by Lee Goldberg
There were two other ways into the valley. He could follow the San Diego Freeway and Sepulveda Boulevard through the Sepulveda Pass or, as a last resort, follow the Pacific Coast Highway north, then cut across either Topanga Canyon or Malibu Canyon.
But one, frustrating fact was certain: whichever route Marty eventually chose, he wouldn’t be making it back to Calabasas tonight.
It would be a few hours at least before the water receded and he could even attempt leaving the building, much less slogging through the mud, the rubble, and the bodies on the streets. And even if he could, did he really want to do that in the pitch darkness of a blacked-out, demolished metropolis?
A horrible thought came to him. Come daylight, there would be hundreds of corpses. Mutilated. Bloated. Strewn everywhere, washed up by the flood. Marty didn’t think he had enough corners in his mind to hide all the death he was going to see. He doubted anyone did.
Going home crazy wouldn’t help Beth very much, would it?
No, he told himself, it certainly wouldn’t.
So maybe it would just be better for everyone concerned if he just found a comfortable chair and waited until things out there were under control. At least until the National Guard finally showed up and started covering the bodies.
And Marty was tired, so very, very tired. Every tendon and sinew in his body ached. He could feel the sting and pain of every scratch, bruise, gash, and bullet wound. His feet were swollen, scored with blisters. And he reeked of piss, blood, coconut oil, sweat, and drying mud.
Would he really be any good to Beth returning home like this?
He couldn’t go on, not tonight.
Maybe not even tomorrow.
What he needed was a rest. A long one. Marty started looking for a place to sit.
The leather chair in the office wasn’t bad, one of those big, over-stuffed executive models. It offered status, class, and absolutely no lumbar support, but it was perfect for what Marty had in mind. He was just about to try it out when he heard the whistling.
It wasn’t really a tune, more of an aimless, semi-musical improv, the sound people make when the body is at work and the mind is on hold.
Marty followed the whistling down one corridor and through another. As he got closer to the sound, he also began to smell smoke.
The corridor curved and led him to an enormous, wood-paneled conference room. The long table was covered with stacks of files and computer disks, which a balding man, still in his Versace suit, was feeding into a fire he had going in a custodian’s metal garbage can.
“If you’ve come to file a claim, we’re closed,” the man spoke without looking up, startling Marty, who didn’t know he’d even been seen.
“Do you work here?” It’s not that Marty really cared, but he wasn’t leaving for a while and he wanted to know who he was stuck here with.
“I’m Sheldon Lemp, the CEO of Quantum Insurance. And if you have a claim, you’ll have to come back another time, though we won’t be able to help you then, either.”
“I just want to stay here for a little while, if that’s okay. It’s safer than being on the street right now.”
“You’re right about that,” Lemp dropped diskettes into the fire by the armful. “This building is made of solid steel with a spring-and-roller suspension system that allows it to ride out a quake. Most homes, by comparison, are made of wood and concrete which, no matter how much they are reinforced, will just crumble. Eighty percent of the properties we insure are homes.”
“I thought most insurance companies got out of offering earthquake coverage after Northridge.”
“They did, so people flocked to us, checkbooks wide open,” Lemp lifted an entire stack of files in his hands and dropped them into the fire. Sparks flew out, forcing him to step back.
“Hey, take it easy,” Marty said. “Those sparks could set the whole building on fire.”
“It’s okay, we’re insured.” Lemp laughed with delight bordering on hysteria. Marty watched him warily, trying to judge if the man was a danger to him.
When Lemp’s laughter finally ebbed, along with the flames, he dumped more files into the fire. “This quake wasn’t supposed to happen for another twenty or thirty years. That’s what all the experts said. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Since 1994, we’ve written 17,000 residential earthquake policies in Southern California with an average annual premium of $1400. That generated an enormous amount of cash, which I invested to capitalize our reserves and maximize profits. Since I’d been assured there wouldn’t be another quake for decades, I felt comfortable with a greater level of risk than our board of directors did, so I found inventive ways to circumvent their oversight.”
“I see,” Marty glanced again at the hundreds of files and disks that covered the long table. “You made some bad investments and now you don’t have the money to pay your claims.”
“There will be some legal issues to contend with,” Lemp flung disks into the fire one-by-one, like little Frisbees. “Thousands of civil suits, certainly, as well as criminal prosecution on state and federal charges.”
“So you’re destroying the evidence.”
