The Warlord w-1

by Jason Frost

  The Night Shift had come upon the scene just as the woman was poking through the wreck, stripping weapons and boots from the smoking bodies. Dirk Fallows had given her a burst from his M3A1 that disintegrated her left hand and arm up to the elbow in a pink explosion of blood and bone. Neither she nor her baby made a sound as she spun and dashed into the jungle, her left arm looking like a bloody shredded sleeve. They searched, but never found her.

  Among the items that the woman had discarded as useless was a set of four drugstore photos of a young woman about twenty-one. In the first photo she was sucking in her cheeks and crossing her eyes imitating a goldfish. In the second she was nibbling a baby's ear; the baby was laughing. The third was of the woman's obviously pregnant belly, slightly out of focus from being so close to the camera. The fourth was the woman and baby smiling, holding a piece of notebook paper with "I LOVE YOU!!!" printed on it in lipstick.

  From the dogtags on Lieutenant Finnegan's body, Eric managed to trace the woman in the picture, Annie, and wrote her his condolences. She wrote back, a chatty, friendly letter all about being pregnant, about her philosophy classes at San Francisco State, about the funeral. She seemed so healthy, adjusted. So damn normal.

  He never wrote her again.

  But he did keep the tiny, cheap photographs folded safely in his pocket for the rest of his tour. Every once in a while he'd huddle in the dark, damp jungle and take them out, a glimpse of normal, happy people, a family. Somehow it made the going easier, somehow saner.

  It was a year after the court-martial when he finally met her. He was twenty-four now, back in college among a lot of eighteen-year-old kids who marched for open sex with the same ferocity that they marched against the war. He was sympathetic to their demands, their needs, but somehow he felt too remote from them to join, too burned-out to belong.

  He was running across the quad trying to make his 2:00 Renaissance Europe class, when he got tangled up in a Vets Against the War rally. A bearded guy in an army fatigue jacket and a red bandanna tied around his forehead was shouting into the microphone, describing the atrocities he'd seen. There were a couple hundred students gathered around and more drifting in all the time. Eric didn't pause to listen, he'd seen much worse than what was being described.

  As he shoved brusquely through the horrified crowd, something-a flash of light maybe?-stabbed in his eye. He stopped, looked around. Over next to the makeshift stage and leaning on a battered, psychedelic VW van, was a shaggy rock 'n' roll band tuning up their guitars. And a woman with thick, long hair past her waist and a clipboard was gesturing at them as if giving them last-minute instructions. The sun kept reflecting off the metal clip as she waved her hands. She had a sleeping baby strapped to her back and a tiny girl tugging on her patched jeans.

  It was Annie.

  Eric shifted directions, winding through the crowd until he was standing directly behind her. He didn't know why he was doing this, what he would say.

  "I want you guys to lay off smoking this shit until you're done here. You're supposed to be volunteering your services for the cause, and we're paying you plenty of money, so look sincere about ending the war. Got me?"

  "Hey, lady, we're against the fucking war," one of them said, his long, black hair tied in a pony tail with a tiny American flag.

  "Yeah, right," she nodded with disgust, "that's why you made us pay you up front."

  "Expenses. That's all. Travelin' bread."

  "Just put on a good show, okay?"

  "Shit, no sweat, lady."

  Annie shook her head, "Right. No sweat." She sighed, turned around and half-sprinted into Eric, "Oh, sorry. I didn't see you there."

  "My fault," Eric said. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you."

  "Is the kid still asleep?" she said, hooking her thumb over her shoulder. The little boy's face was pressed against her back, his eyes closed, a large wet spot on her cotton blouse where he'd drooled in his sleep.

  "Yeah, but your blouse will need washing."

  She laughed in loud spasms, like a frightened whooping crane. A couple of people in the crowd turned to look at her. "Tell me about laundry, man. When they film my life story, it'll be shot in a Laundromat. Faye Dunaway will never look so good as when she's pouring Tide."

  "Mommy," the little girl said, pressing her knees together. "I gotta go."

