Quake (5 page)

    'They always said we'd get it.'

    'Yeah.' He began to climb a slope of wreckage. Until now, he had avoided anything so high. He could've detoured around this one, but knew there would be a good view from its top. If can just get there in one piece. He made his way upward slowly, crouching, open hands down low so that he might catch himself if he should slip. 'How about your house?' Sheila called.

    'It got…' His left foot suddenly triggered a small avalanche. He scrambled higher and found solid footing. Hunched there, he panted for breath. He was shaking, drenched with sweat. His pajamas felt sodden. His moccasins felt gooey inside, as if they'd been lathered with lard.

    'Stanley?'

    'Yeah?'

    'Are you all right?'

    'Fine.'

    'Are you sure? Did you fall?'

    'Some stuff…, gave out under me. I'm okay.'

    'Be careful. don't want you hurting yourself.'

    'Thanks.' Slowly, he straightened up. With a damp pajama sleeve, he wiped his face.

    'What about your family?' Sheila asked. 'Are you married?'

    'My wife died last year.' He resumed climbing.

    As he gained the summit, Sheila said, 'I'm very sorry about your wife.'

    'I appreciate that. Thank you.'

    'You sound a lot closer.'

    'Yeah, I…' He had been gazing at the debris under his face while he climbed. The moment he lifted his eyes, he saw the blazing house. And the handful of people gathered to watch it burn. They were the only people he saw. The burning house had apparently drawn every available spectator, leaving none to notice Stanley.

    'What is it?' Sheila asked.

    'A house fire. Over on the other side of Swanson. At the comer of Livonia.'

    'Is the fire department there?'

    'No. Not yet.'

    'Police?'

    'Afraid not. Just a few neighbors'

    'My God. What if it spreads?'

    'Its pretty far away.'

    'Oh God.'

    'Don't worry.'

    'I'm trapped.' Though the voice came to him along with a confusion of overlapping noises, he heard Sheila's fear. 'I don't want to burn up.'

    'I'll get you out,' Stanley said. 'I'll save you. promise.'

    'Hurry? Please?'

    'I'm coming.' Moving as fast as he could without reckless chances, he descended to the bottom of the without trouble. From there, he could still see the thick black smoke curling into the sky. But the burning house and the spectators were out of sight, blocked from his view by remnants of Sheila's walls.

    I can't see them, they can't see me. He liked that. If they can't see me, they won't be coming over to snoop. 'Sheila?'

    'You sound very close.'

    He looked toward the sound of her voice. It seemed to come from straight ahead - no more than a few strides away. But he could see only more tumbled, broken ruins of the house.

    'I can't see you.'

    'There's a bunch of stuff on me.'

    He took a step. Another step. Halting, he studied the debris. 'Where are you?' he asked.

    'You're almost on top of me.'

    On top of you. Yes. Oh, yes! 'Can you see me?' he asked.

    'Too much in the way. But you sound like you're somewhere above my feet.'

    How could that be? The rubble in front of him looked fairly level and close to the floor. Unless Sheila'd been mashed but she claimed to be unharmed. And she sounded fine. Scared, but not in pain.

    'I don't get it,' he said. 'Where are you?'

    'I think I'm in the crawlspace.'

    'What?'

    'The crawlspace. Under the house. felt the tub drop. All this junk came crashing down, and the tub dropped out from under me. We must've landed in the crawlspace.'

    'You're in your bathtub?' Stanley asked.

    'Yeah. The luckiest break I've ever had.'

    Me, too, Stanley thought.

    'The stuff would've mashed me. But it's all across the top. Too much for me to budge.'

    'Well, I'll start clearing it away.' He took off his pajama shirt. It felt good to be free of the wet, clinging fabric, to feel the air against his skin. He wanted to remove his pants, as well. We'd both be naked. Yeah, and what if somebody comes along? And what'll Sheila think? She'll be able to see me as soon as…

    'How's that fire doing?' she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

    Stanley twisted around for a look. Nothing had changed much. Black columns of smoke still climbed the sky. 'It isn't getting any closer. Don't worry about it. We've got all the time in the world.'

