The Poison Sky

by John Shannon

  The word Burbank had gone through him like an electric shock. Jack Liffey glanced around and there was Jimmy Mardesich, on a window ledge by the wall, staring off into the middle distance with a dependent, hangdog look as if he’d lost all his willpower. He also had a bad black eye, a real mouse, and a scabbed-up abrasion across his forehead. Jack Liffey made his away across and knelt in front of the boy.

  “What happened?”

  The boy shrugged dully.

  “It all got a bit real,” Jack Liffey suggested. The boy focused long enough to send him a single flash of fury. It was so uncharacteristic he hardly recognized it. Then the boy settled back into his grave inertia, and Jack Liffey realized something was wrong beyond a bit of random violence he’d suffered.

  “What is it?”

  “I talked to Mom. Dad called her about midnight and volunteered for another shift. He never came home.”

  “Is that GreenWorld?” Jack Liffey gestured to the TV.

  “Yeah. Yep, it is.”

  Jack Liffey put both his hands on the boy’s shoulders. He could feel himself going onto autopilot. “Van Nuys isn’t far from there, either.”

  “I tried to call Mom again a couple minutes later but there’s no answer. She probably saw it on TV and got out.”

  “You may not realize it yet, but you are just about to enter the critical part of your life’s story.” Jack Liffey knew the boy had a hunger for the dramatic and that got his attention, all right. “Let’s go get your dad.”

  Was it just vanity, he thought, that made him assume he and the boy could do something? He’d promised to rescue the Mardesiches, that was all he knew for sure, and he was deep inside his promise and couldn’t find another way to go.

  17

  ALL DEATH IS LOCAL

  HE SHOWED THE BOY HOW TO POUND ON THE DASHBOARD every minute or so to cuff the radio’s one functioning speaker back to life. Luckily when the old slide-rule tuner had jammed, it had chosen L.A.’s all-news station.

  “… Speaking with Dr. Marvin Symons, professor of industrial chemistry at Caltech.”

  “Actually, that’s organic chemistry. With what little I’ve been told, it’s difficult to say exactly what the Burbank chemical cloud might contain. MIC has been suggested. That’s methyl isocyanate, the notorious compound that escaped from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, and killed over six thousand people. Rumors have also mentioned cyanide, and phosgene. Everyone knows what cyanide is, it’s the gas used in San Quentin’s gas chamber, and it smells a little like almonds. Phosgene is a serious lung irritant that was used in gas warfare for a time in World War One. It smells like new-mown hay or fresh young corn. All three can be deadly in sufficient concentration. If the initial reports of a reaction running out of control in a large toxic-chemical storage tank are true, it’s probable that the cloud contains many different reaction products including all the gases we’ve mentioned plus many others that we know even less about.”

  “Oh, great,” Jack Liffey said.

  “But what’s your best guess, Professor?” As usual, trained up on lying politicians, the radio reporter treated scientific reticence as a form of cover-up.

  There was a silence and then a prissy little sigh. “I’m afraid it would be worse than idle for me to speculate right now without more information.”

  “That’s the best we can do from here, Curtis, talking to Marvin Symons, professor of industrial chemistry at Caltech.”

  Jack Liffey glanced at the plastic sheeting over the right side of his car. It was not the ideal window to seal out a toxic cloud.

  “Just when you begin to think your world is getting on track, oh man,” the boy said. He shrugged with resignation and Jack Liffey noticed the black eye again. It was mottled dark and almost swollen shut but probably wouldn’t get much worse. “I feel like such a child.”

  “Don’t let melancholy start doing your thinking for you. I’m going to need you.”

  Rap-rap. “The northbound 1-5 is shut down completely at the Ventura, and a massive traffic jam is building back past the four-level downtown. In the north, the 5 is blocked at the Sunland off-ramp and all southbound traffic is being taken off there, but we’re told the highway patrol is in the process of moving the roadblock even farther north to the Hollywood Freeway split. The evacuation order has been extended to the city of Sunland to the north of Burbank, and to parts of North Hollywood as far west as Lankersheim Boulevard, and the toxic cloud continues to spread through the San Fernando Valley with no end in sight.”

