Slow Apocalypse (33 page)

“Look at that,” she said.

Dave looked where she was pointing, and at first didn’t understand what had caught her attention. Then he saw it. The Center had been laid out so that you could see the HOLLYWOOD sign in the hills when you were standing in the right spot on Hollywood Boulevard. It now read:

The D and one of the Ls were leaning crazily, one forward and the other back, looking like they could go at any minute.

“Well,” Karen said with a sigh, “I always thought it was sort of tacky.” She sighed, and pointed east.

“Onward.”

They continued up Highland, dodging a fallen tree or strewn rubble here and there, past the Hollywood Bowl. As they entered the darkness beneath the 101 freeway Dave saw motion on the ground. Karen swerved to her left, almost hitting him. There was a man walking in their direction. Behind him were several dozen more, and about as many shopping carts. The man was filthy, wearing a trench coat with so many rips in it that it almost fell off of his thin frame.

“Dave!” Karen called out.

He reached for his pistol and drew it. He aimed it at the man, who stopped.

“I need a drink!” he bellowed.

“Sorry, man,” Dave called out.

The others back there in the dark were sitting down, apparently just beating the heat, which was already up in the high eighties. It was impossible to tell how many had been homeless before the quake and how many were new on the street. In a few seconds Dave and Karen were back in the sunshine.

“I hadn’t thought about how tough this all would be on alcoholics,” Karen said.

“I guess most of them have dried out by now.”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t still cranky about it.”

The deserted freeway was ghostly, uncanny, disturbing. He had never seen a Los Angeles freeway with no traffic at all. There was not so much as a bicycle, which struck Dave as odd. They soon saw why. The overpass connecting West Cahuenga and East Cahuenga Boulevards had collapsed onto the freeway. All lanes were blocked, side to side, by huge slabs of concrete, and on the west side tons of dirt had slipped down the hillside and covered the remains of the bridge.

“I didn’t really think we could make it to Oregon, anyway,” Dave said.

“You’re not giving up, are you?”

“No, of course not. But I’m thinking harder about plan B.”

Plan B was a lot simpler. They would go to San Diego. The Doheny group had picked up some broadcasts from the San Diego area. The city had suffered only minor damage from the tremendous earthquake, and one speaker on the radio had even claimed that the residents were actually encouraging Angelenos to come south…to hold off the starving hordes of Mexicans. Dave had no idea if this was really the case, or if it was the ranting of someone with a racist agenda. But it was the only positive news they had.

“It looks like Cahuenga East is still passable,” Karen said.

Dave looked up there, just in time to see half a dozen armed men in uniform appear at the guardrail at the top of the hill. They looked down through a stand of palm trees. All wore desert camouflage fatigues and body armor.

“Excuse me, sir,” Karen called out. “Can we get through to the Valley on that street up there?”

“No, ma’am,” one of them said. “This is a restricted area. I’ll have to ask you to turn around and leave at once.”

“Got it,” Dave said, and put his helmet back on. Karen looked ready to ask another question but he gave her a nudge and started his engine. They headed back down the freeway.

“That’s Lake Hollywood up there,” he explained, when the soldiers were out of sight. “They wouldn’t let me and Addison up there when we went by earlier. I guess they’re protecting the water supply.”

“So where do we go now? Let’s don’t go back where that crazy man was.”

Back on the surface streets, suddenly there was traffic. A fleet of a dozen tanker trucks rumbled by, with soldiers in trucks before, in the middle of, and behind the convoy. All the tankers had been converted to wood burners and belched smoke. The troop carriers were open in back. Each held six soldiers, all with their weapons pointed outward, looking alert and ready for anything. Some of them waved at Dave and whistled at Karen as they went by, but most of them kept their eyes on the buildings, plantings, and hillsides all around them. They had the look of men who had been in combat.

“At least somebody’s delivering water around here,” Dave said after they had all passed by. Karen sighed.

“Okay. Where now?”

“You want to take a look at the I-5?”

“Why not? If we can’t go north on it, I guess that’s the way we’ll go south.”

The circular Capitol Records Building was still standing.

At the corner of Canyon Drive, a big tree had fallen and completely blocked Franklin.

They turned south. They saw a few people looking out windows of undamaged homes. They came out on Van Ness and went south again to Hollywood
Boulevard. The next two streets to the east, Taft and Wilton, were both blocked, one by fallen trees and the next by a huge gap in the pavement that had brought down buildings on both sides of the street. But the next street, Gramercy Place, was open. They turned left and into welcome shade. Ahead of them they heard the sound of a very loud motorcycle. Karen looked at Dave, and he motioned with his head that they should turn onto one of the driveways between two buildings.

They faced the street and listened to the incredible racket. It built and built, but when it passed it was nothing like Dave had expected. He just got a quick glimpse, and it was plain that it wasn’t that big a motorcycle. It was more like a mountain bike, and it was being ridden by a short man in a black suit.

He must have seen something from the corner of his eye, because as soon as he was out of sight the sound of his engine died away abruptly to a sputtering series of backfires, then died altogether.

Dave removed his shotgun from its scabbard and jacked a round into the chamber. He saw Karen had her Ithaca in her hands, too.

The man came around the corner, saw them, and stopped. He smiled and put up his hands. He was wearing a clerical collar.

“I’m unarmed, my children.”

Dave cautiously lowered his weapon. It could be a disguise. The man’s hair was long and straight and dark black, streaked with gray, and his face was covered with stubble. His skin was brown and he had a round face and the features of a Hispanic.

“I’m Father Michael,” he said, still not approaching any closer. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in the neighborhood.”

“We’re from west of here,” Karen said.

“How far west?