***

    Wellen had only avoided a bead-on collision with the RTD bus by steering even farther to the left, two lanes away from their proper side of the road and into the path of a gray Mercedes. He swerved right. Filled in the space between the rear of the bus and the front of an oncoming Ford. Then again to the right, abandoning the westbound lane with an instant to spare. And it had gone on like that. Bursts of speed, lurches from side to side, skids and abrupt halts, near misses one after another. It seemed that Wellen would no sooner save them from a crash than still another car or bus or delivery truck would be rushing straight at them. Barbara, belted into the passenger seat, sat rigid and squeezed her thighs and tried not to scream. Heather, in the backseat, screamed plenty. And sobbed and pleaded. Earl and Pete shouted. Barbara barely noticed anything that wasn't a direct threat to their Nova. She was only vaguely aware of what they passed: collapsed buildings, fires, wrecked cars, sheared off hydrants spouting white geysers into the air, people sprawled on the sidewalk, all bloody, or hurrying somewhere or stumbling along like zombies. Such sights hardly register on Barbara's mind. They didn't matter. They were background. They weren't real. Only the ride was real - the Nova piloted on its suicidal course by the driver's education instructor. On and on and on he sped with his students. Putting their lives at risk with every turn of the wheels. Taking them farther from school and from their homes with every second.

    A few times, Wellen made detours to avoid sections of Pico Boulevard that appeared to be completely blocked. He whipped around corners, sped down side streets, gunned his way through alleys. But always back to Pico. Until finally, a few blocks past Western, he drove into a trap. Ahead, all lanes were blocked, a solid row of vehicles side by side from one curb to the other. Wellen cried out, 'No!' and mashed the brake pedal. The Nova skidded. It stopped less than a foot behind the rear bumper of a van. He shifted to reverse. Hit the gas. The Nova jumped backward and bucked, slamming into something.

    'Great move!' Earl yelled.

    Barbara twisted her head around to look out the rear window. 'A bus,' she said. Wellen glanced back. At first, Barbara thought he was just curious to see what he'd bumped. From the way his eyes shifted, however, she realized he was looking for an escape route - a gap in the traffic that would permit him to speed backward and resume his mad rush for the school where his daughter worked. 'No way,' Barbara muttered. She shot her arm out sideways and twisted the ignition key. Wellen didn't seem to notice. He flung open his door, leaped out, threw the door shut and ran. There was a nice, clear path for him between the rows of motionless traffic. Seconds after abandoning them he sprinted past a dump truck and vanished.

    He no sooner vanished than a lean black woman in a uniform - the RTD bus driver? - dashed by.

    'Get him, lady!' Pete yelled. He sounded delighted. Barbara laughed. She couldn't believe she could possibly be laughing, but there was no doubt about it. Her laughter had a certain frantic, crazy ring to it. She looked back at Pete. He was laughing, too. We've flipped out, she thought. Heather was in no danger of laughing. She looked as if might never stop bawling. Earl opened his door. He climbed outside and stood next to the car for a moment, apparently hoping to see the driver catch Wellen. Then he looked to the rear.

    'Did she get him?' Pete called.

    Earl ducked into the car. 'Who knows?' he said. 'He's outa here. And so am I. You guys gonna come along? 'Cos gotta tell you, the car's going nowhere. Traffics backed up to hell 'n gone.'

    'Just leave the car here?' Barbara asked, no longer laughing.

    'It's gonna stay here. Don't matter if we're in it or not staying. Guys're bailing out. Nothing's gonna move for hours, Maybe not all day.'

    Frowning, Pete said, 'I don't think we're more than six or seven miles from school.'

    'Walk it?' Barbara asked.

    'Yeah. A couple of hours, shouldn't take much longer than that.'

    Plenty of people hadn't stuck around at all. Everybody isn't honking, just every jerk still sitting car.

    She longed to shut herself inside the Nova and lock the doors. But I'll never get home if do. This is the only way. Heather had the right idea, plastering her hands against her ears.

    'Let's get outa here!' Earl yelled.

    Without waiting for replies, he swung around and began to stride alongside the line of stopped cars. Pete gestured for Heather and Barbara to go on ahead of him. Heather held back. She didn't want to go second. Not surprising. Barbara wasn't eager to be up there near Earl either. The guy was a major creep. But she knew she better equipped than Heather to handle him. So she hurried forward.

