“Lindz!” I shouted. “Stop!”
“I’m not falling for that!” she panted through laughter. “You’ll just have to catch me!”
She sped up.
It wasn’t just my age. Lindz was fast. A young woman, lithe and agile, crossing unforgiving terrain that jarred every joint in my body.
Nearing a distant corner, she turned, mocking me with another jagged barb. I pointed and shouted, but she misinterpreted the gesture.
A man stepped out from a blind corner. The force of the collision knocked her to the concrete.
“Lindz!”
The man was a brute. Grizzled stubble on his chin. Thinning sandy orange hair glistening with sweat. Dirt encrusted every exposed wrinkle on his leathery skin.
“Uh, hi,” said Lindz, slowing inching backward, a slow-motion crab.
“Hi.” The man grinned. It was a sickly thing. A supposedly friendly expression that he was long out of practice with.
“You’re very pretty,” he said. He reached down for her hand. Lindz let loose a startled yelp.
“Jus’ gonna help you up,” said the man, still offering his hand.
“We don’t need your help,” I said, as I caught up. I grabbed Lindz by the armpit and hauled her to her feet.
“That ain’t very nice.” He eyeballed me. “What’s in the pack?”
“C’mon, Lindz. Let’s go.”
“It dun have to be like that. You dun have to run off so quick.”
I turned my back to the lug, hoping he would disappear. Hoping that if I closed my eyes, he would turn out to be nothing more than a figment of my imagination. Praying that this behemoth was one more Los Angeles mirage.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” He grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around. “Must be some good shit if ya dun wanna talk ‘bout it. Let me see.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wha’cha gonna do about it old man?”
I heard the blade lock into position before I saw it. Chrome flashed in the light. I dodged the first swipe, but the ogre latched on to my pack.
I yanked the pack, throwing the ogre off balance and hurtling toward me. His hands were out in front, switchblade leading the way. I danced to the left and jabbed him in the Adam’s apple. Clutching his throat and gasping for breath, he fell to his knees.
Old man, indeed.
I spat on him for good measure.
“Daddy,” Lindz said. Her voice was soothing. Her hand was on my shoulder, gently tugging me away. My fists were balled and I was hitting the giant. Again and again. Until he wasn’t moving.
“It’s okay, Daddy. Let’s go.”
It wasn’t okay. What a place like this would do to her. The things a grubby mutt would do to her if he had his way.
We moved on toward the D-Sals, to meet my contact. Lindz’s attitude had changed. Frolicking joy had been replaced by a creeping fear of the unknown.
“Why are they like that?” she asked.
I struggled for words. “Places like this… they don’t exist in nature.”
Lindz nodded, but there was something in her expression, something that told me she didn’t really understand. To her, her father had over reacted. Gone crazy over a man who may not have posed any significant threat.
“Places like Los Angeles, they’re man-made illusions,” I said. “People flock to this city believing in the promise of a better life. They see fleeting glimpses, maybe a taste of something special that convinces them to stay. The illusion is powerful. Even when things start to go downhill, the promise that things will get better locks them in place, while their souls slowly evaporate.”
Lindz got that distant look in her eye again. “But some people make it, don’t they? I mean, they’d have to, right?”
“People wouldn’t come here otherwise. Or stay, for that matter. But it’s not… It’s not a lottery. Those that thrive here—”
I hadn’t completed the thought. Not in words anyway. It was a feeling I got whenever I thought about Los Angeles—whenever I thought about the people that lived here, and what it took to succeed.
“Daddy?”
“They’re predators,” I said. “To survive in a city like this, to make it to the top, you can only do that by exploiting others. It’s not natural. Los Angeles is a place built on the trampled dreams of those who will never succeed. That’s how it works, by design. It is a trap. Never forget that.”
Lindz nodded, but I don’t think she really understood. And how could she?
“Is that why the elders left in the first place?” Lindz asked. “I mean, they talk about Los Angeles. About what it was like growing up.”
“That’s why many of us fled. To remember what life was really about.”
We approached a structure of twisting pipes. Smoke billowed from slender fingers of steel that clawed at the sky.
The sun was a blazing red orb, and the sky was alight with golden oranges and tie-dyed pinks. Basking in the reflected glow from the mountains, the city, which had been dull and dreary, now glowed, backlit by the remaining light of the day.
An alien stench, sweet and syrupy, bit my nose. I knew it as the byproduct of electricity robbing the ocean of its salt. Like the rest of the city, it was one more reminder of the unnatural process necessary to hole up in desert scrubland against the whims of Mother Nature.
Lindz scanned the foreign landscape. “Are you sure this is where we are supposed to meet?”
Someone behind us cleared his throat. A man in a light sports coat and a crisply pressed button down shirt strutted down a metal catwalk. His collar was flipped up and loosely parted. This was probably the first time Lindz had seen clothing that wasn’t some form of jeans and a T-shirt.
He ran a hand through slicked jet black hair. There was something unmistakably cavalier about his attitude, despite attire attempting to suggest restraint and dignity. Power exuded from him in a casual manner, flowing without any effort on his part.
“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.” He beamed. “It’s good to see you, Harl.”