  "Okay, Jenny." Annie nodded at Eric and took off in sudden clipped walk, holding Jenny's hand. As an afterthought, she called over her shoulder, "Nice meeting you."

  Eric tagged along. "That group. They didn't look like they even knew there was a war, let alone protest against it."

  She shrugged. "Doesn't matter. They're pretty well known locally, so they'll help draw a crowd. We've got a couple reporters and camera crews coming by in an hour, so we'll want to have as large a crowd as possible for the early news show." She stopped, looked up into his eyes, her jaw firmly set. "And don't give me any crap about how that's deceiving the public or any bullshit. We're not here to win Eagle Scout medals, just end the damn n war.

  He stared back at her, a smile playing on his lips. "I'm Eric."

  "So what?" she said, her eyes locked with his. Then her harsh expression began to change, melt slowly into something like recognition. A tear rolled out of one eye. "My God," she said.

  They were married within the year.

  Eric flipped the light switch in the bedroom, checked the fuses in the box he'd installed recently, the one that controlled the security system he'd built into the house. The fuses were fine. He dropped to his knees and checked the crossbow under his bed, the quiver with hunting bolts next to it. Light glinted off the brass plating, making it look ominous, hungry. He'd been practicing with it and his long bow for several weeks now until he was almost back to his old marksman self. Still, tomorrow he would take a little trip to downtown Los Angeles and shop around for a gun where, as long as you have the cash, no questions are asked.

  The doorbell chimed.

  He heard happy chattering drifting up from down-stairs.

  "Eric," Annie shouted. "Drag your keester down here. Trevor's brought another cheap wine he insists I ruin my magnificent dinner by serving."

  Eric scanned the room one final time. Everything was in place and working. The alarms, the weapons. He wouldn't be caught off-guard again. He glanced out the window, down into the dark yard below. The street lights hadn't worked since the quake. Every shadow looked dangerous, threatening. Lurking.

  "Eric! Your mother's faint from hunger. Let's go."

  Eric studied the shadows a little longer, then pulled the curtain shut. "Coming," he said.

  "I've never been so popular in my whole life!" Trevor Graumann laughed, waving his unlit pipe in the air. "Not since dear old Atlas hit-"

  "Atlas?" Annie asked.

  "That's what he calls the damned quake," Maggie explained. "Quaint, huh?"

  "Yes, Atlas," Trevor said defensively. "It's the perfect name. He carried the world on his shoulders. One shrug from him could bring everything down. He was-"

  "Yes, yes, yes. We all know about Atlas, Trevor."

  Trevor Graumann frowned at Maggie, shifted his slightly rotund body, and sucked on his unlit pipe. He ran a pudgy hand over the top of his bald and freckled head as if checking for any new growths. It was habit more than hope. He'd been bald since he'd first met Maggie forty years ago in graduate school. She was one of the few women there who actually took her education seriously. She was going to be an archaeologist and a teacher, by God, and that was that. Her intensity had intimidated him a bit back then-hell, quite a bit-and he'd ended up marrying the secretary to the Dean of Admissions. A pleasant young girl who miscarried twice in their first year of marriage before deciding she'd rather be a movie star. Not an actress, mind you, a movie star. So one day she cleaned out the joint account and took off in his Buick, never to be seen or heard from again. For forty years Trevor had avoided going to the movies for fear he might see her in one, perhaps under a flamboyant stage name, even if o
nly in a bit part. He knew it would hurt him unbearably, make him feel as if she'd been telling everyone in Hollywood how she'd had to dump her bland and boring husband before she could have any fun or success. Well, now things were different. He and Maggie were together, older but not worn out. They enjoyed each other's company both intellectually and occasionally sexually, though, he had to admit, she still intimidated him. Just a bit.

  "Anyway," he continued, "since Atlas did his little cha-cha, I've been interviewed by TV stations, radio, newspapers. I've had my picture in the L.A. Times. People magazine called yesterday as part of a profile of major geologists in the country. I've been invited to speak here, there, and the other place." He grinned at Maggie. "I've even gotten a few marriage proposals from ladies who caught me on the six o'clock news."

