Slow Apocalypse

by John Varley

  They froze, bringing their shotguns up into firing position.

  Two men came hurrying around the corner and into the warehouse. Both were black, one in his mid-forties and the other a teenager. They stopped when they saw Karen and Dave, and the older man put his hands in the air.

  “We ain’t armed,” he said.

  “Don’t shoot,” said the younger one. He looked on the edge of tears.

  “Keep your hands up,” Dave said. The younger one quickly raised his hands.

  “I surely will,” said the older one, “but staying here ain’t a good idea. There’s some bad dudes coming down the street.

  As if to punctuate his words, there was another burst of automatic weapons fire and then single rifle shots in return. A bullet hit the outside of the warehouse and whined off into the distance. The steel wall rang.

  “We need to take cover,” the man said.

  “Get back behind those crates,” Dave said, gesturing with his gun.

  “You got it.”

  The two hurried to the crates, followed closely by Dave and Karen. They made their way back behind them, into a narrow aisle.

  “Stop there,” Dave said. “I’m going first. Karen, you cover them. I want you guys to stop in the middle of the aisle here and sit down. I’m going to the other end, and Karen will be on the other side of you. She’ll stay twenty feet away from you, and she will shoot if you try anything funny.”

  “Funny is the furthest thing from my mind. Come on, son, do what the man says.” The man and boy sat with their backs against the crates. The boy was shivering, obviously scared to death. Dave hurried to the end of the aisle and peered around the corner. From there he could see the street.

  “What are your names?” he heard Karen say.

  “I’m Justin, and this is my son Kareem.”

  “Justin, I’m sorry about this, we don’t mean to—”

  “Don’t worry about it, ma’am. I was in your position, I’d do the same.”

  “What were you doing out there without a weapon?”

  “What I was doing was looting.”

  “Dad!”

  “No point prettying it up. We’ve been hungry, my family and me. Heard there was food in some of these warehouses, being guarded by the companies that own it. That didn’t seem right to me. So we come down here to see what’s what. As to coming without a weapon, I had me a pistol until ten minutes ago. Lost it running away from all that shooting. I’m afraid I’m gonna miss that pistol.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Live in Downey, work in Vernon.”

  “Quiet, everybody!” Dave said in a loud whisper. “I think I hear someone coming.”

  It sounded like a large group. Dave peeked around the wooden boxes. He saw four men, then six come running down the street. They all paused and looked into the warehouse. All the men were young, and looked Hispanic. They were all armed, with a variety of weapons, mostly handguns but two rifles that looked military.

  One of the men said something in Spanish, and four of them took off. Both the assault rifles went with them. The two who were left behind looked like the youngest, and all they had was pistols. Dave now liked the odds better, but was hoping not to have to shoot. It was not only that he was loath to take a life, but the probability that the sound would bring the others back.

  “You think they in there?” one of them said. He was wearing a red bandanna tied around his forehead. His skin glistened with sweat.

  “How the fuck I know that?”

  “Dude, I don’t wanna go in there. There a thousand places to set up on you, and those dudes could be in any of ’em. We walk in there, we sitting ducks.”

  “But Cuchie say we should—”

  “Yeah, and Cuchie, he down the street looking for them others. I say we cool it here ten minutes, then we catch up, say ain’t nobody here.”

  “Sound like a plan. You got a smoke?”

  “What I look like, a cigarette machine? I got three, maybe four I been saving. Ain’t no food coming into town, damn sure ain’t no smokes coming in.”

  “Aw, c’mon, share one with me.”

  “All right. But don’t just stand there, fool. Let’s get outta the doorway. Goddam shooting gallery, this is.”

  Dave watched them hurry to hide themselves on the other side of the open door. He glanced back at Karen, who wasn’t pointing the shotgun at Justin and Kareem anymore. The two men still sat, heads down, trying not to breathe too loudly. Dave realized he had been holding his breath, too.

  Neither of the bangers could have been much older than fourteen.

  Dave could hear them talking on the other side of the steel wall. He realized he had very little idea what was going on, who was involved in the fighting out there. He thought it over, and then pointed at Justin. The man looked, raising his eyebrows. Dave gestured for him to come over.

  Justin got carefully to his feet, making no noise. His son watched him fearfully. The older man walked carefully, his hands in the air. Dave signaled that he could put them down. Justin stopped five feet away, and Dave motioned him closer.

  “Justin, I’m going to trust you,” he whispered.

  “I can get behind that.”

  “I like it that you didn’t try to bullshit me about the looting business. In my book, there’s no shame in going out to get food when your family’s hungry, even if you have to break into a warehouse. I’m sorry we had to meet like this, the guns and the threats.”

  “I’ve already forgot about it.”

  “Listen, I don’t have any idea what’s going on out there. This isn’t my area. Anything you could tell me would help us out a lot.”

  Justin shrugged.

  “I don’t know a whole lot more than you do, probably. At first it was…” He stopped, and they both listened as the kids outside raised their voices. Dave didn’t get the first part of it. Then one of them spoke again.

  “Fuck this,” the kid said. “I ain’t waiting around all day. How long it take to search a goddam warehouse like this, anyway? Let’s catch up with the others.”

