Slow Apocalypse (9 page)

He stayed behind them as they crossed the freeway and Ranger ambled down Ventura Boulevard. Then they crossed over and began to climb. The streets up there were narrower, and winding. In most places there wasn’t room for two cars to pass. He got ahead of Addison and putt-putted in front of them to each curve and waited there.

It is a complicated and winding route up from the Valley, across the hills and valleys and down to the house on Mockingbird. It took them half an hour to reach Mulholland Drive. Addison dismounted. Dave turned off the scooter’s engine, and they both walked for a while. There was quite a bit of forage up there, though you had to be careful not to let the horse eat somebody’s valuable plantings.

They reached Sunset Plaza, and before long they could look down the hill and see the house. A pitcher with a good arm could have landed a baseball on their roof. It looked as if they were almost home, but it was an illusion. They had to descend Sunset Plaza almost all the way to Sunset Boulevard itself
before going up Rising Glen, down Thrasher, and finally up Doheny and into their neighborhood, a total of three and a half miles. Walking or riding a horse gave you a whole new perspective on distances.

At last they arrived at the house and Addison took the horse into the empty garage stall. Dave helped her move a bale of wood shavings into the stall, which they spread across the concrete floor, and she got out a bale of hay and gave Ranger about half of it. He moved a few items to form a crude barrier between the horse and Karen’s Mercedes, then found a tub and filled it with water. He tried to imagine the scene when Karen arrived home the next evening to find that part of their garage had been converted into a stable.

Dave and Karen didn’t speak much when he picked her up at the airport. That had become the new norm in their relationship.

When they got home Dave kept trying to start a conversation about the current political and social situation, the uncertainty everyone was feeling, but it was hard to get her interested in current events. She might very well go to work for a group whose purpose was to obtain extra gas allotments for poor people who were unable to get to their jobs, but she seemed oblivious to the fact that rationing was going to make big changes in her life, too.

As they were finishing their dinner there was a loud neighing sound from outside. Karen frowned, and started to get up.

“That’s Ranger,” Dave said. Karen stopped, and sat back down.

“And what is Ranger doing here?” she asked.

“Well, it’s a long story, and sort of complicated, and not all that easy to believe,” he admitted.

She gave him a long, hard stare.

“You probably think I haven’t noticed some strange goings-on around here,” she said, evenly. “Well, whatever it is you’re trying to hide from me, I guess now’s the time to get it all out.”

“I wasn’t hiding it, exactly. Well…maybe I was. I was hoping for a better time to tell it all to you. Because, I admit, it’s a lot to swallow.”

She rested her chin on her fist and gave him a flat stare.

“Please do go on,” she said.

Her eyes were hard as nails, and he had the sinking feeling that he was doomed before he even started. But she was right, it was time to get it all out in the open.

“It begins with Colonel Warner,” he said, and talked nonstop for half an hour.

It might not have been the best pitch he ever gave, but it was the most heartfelt, and the audience was tough. Karen’s expression never changed throughout the story. She said nothing for a long time. Addison kept looking back and forth between her parents. When Karen spoke there was no hint of emotion in her voice.

“And what do you propose to do about this?” she asked.

That was not what he had expected, and he hoped it was a good sign.

“Well, I’ve stocked up on gasoline and a lot of other essentials, in case food might be hard to get for a while. How long do you think the food in markets and warehouses will last if the trucks and trains don’t keep rolling, bringing it all in from all around the country?”

“I’m sure I have no idea.”

“Well, I don’t have an exact time, either, but I suspect it would be only a few weeks. Maybe less.”

“Again, what do you propose to do about it?”

He took a deep breath. He hadn’t told Addison about this, nor anyone else.

“I originally thought we’d hunker down, sit it out right here. We could last for months with what I’ve put away. But if people are getting hungry, if people are
starving
, as I suspect they soon will be, then we would have to defend it all. So I think the best idea is to get out of here while we can. Los Angeles will soon become untenable.”

“Get out of here,” she said, in the same quiet voice. “And go where?”

