrow. But I’ve been wrestling with that decision all night. We took a trip yesterday, reconnoitering. I’m no longer sure it’s a good idea.”

“Where did you go?”

“South. We were thinking of San Diego.”

Dave was itching to hear about Ted’s journey north, but the younger man wanted to hear their story first. Dave told him, with help from Karen, leaving out the part they had agreed no one else should hear. They had talked it over and decided there was no point in shielding Addison from hearing about the violence around the warehouse. She couldn’t be protected from everything. She needed to have a more realistic picture of what was out there. She would be fearful, but also more alert. They would keep from her only the fact that her parents had killed.

Addison was hearing that story for the first time, and her eyes were wide but she seemed steady again. No doubt she was reflecting on just how much danger her parents had been in. He didn’t mention the dead bodies, but he was sure her imagination could fill them in.

“So, aside from that food riot, you didn’t run into any other trouble?”

“We saw some…signs of gang activity in Koreatown. We saw some kids who might have been thinking about robbing us, but we—”

“I’m sure they were going to rob us,” Karen said, with a straight face.

“But we got away from them.”

“You were lucky,” Ted said, flatly. “Things like that can happen anywhere. Some places are worse than others, but there are roving bands, too.”

“You know this for sure.”

Ted nodded. “I’ve been out almost every day, and some nights, scouting around. I’ve seen some roving gangs, mostly on motorcycles, some on foot. Every once in a while there’s a car full of them. I’ve been shot at.”

“What did you do?” Addison asked.

“I ran like hell,” Ted said, with a smile. But the smile didn’t last long. “Three times I’ve had to shoot back. I won’t lie to you. At least twice I hit somebody. No telling what happened to them. I didn’t stick around to find out.”

“You do what you have to do,” Karen said, not looking at Dave.

“Yes. You do.”

Dave wanted to get off the subject of things you had to do. Addison’s eyes had gotten even wider while listening to Ted.

“At any rate,” Ted went on, “there aren’t nearly enough cops around. I’m sure some were killed in the quake, and transportation from their homes has been a problem. Some have been killed in the line of duty. And I’m sure some simply resigned, informally, when they saw how dangerous things were getting
out there. They have to think of their families, just like everybody else. For whatever reasons, you’re largely on your own out there. Does that fit in with your experience?”

“I’d say so. We saw cops around the police station, and some around the hospitals. It’s not complete anarchy, but it’s not good.”

“Yes. My dad, my brothers…we’ve all agreed on several things.

“Number one,
anywhere
else is better than Los Angeles now. Sure, we know there are other places, like the Texas oil patch, that are completely uninhabitable, but they’re out of our range, anyway. But elsewhere, in California or Nevada or Arizona or Oregon, no matter how hard the lack of fuel, food and water shortages, they don’t have the worst natural disaster in American history on top of that. Nobody has said anything officially, so far as we know, about casualties from the quake, but I think tens of thousands have died. Los Angeles is a dying city. Do you agree with that?”

“From what we’ve seen, I’d have to,” Dave said. “Somebody has been plowing routes through the wreckage, but we didn’t see anything like rescue activity going on, except for neighbors helping neighbors.”

“Okay. With a lesser disaster, I’d say it would make sense for you to stay holed up here in the hills. It’s easier to defend than our house is. But we feel that no place in Los Angeles is going to be really habitable in the long run. People are planting gardens, but it’s going to be hard or impossible to find the water to grow the crops, and it takes more time than we’re likely to have before you
get
a crop.

“You can’t grow rice here. I don’t see wheat fields happening anytime soon. People are planting corn, but it takes months to get a crop. The important thing to remember is that Los Angeles was built in a desert. It’s going to become one again. The aqueduct is not flowing anymore.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“We don’t know why. Probably the quake, though there are rumors that the people up north have turned off the faucet.” He looked at Dave. “I guess I’m telling you some things you already know. After all, you’re the one who laid it all out for Dad, just how bad it could get…”

“I want to know everything you know, and everything you’ve figured out.”

“Bottom line, we feel we have to leave.”

“We saw some people on the 5 freeway,” Karen said. “Not a lot of them.”

“That could be because of the rumor that the San Onofre nuclear plant has suffered a meltdown.”

That remark was met with a brief silence.

“By meltdown, do you…” Dave stopped himself. “Wait a minute. If you came from San Diego…”

“I had to pass by it, right. Only I didn’t.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“I had no choice. The interstate is closed at the southern end of Camp Pendleton, and I presume at the north, too. And San Onofre is—”

“—right on the north end of Camp Pendleton,” Dave finished for him.

He had driven that road many times. Bounded by the exclusive communities of San Clemente to the north and Oceanside to the south, Camp Pendleton was 125,000 acres of barren land and twenty miles of unspoiled coastline, virtually empty except for scattered Marine Corps structures. It extended almost twenty miles inland, into the hills. One had only to look at the suburban sprawl to the south and to the north, to imagine the many hundreds of billions of dollars those miles of shoreline would be worth if the Marines ever decided to abandon it.