“Just this side of Beverly Hills,” Dave told him.

“Ah, yes. I’ve been through there. Why are you out and about? It’s dangerous.”

“Well, we didn’t lose too many people. We’re hoping to leave the area entirely. We need to see what we’re up against. What about you?”

“Yes, I can’t argue that leaving this place is a not good idea. As to myself, so far I believe my clerical collar has saved me from any trouble.”

“Can you tell us anything that might be useful to us?” Karen asked. “Anything about conditions to the north? We’re trying to get to Oregon.”

“I admire your ambition. As to useful information…I haven’t been far
into the Valley. I’ve been commuting back and forth among the various hospitals that are still operating, from East Los Angeles to your neighborhood, Cedars-Sinai. I just came from Glendale Memorial, on my way to Children’s Hospital by a rather indirect route that will allow me to stop off at a church where I’m needed. I’m afraid I will have to offer last rites again when I get there. I have given last rites so often in the last weeks…”

He looked haunted for a moment, then shook his head violently.

“The I-5 is completely blocked just north of Los Feliz, which I assume is where you were going. A landslide in Griffith Park, about where the pony rides were, has covered it completely. San Fernando Road is open. I have seen many pilgrims headed south, a few to the north.”

“Pilgrims?”

“Did I say pilgrims? I suppose that’s how I’ve been thinking of them. Of course, they are refugees. Most of them are on foot, but from time to time someone goes by in a vehicle they still have the gas to run. But I think most people who had access to gasoline have already left.”

“Do you have any news from San Diego?”

“None at all, I’m afraid. And I wouldn’t rely on it much if I did. I try to report just what I’ve seen with my own eyes. Do you intend to go to I-5?”

“I think so.”

“Then watch out for lions.”

Dave wondered if he had misheard. Then he wondered if the pressure had been too much, if it had driven the priest crazy. Father Michael saw it.

“This is something I’ve seen with my own eyes. One rumor has it that the earthquake opened the cages at the zoo. Another says that a zoo employee, from an impulse of kindness, released all the animals. I have seen a kangaroo, or perhaps it was a wallaby. And three days ago I drove around a corner, and down the street was a lioness tearing at the body of what looked to be a German shepherd.”

He shivered slightly.

“The cat showed no fear, not even the racket of my motorcycle with a broken muffler seemed to faze him. I turned around and hurried away. It’s all the talk of Glendale. I know many people have been hunting for the more dangerous predators. But I suggest you keep your eyes open.”

“We will,” Karen said. She stared at Dave, her eyes wide.

“However, the most fearful predator of all is, of course, mankind. Lions don’t have submachine guns.”

“We’ll keep that in mind, too,” Dave assured him.

“Well, it’s been nice chatting, but I must return to God’s work. Be safe, my children.” He put out his hand, and they both shook it. They started their engines and pulled out onto the street.

There were a lot of trees on many of the streets in this neighborhood, which was known as Little Armenia or Thai Town, and many of those were big old spreading deciduous trees that had fallen. They ended up taking many detours, and at one point, somewhere around Normandie and Sunset, they could look north and see the recently refurbished Griffith Park Observatory perched out at the end of its promontory, three domes set on a low white building. It was still standing, and looked intact.

Sunset was clear, and they were able to head east again through the medical complex of Kaiser, Children’s, and Hollywood Presbyterian Hospitals. There were some LAPD on bikes, taking a lunch break. It looked like canned soft drinks and tacos.

They drove out onto the bridge over the I-5 freeway and looked over the edge. It was as empty as the 101 had been. Just to the north they could see a huge landslide that had shaken down and covered all lanes, as the priest had said.

They backtracked, then turned south on Riverside Drive. Passing under Hyperion Avenue, they entered the freeway and started south. They saw almost no one until they passed underneath the Glendale Freeway, then they began to see travelers here and there. Most of them were headed south.

Once they had passed over the dry river and the Pasadena Freeway they began to see more people. It never developed into a throng, or even a crowd—there were times when they were all alone—but it felt good to see people again, particularly when none of them seemed threatening.

They entered the East Los Angeles Interchange, the busiest interchange in the world, where four major highways intersected and tangled with each other like a bowl of concrete spaghetti. The I-5, the I-10, the 101, and the 60 entered and exited the area at different points, and the proper route for getting from one to another was not always obvious. It was a place that had defeated millions of people not familiar with the area, and had even confounded Dave a time or two.

At motor-scooter speeds and with no traffic to merge with, it was not a
problem. As they passed each of the other highways, keeping to the I-5, they saw more people entering. For the first time they saw a few on scooters, one on a motorcycle, and several official vehicles belching smoke from their jury-rigged wood burners. At one point three LAPD motorcycles screamed by. The officers were riding two to a cycle, something he had never seen. The man or woman in back carried a military rifle in the ready position.

But most of the people were on foot, pushing grocery carts. Some pulled big wood-sided children’s wagons, piled high with the possessions they thought they would need on the trek south.

They went under a dozen overpasses, none of which had fallen down, though some showed large cracks. A lot of overhead freeway signs had fallen, but they had been pushed to the side of the road.

They came to Hollenbeck Park, a long and narrow strip of grass with a lake running down the center, much like Echo Park. It had been turned into a refugee camp. It was a sea of people. There were many real tents, but the predominant color was blue, from the hundreds of plastic tarps that were serving as makeshift shelters.

This was East L.A. and Boyle Heights, the overwhelmingly Hispanic neighborhoods where incomes were low, unemployment was high, and there had historically been a lot of gang activity. In the best of times many of these people lived on the edge, commuting to minimum-wage menial jobs in construction, gardening, and food service.