Slow Apocalypse (25 page)

“Just play it, Patel.”

The small man nodded, and turned to his laptop. He called up an audio file.

A female operator who sounded like a police dispatcher announced that the mayor would be addressing the city from the emergency center in City Hall. She said the message was going to go out on all available frequencies, but that most commercial radio and television stations had been silenced, so she requested that anyone capable of tuning in record it and rebroadcast it as widely as possible. The operator sounded exhausted.

There was a pause, then a man’s voice, sounding even more tired than the operator.

“This is the mayor speaking. First I want to issue an appeal to any authority outside the Los Angeles area.” There was a long pause.

“We need help. Please come quickly, and help us.”

The man’s voice broke. There was dead silence on the tennis court. The mayor took a deep breath and went on.

“Los Angeles has been struck by a catastrophic earthquake. The devastation is…unimaginable. The earthquake has started fires which the fire department was…well, there were too many to respond to…We need firefighters, and quickly! We need air tankers, smoke jumpers, we need rescue crews and dogs, we need any help that anyone can send us.”

Another long pause.

“The city is without power. None of the generating stations are operating and a great many power lines are down as well, so even if we get generators back online—and I don’t know what they’re going to burn if we do…there will be no electrical power for the foreseeable future. None. Residents, you must take that into account in your plans.

“Water mains are broken in so many places that it will take some time to restore water service. The Stone Canyon dam has failed, and we don’t know how many people may have been killed or rendered homeless by that. There is water in Lake Hollywood, apparently that reservoir is intact, and we are attempting to run temporary pipes downhill to a dispensing facility. Keep listening to…to whatever source you are hearing this message on for further…for further developments.”

The man sounded on the edge of a nervous collapse. He rambled, he lost his train of thought, he paused so long that it seemed he might not go on. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind about what he should he talking about. He alternated between assurances that everything possible was being done, to ever more pitiful pleas for help.

It was the exact opposite of the leadership that someone needed to show at such a time, and indicated to Dave that there really
was
no meaningful leadership in this town on this day.

But there was worse to come.

“My police chief,” the mayor began, and then laughed. It was a chilling sound.

“My new police chief,” he amended, “my
acting
police chief…she tells me she is hardly able to communicate with her remaining officers. We don’t know how many officers that is, but if you are a sworn member of the LAPD, or an auxiliary, or even if you’re retired, for God’s sake, and you can hear my voice, we are pleading with you to muster at City Hall this evening at six o’clock for
assignments. Please, don’t desert your posts in the hour of your city’s greatest need. I know your impulse is to stay home and protect and provide for your families, but remember that you took an oath, and we must hold you to it. You are all we have now.”

There was another long pause.

“We have been in contact with a seismologist at UCLA, and he tells us this quake registered an estimated 9.5 on the scale. That is equal to the most powerful one ever recorded. There have only been five quakes over 9.0 in the last 150 years. There is a possibility that it was caused by the same thing that caused the Doheny explosion. This man is theorizing that the expanding oil and sludge has worked its way down to the Santa Monica Fault or the Newport-Inglewood Fault, possibly both. It increased pressure and at the same time lubricated the rock faces so they slipped all at once, instead of in smaller increments. Or so they tell me. Who knows if it’s true?”

Again there was silence, both on the radio and at the tennis court.

“Patty, take over, okay? I can’t go on here.”

The new police chief was heard next. She introduced herself as Patricia Noori.

“Until this morning I held the rank of captain in the LAPD. I have been asked to take over command. I intend to do so to the best of my ability.

“The mayor has approved some emergency measures. I am announcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew for all residents of Los Angeles. Rioters and looters will be shot on sight.

“I believe that we will pull through this. Recovery will take a long time, certainly many years, but I don’t believe in giving up, and neither should you. May God see us through these coming, difficult days of trial. Thank you.”

The laptop was shut off, and everyone looked at each other.

“Nobody likes to hear that the police will shoot on sight,” Ferguson said. “Nobody likes it that we’ve come to this point. But we’re not going to get through it by being polite, and the police aren’t going to have time for Miranda warnings. They’re going to be too busy trying to survive. I’ve had the advantage of hearing this twice before, and having a little time to think about it.

“I think this Chief Noori is a much better leader than our mayor. But I also think it’s clear that the LAPD is completely inadequate to deal with the situation we have on the ground. Do you agree?”

No one said otherwise.

“As for the National Guard…well, their strength and deployment is
something I hope we can find out in the days to come. But I, myself, don’t feel any more inclined to rely on them than I do on the LAPD.

“I think we are
on our own
. Our neighborhood. We must band together as strongly as we can, with as much organization as we can muster, because in unity there is strength. I weep for Los Angeles, for California, for the nation, and for the world. But right now what I am most concerned about are these blocks around us, in the general area of Doheny Drive, this little valley, from the flats to the crest of the hills. I think it is a defensible area, and I think we should start thinking about defending it. And I propose that we start in on that right now.”

