“Right. Ted and Suzi have been there before, and Bert and Aline.” He focussed on Dave and Diana Marston. “It’s hundreds of acres of rolling hills, stuck up a canyon out of sight. It’s got a compound of buildings, a good water supply and limited access. It’s right near Fort Ord, and I’m a friend of the commanding officer there — Ernie Miles. So it’s well protected, about as secure as any place in the country. And it’s got a smart, loyal staff, a Chicano couple.
“What it doesn’t have,” Allison went on, “is enough people to keep it going on a self-sufficient basis. That’s why I thought of you people. Ted’s a super organizer, a guy who gets things done. Suzi has crafts ability, pottery, leatherwork. Dave’s a jack-of-all-trades and a good shot, but I’m really after Diana.” More laughter: Diana Marston was a local celebrity thanks to her gourmet cooking show on the Los Angeles PBS station. She smiled and blushed.
“Bert’s a weapons expert and a hell of an outdoorsman. Aline is another good organizer, a born quartermaster.”
“You keep talking about weapons and military stuff,” Suzi Loeffler said. “Do you think we’ll all have to, have to fight people?”
“I hope to God not,” Allison smiled. “But if we get in a bind, it might help to know something about fighting.”
“If we accept,” asked Suzi Loeffler, “can we bring other people too? Relatives, you know, or friends?”
“Immediate family only. Your kids, but that’s it.” Allison shrugged. If we get into nephews and nieces and cousins and neighbours — ”
“I understand,” Suzi nodded. “Just getting it straight.”
“Okay,” said Bert. “And when do we go?”
“Tonight, about seven o’clock.”
It had the effect he’d expected: hands to faces, widened eyes, a long moment of silence.
“All right,” Dave said. “Makes sense. What do we bring?”
The planning went on for hours. At two in the afternoon, the phone rang. Alison answered it, then took Bert aside for a moment.
“Have you got a gun with you?”
“In the car.”
“Some people are coming over in about an hour with a lot of stuff I’ve ordered. They’re getting paid in gold. I just want to make sure no one gets ripped off, least of all us.”
Promptly at three, a new Range Rover and Dodge van pulled into the driveway, while a Volvo diesel sedan parked across the street. The drivers of the Range Rover and the van got out and stood in the shelter of the garage, where Allison was waiting for them. They were young, tough-looking men in rain parkas, jeans and hiking boots. One of them handed Allison a neatly typed invoice. Allison scanned it briefly, then went out in the rain to check the trucks’ contents against the list. Canned and dehydrated food, drugs and medical supplies, tools, jerrycans of gasoline.
“Okay,” Allison said. “I’ll be right back.”
When he returned from the house, he was holding a leather shoulder bag. It thumped when he put it on the trunk lid of his Nissan. Opening it, Allison began counting out Krugerrands. At a thousand dollars an ounce, half a million dollars in gold weighed just under thirty-two pounds.
“Awright” smiled the invoice man. “All present and accounted for.”
“Now,” said Allison, “I’m going to carry it to the Volvo. You two stay about fifteen feet behind me. Once I hand it over, you get in and leave at once. No funny stuff.”
“Hey, don’t you trust us?”
“I trust you a lot. I just believe in consumer protection. So a friend of mine will be watching you, and he’s very well armed.”
The two men glanced at each other. “Okay, it’s cool,” said the invoice man. “We got some backup too, you know? Nobody gets burned.”
“Great.” Allison picked up the bag. Hatless, but wearing sunglasses, he strode out into the rain, across the driveway, and into the street. Both windows on his side of the Volvo rolled down. A man in the rear seat took the bag. The driver grinned and waggled a .38 revolver in his lap, where Allison could see it.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” Allison said to the man in back.
“Likewise,” said the man. “Nowadays you can’t be too careful.”
The invoice man and his companion got into the Volvo; the driver backed downhill into the next driveway, then accelerated towards Sunset Boulevard.
Bert, holding a revolver, stood up behind a laurel hedge.
“Nicely done,” he said. “That took balls. Everything okay?”
“Sure. A little tense there for a minute, but I knew you were watching. Thanks.”