“What we need is a place with fertile land, adequate rainfall, and hydropower. And that means, to me, the Pacific Northwest. Oregon and Washington, Idaho. British Columbia, if they would take American refugees.”

“Refugees.” Her expression still hadn’t changed. “You really think Americans are going to become refugees.”

“I was thinking, we could go visit your brother. Martin has a big house, most of their children moved out. We could stay with him until we got settled.”

He was suddenly feeling very tired. He had said all he had to say until he heard something from her. Which wasn’t long in coming. She stood up, calm as could be.

“I can’t begin to imagine why you have manufactured this silly story,” she
said. “I think you may have cracked under the pressure of not finding work. I don’t want to think there’s a more sinister motive. I might be able to shrug it off, take it as a bad joke, but you seem to have infected our daughter with your paranoid fantasy, and I can’t forgive you for that. I’m moving out, right now, and I’m taking Addison with me. Come with me, Addison, and we’ll pack.”

Addison glanced at him. He didn’t move. This was up to her. She folded her hands and looked at her mother.

“I’m staying here,” she said.

“Addison, I’m not telling you again. Get out of that chair and come with me.”

“No, Mom.” There was a catch in her voice, but she held her mother’s eyes.

Karen’s eyes were cold.

“I see,” she said. “I can’t physically force you to come with me, but both of you should know that my lawyer will have something to say about all this. He’ll be contacting you tomorrow. I can’t wait to hear you tell your little story in court. Which is where I’ll see you next.” She turned and stalked out of the room. Dave could hear her going up the stairs. He looked at Addison.

“Well,” she said. “That went nicely, don’t you think?”

Karen came back down carrying a suitcase. Dave followed her to the door.

“Karen, don’t do this.”

“Get out of my way.”

He closed the door behind her. He felt numb, and more than a little shaky. It felt like one part of his life was over and another was beginning, and he wasn’t ready for it. He had known for some time, even before the crisis, that this day would come, in one way or another. He still loved her, or maybe he still loved the woman he thought was somewhere inside this hard, detached Karen who had replaced the woman he married, but he doubted that she loved him any longer, not even deep down.

Addison joined him. He put an arm over her shoulder. He thought she might cry—he would have, if it had happened to him at her age—but she didn’t. He thought that, of the three of them, she might have been the strongest.

Addison answered the phone. She listened a moment, and then handed it to her father.

“It’s Mom,” she whispered. “She’s crying.”

He couldn’t immediately make out what she was saying; it was an incoherent mixture of words and sobs. But she finally pulled herself together.

“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” she said. “I went to the hotel and gave them my credit card…and it was
refused
! What have you done to us, Dave? That desk clerk, the way she looked at me…and they kept the card, David! As if I had stolen it!”

“I’m so sorry, Karen. I have some cash, if you want it. You can go somewhere else. Where did you try to check in?”

“The Beverly-Wilshire.” He knew the Beverly-Wilshire’s rooms went for around $600 per night. “I suppose you want me to live at the Motel 6.”

“No, but there are good accommodations that are cheaper than the Beverly-Wilshire. Just come back here and I’ll give you the money. We’ll work something out.”

“I can’t. I wrecked the car.”

“Karen, are you all right?”

“Of course I’m not all right. But I’m not injured. I was so upset…”

“Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.”

The car was at the curb on Santa Monica Boulevard, on the edge of Beverly Hills. Karen was sitting in the backseat on the left, and at first he couldn’t see anything wrong with the car. He parked behind her and got out onto the sidewalk, leaving Addison inside. Then he could see that the right front fender was crumpled and a lot of paint had been scratched off on that side. The doors on the right side were also caved in. Karen got out of the car and stood looking at it.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“I was crying, and reached for my purse. I hit a parked car.”

“Where’s the car?”

“Gone. He came out of that shop there. He was angry. It was a silver Porsche. We exchanged insurance information and he drove off.”

Dave squatted down and took a closer look at the fender.

“My beautiful Mercedes,” she said, and started crying again. Addison appeared at her side and put her arm around her mother.