  "Probably watched while they were peeling onions," Maggie said. "They were overcome by the fumes. Only rational explanation."

  Trevor winked at Eric. "Professional jealousy is so ugly."

  "Professional jealousy, my ass!" Maggie howled. "We're just trying to get you back to the point you were making before you started giving us the grand tour of your ego. And undeserved fame."

  "Undeserved? Why I know more about California geophysics and plate tectonics than anyone else, including that big mouth Tripette up at Berkeley. Go ahead, ask me any question. Any question at all."

  "I've got one," Annie said.

  "Fine. Go ahead, Annie. We'll show your smug mother-in-law a thing or two. What's your question?"

  "How come you always have a pipe, but you never light it?"

  There was a slight pause, a look of confusion on Trevor's face, then everyone burst out laughing. Including Trevor.

  He turned to Maggie. "Are you sure she's not really your daughter and Eric's the in-law?"

  "Family secrets," she said, wiggling her eyebrows.

  Annie turned to Eric. "What have you got to say to that?"

  "I wanted a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad."

  She gave him a playful shove and he rolled back into the sofa.

  "But I'll answer that question," Trevor said, holding his pipe out in front of him. "It's basically an affectation, one I picked up in graduate school when I thought the only way I'd ever get a job as a professor was if I looked the part. Baggy clothes, mussed hair, a slight British accent, which was not easy for a boy from Missouri. And of course a pipe. Trouble was, I hated the smoke. So I gave up smoking a pipe after one try, but kept it for a prop. After a while, just holding it became as addictive as smoking it for others. Simple, huh?"

  "Simple-minded," Maggie said.

  He clamped the pipe between his teeth and sucked. The wind whistled through the tiny stem. "Seriously, though, the most remarkable by-product of all this publicity-"

  "Here we go again," Maggie groaned.

  "-is that my students, what's left of them anyway, are suddenly enthralled with the heretofore dry and dusty subject of geology. They can't ask enough questions. For the first time in my life, I'm a popular professor." He pointed his pipe stem at Eric. "Eat your heart out, you young scamps in the English Department."

  "I'm in History," Eric said.

  "Oh, right. Sorry." He waved a dismissing hand. "English, History, Theater. Everybody's young in those departments. That's how I categorize our departments now, the young ones and the old ones, according the average age of the teachers. Not very academic, I suppose."

  Maggie nodded. "I've been doing the same thing for the past five years. Philosophy and Religion are old. Art and Biology are young."

  "Physics is young."

  "Sociology is old."

  Maggie and Trevor laughed; patted each other's hands.

  Annie smiled, reached over and slipped her hand into Eric's.

  "Well," Maggie said, "I didn't sacrifice my body to this old coot just to hear about his pipe. He's been telling us how much he knows, how he's the Answer Man. Let's make him prove it."

  "When did you sacrifice your body?" Trevor asked.

  "You've forgotten already. My, my, at your age I guess your memory is the second thing to go."

  "What's first?"

  She grinned wickedly. "Don't ask."

  "I've got a question," Eric said.

  "Shoot."

  "Is the worst over?"

  Trevor sucked his unlit pipe again. "Boy, you don't ask the easy ones, do you? After all this buildup I hate to give you such an inadequate answer, but I don't know. No one does."

  Annie sat up. "I don't understand. That was a major quake, right? I mean, 7.4 on the Richter Scale. All those people killed, the damage in the millions. We couldn't possibly have another one like that very soon, could we?"

  "Possibly."

  "But not likely?"

  Trevor shrugged. "Impossible to say. There are over one million earthquakes a year in the world. One million. In California alone, we often have several a day, every day. Most don't measure more than 4.4 or reach a magnitude on the Mercalli Intensity Scale beyond V."

  "Whoa, Trigger," Annie said. "What's this Machiavelli Scale?"

  "Mercalli. In 1902 he created a scale which modified De Rossi and Forel's scale of 1880, measuring-"

  "Save it for your classroom, Trevor," Maggie interrupted. "Just give us chickens the plain feed. Enough so we know which way to run."

