by John Varley
Karen had taken Jenna under her arm and hustled her off to the private corner behind the blanket where they kept the tub, and shouted for Addison to heat some water. Lots of water. Later she had called for clothes, and Addison had brought some of her own, because she was closer in size to little Jenna than her mother was. Then Addison got the big box of bandages and disinfectants. She took with her a glass of Gatorade over ice.
The women stayed behind the curtain for over an hour, and two tubs of gray, soapy, and bloody water were dumped by Addison. When they finally drew the curtain back Jenna looked much improved: clean and neatly dressed, with a pair of black running shoes, her hair freshly washed and combed out. In other ways, she looked awful. Washing off the dirt had exposed dozens of cuts and scrapes. There was a big bandage over her swollen eye, and lots of Band-Aids and splotches of iodine. There was a splint on her left little finger.
Dave had been ready with a pan of spaghetti he had heated up over the small propane stove. And Jenna began to eat and talk.
“Anyway, there are whole blocks that are burned-out, and blocks that are mostly rubble. People are sitting out on the street with what they’ve salvaged. It’s a pitiful sight, they have almost nothing. Well, all I had was what was in my backpack, and now I don’t even have that. But I don’t give a damn. I got out alive.
“I saw a city water truck come by and it was almost mobbed. There were two cops on it, and they had to fire in the air to get people to line up for water. I got lucky, I was there when a Salvation Army truck pulled up. I think that might have been in Toluca Lake, but I’m not sure. I did walk close to the lake at some point, but I got turned back by guys carrying rifles. Protecting their water, I guess. Anyway, I was near the head of the line when the Salvation Army started passing out sandwiches. Bless ’em. That bologna and cheese sandwich tasted better than a pastrami on rye at Canter’s. I don’t know where they’re getting their food or gas, but they still seem to have some.
“Then I stumbled on Laurel Canyon Drive and realized it was probably the easiest way over to your place. But it was getting dark, and I only made it up to Mulholland. I couldn’t see very well after that. I spent the night hiding in some bushes around the parking lot of the dog park up there.”
Jenna took another bite, and for the first time didn’t look like a starving animal. She chewed it slowly, then looked down at her plate for a while.
“I got careless,” she said. “I’d heard the motorcycles in the distance. In that maze of streets, I never could tell if they were close, or in what direction. I didn’t want to meet them, so whenever they sounded close I’d find somewhere to hide. Twice I came to barricades with men standing behind them. They let me through when I told them where I was going. As long as I was moving along it was okay, I guess. A couple people tried to give me directions, but I still got lost again. I thought Wonderland Avenue would get me to that hill I rolled down, but I ended up at a dead end.”
“Probably Wonderland Park,” Dave said.
“That sounds familiar. Anyway, I wandered some more. The sun was going down when I heard the motorcycles again, and that’s when my luck ran out. I was on a stretch of road with precious little to hide behind. Walls on both sides, not much plantings. I crouched down behind a car but they’d seen me. They dragged me out…and the rest is right out of a bad episode of Law and Order. Let’s just skip right over the next eight hours, okay?”
Karen reached out and took Jenna’s hand. Addison did, too. Dave thought it best to keep his own hands on his side of the table.
“Not only did they have gas, they had booze and drugs. They took me to a house they’d taken over, the eight of them. The place was already trashed. I mean a garbage pit, not just damage from the quake, it held up pretty well. Already there were filthy dishes piled up and empty cans everywhere. They had a couple of big pit bulls, and there was dog shit all over the place. They were feeding the dogs from cans of corned beef hash, chipped beef, stuff like that, but they never gave me any food at all. One of the women brought me a glass of water at one point. That was it.
“They got drunker and drunker. I mean, they’d been drunk when they grabbed me, and they kept on drinking. They tied me to a drainpipe in the kitchen, but they were so stoned they forgot to check for knives in the drawers, and there was one there. A table knife, dull as a plastic emery board. But I sawed at it for an hour and got free.
“One of the guys, a fat slob who smelled like stale piss, was passed out in the living room. I guess the others were in the bedrooms. The idiot had left a shotgun propped up in the corner. I walked over to him and aimed it at his head.”
Addison’s eyes were wide.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t do it. I don’t claim any great moral qualms about it, it was a practical thing. I don’t know much about guns. I wasn’t even sure how to reload it. I knew they’d come running if they heard a shotgun, and how was I going to fight off seven people and two dogs?”
She paused, with a faraway look in her eyes.
“I won’t lie to you. I wanted to kill them. I wanted to kill them all. If I’d had one of those machine guns, a MAC-10 or whatever, I think I might have tried it. Just blown them away in their sleep, or better yet, wake them up and let them see what’s about to happen to them. I know some people say that killing somebody stains your soul, they say that it will haunt you, even cops, even soldiers. I don’t know. I do know that, as far as feeling stained goes…as far as feeling stained…”
She finally lost it, crying silently with her head down. Karen was up instantly, then sitting beside her and cradling Jenna’s head on her shoulder. Addison leaned in closer. There were tears in her eyes.
Karen caught Dave’s eye and gestured with her head: Get lost.
Dave did that.
