“Mister Mayor, they insisted.”
The man in uniform stepped forward. He was older for a solider so it made sense when Martin saw the two stars on his uniform, a General. He stepped right to the mayor and extended his hand. “Mayor Hillard? Pleasure to meet you. I’m General Redcrow.”
The two men shared a nervous shake.
“We’re here to help.”
The two suits beside him held out business cards. Martin stepped in front of the mayor and put out his hands for the cards. CDC and FEMA. Martin understood FEMA, but didn’t understand why CDC was here for a wildfire. They were typical middle-aged white guys. He knew the name David Shea from FEMA, an appointee of the president who was overseeing earthquake refits and various projects along the west coast. He didn’t recognize Shane Lewis of the CDC.
“With all due respect, General. . .” The mayor was a tall man who played high school basketball not because of skill but size. He stood up straight looking down on the general. “We need resources, but we have the matter under control.”
General Redcrow chuckled and smiled. His two men laughed with him. The general looked straight at Martin. “When was the last time he looked at an updated map?”
“Excuse me!”
“Mister Mayor, did I hear you correctly? That you are planning on keeping the schools open?”
The Mayor didn’t respond. He was thinking about what answer he was expected to give.
“The air is getting worse by the minute,” said the FEMA man.
“We could have a public health crisis on our hands,” added the CDC man.
The general grabbed the mayor by the arm and walked a few steps with him. “We need an hour or two to get the guard in place, light traffic and then you’ll make the call.”
“I don’t take orders from the military.”
“The governor has declared a state of emergency for this county. Washington has authorized a full mobilization. Look, Mister Mayor, you still get to go on TV and play the hero.”
“I don’t care about that.”
Martin did care, already thinking about how this impacted his mayor and ultimately his personal career. General Redcrow’s smile faded. He seemed offended. He lowered his voice. “I hope that’s true, Mister Mayor, because your city is over a goddamn barrel.”
The general walked towards the door. His two guards followed him.
“That’s it?” Martin blurted out. The Mayor put up his hand. Let them go, the silent message.
General Redcrow paused in the doorway. “I will command operations from Spike Camp, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Shea are familiar with the entire scope of the operation. The next few hours are critical, Mr. Mayor. I hope my presence is not justified.”
Martin watched him leave. The mayor was looking at the two government men before they walked into his conference room.
“What the fuck is going on?” Martin didn’t expect answer.
“You saw the map,” said The Mayor with bitterness. He went back to the conference room. Martin knew the mayor. He was a good man and Martin hoped he was motivated by being the hero.
***
Kendra Ryan closed her laptop and looked out across her desk to the newsroom. She couldn’t look at anymore e-mails, and she couldn’t avoid going out into the storm anymore. Normally she liked watching her crew from her desk and trusted them. When she took the station manager job she knocked down the wall and made her office wall a window. She watched the newsroom most of the morning and everyone from the lead reporters to the sports reporters and sales team were pitching in. She answered e-mails from the network in New York that wanted updates. They wanted to know if they should send national reporters. Kendra assured them that her crew could cover it.
She got up and opened the door to her office. She walked the cubicles, seeing maps of the fire on computer screens. She had teams out at various points in the county. Down the row of cubicles, she saw her primetime anchor, Jeff Gonola, already dressed for air talking to Eugene, her business reporter. She already knew the conversation before it started. Gonola saw her, he ran to catch up.
“Kendra, there you are.”
Kendra kept walking towards the live studio. She started at the NBC affiliate in D.C. straight out of Howard, growing up in what her husband called the black bubble. Not only did the San Diego newsroom feel fluffy by comparison, the subtle unacknowledged racism was a never ending issue. Gonola was the worst. A blowhard white boy anchor who didn’t know how to take orders from a woman, let alone a black woman. Born two generations late, he was like a young Ted Baxter who read the teleprompter well and was constantly annoying her for more screen time.
“Gonola, save it. You go on at your normal broadcast time.”
He kept following her. “Kendra, the people are tuning in for updates. They need a source they can trust.”
“Are you saying they can’t trust your colleagues?”
“Look at the poll numbers!”
Kendra still laughed at the poll Gonola personally paid for with heavily slanted questions of 1,000 random San Diegans that said he was the most trusted and loved anchor in town.
“How about you focus some energy on the story. Talk to the reporters in the field, research past wildfires be ready to go when it is your time.”
Kendra stopped outside the live studio. The sirens outside were getting intense. She knew the studio was sound proof but worried about it for a few seconds. Mindy, her morning weather lady, was talking about wind patterns coming out of the east. This was worst case scenario and she had sent out three e-mails reminding on-air to remind viewers this was pushing the fire fast towards the city. This was important for everyone in the city to understand.
She looked outside and noticed something. The normal downtown activity on a weekday morning had trickled to nothing. Their studio was on the street-level meant to mimic the network in New York. A few people were walking, but she was used to a train of people coming off buses and the trolley past their spot heading to offices, courts and the Horton Plaza shopping center behind them. Kendra walked to the double doors that lead outside. She pushed the first set of doors and paused in the door way for a moment. The streets downtown were dead, two city buses were pulled over and the sound of sirens echoed through the valleys between buildings. Kendra stepped outside. The air wooshed and she felt suddenly like she stepped into a smoke filled bar. Looking up, she saw the trickle of the ash. She coughed fighting to expel the dirty air. She held her arm in front of her face.