    When she caught up to Earl, she called, 'Let's get from Pico when we can! Take the first side street! Get from this mess!'

    He frowned back at her, nodding.

    At the first corner, they turned to the left. They bypassed the sidewalk to avoid its collection of broken glass and other debris. This section of road had meter curbside parking. All the spaces were taken. They walked in the road, alongside the parked cars. The vehicles to their right were moving no faster than those harbored at the curb to their left. At least twenty were stacked up in the two northbound lanes because of the blocked intersection, but this road was completely jammed. With cars plugging one side and debris from a collapsed building piled in the other, no vehicles could escape onto it from Pico. The rubble was only at the corner, so the southbound lanes were clear. In a fairly orderly fashion, the cars at the rear were backing off, turning around and heading away. All those trapped here would soon be free. The drivers were waiting their turns. Without honking. With every stride that Barbara took, the din of the car horns on Pico diminished. So did the smoke. Several buildings had collapsed along this section of road, but none was on fire.

    'This is a lot better,' Barbara said.

    'Glad thought of it,' said Earl.

    She looked back. Heather, ears uncovered, was walking beside Pete, pressing herself against his side and clutching his arm as if her life depended on keeping herself attached to him. Give the guy a break, Barbara thought. Maybe he doesn't want you hanging all over him. He didn't look like he minded, though. In fact, he seemed pretty much oblivious to Heather. With a worried frown on his face, he glanced every which way as if he expected trouble and wanted to see it coming. 'Watch where!'

    Barbara couldn't stop in time. Head turned toward the others, she walked smack into Earl, ramming him with her right upper arm and breast.

    'Geez!' he gasped, and shoved her away.

    'Sorry.'

    'What're you trying to do to me?'

    'I said I'm sorry. If you hadn't stopped like that…'

    'What's going on?' Pete asked.

    'We had a little collision,' Barbara said. 'It wasn't anything-'

    'Yeah, right,' Earl muttered. 'Ban-butt tried to flatten with her Flying Tit Express.'

    She was already so hot she could imagine steam rising off her skin. Earl's remark, however, boosted the temperature. lot. 'Jerk,' she said.

    The heel of his hand pounded her shoulder. The blow didn't hurt, but it twisted her torso and she stumbled backward. Seething, she raised a fist. 'Oooo. I'm so scared.'

    'Leave her alone,' Pete said.

    'Leave her alone? She's the…'

    'Let's not fight!' Heather blurted. 'It's stupid! Stupid! We're lucky to be alive, you people. Honestly! Just look around. The quake… Maybe thousands of people are dead, for all we know. We might get killed ourselves before we ever make it back home through all this. We've got to depend on each other. We've got to be friends!'

    'You're right,' Barbara said, amazed by Heather's outburst. The girl was new in school this year, but she'd been in three of Barbara's classes. In each of them, she had cowered at her desk, huddled in isolation. She had rarely spoken. Several times, she had burst into tears for no apparent reason. A basket case. But mostly a silent basket case. Until now.

    'We don't have to be friends,' Pete said, 'but it is pretty stupid to fight among ourselves. We're in this together.' Hugging his arm., Heather gazed up at his face. Wonderful, Barbara thought.

    She met Earl's eyes. 'Anyway, should've watched where was going. I'm sorry.'

    'Yeah, sure. Okay. So the thing is, the reason why stopped - was thinking why don't we cross over to the other side, you know? Maybe we can hitch a ride.'

    'Hitchhike?' Barbara asked. 'Are you kidding? That's a sure way to get ourselves killed.'

    'What? There's four of us. Who's gonna pull something when there's four of us?'

    'It's really asking for trouble,' Barbara said. 'Besides, these cars may be getting out of here, but they won't get far.'

    For a while, they all watched the cars that were peeling away from the tail ends of the jammed lanes, making U-turns and heading south. The road was fairly clear for a couple of blocks. In the distance, however, Barbara could see a backup at Venice Boulevard. Cars going in that direction would be stopped again. About half drove straight toward Venice Boulevard, but the rest turned off, taking their chances on little side streets.