When Jenna calmed down again there wasn’t much to tell. She found her way to the cliff overlooking Doheny Drive and holed up again for the night. She figured she would walk the long way around, but then she heard the gang coming again—you can’t sneak up on anybody on a Harley—and decided her only chance was to get down the hill as fast as she could.
“Dave, I left that shotgun up there in the bushes. I just had enough time to hide it. Do you figure it’s worth it to go up there and get it?”
Dave went to Ferguson’s house the next day and told him about Jenna’s arrival, and Karen’s worries about being vulnerable from above.
Getting Jenna’s shotgun turned out to be the first move in opening relations with neighbors surrounding the Doheny Drive community. And so was born the Doheny neighborhood’s foreign policy. Two couples who had friends over there were sent on a diplomatic mission to Rising Glen and Sunset Plaza, the two streets that ran up the nearest valleys to the east. They reported back that the two valleys were united in one self-defense organization similar to the Doheny group. Barricades had been erected on lower Sunset Plaza and on Londonderry Place, and were being guarded around the clock. So far there had been no trouble.
Joe Crawford was sent over the hill to Trousdale Estates in Beverly Hills. He reported back that he had spoken to people up and down both Hillcrest Road and Loma Vista Drive and had seen no signs of organization there. Everyone seemed to be hunkering down in their own houses, those that were still standing. Joe was sent back with instructions to try to drum up support for a community meeting to elect a leader or leaders, to tell the people over there how they had done it on Doheny and Sunset Plaza.
Dave volunteered to scale the hillside and try to make contact with whatever people might be organizing in the hills above him. That suited him fine, as it would give him a chance to recover the shotgun Jenna had taken from the biker gang. But he wasn’t thrilled about the “scaling” part.
It turned out not to be a big problem. Herman Patterson, whose backyard Jenna had fallen into, had already established relations, of a sort.
“I went up and talked with them for a while,” Patterson said.
“You climbed that?” Dave had been eyeing the
slope without any great enthusiasm. It was steep, and the dirt looked loose in places.
“They dropped a rope. Wait a minute. We arranged some signals.” He dug in his pocket and took out a referee’s whistle. He blew two shrill blasts. They waited awhile, and then a man appeared behind the guardrail.
“My friend wants to come up and talk to you!” Patterson shouted. The man on the hill made a sign with his hand, and disappeared. He returned in a moment with a coiled rope slung over his shoulder. He tied the rope to the rail and flung it out over the hillside. It might have made it to the bottom but it got tangled and landed two-thirds of the way down. He looked disgusted, and hauled it back up.
The next time he untangled it and laid it out carefully, then tied a broken branch to it. When he hurled it out, the branch landed about twenty feet upslope from Dave and Patterson.
“You said you climbed up that?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks. I’ve made it to the top without a rope at all, when I was ten years younger. Try it, you’ll see.”
Patterson was right. It would be possible to climb the hill without the rope, but Dave wouldn’t have wanted to try it. With the rope, it was fairly easy. Twice the ground slipped away beneath his feet but he held on to the rope until he got his footing again, and then resumed his climb.
In a few minutes he was at the top. He shook hands with the men up there. They were Gene Chao, about forty years old, and Oscar Wilson, who looked to be in his mid-thirties. They were soon joined by Gene’s wife, Lisa, a tiny woman who somehow communicated that she wasn’t somebody to fool with.
He quickly determined that no one up there had really gotten serious about community defense, though there had been some talk. His instructions were to give a simple outline of the steps that had been taken on Doheny, and to suggest that they call a community meeting. Dave suspected that a person with the temperament suited to leadership would step forward soon enough.
But it really wasn’t any of his business. If the Wonderland people organized, so be it, the Doheny group would work with them on mutual defense, covering each other’s backs. If they didn’t, then they were on their own.
The four of them spoke for a little over half an hour, then they worked it out that at noon every day someone would appear at the guardrail and someone else down on Doheny, and they would alternate climbing up or down.
Before coming back down the hill that day, Dave followed the directions Jenna had given him and, with a little rooting around in the shrubbery, found the shotgun she had abandoned. It was a Winchester pump, in a canvas case with a sling. Dave wished he had bought two pump guns rather than a pump and a double-barrel, but he had taken what he was offered. It would be good to have three shotguns.
Jenna spent most of the next day sleeping in the spare bedroom in the guesthouse. When she did get up he saw from the way she was hobbling around that she was in a great deal of pain. She kept insisting that she wanted to help out, and Dave and Karen kept assuring her that pretty much all the work that needed to be done had been done. Still, it was obvious that she was deeply disturbed to be invading their home with nothing to contribute. Dave pointed out that the shotgun she had taken from the biker would be a big help, which seemed to make her feel better.
“Can you tell me what to do?”
“I don’t know much more than you do,” Dave admitted. “But you want to be the one who shoots first. You might miss, but you’re sure to rattle him.”
“I don’t want to miss,” Jenna said. “I don’t want to be a wuss here, Dave. All my life I’ve been against guns, in favor of gun control. If things were the way they were, I’d still be antigun. But I can see they’re needed now.”