Bert cleared his throat. “Uh, Bob — did you really pay those suckers half a million in gold?”
“That’s right. And if they can figure out a way to eat it, or shoot it, or live in it, they’re smarter than I am.”
“Jeepers. Seems awful steep to me.”
“Listen,” said Allison. “From now on, wealth is goods only. No abstractions, no gold, no paper, no jewels — just food and fuel and shelter and weapons. I just ripped those guys off something cruel.”
*
Late in the afternoon, Ted Loeffler drove the Nissan to Santa Monica, with Allison following in the new Range Rover. Ted had phoned Astrid to say he’d leave the Nissan outside her building, with the keys and a thousand dollars under the driver’s seat. He couldn’t stay to visit; the neighbour who was following to pick him up was in a hurry. She’d understood and thanked him.
It was almost dusk when they turned off Santa Monica Boulevard onto Yale Street. Astrid’s was a fairly new five-story building; her apartment was on the second floor. Lights burned in the windows, but they had an almost orange glow: voltage had just been stepped down into a brownout.
Ted parked across from the building, and honked twice. Getting out, he waved to Astrid, a dark outline, and climbed into the waiting Range Rover.
“I sure hope this is the right thing, Bob Tony.”
Allison drove down to the corner, turned left, and left again into an alley. “I know it looks shitty, but the kid’s safety comes first.”
“Sure.”
“Ted, after this I owe you a big one.”
Ted didn’t answer. Allison parked at the rear of the building, got out, and went through the rear entrance into the recreation room.
A door led to the lobby. Allison peeped through, heard footsteps on the stairs, and then saw Astrid hurry across the lobby in a glossy yellow raincoat. The coat made it easy to see her cross the street and slip into the Nissan.
Allison walked casually into the lobby. Once out of sight of the street, he raced up to the second floor and rapped on Astrid’s door.
“Mommy?”
“No, Sarah, it’s Dad. Open up, I’ve got a surprise for you.” Astrid would be searching in vain for the keys to the Nissan; he would not have much time before she gave up and returned.
The door opened. God, Sarah was beautiful. “Daddy!”
He picked her up, dizzy with the joy of holding her, smelling her, feeling her wiry little arms around his neck.
“Where’s my surprise?”
“Downstairs. Come on, we have to hurry.” He held her on his hip, just like the old days, as he took the stairs two at a time. She giggled excitedly at the jouncing until he shushed her. A quick turn from the lobby into the rec room, not even a glance from under his wide-brimmed Stetson to see if Astrid was still across the street. Christ, what an adrenalin rush. Fun.
Then they were in the alley, in the truck. Ted was behind the wheel; the Range Rover lurched forward.
“Where we going?” Sarah asked.
“On a surprise trip up to the ranch. We’re going right away, and we’ll be there in the morning when you wake up.”
“What about Mommy?”
“You know she doesn’t come to the ranch, silly.”
In the dashboard lights, Ted’s face looked taut and grim. “Bob Tony, you really do owe me a big one.”
Allison reached over and patted Ted’s arm. For an i
nstant, as he chattered with Sarah, he imagined what Astrid must be going through: coming back to find the door open, the apartment empty; asking neighbours if Sarah was with them, calling police who wouldn’t come, calling anyone she could think of and getting no useful answer.
Well, very heavy, sure, but so what? Astrid was part of the past, the dead past. They were driving through the rainy night into a strange and terrible future where private sorrows dwindled into less than the chirping of crickets. He cuddled his daughter. He would get her through that future at any cost, protect her from any danger.
*
The convoy was moving north on the San Diego Freeway by a little after seven: Allison in the Range Rover, with Sarah asleep on the back seat; the Dodge van with the Loefflers; the D’Annunzios in their Vanagon; Dave and Diana Marston in their GMC Jemmy. All had CB radios, which were almost useless: endless jabber filled every channel, barely audible under waves of static.