“Karen, it’s no big deal. I don’t think those doors will open, but the fender’s not touching the tire. We can drive it home.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t see why not. We’ll start her up and drive it a few blocks and see how that goes. Okay? Do you want me to take you to another hotel?”

She didn’t answer at once. He didn’t know if she realized she had been overdramatizing, but he found himself wondering, with a bit of hope, if she had used the excuse of the “totaled” car to backtrack on her announced intentions.

“And pay with cash?”

“They do still take it, you know. They might want a deposit for phone calls and other room charges.”

Still she said nothing.

“I think there’s a hotel a couple blocks south of here. The Carlyle, something like that.” He happened to know the room rates were more like $150 per night. He had Googled it. She looked like she was thinking it over.

“It’s a Best Western, isn’t it?” she finally said. It broke his heart, the hopelessness in her voice when she said it, as if he were recommending a flophouse.

“Nothing wrong with that. Or, I could take you back home. I’ll move into the guesthouse, you’ll hardly have to deal with me. It’ll be better all around. You can still call a lawyer in the morning.”

She looked around her, as if she’d never seen Santa Monica Boulevard before.

“Come on, Mom,” Addison said.

Karen sighed, and he held the door of the Mercedes open for her.

“I’m not driving that car again,” she said.

“Fine. I’ll drive it. You take the Escalade.”

They saw very little of each other during the following weeks, though every time they did run into each other in the course of the day, her expression was a little more smug than it had been the last time, and he was sure he looked like the nervous wreck he was becoming as the days went by and things settled into the new normal.

The school year ended. Aside from feeding Ranger, and cleaning up after him, Addison spent as little time as possible at the house. Dave could hardly blame her. He had bought her a new bicycle. She and her friends were getting used to cycling to places their parents used to take them in their soccer-mom SUVs. At first, Addison would arrive home in the evening exhausted from the
hard climb up Doheny, but after a week she was doing a lot better. Even some of her friends from the flatlands came by to do whatever it is fourteen-year-old girls do, giggling behind closed doors with their iPods and their cell phones. They took turns riding Ranger on the steep streets, so the big horse got enough exercise to stay in shape.

Dave suspected boys were discussed, now and then.

He had made one last trip in the Escalade, stocking up on staples like flour and rice and cornmeal and sugar. He was now leaving the house only every third day, puttering along on his little scooter, shopping for items he had forgotten and taking the pulse of the city.

What he saw, though far from apocalyptic, was alarming enough. Grocery-store shelves were looking barren. Staple foods were sold out, and when a new shipment arrived at Ralphs or Vons, lines formed outside to get the one twenty-pound bag of rice or flour allowed to each customer.

The army surplus stores on Hollywood Boulevard and on Vine were shuttered, sold out to the bare walls. There were no more guns to be had, except on the street, at ruinous prices.

He spent some of his time cobbling together a scooter trailer from plywood and the wheels off an old wagon he had bought at a garage sale, using plans he found on the Internet. It wasn’t a pretty thing, but it would do to carry home any treasures he managed to snap up in his prowls of the supermarkets, Costco, and Home Depot.

There was the expected chaos on the Monday when both gas rationing and mandatory carpooling began. To no one’s surprise, the rationing system was far from ready on the first day. Some ration cards had gone out, but many millions nationwide had not received them, and thus were not able to purchase gasoline. The uproar over that was immense, to the point that the president had to go on television and announce a week’s delay. Until then, everyone could continue to buy all the gas they could afford.

With prices fluctuating wildly between eight dollars and twelve dollars per gallon, that often meant less than a tankful.

All the cities and towns along the vast freeway system posted police at each freeway entrance, and simply didn’t let any car enter unless it had a full load of passengers. Commuters arrived and had the option of parking their cars on the city streets or getting in line to take on passengers. The next day the newspapers
and blogs were full of stories of how people actually had a good experience with what was, in essence, hitching a ride with total strangers. For once they had people to talk to, and they often found that they enjoyed it.