  The boy slowly became aware of his surroundings and glanced around critically at the world outside, as if he might be asked to rent one of the buildings they were passing. “This is an odd route to the Valley.”

  “We’ve got to make a pit stop.”

  He drove into the northern foothills of Glendale, where Mike Lewis and Siobhan had moved only six months earlier, apparently just before she had fled back to Ireland. He could see helicopters and small planes circling and circling far away to the west like buzzards waiting for something to die. It was still early enough that he had to pound on the door for a while to wake him up. Finally a bleary-eyed Mike Lewis in a bright red nightshirt opened the door a crack.

  “I need your scuba gear. I haven’t got time to explain.”

  “Jayzus, Jack.“ He pulled the door open and rubbed his eyes hard. He was as wan as an earthworm, and he’d started looking old all of a sudden.

  “Do you have two kits? Are they full of air?”

  Mike Lewis nodded and then banged his head with his fist, as if clearing it. He yawned and pointed to a door. There was a blast of warmth and dust as Jack Liffey threw open the door that led into the attached garage and went in, and Jimmy Mardesich followed a few steps behind. Mike Lewis stared after the boy with a bemused look. “Good day to you, too.”

  “Hello,” the boy said belatedly over his shoulder.

  Mike Lewis caught them up and pointed to a rickety loft hung from the rafters just overhead. “There are two of them up there. Siobhan used to go out with me. Do you know how to use them?”

  “Long ago. It’s like riding a bike, you never forget how to fall off.”

  Mike Lewis checked the gauges on one of the consoles. “It looks like most of a charge.”

  Jack Liffey pulled the second one down and shoved it into Jimmy Mardesich’s arms. “Masks?”

  “Right here.” He grabbed them off a nail.

  “Let’s go,” Jack Liffey said, and then they were outside hurling the tanks into his backseat.

  “Might I know what’s going down?” Mike Lewis called from the door.

  “Turn on the news.”

  “Uh-oh. Keep your powder dry.”

  • • •

  SCHATZI was farting loudly, and it wasn’t doing anybody any good. Every time he’d fart, he’d look straight up at the ceiling and shout, “Onions!” and then tilt his head back down with his rambling anger stepped up another notch.

  Faye was eyeing the roll of silver tape he’d set on her table, and beside it a bottle of spray shaving cream and two yellow disposable razors. She didn’t like what was going on one bit, especially since she was worried about Milo and wanted to try to find out what was happening to him, but this crazy fat man kept cursing and pointing his pistol at things near her.

  “It is only through much tribulation that we will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  “This is starting to get pretty dopey,” she said.

  “Shut your mouth,” he said. He was trying to sound resolute but his voice betrayed the petulance of someone who had a certain familiarity with being ignored. “There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth!”

  The phone rang and he went rigid. Two rings, three.

  “Do I get it?”

  “No! Don’t you budge!”

  The machine wasn’t on, so she wasn’t even going to be able to monitor the caller. It was probably Jimmy calling back.

  He farted. “Goddamn onions!” He pointed
his pistol at the phone and said, “Bang! Bang!”

  The phone stopped. Now Schatzi pointed his pistol at her grandmother’s oak rocker, but this time he seemed to be doing it just as a pointer. “Take that roll of tape there and sit your bottom down in that rocker chair and tape your lower arms to the wooden arms of the chair.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Your lower arms, she thought. The rocker chair. It was as if he were reading his orders off a printed sheet of instructions translated from the Japanese, and having a little trouble with it. She tried to remember what you were supposed to do with an assailant, something about establishing a sense of rapport and acknowledging them in some way. She’d had a class in women’s self-defense at the Y but it was a long time ago.

  “We’re going to discuss this like two adults,” she said. “Are you upset at Milo? At Jack Liffey? Is that it? It can’t be me.”

  “He is a lamb and a lion!” he bellowed, “And He brings us a sword, riding on a powerful red steed!”