I grunted. “Wish I could say the same.”
“Always so pleasant with the pleasantries.” He took pause long enough to casually look over Lindz. “I see you’ve come bearing gifts.”
My hand clenched into a fist on my pack’s strap. “Let’s get this done.”
“What’s the rush, Harl? You just arrived. Let’s have a little fun.” I tensed up as he sauntered towards Lindz. “Who might this lovely lady be?”
He reached for her hand. Lindz flinched at his touch, looking to me for approval. My jaw tightened.
“This is Lindz,” I said. “My daughter.”
“Harl, you dirty dog. You’ve been holding out on me. I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
He bowed, raising my daughter’s hand to his mouth. He let his lips gently touch the back of her hand. After a protracted moment, he looked up from his hunched position, catching Lindz’ eye. “Charmed.”
Lindz shot me another look, but this one was different than before. Even under the color of the day’s sun, her cheeks took on a rosier hue than normal.
She curtsied in response. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.”
“Pettray Brontoch. Your father has other names for me, I’m sure. But please, I prefer Pettray.”
Pettray had his driver waiting for us. I couldn’t remember if Pettray always traveled by limousine, but he had always traveled with style. That much I could remember.
The driver took us north, toward the hills. To the strip. Whatever Pettray was planning, it wasn’t business. At least not in any traditional sense of the word.
Fifteen minutes later, the driver stopped in the middle of the street. Behind us, horns blared and traffic backed up, but either the driver was deaf, or he simply didn’t care.
“We’re here,” said Pettray. He opened the door for Lindz and guided her onto the sidewalk.
The strip was billboards and dancing lights. An explosion of eye-assaul
ting stimuli bludgeoning us for our attentions. Time had changed the facade, but the overall feel was the same as I remembered. It had always been filled with joints that weren’t exactly clubs. Closer to dives and crashes. Small places where people could get blitzed and maybe discover that significant other interested in a similar type of debauchery.
The corner was swamped with hood rats and teeny-boppers and yuppy-ego-hipsters, or I don’t know what they called them these days. Generations and fashions apart, but they all looked the same to me. They were waiting in queue for their turn at whatever was inside. Extreme ends of individual expression conforming to the social contract of the line.
Pettray bypassed the velvet rope with his smile and led us through an ocean of bodies writhing to a rhythm more tactile than aural.
Inside, another smile and another velvet rope parted, and we were heading upstairs to a hidden balcony overlooking a dance floor.
The maître-d nodded toward an empty booth front and center. Lights were angled toward it. Despite a club filled to capacity, the booth was empty. Pettray shoved a stack of colored paper into the maître-d’s hand—not that the gesture meant much to me.
Settling back in the booth, Pettray held his hands aloft. “Drink it in,” he said. “Drink. It. In.”
“Can I offer you gentleman a beverage?” asked the maître-d.
“A round of dihydrogen monoxide,” said Pettray. “Pure. Only the finest for my friends.”
Downstairs, the dance floor was churning. Pettray caught my gaze. “You can join the cheap seats if that’s your thing. I can arrange it. I just assumed you wanted to—”
“It’s fine. I have no interest in going down there.”
He thought he was being funny by calling them the cheap seats. They only served booze on the floor. Alcohol was no one’s beverage of choice. Up here, they served the good stuff. Nothing cut with barley or hops. One hundred percent pure.
The waiter returned, setting crystal glasses in front of us. With a smooth flick of his wrist, Pettray raised his glass and swished the contents. Hovering his nose over the rim, he filled his lungs with what I could only assume was a pleasant aroma. It didn’t smell like much at all to me. His eyes were closed. Slowly, he touched his lips to the glass, sipped, and shuddered.
“I guess you drink this all the time,” said Pettray, returning to his senses. “You must understand what an extravagance this is.”
Lindz shot me a look. I tried to hold a stone facade, but she knew me well. She smiled, knowing that Pettray’s pretensions set me on edge.
What was worse—I think she found his mannerisms charming. Or at the very least intriguing.
What she didn’t know was that Pettray’s people had come out to the valley by the truckload trying to uncover the secret of the Valley people. How had the Deathies survived? How had we gone on living, finding water, in the middle of nowhere?
When we had abandoned the city, not many Angelenos cared. Good riddance and all that. We weren’t supposed to be able to survive on our own outside of a big city. No one was. Especially not in the desert. Yet, we had.
Once disbelief subsided, those with more business acumen than the rest came to see for themselves. They were less interested in us, than in how we had done it. Or rather, how they could do it themselves.
We didn’t exactly share our secret, but its byproduct. Enough to trade for provisions that the desert couldn’t provide.
Our generosity had been a mistake. At least that was what I told the council. We had whet their appetite and now they wanted more. They wanted everything.
Truth was, our interaction had whet the appetite of some of the elders too. The allure of the creature comforts of city life was as addictive as any drug.
Lindz pried her gaze away from the surroundings. She cocked her head at Pettray, sizing him up. He mirrored the tilt of her head and let a practiced smile brighten his expression.
“Why did you bring us here?” asked Lindz.
“The little lady likes to get right down to business.”