It was still raining when they crossed the Santa Monica Mountains into the San Fernando Valley; the northbound lanes were crowded, and traffic was slow. The Valley looked utterly ordinary, except for the orangey dimness of the street lights. Traffic rumbled along, stores were open, police cars cruised silently. Allison looked out at the countless bungalows and garden apartments, the taco stands and Polynesian restaurants and shopping centres, and said good-byee to it all. For a few more days or weeks, places like this would sustain the pattern of normality. Then they would go under. Towns and cities to the east would fail soon as well, overwhelmed by refugees and the collapsing economy. Food would be scarce in a month, maybe less; he’d read not long ago that the UV damage to crops had left North America with only a twenty-six-day supply of grain.
Allison felt the drag of the .45 automatic holstered at his waist. It was one of Bert’s; Allison had accepted it more out of the logic of their circumstances than out of felt need. It was somehow comforting to be armed, even if he hadn’t yet fired his gun even in practice.
The convoy turned west onto the Ventura Freeway; driving was suddenly easier, with almost no other traffic to contend with. Wondering whether the road might even have been blockaded, Allison turned on the CB. Static and fragments of chatter crackled from the loud-speaker: then an urgent command.
“ — get everybody right outa there, right now. The police are up there now, tryna get ‘em moving. They figure it’ll go right across Ventura and up Balboa Boulevard. You know how many houses there are in that area? You know how many people? You get your people out … Any minute, any minute. It’s comm’ over the top of the dam already.”
Allison got on his CB. “This is Escondido One. Anyone pick up something about a flood on Ventura Boulevard?”
“Escondido Three.” That was Bert. “Uh, yeah, it’s the Encino Reservoir.”
“Well, we’re nearly at Balboa Boulevard. We should be able to get past in time. It’s not going to reach the level of the freeway, anyhow.”
“Uh, no,” said Bert, “but we could get in a real jam if people use the freeway as high ground.”
“This is true. Okay, well, as they used to say, let’s go for it.”
The lights along the freeway went out, and most of the lights on the streets below. Driving in the far right-hand lane, Allison looked down and saw chains of red taillights moving north. The truck shuddered, as if it had gone over a bump, and seconds later Allison saw the taillights in one street begin to wink out, from south to north. Down there in the darkness, a flood was rolling past. A grinding rumble overwhelmed the noise of the engine.
“Daddy, what is it?”
“Hush, love, it’s just raining really hard.”
“I can’t hear you!”
“It’s raining, it’s raining!” Allison shouted. “Now hush and let me drive!”
The headlights could scarcely penetrate the rain. Allison slowed down when he saw a cluster of taillights up ahead. They weren’t moving; in a few moments the convoy was on the eastern edge of a small traffic jam.
A sports car and a pickup had collided, blocking three lanes. The unconscious driver of the sports car was trapped inside, his head on the steering wheel. No one was trying to help. The pickup seemed to have been abandoned. A Trans Am and a Toyota tried to squeeze into the one clear lane, and sideswiped each other. The driver of the Trans Am got out with a gun in his hand, rested his arms on the roof of his car, and began firing at the other one. The shots did not sound very loud. Allison, behind several other cars but able to look over them, saw the Toyota glance into the guardrail and stop, plugging the one remaining lane. When the shooting stopped, he could hear screaming.
Bert was suddenly there, beside Allison’s door. “Gotta move that car, Bob.”
“Right. Sarah, love, you stay put, understand? We have to go give those people a push.”
“Was that man shooting? It sounded like shooting. Are they making a TV show?”
“Just stay right there till I get back.”
Bert and Allison jogged up between the stalled cars; none of the other drivers seemed willing to deal with the Trans Am and his gun.
The gunman was just getting back into his car. The screaming was coming from the Toyota. Bert walked up to the gunman’s window.
“We’re gonna push that car out of the way so you can get through. Want to give us a hand?”
“Fuck no. Not gonna give that son-of-a-bitch any more fuckin’ help, man.” He was a pale young man of twenty or so. No one else was in the car.
The driver of the Toyota was dead. Most of his head was covered with blood and splinters of glass. A woman on the seat beside him was howling, her face in her hands, and two small boys wailed in the back seat.