Within an hour, with very few dissenting voices, the Doheny Militia was formed, with Richard Ferguson, former CEO of an aeronautics firm, as acting chief.

Dave’s first turn at manning the ramparts of Doheny Drive came on the night after the neighborhood meeting, the third night after the quake.

It had been decided that intelligence would be gathered at first by monitoring what electronic media were still in operation. Then, if they decided they needed to know more, small parties might venture beyond Sunset to get the lay of the land.

Ferguson had not been elected, and so far no one had called for elections. Everybody seemed content to let him take over, since he seemed to have the best information, had been thinking about it longer than anyone but Dave, and was willing to take the job.

Dave had not revealed his own prior knowledge. He didn’t intend to enlighten anyone, either. He felt nervous about his stockpiles of food and other supplies, and not only against a perceived threat from outsiders. He worried that his own neighbors might be just as big a threat to his family, when they got hungry enough.

That first day groups had been organized by street, and those groups had caucused briefly to select one person to be in charge of each group. Those group leaders were to receive new information from Ferguson and three other men who had volunteered to be his lieutenants. Bulletins would be issued as Patel found out more from the radio networks being established, and relayed verbally up the hill. Printed notices were to be kept to a minimum, to save paper.

So already a small bureaucracy had been established. Mankind was the political animal, no doubt about it.

The last order of business had been for volunteers to draw numbers from a silver punch bowl. A duty roster was to be drawn, and when one’s number came up he or she was to report to the bottom of the hill—armed, if possible—to stand a watch. Dave had volunteered, along with more than half the attendees. Later that day a messenger came to his gate with the news that he was to present himself between midnight and 6
A.M
. the following evening.

When he arrived on his bicycle, carrying his shotgun, he was surprised at how much had been done.

A barricade had been built right across Doheny by rolling useless cars with empty gas tanks down the hill. Some of them had been turned on their sides, providing good cover for the militia to hide behind. Dave could see a Hummer with a chain attached to it that had been used to upend the cars, and a block and tackle.

The reason he could see any of it on that night without streetlights or light coming from any of the houses was two battery-powered security spots on metal poles, facing down the street.

He was greeted by a man he recognized from the meeting two days before, who introduced himself as Art Bertelstein. He was tall and thin, in his forties, with a shock of curly yellow hair held down by a yarmulke. He was carrying a rifle, and had a revolver tucked into his waistband.

“What’s my job here?”

“We’re still feeling our way. Personally, I think this is all overreaction.”

“Is that why you’re carrying two guns?”

Art laughed.

“Better safe than sorry. I think that if we get attacked, it’s most likely to be under cover of darkness. What do you think?”

“I don’t know whether to expect organized attacks, or just desperate individuals. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I won’t shoot unless somebody is shooting at me.”

“I’m with you there. What do you think about this Ferguson?”

“What do you mean?”

Art looked down at the ground, then back at Dave.

“He’s sort of taken over. I don’t know much about him.”

“I’m willing to follow his lead for now.”

Art nodded, but he didn’t seem happy.

“Okay. I was never in the army. How about you?”

Dave shook his head.

There were four of them on the graveyard shift. The other two were Sam Crowley, a seventy-two-year-old retired cinematographer who lived on Kinglet Drive, and Marie O’Brien, who had run a real-estate agency in Beverly Hills. She appeared to be in her late forties, and was attractive even in rumpled
clothing that wasn’t too clean. Crowley was athletic-looking and completely bald. Both of them carried shotguns.

“There’s another guy out there about a hundred yards down the street,” Art said. “He’s hiding behind a wall, beyond the range of the lights, and he’s got a walkie-talkie. He’s supposed to warn us if he sees anybody coming up the road.”

“If he sees somebody and talks, would the people coming up the road be able to hear him?” Dave asked.

“Good question. Damn, I wish we had a soldier here.”

“I have a suggestion. I saw it in a movie. You can just click the button on those radios and it will make a click on your unit. We could work out a code.”

“Good idea.”

“Is he armed? Yes? Then if we get into a firefight, he could surprise them by firing from behind.”

“Unless he runs away. Damn. Firefights, ambushes…I hate this.”

“Don’t we all.”

Art called the man at the forward post and they decided if he saw anyone coming, he would click twice, pause, and then click the number of people he saw. He was dubious about opening fire from behind, unless there was only one or two guys. Dave didn’t blame him. He had been thinking like a scriptwriter. Out in the field, where the bullets would be real, it felt very different.

They stood around and talked quietly, though their eyes kept being drawn out to the street, where the lights faded into a darkness that now looked threatening. Twice they were silenced by the rattle of a distant automatic weapon, and once by a single shotgun blast. Other than that, the first night passed without incident.

Dave had spent the previous day and a half working on the guesthouse with Karen and Addison. They had cleaned out all the things no longer needed to make the guesthouse livable, and when it got dark they moved much of their food from the basement to a locked closet on the first floor.