    'Maybe we oughta give it a try,' Pete said. 'If we can get any kind of ride at all, it'll save us time. As long as it's going in the right direction. Even a few blocks would be better than nothing.'

    'I don't know,' Barbara said.

    From the time she'd been a toddler, Mom and Dad had warned her against involvement with strangers. You didn't talk to strangers, you didn't believe anything a stranger might tell you, and you most certainly did not enter a stranger's car. On the subject of what might happen to her inside a stranger's car, Dad had frequently scared the wits out of her. can't even tell you how bad it might be. There are nuts out there who'll do things to little girls that you don't even want to think about. Barbara used to spend a lot of time thinking about it, wondering what Dad had meant by that. He'd never come right out and explained. But Barbara had gradually figured out, from watching TV and listening to her friends, that the men who picked you up took you away and kept you. They made you take off your clothes, then they did things to you. They hurt you where you go to the bathroom. And then they choked you or shot you in the head or cut you into pieces and threw you away. For years, that was how Barbara had imagined her fate if she should ever get lured or dragged into a stranger's car. More recently, she'd read some books about serial killer. And found out, shocked, that her childhood version of the horrors had been almost charming compared to the real thing. You were lucky if all they did was rape and murder you. If you weren't so lucky, they ripped at you with pliers, burnt you with matches or cigarettes, took off your fingers or toes or nipples with hedge clippers, jammed your vagina with screwdrivers or broken bottles or broom handles or God knows-what. All that before you were dead. Dad had been right: you don't even want to think about such things.

    But there are four of us, Barbara reminded herself. Al this is an emergency. And these are mostly just morning commuters. And…

    'Okay,' she said. 'We can try it. But won't get in a car unless the driver's a woman.'

    'Yeah, right,' Earl muttered. 'Like women are a bunch of saints?'

    'They're rarely homicidal rapists,' Barbara pointed out. He huffed.

    'Why don't we just ask somebody who's waiting?' Heather suggested as they walked alongside the line of cars. 'Wouldn't that be easier than trying to hitchhike?'

    'Nobody's gonna go for it,' Earl said. 'Too many of us. Not a chance. It'll scare 'em off. What we gotta do, we gotta use our heads.'

    He led them to the end of the line. They waited while a couple of cars turned around. Then they hurried to the other side and headed south. While they walked, several cars sped by. Two turned right at the first cross-street.

    'That's where we'll get one,' Earl said. He raised his eyebrows. 'You wanta be the bait, Heather?'

    'Me? Huh?'

    'Bait. You stand out in plain sight, charm a driver into stopping. The rest of us hide. You open up the door, and we all run out and jump in.'

    'Cute,' Barbara said.

    'I don't see why we need to be sneaky about things,' Pete said.

    'Depends. Do you want to ride or walk? If you want to ride, this is how it gets done.'

    They reached the corner. To the right, 15th Street stretched into the distance. This didn't look like a good place to be. On both sides of the street were two-story, woodframe houses with gables and bay windows and front porches. They looked as if they'd been uprooted from a quaint, midwestern town back in the days of the Great Depression, planted here in Los Angeles, and left to rot. About half of them were down. Barbara was surprised that any had survived the quake. Every yard was enclosed by a six-foot chain link fence. Protection against marauders. Except for a lone derelict pushing his shopping cart down the sidewalk at the far end of the block, nobody seemed to be around. No trees. No people.

    'Where is everybody?' she asked.

    'Maybe dead,' Heather said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

    'Dead, my butt,' Earl said. 'They're probably all off on a looting spree.'

    'At least the cars are getting through,' Pete pointed out. 'Yeah!'

    For as far as Barbara could see - perhaps three blocks - the few cars traveling this street seemed to be moving fast. We could make fantastic time. Who knows? If we're really lucky, maybe the driver will take us all the way home. But even a mile… Dad probably won't be there, but Mom… She might need me. Maybe just a few minutes could make all the difference.

    'I'll do it,' she said. 'I'll be the bait.'

    Heather looked greatly relieved.

    'Fine,' Earl said. 'Just don't be picky. You don't gotta marry the guy, just ride in his car for a while.'