  “Don’t take things too literally,” she said calmly. “A lamb couldn’t possibly ride a horse and a lion would scare the horse to death. Those are just symbols.”

  His eyes went blurry for a moment. He had to put down his pistol to pick up the tape and run off a foot of it and then tear it with a sizzling sound. Perhaps it was her self-defense class, or perhaps the dance training, or, too, there was her anxiety at not knowing what was happening to Milo—and maybe it was just her own monumental temper snapping once again—but the instant he advanced on her with the tape, she blew a fuse. She wound up and kicked upward into his crotch with a full extension swing of her right leg. Her foot connected perfectly, driven by what felt like a whole lifetime’s frustration, and the blow brought back a very satisfying sense memory of the cheerleader’s baton in her hands and that little shiver when it had walloped Martina McCarty’s bottom in the shower room. It probably helped, too, that just that morning, on a whim, she had forced her feet into the last pair of dance slippers she’d ever bought and the packed toes were hard as concrete.

  His mouth opened as he fell, clutching himself, but no sound would come out of his wide-open mouth. Handcuffs clattered across the floor, and since he didn’t seem to be getting up anytime soon, she grabbed up the cuffs and manacled one of his ankles to the steel bed frame in the sleeper sofa right next to where he lay. Then she used his pistol to demand and get his keys, which she threw up on the roof as she ran to her car. She could use the car radio to find out what it was that had so worried Jimmy about Milo.

  JACK Liffey kept the old Concord on streets that skirted the hills as he headed westward, and before long they could see the bright yellow cloud ahead, like a furry curtain hung from the summer inversion. They started to see cars coming away from the cloud, very fast, drivers and passengers holding rags and bits of cloth to their faces.

  “Radio,” Jack Liffey said.

  The boy came out of his reverie and hammered on the dash again. “… Believes something called the relief-valve vent header has sheared away and there is no possibility of ending the leak until all the reacting gases have boiled off into the atmosphere. The assistant plant supervisor said the tank in question was known to the employees as Big Bertha and has a capacity of nearly two thousand tons of liquid wastes. By comparison, the Bhopal spill released only forty-one tons of toxic gas. A chemical-warfare team with gas-proof armored personnel carriers has been dispatched from the marine-corps depot near Barstow but it will take them an hour and a half to arrive. The L.A. County Fire Department has lost contact with their lead hazmat unit which was sent out forty minutes ago. They don’t know what has happened to it. Another unit from the city fire department seems to be caught in the gridlock of the huge tie-up on the Hollywood Freeway. Two other teams with breather equipment have been dispatched from Ventura and Orange counties, and the national guard is reported to be assembling a chemical-warfare team at the West L.A. Armory. Cleve, I think this is a remarkable response in—what?—only one hour and twenty minutes since the spill was first reported …”

  There were more cars now, speeding away from the yellow fog with occupants hunched forward into wet rags, and there was something else coming at him, shielded by an RV so he couldn’t quite see it, and then he pulled to one side as he cleared the RV, making way for a lone riderless white horse galloping down the exact center of the street and then a moving remuda of a dozen more horses in a hurry. A shiny black Arab passed only a foot from the car, with a panicked glaze on its eyes and nostrils flaring. He guessed someone had opened a stable to give them a fighting chance. After the horses there was a steadier flow of cars, and soon little knots of people on foot, hurrying eastward with birdcages, suitcases, and cardboard boxes. A big white goat trotted along with determination, past an old woman in what looked like a Shaker dress who sat on the curb, vomiting, while her family hovered around her.

  There was a yellow glow on the air now. It didn’t suggest smog, for some reason, more a color photograph that had been processed a bit wrong. There seemed to be an aura around objects, or a gold radiance from within, and he hoped the boy wouldn’t mold it into some religious parable. He hammered all the vent latches on the dashboard as closed as they would go.

  “My eyes are smarting,” the boy said.

  “Get the masks.”