“They’re great equalizers,” Dave said. “But only if you know how to use them. And only if you’re willing to use them.”
“I’m willing. Will you teach me?”
So they went out in the street and up the hill, knocking on doors as they went, warning the jittery occupants there was about to be gunfire. Several people joined them with their own weapons.
The collapsed house at the top of the street served well as a target and a backdrop. No one had figured out a way to remove the body of the man who had died inside, and his wife had left for parts unknown the day after the quake.
Jenna flinched as she fired her first round, as Dave had known she would. But her hand was steady when she fired again, and the third time. She even hit what she was aiming at, though they were not at any great distance from their targets.
Both Karen and Addison wanted to try their hands, too. They ended up firing a dozen of his precious shells, but he felt they were well used. It wasn’t exactly Marine Corps basic training, but at least it got all three women used to the noise and the recoil. There was a good chance they would do what had to be done if the need arose.
The sound of gunfire brought other neighbors, and the word spread that a shooting range had been established. They brought their weapons and soon were blasting away at the collapsed house.
Some people up the hill, in the Wonderland area, were drawn by the gunfire, too, and stood behind the guardrail up there and observed the action. Later in the day, Dave heard shooting coming from up there. He hoped it meant they were forming their own militia, protecting the backside of Doheny.
The two cops on bicycles looked like they had been through a war. One of them looked past retirement age. He wore a sergeant’s stripes on his dirty yellow short-sleeved shirt, beneath his Kevlar vest. The other was a young woman, husky, with a blonde ponytail tied up in back, her hair black at the roots. They both wore shorts and knee-length socks, also dirty. Sunglasses completed the ensemble. They had pulled up to within fifty feet of the barricade across Doheny. Not too close, but near enough that they didn’t have to yell.
“Would you put down your weapons, please?” the older one asked.
Dave looked at Art Bertelstein and Maria O’Brien, his companions on the evening shift. Art shrugged, and set his shotgun on the ground. Dave and Maria did the same.
The woman cop gestured behind her with a jerk of her head.
“And tell the guy in the bushes to come out, too, okay? We’re not here to cause anybody any trouble, and he makes me nervous.”
Art thought about it, then picked up the radio and made the series of clicks they had arranged. Down the street, Sam Crowley’s son, Max, stepped out onto the pavement, looking sheepish. He left his gun in the bushes where he had been hiding—though not well enough, it seemed—and walked up the street to join the others as they came out from behind the barrier and faced the cops.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble,” the older man said. “I’m Sergeant Daniels and this is Officer Gomez.”
“We weren’t sure there were any LAPD left,” Art said.
“There’s more of us left than you might think. But you’re right, there’s far from enough of us to handle this situation. That’s why the mayor and the chief have decided, reluctantly, to enlist the help of the various posses that are forming around town.”
“What, you want us on patrol, or something?” Marie asked.
“Nothing like that,” Gomez said. “We’re not asking you to enlist. Mostly, we’re trying to find out how many of you there are, and how well prepared.”
“Intelligence has been one of our biggest problems,” Daniels said. “We’re getting a lot of our information from the same place you’re probably getting it. Radio reports that may or may not be reliable. We’re trying to pull it all together here on the ground, eyeballing it. We need to know where everybody is, and what they’re doing.”
Bertelstein had called Ferguson when the cops first appeared at the end of the street. Now he came hurrying up, looking winded and dripping sweat from the short walk from his house. It was another hot, muggy day, but the sweat seemed excessive.
“What’s the situation, Officers?” Ferguson asked.
“Are you in charge here, sir?”
“As much as anyone
is, I guess. We’re a loose organization, banded together for self-protection.”
“I understand. It’s happening all over, and that’s the biggest reason we’re here. We’re making a list and a map. What we’d like to do is get your name, the names of any of your lieutenants, if any, and the amount of territory you are taking responsibility for.” Daniels opened a fiberglass pannier on the side of his bike and took out a clipboard. Ferguson got busy filling out the form. Officer Gomez had taken more papers from her own bike and now laid some of them out on the hood of one of the cars.
The first showed the whole Los Angeles area, from Malibu down to Long Beach, and east as far as the beginning of the San Gabriel Valley. Different areas had been outlined and lightly crosshatched in different colors with fine-tipped markers. Everyone crowded around as Gomez pointed out the important facts.
“These green zones are where the LAPD and the military are in control.” She paused. “Mostly. The fact is, there is nowhere in this city where I would want to go out at night. We don’t patrol at night; we’ve lost too many officers. And when I say we control it, what I’m really saying is that we’ve contacted the posses, the militias, the self-defense cadres, whatever they call themselves, and determined that they are sufficiently organized to defend themselves.”
Dave saw that the green areas were patchy. There were some in the Valley, in the Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood areas, and Studio City, and much of Burbank. There were some green patches north of that, but also a lot of yellow and red.
“Yellow is places where we think there are people in control, but we haven’t actually determined that on the ground. Red is just what you think it is. Don’t go there. Some of it is burned-out. Some of it is ruled by gangs. The National Guard has made some efforts at cleaning them up, but they’re hampered by the same constraints we are. Lack of transportation, lack of communication, and…defections.”