“Jesus, Jesus Christ,” Allison muttered. He opened the driver’s door, and saw the car was stalled in first gear. He put one foot awkwardly on the clutch pedal and reached across the corpse to shift into neutral. The dead man smelled of aftershave.
“What are you doing? What are you doing?” the woman screamed.
“Helping,” Allison answered. The rain was cold on his neck, and trickled through his beard. With Bert pushing from behind, he managed to steer the Toyota a few yards past the bottleneck. The woman and her children kept screaming.
“Don’t leave us! Mister, please, don’t leave us. My God, he’s hurt, he needs help. Please, get the doctor, the police.”
“The police will be along any minute. It’ll be okay,” Allison said. Before her hysterical pleading could soften him, he turned away and followed Bert. The Trans Am was idling in the gap, waiting for them to get out of the way. Bert, in the lead, paused and rapped on the driver’s window. The young man rolled it down.
“Yeah?”
Something flashed orange in Bert’s hand; the boom of the shot was sudden. Allison saw the window on the right-hand side of the Trans Am blow out, a burst of glitter in the headlights.
Bert turned to Allison, holstering his pistol under his poncho. “Let’s get this asshole out of the way.”
“Christ, Christ, Bert. You just blew him away.”
“What’s the matter, think he didn’t deserve it? Come on, push this thing.”
“You’re making me accessory to murder, Bert,” Allison said, but he pushed.
“Weren’t you ready to shoot those schmucks in the Volvo this afternoon if tried to rip us off? This jerk had it coming.”
Bert opened the Trans Am’s door and twisted the steering wheel to the left, guiding the car past the Toyota and onto the side of the road. Almost at once, cars began to stream through, honking; people leaned out, grinning at the men and shouting “Right on!”
“Thank you!” Not far to the east, the growl and rumble of the flood was softening.
A few minutes later Allison was back in the Range Rover, driving west through heavy rain. Sarah had finally fallen asleep, despite the buzz and sputter of the CB.
He thought for a long time about what had happened. Bert, he decided, had been a very smart choice. He himself had been slow, and sh
ocked by the second shooting, but he had swallowed his objections and cooperated. For all his talk about economic and social collapse, he was just not yet fully emotionally aware that the old rules, the old laws, were as dead as the two drivers back there.
Allison promised himself that the next time, whenever it came, would find him ready. He only hoped Sarah wouldn’t have to see it.
Chapter 8
It was extraordinary, Kirstie thought, how quickly one adjusted to arbitrary new routines. Electricity was now on, at best, two hours a day, usually in the early morning. That meant they had pumped water, so the toilet could be flushed and the bathtub and sinks filled. Whatever needed cooking was cooked then and either eaten cold or rewarmed in the fireplace — a smoky, clumsy business she preferred to avoid. Don had managed to find two battery rechargers; they were plugged in the moment the power came on, to ensure that the radio and flashlights stayed functional.
Amid the early-morning bustle, they heated water on the stove, took hasty sponge baths, and washed the last day’s accumulation of dishes and pots in the same water. Sometimes they washed a few clothes, using cold water and a sliver of hand soap; in this cold, damp spring, in an unheated house, things took forever to dry. Kirstie sometimes found herself wishing they could move down the hill, where water was available almost all day long by gravity feed. But the municipal authorities were adamant: hill people were to stay on the hills or move out of the city. Since transportation was almost non-existent, that meant the city’s former elite were now tied to their property like serfs.
Food was the major problem, the continuing outrage. The government had patched together a rickety distribution system for the Bay Area, but had little to distribute through it: rice, beans, some canned goods. Meanwhile a flourishing black market had sprung up to supply meat, milk, fruit and fresh vegetables — all of poor quality and available only for gold, silver, or usable goods like tools and gasoline. The Kennards were perpetually hungry; they had little to trade, and their savings were worthless.
Money had disappeared from the economy within three or four days. First the banks had closed and were not expected to reopen soon. For a week, companies had gone bankrupt; after that, their owners and officers didn’t bother and just walked away. If millions of people had lost billions of dollars through damage to their homes and businesses, they had saved billions simply by not paying their creditors. The economy, built on two generations of consumer debt, had not so much crashed as evaporated.
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