Charges (2 page)

2

Vincenzo’s office remained abuzz all day with the possibility that the world might end that night. As the hours rolled by, he heard more and more conjecture on the possibility that the seething mass of cosmic gases hurtling toward the planet might indeed be something to worry about. The president of the United States addressed the nation at eleven o’clock that morning, confirming the mass of supercharged ejecta was headed toward the planet, but he added that the science community was still severely divided over the threat it posed. He insisted that the government was standing ready to deal with any and all contingencies and that people should go about their daily lives without making a fuss. Like so many politicians, part of his job was performing, and when it came down to it, the only difference between Washington, DC, and Hollywood was that the folks in DC didn’t dress as well and watered down the booze. Then, the president left without taking any questions.

Acting as his surrogate and to bolster the gravitas of the president’s speech, the administrator of NASA hosted a brief question-and-answer session in which he also tried to dispel the dreadful notion that everyone might be without lights, air-conditioning, and high-speed Internet for a time. The press wasn’t having much of that, and the majority of their questions centered around how much NASA actually knew, what they were sharing with the public, and if any special preparations would be made for the crew of the International Space Station. The administrator said the Russians had already decided against attempting a recovery mission, as there was just no way to get a Soyuz capsule aloft in time to rendezvous with the ISS, remove the two Russians and one Canadian from the station, and return to Earth before the stellar storm hit. Vincenzo saw why the president hadn’t taken any questions. Even though the man was a darling of the press, the fifth column was beating the shit out of his designated spokesman.

Danny had come into his office to watch the broadcast, apparently forgetting all about his job. “What do you think of that?” he asked Vincenzo.

“I think trying to get the head of the agency that blew up a lot of space shuttles to deal with the press probably wasn’t the best choice the White House could have made.”

Danny shot him an odd look. “I thought you were a liberal!”

“I am. I voted for the president. But he’s doing a shittier job this term than in the last one, and he’s running out of excuses. ‘Blame Bush’ has had its day, and just because I’m a liberal Democrat doesn’t mean I’m stupid.” Vincenzo looked at Danny pointedly. “Don’t you have a writer’s meeting to pull together for me?”

Danny blinked. “Gosh, the world might end tonight. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“If the world doesn’t end, then the network still needs programming. Get back to work.” Vincenzo’s smartphone trilled, and he answered it. “Hey, baby. How’re you doing today?”

Danny sighed and left the office.

“I’m all right,” Jessie said.

“Benny make it to school all right?” Vincenzo imagined her sipping a cup of coffee while looking out over the City of Angels spread out in the basin below her. It was just before nine thirty in the morning in Los Angeles, which meant that their son, Benny, was already in school. He heard the muffled beats of a helicopter’s blades over the phone and thought it was probably one of the news choppers reporting in on the latest Sig alert.

“Yeah. No problems. What’s this I hear about the sun?” she asked, and for the first time in months, he heard a trace of emotion in his wife’s voice. Under normal circumstances, that would have made Vincenzo’s heart leap; Jessie had been barely more than a walking husk of a human being after their daughter had passed away in an LA-area hospital’s NICU. Unfortunately, the emotion she chose to display was worry. “There’s some sort of glow around it.”

“They’re saying there was some sort of corona discharge. A part of the sun erupted, and now a bunch of gas is flying toward Earth. It’ll hit tonight, and all the doomsday prophets are telling the world that the end has come.” He tried to sound upbeat and confident, but he wasn’t feeling that way. At all.

“So what will happen?” Jessie asked. “On TV, they’re saying that the entire planet might lose power.”

“Not going to happen.”

“There are already riots in the city. I can see smoke rising into the sky.”

“What?” As he spoke, Vincenzo became aware of the wail of sirens coming from the street below. He turned in his chair and looked out the window. Three NYPD cruisers were threading their way through the late-morning traffic on West Fiftieth Street, heading east. “Riots? Where? In Los Angeles?”

“Yes. I see smoke around East LA and Central, maybe around Westlake. The LAPD’s all over the south part of the city right now.” She paused, and when he heard another helicopter, rotors pounding, he knew she had stepped out onto the back patio. “Lots of helicopters in the air.”

“When did this start?” he asked. He wanted to shout
Why did you let Benny go to school?
, but that wouldn’t have been very constructive. That Jessie was worried concerned him. Things must look bad from her standpoint; otherwise, she wouldn’t even be mentioning it.

“Half an hour ago. Maybe sooner, but I took a long shower after Benny left for school. They said the riots were starting because people are lining up for food at all the grocery stores. Traffic’s horrible today, especially on the surface streets. Do you think I should get Benny?”

Vincenzo grabbed the remote control and started flipping through the channels, looking for some news about what was happening in Los Angeles. He found a satellite station broadcasting helicopter footage from KTTV. The chopper was near the eastern edge of MacArthur Park, orbiting over the blocks between West Sixth Street and Wilshire Boulevard. The view was of Westlake, a mostly Latino community in central Los Angeles. A Home Depot and a Food 4 Less grocery store were on fire, and Vincenzo glimpsed a cordon of police vehicles amassed around the park, right in the middle of the intersection of West Sixth and Alvarado. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the streets, a mass of turbulent humanity that Vincenzo hadn’t seen since the riots of the early 1990s.
Damn! People are seriously panicking over this?