  A big pack of dogs ran steadily along the curb, avoiding the flow of refugees on the sidewalks. A man tugged an exhausted woman along, arguing as they went, and a policeman stepped out into the Concord’s path for a moment to try to warn him back, but Jack Liffey honked him out of the way.

  The boy hung over the seat to retrieve the scuba masks and they strapped them on. The straps were set for a smaller head and the rubbery edges felt sharp and uncomfortable. Under the rubbery smell, faintly, he thought he detected one of Siobhan’s musky perfumes. The burning in his eyes gradually eased.

  The boy was watching him. “You’re a brave man,” he finally said, his voice distorted by the mask covering his nose. Something had finally torn him out of his self-absorption.

  “I can mimic it. I’m not brave in my bones.”

  Refugees were jamming both sidewalks now, carrying bundles and supporting one another. People dragged wagons, walked bicycles, and carted incapacitated loved ones on wheelbarrows. It was like one of those wartime photographs of whole European nations retreating ahead of their defeated army. Before long his was the only car, and the crowd spilled out into the street. He had to slow to give the refugees time to part for him, and now and again someone tried to wave him back or shout something at him. A boy slapped the side of the car.

  At a big intersection a long block ahead, he saw tanks and armored personnel carriers. A soldier with an old-fashioned canister gas mask was doubled over at a barricade coughing, his rifle lying in the pavement at his feet. Other soldiers were double-timing away. They all wore gas masks, but the masks didn’t seem to be working and a few soldiers were tearing them off. Troops at the side of the intersection were abandoning their rifles and tumbling back into the personnel carriers in a panic. No discipline but plenty of firepower, he thought: the American condition.

  The yellow glow had become a palpable haze in the air and he could taste it now, like rotting tropical fruit somewhere in the car. He saw that Jimmy Mardesich was dripping with sweat, and his eyes looked frightened inside the mask. It was stiflingly hot but that couldn’t be helped. The gas burned in his throat and he hammered at the vent latches once again. He had to slow the car another notch because people had begun staggering blindly into their path.

  They were truly inside the toxic cloud now and there was a chilling sense that everything had changed, they had entered another moral universe. There was no longer any question whether the world around you was hostile, no question of fate giving you an inch of grace, no relaxation, and no exemptions; everything you did mattered. The yellow cloud had erased the existential lie: the future of every person in this new world was distinctly provisional and you migh
t just not make it.

  “… If you’re still in the exclusion area, stay in your homes and close all the windows. Roll up wet towels and place them along the bottoms of your doors. If you’re in a car, close the windows and set your air conditioner to recycle and leave the area immediately. There is a slight wind from the north, and the cloud is spreading most rapidly south and west. Drive directly out of the exclusion area, north or east if you can. But do not drive toward the Burbank industrial park. If you are near the hills, climb as high as you can. The gas cloud appears to be slightly heavier than air. Cover your face. A wet cloth may be of some use. It appears that the standard-issue police gas mask, intended for CS or CN tear gas, is ineffective. Do not attempt to use a gas mask unless it is a positive-pressure self-contained respirator with its own air supply …”

  The refugee crowds were thinning and more of the people were old and infirm, as if the young had hit the lifeboats first. By the time they wound their way through the fleeing knots of people to the guarded intersection, the military personnel carriers were driving away. One soldier lay in the street unconscious, and two others had been abandoned beside a bus bench. The gas masks were definitely making it worse. A man had torn off all his clothes and ran through the yellow fog cursing and screaming. They could see people who had given up now, sitting on the curbs holding their heads or lying full length on patches of lawn.

  A woman lay in front of the broken window of a jewelry shop vomiting on the sidewalk while an infant stood beside her wailing at the top of its lungs. Small knots of drugged-looking people hurried past them, intent on their own escape. Jimmy Mardesich dragged a scuba tank into the front seat, but Jack Liffey shook his head. “Not till we can’t stand it.”

  It felt cold-blooded to be driving past all these people he could have saved, in order to rescue Milo Mardesich, but he couldn’t help very many people and one of them might as well be the boy’s father.