  “I hear that.”

  Justin and Dave waited. Dave thought he heard footsteps moving away. He started to go around the corner of the crates, and Justin put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Might be a trick,” he whispered.

  “I don’t think they’re cunning enough for that.”

  “I don’t either, nor smart enough. But give it a few minutes, just in case.”

  Dave nodded, and gestured to Karen and Kareem. They joined the men, and Dave whispered to them.

  “Very quietly, make your way toward the back and see if there’s a door back there that can be opened.”

  Karen nodded. Kareem raised his eyebrows and pointed his thumb at his chest. Dave nodded, and the young man headed off with Karen.

  “She ain’t trigger-happy, is she?” Justin said.

  “She’ll do what she has to do, I think. If the situation arises. But your son has nothing to fear from her. She’s a good shot. Better than me.”

  “I ain’t no kind of shot at all. Hardly ever fired that pistol, but you feel like you gotta have one down here.” He gave a bitter laugh. “All my life I kept my nose clean, didn’t run with no gangs, worked hard. And now look at me.”

  “Everybody’s in a bad spot.”

  “Some worse than others. Those your little bikes back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you got some gas.”

  “I put some away.” Dave didn’t know why he was telling this man about his business; his instincts told him to shut up, but he didn’t. “I had a little advance warning things were going to go bad.”

  “Wish you’d have told me.”

  “I wish I could have shouted it from the rooftops, But who would have believed me?”

  “You got a point there.”

  Karen and Kareem came back and reported that the back door was locked, and they hadn’t heard anybody out there. They all sat down and wa
ited, speaking softly. Dave kept an eye on the open door.

  “There was already some bad shit going down before the quake,” Justin told them. “About what you’d expect. Black folks against the Latinos. When the gangs realized the cops and even the Guard was pretty busy, the gloves came off. Shooting every night, bodies in the street in the morning. But before long everybody was on foot or on bicycles, even the bangers. Nobody had any gas.

  “Worse than that, the food was running out. When it was clear that no food was coming in, I finally saw the light and went to the grocery, spent all the money I had left ’cause the banks didn’t open, not down here, at least. This Korean family, known them most of my life, had the only grocery store still open when I went shopping. By the end of the day, it was pretty much a riot. I’d paid for my stuff, some sacks of flour, as much canned goods as they had left. But pretty soon people was just taking stuff. That Korean couple got roughed up. That was…how many weeks ago, son?”

  “I’ve lost track. One day seems pretty much like another, with no TV and no Internet. All I know is I been real hungry for at least a week.”

  “We all been. We ain’t got much left. Couple cans of soup, a little flour. Anyways, we heard a rumor about these warehouses around here, how the owners were guarding all the food the people needed. We came down here looking. Came upon some folks had a pickup truck, one of those they converted to burn wood. They had chains, and they was pulling the doors off warehouses.

  “They done a dozen of ’em, and there was nothing in them worth taking. Not nowadays, anyway. Who needs a goddam flat-screen television, or a tranny for a Lexus?

  “Then they opened that one around the corner from here, and it was full of stuff, sacks and crates with Chinese letters on ’em. Lots of rice in big old sacks, lots of pallets full of those ramen noodles, cans full of I don’t know what. And a bunch of Chinese guys with guns. Maybe a dozen of ’em, I couldn’t see for sure.

  “They was outnumbered, but they stood their ground. Then the firing started, and it went on for a while, in that warehouse. We ducked around a corner. But then the firing stopped, and people started going inside. So we did, too.”

  He stopped for a moment, and rubbed his hand over his face.

  “I ain’t proud of what we did. There was dead Chinese guys all over the place, all of ’em, I guess, unless some of ’em run, and black folks and Mexicans. And people wounded, some of ’em crying out.”

  “God, Dad,” Kareem said, with a catch in his throat.

  “I know, son. And people was loading up their carts with the Chinese food. And that’s what we did, too. God help us, we took all we could handle, and then the shooting started again.

  “This time I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on. It seemed liked everybody was shooting at everybody else. It wasn’t a black against brown thing, least it didn’t look like it. There was some Chinese in there, and some white guys, some of ’em in uniforms. Not cops and I’m pretty sure they weren’t the Guard. Some of ’em looked like private security, but they had some serious weapons.

  “We started to run, and I dropped my pistol, and we had to leave the cart behind. And the next thing I know, you two was pointing your shotguns at us.”

  Everyone was silent for a while. Dave looked around the crates again, just for something to do. He took a deep breath.

  “It’s been about half an hour and I don’t hear anything. We can’t stay here all day. I’m going to see what’s happening out there.”

  “Be careful, honey.”

  Dave nodded. He crept to the open door. He looked back and saw that everyone was following him. Well, why not?

  He reached the door and carefully looked around it.

  There was a dead man lying in the street, facedown. About a hundred yards to the north was what looked like another dead body. Far away, probably to the north, they heard isolated gunshots. Nothing was moving, not even on the freeway in front of them. Any travelers were still lying low, it seemed.