  Eric smiled. He knew his mother was almost as knowledgeable about geology as Trevor. If not from her studies as an archaeologist, whose awareness of earth movements is crucial to new discoveries, then from her years of close contact with Trevor. But playing ignorant was her way of not making Annie and Eric feel too dumb.

  Trevor continued undaunted. "Simply put, the Mercalli Scale measures the shock intensities of a quake. It ranges from roman numeral I, which is the mildest form, often not even felt by people, to roman numeral XII, in which damage is total, lines of sight are distorted, rivers are deflected. It all depends how close you are to the center of the quake."

  "But the Richter Scale-"

  "The Richter Scale can be misleading unless you understand the mathematical formula in relationship to the logarithmic scale. Which means that every whole point you go up on the Richter Scale results in a tenfold increase in size of the quake over the preceding number. So if you compare a 4.3 quake with the San Francisco quake of 1906, which measures 8.3, you're talking about a quake that's ten thousand times as great. And the energy released would be ten million times as great."

  Annie blew out a long sigh. "Scary."

  "Don't worry, honey," Maggie said. "The worst is probably over."

  "Perhaps," Trevor said. "But according to a couple scientists named Gribbin and Plagemann, the worst is just beginning."

  "The Jupiter Effect?" Eric said.

  "Ah, then you're familiar with their work?"

  "Vaguely. I read their book when it first came out back in '75. Then a few years later their The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered. Interesting."

  "Oh, yeah," Annie said. "Is that the book about sun spots and stuff you were telling me about? The one that predicted Mount St. Helens' eruption?"

  "Not that event specifically, but occurrences like that." Eric turned to Trevor. "What do others in your field think about their predictions?"

  Trevor laughed. "Well, before Atlas, there was skepticism. But now, well, the proof is in the pudding, I suppose. They were right. The only question left is whether this is the big one they were talking about or just foreshock."

  "Foreshock?" Annie asked. "What's that?"

  "Usually it's a minor movement that precedes the main shock, may even trigger it. Problem is, they're impossible to determine as a foreshock until much later. Bloody mess, actually."

  "Uh oh,'' Maggie laughed. "Here comes the British accent again. Just ignore the Missouri twang, Sir Trevor."

  "Sorry. Sometimes I slip into it unconsciously."

  Annie stood up with her coffee cup. "More coffee anyone?"

  "I'll get it," Eric said, taking her cup. "You're looking
a little shaky."

  "Good, because I feel a little shaky. He's almost got me believing California's about to slide into the ocean."

  Trevor handed his cup to Eric. "It's quite possible."

  "Perfect," Annie said, collapsing onto the sofa.

  "For God's sake, Trevor," Maggie said, "don't you know when you've said enough?"

  "I'm sorry, but it is quite possible. Naturally it depends upon the size of the quake, but one big one could set off a chain reaction, resulting in part of California separating from the coast. After all, it's a fairly common belief among scientists that all the continents of the Earth were once one giant land mass. What with sea floor spreading and giant earthquakes and such, the continent broke apart to form what we have today. And it's more than likely that they'll keep changing. If we could come back to the Earth fifty million years from today, we probably wouldn't recognize the continents."

  "But California as an island?" Annie shook her head. "Disneyland wouldn't stand for it."

  Eric returned with steaming coffee, handed a cup to Trevor and one to Annie, and sat down. "What do you think, Trevor? Do you personally, in your expert opinion, think we're in for another major quake?"

  Trevor blew a wisp of steam from his coffee, sipped, set the cup down. "Well, if we consider what we know about moonquakes, volcanic seismicity in the Galapagos Islands, solar flares-"

  "This isn't Channel 7, Trevor," Maggie sighed. "Just answer the damn question."

  "I can't. Not the way Eric wants me to. Probability dictates that we won't have another major quake for a while, perhaps years."

  "But?" Eric prompted.

  "But, personally, I suspect we will. If Gribbin and Plagemann are right, solar activity and the alignment of the planets suggest we're in for more activity. Much more."