Looking down Broadway, she saw a few cars and more buses pulled over. Half a dozen police cars came down the street directly over the center line at a speed worthy of the freeway. Kendra felt her skirt blow-up and she had to hold it down as the car flew past. The next five police cars drove past so fast the wind and ash they kicked up almost knocked Kendra off her feet.
Paul Bingham, one of her reporters, came out of the news room to watch with her.
“Tell me you know where they are going?”
Paul coughed before answering. “Riot on Market a couple blocks from here.”
“Take a camera. Get over there.”
“Ms. Ryan. . .”
She hated formality but he was young. “What?”
“I was on my way to tell you. We’re getting reports of isolated attacks around the city.”
Kendra reached into her suit pocket and pulled her keys free. As she unlocked the door to the building.
“The story is the fire right now and maybe this riot. The air is getting toxic. Have we gotten a statement about where the homeless are going to go from the mayor’s office?”
Paul shook his head.
“Well, get to the riot. I’ll find someone to call the mayor’s office.”
Kendra walked through the first door and shook her head. The ash fell on to the floor. She gave her clothes a last sniff and walked back inside. She headed back to her office and past the sports department. One desk was empty in the whole newsroom. She stopped at Jake Rivers desk. She star
ed at his empty space. His cubicle was wallpapered with pictures of his family.
“Where is Rivers?”
“He’s on the radio.”
Kendra turned to see Andrew Mallick, her Sky7 pilot, sitting at the traffic desk, the closest thing to office space he had. He and Jake were always leaving for lunch together. She often saw Mallick standing over Jake’s desk.
“He’s what?”
“Filling in for Billy Shocker on 690.”
Kendra looked at the swirling chaos in her newsroom. No one was off the hook today.
“The hell he is. And Mallick, why the hell are you not up there.”
“Conditions are shit.”
“CBS has a bird in the air.”
Mallick stood up. He mock-saluted and walked toward the elevator. Kendra got out her phone and searched for Jake Rivers in her contacts.
Chapter Five
“Keep it tuned right here for another hour of the Willy-Billy show on. . .” Will looked at Jake. It was Bill’s line.
“AM 690, San Diego’s sports leader.”
The commercial sounder played. Will dropped his headphones already looking at his phone. Alex was in the producer booth talking off air. Jake thought about listening to the commercial about hair restoration but dropped his headphones. Assuming he could watch for Will to put his back on.
“You say sports leader first,” Will didn’t look up from his phone. “Then the call number.”
“Sorry.”
Jake was not really sorry. He didn’t care.
Jake pulled out his phone and saw that he had 13 missed text messages. He punched in his code and the message window opened. He saw 2 messages from Victoria, and the rest were from various people at the newsroom. He opened the last one from his news director, Kendra: HERE NOW!!!!
She went all caps. He scrolled down to the text from Andrew that read, Mega-bitch even making your crew work the fire. F Willy-Billy get here soon. I have to put the bird in the air. She crazy. The end of the message was punctuated with a row of devil emojis.
Jake had an hour left on the show. He had to stick it out. He promised Alex, and it helped his Twitter following every time he came on the show. He looked up as Alex came in the studio.
“We have a big problem.”
Will looked up from his phone. “We have a minute before air, dude.”
“Marty just got sick, and Dana called out, her road is blocked by the fire.”
Marty was the host of the afternoon show. He rode mostly solo, but Dana was the heart of the show.
Will stood up and pointed at Alex. “Do an extra-long update.”
Alex ran back to the board. Will was out of the studio. The sounder played and Alex read the baseball scores. Jake listened on his headphones but stood up to look through the window. Will was in the lounge across the hall trying to help Marty off a couch. Marty was a fit guy bigger than Will who tried and failed to prop him up.
Alex was giving stats down to individual box scores on the games when Will came back into the studio, hit his cough button to make sure the microphones stayed cold.
“Well, looks like we’re doing a few more hours. Marty is heading home.”
Jake hit his cough button. “I can’t! The station is up my ass to get down there.”
“To cover the fire? They don’t need jock reports.”
Jake nodded. “Our news director is very serious. Jeff is still in the office. Get him back in here.”
“You can’t be serious. The listeners can only handle so much Jeff. I can only handle so much Jeff. I am going to miss my daughter’s game tonight. I am doing this. Just help me out, bud.”
Alex was waving his hands wildly trying to get their attention to join the show. Jake wanted to scream, I have cancer, motherfucker, I am out! The county is burning down! Fuck your daughter’s soccer game! He kept it all inside. Will put his index finger up.
“Hey, Willy-Billy friends, this is Willy Goldberg at you for another hour of sports talk. My man Marty looks down for the count. I think he had some bad sushi, you know what a foodie he is. So you might have me for a few more hours. Jake Rivers filling in for the shock-man Billy Shocker, can you give our listeners a little bit more of your day. . .?”