  Dave walked to the dead man. A stream of blood had flowed down the slight slope of the street to pool at the curb. He didn’t want to do it, but he crouched down and put his hand at the man’s neck and confirmed what he had already been sure of when he saw the gaping hole in the man’s back. It looked like an exit wound, and it was right around the heart.

  There was a pistol, a .45 caliber, maybe a Glock, not far from the dead man’s hand. Dave picked it up and stood. Kareem was pointing at something on the ground.

  “That’s a clip for that weapon,” he said.

  Dave saw it and picked it up. It was empty. He clicked the release and another clip fell into his hand. It was full.

  “Looks like he was reloading,” he said. He pushed the clip back into the butt. He looked at Kareem, and hesitated only a moment.

  “Do you know how to use this thing?”

  “I could figure it out.” He shrugged. “I seen it in the movies.”

  Dave tossed the weapon to Kareem, who caught it, looked at it, and tucked it into the waist of his jeans.

  “Thanks, man.”

  Dave had a feeling the kid had handled a Glock before.

  The pistol was back in Kareem’s hand as they cautiously moved along the street until they could see the parking lot where the battle had raged. There were more bodies, and this time there were some living people. They were scuttling among the carts, some of them overturned, quickly gathering what they could. Down the street they could see more people entering and leaving the warehouse where the food had been. There were sacks of rice spilled on the pavement. Some of them had burst open, and people were scooping up handfuls and putting it in plastic grocery bags.

  “I guess here’s where we leave you,” Justin said. “We’d better get some of this grub before the fighting starts again. And you folks, you only got a little more daylight. You’d probably better head back to the hills.”

  “That’s what we plan to do,” Karen said.

  “Thanks for the gun,” Kareem said. “Y’all didn’t have to do that.”

  “I didn’t want to see you unarmed.”

  Justin held out his hand, and Dave and Karen shook it, then Kareem’s. The man and his son hurried off across the parking lot, Justin grabbing a cart with a bent wheel that made a racket as he pushed it. Dave and Karen watched them load a sack of rice onto it and move on.

  “I wish them luck,” Karen said.

  “They’re going to need it.”

  They returned to the freeway and as they made their way north, they began to see more people heading south again. They also saw people cautiously watching from the side streets, hiding behind houses or industrial buildings.

  The scooters were not noisy, but Dave was wishing they were as silent as bicycles. After what they had seen, the last thing they wanted to do was attract attention. He worried that they presented a tempting target to anyone hungry for transportation, which could be just about anyone they encountered.

  They agreed that since the main purpose of the trip had been to take the measure of the situation on the ground between them and San Diego, they should take a different route home. But the neighborhood they were in was not familiar to either of them, and was full of rail yards. So after crossing the 710 Interchange they got off on Olympic Boulevard and headed west.

  They saw very few people for several miles. No one moved to approach them. Dave wondered if things might have been different if they hadn’t been carrying shotguns displayed so prominently.

  They came to the Olympic Street bridge over the river, which didn’t seem to have suffered any damage. But just to the north the freeway bridge that carried the I-10 over the river was in ruins. Great slabs of roadway had fallen down into the concrete channel.

  The freeway had fallen onto the railroad tracks on both sides of the river, and there they saw the first constructive activity they had seen in a long while. A crane mounted on a railcar had been moved into place from the north, and fitted for wood burning. People were attaching c
ables to the large chunks of concrete and trying to move them off the tracks. Several had already been dumped to the side, and one track was clear, though badly damaged. Other men were working to repair the tracks.

  “Maybe they’ve got some trains running again,” Dave said.

  “Do you think that means we might be seeing some relief supplies soon?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  When they reached the intersection of Olympic with the I-10, they discovered that there no longer was an I-10. From the river to the 110 the freeway had been elevated on concrete pillars. They had all collapsed.

  They discussed going back over the river and thus back up the I-5, but decided to continue on awhile to see if there was a way to get past the wreckage. In particular, Dave wanted to see the Convention Center again to see if there were still refugees there.

  Fifteenth Street was blocked by the ruins of the freeway, as was Sixteenth. They got onto Eighteenth and headed west. At the corner of Naomi Street there was a small church with flat stucco sides and a modest steeple. A few people were sitting in the open door and organ music was coming from within. Dave was not a religious man, but the hymn grabbed at him on some deep level, and for one wild moment he wanted to go inside, join with his fellow men and women in song. But it was getting late and they still had a long way to go though uncertain territory if they were to get home before dark, as they had promised Addison and Jenna.

  There was a big open barbecue pit made of black iron set up on the sidewalk. Smoke was pouring from it. As they passed, a woman turned something lying on the grill. She watched them without expression as they passed.

  “Tell me that wasn’t a dog,” Karen said.

  “I’m going to say goat.”

  “From your lips to God’s ear.”

  The fact that the dog population of Doheny Drive had fallen drastically in the last weeks was something Dave had kept from Karen and Addison. It was one of the things people had talked about during the long watches at the barricades. If anyone had eaten their pet Dave wasn’t aware of it, and he doubted it. But the simple fact was that food was running low for humans in most households. There just wasn’t anything to spare for a dog, particularly a large one. One man had broken down and wept as he told of putting down his dog.