“Tony?”

“I’m here, babe. Sorry, I was tuning in what’s going on over there. It looks… it looks like things are definitely getting out of hand.”

“Should I go get Benny?” Jessie asked again.

“Honey, go inside. I need you to write some things down.”

“Just tell me, should I go pick up Ben?” Jessie snapped.

Vincenzo got up and closed his office door, almost right in Danny’s face. He turned back toward the window and looked down at the street. Traffic was getting worse, and he heard hovering helicopters. While that was a normal occurrence in Los Angeles, hearing a plethora of helicopters pounding away was fairly anomalous for New York City, especially midtown. “Yes, I want you to go get Benny but not yet. Go inside. Get a pen and paper. Let me know when you’re ready.”

His mind was whirling. In New York, he’d mostly been able to ignore the goings-on in the rest of the world, but since Jessie had introduced him to the burgeoning upheaval in Los Angeles, a stab of fear had lanced through his heart. He didn’t give a damn about solar flares or coronal mass ejection, but if Los Angeles was going to fall apart while he was trapped on the other side of the nation, he very much needed to give his wife an action plan.
 

“I’m inside,” Jessie said. “I’m going to the kitchen. There’s a pad there.”

“Let me know when you’re ready.” Vincenzo kept his eyes rooted to the TV.

On the screen, smoke billowed into the air, keeping the news helicopters at bay. A thick curtain of what looked like gray, curdling milk obscured the tall sign that marked the Westlake Theaters. He wondered how long it would take for the unrest to spread. As the helicopter orbited the area, the camera panned toward the hills in the north, where Vincenzo’s house sat. In the distance, everything appeared normal, but he had no doubt that the supermarkets in Hollywood and Sunset would soon be mob scenes, if they weren’t already. Jessie and Ben would have to stay put.

“I’m ready,” Jessie said finally.

“In the garage, where all the boxes are, you need to find the three that have ‘S.R.’ written on the sides. There’s a year’s worth of food there from Shelf Reliance—”

“I hate that stuff, and so does Benny.”

“Don’t interrupt, Jess. Write it down. There should still be about a month’s worth of water in the storage room off the garage. After you pick up Ben, you need to start adding to it. If you can’t get to a store to buy more, stop at gas stations or 7-Elevens, any place where they might have some. You get that?”

“Yes! I’m going to get Ben now, and—”

“Jessie! Shut the fuck up and listen to me!” Vincenzo bit his cheek to stop himself from shouting at her.
Months of apathy and depression, and now she’s starting to panic. Awesome.
“I’m sorry. Just listen. Please. Here’s the combination to the gun safe: three spins to the right to twenty-seven, two to the left to five, one to the right to zero. Pull out the shotgun that’s not painted in camouflage. That’s a 20-gauge, you’ll be able to handle it easier.”

“You want me to get a
gun
?” She hated guns, always had, even when Vincenzo, an occasional small game hunter, had tried to get her interested by taking her to the gun club range a few times.

“I want you to get a
specific
gun. Don’t use the 12-gauge, the camouflage one. It’s too big, and it’s got too much kick. Get the one with the wooden stock, the one you’ve fired before at the gun club—”

“I remember which one it is, Tony. Why am I getting a gun?”

More sirens wailed in the street outside, and Vincenzo turned away from the TV and looked out the office window. Several trucks from the Emergency Services Unit—the SWAT team of the NYPD—were trying to move up the street, which was swollen with traffic. Pedestrians darted in and out of the slowly moving vehicles.

“Because if things get out of hand, Jessie, you’ll need to protect yourself and Benny until I can get there. Baby, when you get back with Ben, fill the bathtub with water. And the sinks, too. Every container you can put your hands on, fill it with water. Make sure the food is safe, and get the damn shotgun. Take it with you when you go for Ben.”

Jessie let out a nervous laugh, but she sounded frightened. “You want me to take a shotgun with me when I go pick up our son. Am I hearing you right?”

“Jessie, I want you to take a
loaded
shotgun with you when you pick up Ben. You might need it. There are four boxes of shells on the top shelf of the safe marked 20-gauge. Put five shells in the gun. Remember, in order for it to fire, you need to pump the slide and then flick off the safety with your thumb. The switch is on the top of the shotgun, right next to where your thumb would be when you hold it in a firing position. And remember: never put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to shoot something.”

“I remember this stuff! But why do you think I need to bring a
shotgun
with me to pick up our son?”

“Because from what I’m seeing on KTTV, there’s a good chance LA is about to fall apart.” The sirens from the street were getting louder. “And New York might be following. There’s lots of police activity outside.”

“Are you going to come home?”

Vincenzo had already thought of that. “If I can get a flight, yes. Listen, Jessie, if things really
do
go bad, try to hook up with Grant and Lisa. I’ll call them now and let them know you guys will need to link up. Because if this solar flare thing really turns out to be as bad as some people are saying, then we’re probably not going to be able to talk again for a long time.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know, aside from what I’ve heard on the TV. Weeks. Months, maybe.”

“Oh, God.”

“That’s why I want you to write everything down, babe. You’ve got to remember this stuff. After you pick up Ben, you’ve got to get ready to start organizing. Take care of the food and water first then worry about keeping the house secure. And remember, fill up every container we have with water, including the bathtubs! You got all of that?”