Will smiled, knowing he trapped him by asking him on air.
“I got a little more time.”
“We’re talking an hour at least because I know our friends out there need a distraction from the gloom in the air. They need to talk San Diego Aztec football and who better than former Aztec team captain and the school’s all-time leading tackler, Jake Rivers?”
If eyes could kill, Will Goldberg would have never left the studio.
***
Austin had gone a million miles or more around this city on her bike. She ate from food banks and dumpsters but she had never been called unfit. She shifted into high gears but soldiered up steep hills and she never grew tired. Now, as she rode the straight away towards her river camp, she was fighting for breath. Coughing over and over.
She could have folded her tent and tied it to her pack earlier in the morning but she didn’t want to carry her whole world. She had to trust that she moved her tent far enough off of the river that no one would see it and steal her stuff.
Robbins had left for the library, wanting to type up the latest pages of his book, but made sure to convince her first to move totally away from the river. The river trail had a concrete path that wormed between the 8 freeway on the north and the river on the south. She stopped at spot on the chain link fence that blocked off the river bed. She knew this was her spot because of the razor wire she had cut earlier in the morning when she stashed her gear. She locked her bike and climbed the fence.
The smell had not gotten better on the river. The flow was almost stopped and the fish were rotting on the surface. The ash falling from the sky added a layer that looked almost like snow on the brush. It was at that moment that she noticed how quiet it was. A flock of wild parrots that had escaped being pets and bred in the wild had long ago taken over the area near Ocean Beach. They were loud in the morning, it was part of pitching in the neighborhood near the beach.
Austin looked around at the hole in the large palm tree where she had seen a family of parrots living for more than a year now. They were quiet, or gone. Either way, they were silent. She saw the body of a seagull lying by the river bed.
To get to her spot she had to balance on a few rocks. The tent waited for her, the padlock hanging from the two locked zippers. Austin put in the code and snapped open the lock. She had a bag she kept with supplies from her last Not My President rally. She didn’t care about anything else in the bag but her gas mask. She had grabbed it on that last night in the apartment after her mother was taken away. The last thing of her mother’s that she owned. She had to hide from her foster parents, until she ultimately ran away. Her mother’s gas mask. Her mother had written TOXIC U on the strap with white-out and it had faded years ago.
Austin’s mother had bought it at an Army-Navy surplus store for protest symbolism. She was protesting the university practice of selling land for corporate chemical dumps. She ended up wearing it in many protests protecting her from teargas. Austin threw it over her head and tightened the straps in the back. She stood up and breathed deeply. Her breath sounded impossibly loud and the world looked odd through the scuffed clear plastic. For the first time in at least an hour she wasn’t fighting for breath. Her lungs hurt still.
Quickly, Austin pulled her stuff out of the tent and looked one last time to make sure it was empty. She pulled the stakes free and folded the tent before stuffing everything into her large frame pack. She had it down to a science. In a few seconds she had the tent rolled and tied to the outside of her pack with two short bungee cables. She had to be back uptown at two PM to meet Robbins. She thought about Lindsay, the woman she had been dating off and on. The last night together had not gone well. Lindsay’s roommate called Austin a mooch, accused her of sleeping with her for the apartment a
nd the roof to sleep under.
Austin opened her flip phone, no messages still. More importantly, she saw that she had a few hours before she had to be back in Uptown. Might be enough time to see her lady. Patch things up. Austin swung the pack onto her shoulders. It was heavy, but when she thought about it being everything she owned she was actually proud. Her mother, as anti-establishment as she was, tried to give them a normal life. Austin never wanted that. She had one bill each month for the crappy dumb flip phone that her older brother Isiah paid, so he could call her. Every once in a while she answered when his name came up in the caller-ID. He would beg her to come live with him in LA. She hated talking to him. He sold out in every way, shape and form.
Austin got to the fence and thought about throwing her pack over. Instead, she climbed with it on. Her breath echoed in in the mask as she went over the fence. Austin landed on the pavement and walked towards her bike when she heard coughing and wailing. She looked down the trail and realized something. The tent village that had been along the river for years was gone. She only saw one camp. A tarp tied between two shopping carts. Betty Clark. She was a grandmother who lost her home when collectors came for the bills amassed in her husband’s final year in hospice. Her grandkids were addicts who couldn’t help with the bills, just yelled at her when she lost the house.
Austin walked towards her carts.
“Betty?” Austin’s voice sounded like Darth Vader through the mask.
Betty coughed in response. Austin pushed the carts apart and saw Betty on the ground. It had been months since Austin saw her around. She was wearing the same shirt she last saw her in, but she was swimming in it. Austin gagged she could smell her faintly even through the mask. She was filthy, had not changed in forever maybe had not moved. There was a stain on the concrete under her.
“Betty, what the fuck?”
She looked up at the gas mask, Betty had no idea who was talking to her. Austin wasn’t sure in this state if she would recognize her if she saw her face.
Ring of Fire Page 5