About five miles of the northern stretch was the San Onofre State Beach, and smack in the middle of that were the twin containment domes of the Southern California Edison nuclear plant.

“It’s kind of far from here, isn’t it?” he asked.

“That was our thought, too. But the Marines who turned me back said the area was unsafe. I knew how to ride around Pendleton; I’ve done it before many times. I also knew how to stay off the highways as much as possible. There are bike paths, and some trails that you can manage with an off-roader, which is what I was riding. So I passed about fifteen miles to the east of the plant.”

“Which way was the wind blowing?” Karen asked.

“Well, that has me a little worried. It was coming from the west, and blowing pretty hard. If those plants did crack open, I might have been exposed to some serious radiation.”

Karen reached across the table and squeezed his hand. He smiled back at her.

“I’m not worrying too much about it. If I had it real bad, I figure my hair would be falling out by now, diarrhea, vomiting, the whole nine yards. Maybe I got just a little dose, won’t show up for years, if ever. Or maybe I got no dose at all.”

Dave saw that Addison was crying. He took her hand. She wiped her tears away with the other hand.

“It seems like it never ends,” she said, sounding very young again. “The bad things just keep on coming.”

“And we’ll just keep on fighting them, Addie,” he said.

Ted disposed of the rest of his epic journey north in a few terse sentences. He encountered problems along the way, he said, both natural and quake-induced barriers and encounters with people who didn’t wish him well, didn’t want him passing through their territory, or wanted to take what he had. The natural impediments were dealt with fairly easily in most cases by altering his route. The human problems were more complex and worrisome, but he claimed he hadn’t had any major problems. Dave suspected there was a lot more that he could say.

“So,” he said, and took a deep breath. “My family has decided that a trip north is our best bet. Mostly because of the water situation. We’re still months away from the rainy season, and you know how short that can be, even in a good year. Dad wants you to come down and meet with us, see what we’ve done, see if you agree that traveling together is a better idea than traveling alone.”

“I already agree about that,” Dave said.

“We’d like you to come down today, if possible. We plan to leave either tomorrow or the next day.”

“So soon?” Karen asked.

“Look, I can go outside and leave you guys alone to talk it over if—”

“I don’t think we need to do that,” Dave said, glancing at Karen. Ted watched the interchange, and said nothing. “When do you want to get started?”

“As soon as possible.”

A problem soon became apparent. Dave didn’t feel good about leaving the house and all their resources unguarded, and he didn’t feel good about leaving someone behind to look after things. In that regard there was only one option open to him, considering the promise he had made to Addison.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jenna said, before Dave even broached the subject. “I’ll be happy to stay behind and look after the place.”

“Jenna…”

“Honest, Dave, I’m happy to do it. Look, man, I came here to sleep in your house and eat your food and drink your water with nothing but a shotgun, and you had to climb a mountain to get the damn shotgun.” She looked down for a moment. “Actually, what I want is a seat on Bob’s bus when he pulls out of
this nightmare town, with you guys following along. Do you think he’ll be interested?”

“If he’s not, we won’t be going with him. Like I said, you’re with us now.”

Ted had overheard part of the conversation, and now broke in.

“Listen, Jenna,” he said, “if I hadn’t found you here, my next stop was supposed to be your apartment. Now I’ll be heading over to Glendale to Dennis and Ellen Rossi’s house, then I’ll try to find Roger Weinburger. One thing Dad made clear to me is that he regards you all as family. You’re all invited.”

Jenna had to turn away. She walked to the edge of the drop-off and stood gazing out over the ruined city.

“Dad has tried to convince a few other friends to come, too,” Ted went on, in a lower voice. “So far, no takers. So believe me, Dave, you’re not only welcome to come, we really need you. You and Jenna and Dennis and Roger are people he trusts absolutely to watch his back while he’s watching yours.”

“Teddy, you’ll never know what a load you’ve taken off my back.”

“Not all of it, surely.”

Dave laughed.

“No, I’ve got a feeling we’re all going to be carrying a big load for a long time. But it just got lighter.”

“I don’t know you, Dave, but Dad has always spoken highly of you. I know you understand that we’re all going to have to expect a lot from each other. We’re all going to have to do things we never expected we would have to do. You have a child and a wife. My brothers and sisters have children. I don’t think I need to say a lot more than that.”

“You don’t,” Dave agreed. He and the younger man shook hands, Then Ted put on his helmet and was off down the street, headed for the wilds of Glendale.

It didn’t take them long to get on the road. They loaded the Escalade since it would make sense to use the trip to transfer some of their things to the Winston house. If it turned out they wouldn’t be going with the Winstons, they could always bring it all back.

They told Jenna to use a bicycle to join them if things got hairy. She insisted she wouldn’t have to. They left her on the street, holding her shotgun, and Dave watched in the rearview as she hand-cranked the metal gate back in place over the driveway.

“Are you sure we should leave her behind?” Addison asked. She clearly still had separation anxiety.

“Addie, I don’t like leaving her, but I don’t think she’s in much danger up here.”

“Okay.” She was clearly still unhappy about it.