“What is it that you and my father do?”
“Barter. Ain’t that right, Harl?”
I glared at him. “You know it is.”
“Aren’t you the card, Harl?” He rolled his shoulders and turned to face Lindz. “Harl shows up, trades us his miracle packets and our water output quadruples.”
“Why don’t you get what you need yourself?”
Pettray roared with laughter. “Oh, Harl, you raised this one right. Lindz—” he leaned forward like a jungle cat ready to pounce on its prey. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?”
“What about the D-Sals?” Lindz asked. “Don’t they provide the city with water?”
“That swill? I guess its fine for survival.”
“He’s being coy,” I said. “The D-Sals don’t churn out enough water for the city. They need more. And a more efficient, less costly way at that.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” said Pettray, waving his glass around. “Lindz, my dear, there’s never enough.”
“There’s always the Owensfolk,” I said. “Could always ask them real nice.”
Pettray snorted mid-sip, inhaling water down the wrong pipe.
“Those rich assholes?” Pettray shook his head and dabbed at the spilled water on his shirt. “They want an arm and a leg for what should be free.”
A grim smile found my lip. Pettray only wanted our methods so that he could sell them at an incredible mark-up to those trapped here by the promise of civilization. He didn’t care if people charged an arm and a leg for what should be free. He only cared that it wasn’t him doing so.
“Besides, they won’t let us touch their source,” said Pettray. “And that’s where the real money is.”
“I’m shocked they didn’t let you dam their valley. Who’d have guessed they didn’t want to live at the bottom of a lake?”
“Yes. Oh well. You win some, you… Well, you know how it goes.” Pettray downed the last of his drink.
Over his shoulder, I caught a glimpse of someone milling through the crowd. We made eye contact. And as quickly as we locked gazes, the stranger broke it. That by itself might not have tipped me off, but I had seen him pass three times now.
Rather than point, I nodded in his direction. “You got a friend?”
Pettray looked over his shoulder, not caring if he was caught doing so.
“Not mine.” His eyes shifted to Lindz. “I think someone’s picked up an admirer.”
Lindz was blushing.
“Her?” I asked.
“Her, Gramps,” said Pettray, chuckling to himself. “Can’t believe you’ve gotten so old, Harl, that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young.”
A young man, no not even man, a kid, with shaggy brown hair hanging over his eyes was circling. Gaze locked on my daughter. He couldn’t have been more obvious. And I had missed it.
He shot another glance at the table. At Lindz. Then his eyes flicked to me and quickly away again. He swiped a shot glass off the bar, downed its contents, and marched toward us.
I shook my head at the display.
When he arrived he simply stood next to the table. He swayed back and forth, hovering, as if politely waiting his turn to interject into the conversation. Except that our conversation had ended long before his approach.
I was mildly amused by his awkwardness, but it didn’t go much further than that.
Lindz didn’t say anything. She could, and would, talk up a storm given the chance. But when it came to strangers she was still my shy little girl. She watched this shaggy haired kid, waiting for him to make the first move. To say anything.
We all were.
“Hi,” the kid stammered.
“Hi,” said Lindz.
“I, uh, I saw you across the way, and uh…” He trailed off and didn’t bother to finish his sentence. As if what he wanted to say was evident without words.
I groaned.
Lindz broke the silence. “Yes?”
> “You want to go downstairs and dance or something?”
Lindz looked over the railing. The dance floor crawled with movement in rhythm to the vibration of the walls.
This poor stupid kid. Lindz wouldn’t fall for such an obvious ploy.
“I’d love to.”
She held out her hand, and he took it. Rising, as if the simple act of touch was all it took to defy gravity, she floated from her seat and away from me.
Bass shook the walls. Downstairs, sweaty flesh ground against sweaty flesh. I kept losing sight of Lindz. Her head bobbed in and out of the constant wave of bodies. Hands raised overhead. Faces looking every direction. Eyes closed. Bathing in the moment.
When I caught sight of Lindz and the kid, she had a drink in her hand. Some cheap booze or something. Nothing as pure as what we drank every day. This local kid was trying to ply her with what he could afford.
A smile was on her face.
I knew the expression. The feeling. Belonging to something larger than yourself. I remembered.
It was something I had missed since leaving Los Angeles. The exact feeling was hard to articulate. It wasn’t the sense of community that I missed. We had that in the commune, and in fact, I preferred what we had there to this. What was unique was the scope. The feeling that the city extended well outside its physical boundaries.
For some reason, it was only here amongst so many that a simple purity whispered tales beyond imagination with no need for proof. A poison tongue traced the outline of an ear and in its warm breath concealed a secret. There was more to the world than was within line of sight. The city hinted at something beyond civilization at its core.
Something fantastic.
Watching her dance, I thought about my childhood. About being raised here. I wondered if she had missed out on a life that would have been very different.
She looked perfect here.
Like father, like daughter, I thought.
“She’s something else,” said Pettray, nodding over the balcony railing.
Brought back to my senses, I realized he had been talking business for quite some time, but had been too much the gentleman to point out that my attentions were elsewhere.
“She is,” I said.
Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles) Page 16