Lemp laughed again, an anxious twitter. “Oh, there’s far too much of that. I can only hope to hide one, negligible aspect of my financial activities, some modest loans I granted myself as token compensation for the valuable, additional services I was rendering for the company.”
“Doesn’t telling me all about it kind of defeat the purpose of covering up the crime?”
“Not really,” Lemp smiled at Marty. “When I’m finished burning all this, I’m going to kill myself.”
Marty wondered how long you had to talk to someone before their death had any emotional impact on you or whether just seeing someone before they died was enough.
He checked his watch. His eyes were so tired, he had a hard time focusing on the dial underneath the cracked crystal. It was nearly 8 p.m.
“Look, Sheldon, I’m going to find a couch and lie down,” Marty said. “Could you do me a favor? Try not to set the place on fire before you off yourself.”
“Sweet dreams,” Lemp chucked a hard-drive into the fire and started whistling again.
Marty left the conference room and went back to the front lobby, which had three nice couches to chose from. Lemp may have squandered the company’s cash, but at least he bought some good, comfortable furniture before it was gone.
He stripped off his pack, letting his wet, crusty jacket slide off his shoulders with it, then kicked off his shoes. His socks were stuck to his feet like a second layer of skin. Marty sat on the edge of the couch and carefully peeled them off, placed them on the coffee table to dry, and then he lay back, letting his body sink into the soft cushions.
Marty was asleep before he even closed his eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
The Morning After
T he building was ablaze and they were trapped on the top floor, cornered by the flames below.
“What are we going to do?” Fred Astaire asked him.
Marty handed him a rope. “Tie yourself to the pillar, we’re going to blow the water tanks on the roof.”
“We could all drown.”
“You ever heard of anybody drowning in an office building?” Marty gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Trust me. I’ll get us out of this.”
Marty did a quick pass through the room, checking on everybody, making sure they were securely tied in place. Once he was certain everyone was ready, he strapped himself to a pillar alongside Paul Newman.
“You’re the bravest sonofabitch I’ve ever met,” Paul said.
“I’m just an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.”
“We got a word for that,” Paul looked him right in the eye and morphed into Buck. “We call ’em heroes.”
“As soon as this is over, I want to see that napkin collection.” Marty took out the remote control and pressed the switch, igniting the explos
ives.
The entire building shook and the roof caved in, spilling 50,000 gallons of water into the room, the torrent sweeping tables and chairs and people right out the windows. He held on tight, the current raging against him. Suddenly, Marty’s rope slipped free of the pillar and he felt himself tumbling across the floor towards the San Francisco skyline and a 90-story drop.
“No!” he screamed, the water carrying him out into the night sky, sending him plummeting in cartwheels to the ground.
Suddenly the piss blankets around him pulled taut, and he was dangling in daylight just a few feet over the doomed 747, stewardess Karen Black staring up at him through the gaping, ragged gash in the cockpit. Her eyes told Marty everything, told him of her desperation, her fear, her need for him. Without him, they had no hope.
Marty looked up, following the string of piss-blankets back to the Army helicopter that was maneuvering him towards the pilotless airliner. He motioned to them to bring him down even closer, until Karen was able to grab him by his belt and guide him inside the plane.
As soon as his feet touched the cockpit floor, he grabbed hold of the pilot’s seat to steady himself and released his urine-soaked lifeline. The helicopter immediately veered off to watch the drama unfold from a safe distance.
“Thank God you’re here,” Karen clutched him like a long-lost lover which, he realized, he probably was. “There’s nobody flying the plane.”
“There is now,” Marty gently pulled himself away from her as her uniform transformed into a one-piece bathing suit. The old lady smelled of coconut oil and held a roll of toilet paper out to him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll bring this baby down safely.”
Marty settled into the pilot’s seat, only now it had become the driver’s seat of a pick-up truck. He confidently took the steering wheel in his hands, wrenching it hard to the left, barely missing the fireball that shot out of the La Brea tar pit.
The pick-up truck skidded across Wilshire Boulevard, another fireball blasting the asphalt away in front of him. He wrenched the wheel again, the truck nearly rolling over as he skillfully avoided a streaking ball of molten death.
“Hold on,” Marty yelled to Anne Heche, the beautiful, headstrong, presently heterosexual geologist beside him. He brought the car to a skidding stop. “Get out!”
They dived out of the truck just as a fireball slammed into it, blasting it to bits.
“Run!” Marty took Anne’s hand and together they ran through the rain of fire spilling from the geyser of lava that towered over the LA County Museum.
At last, they were outside the reach of the molten spray, safely shielded by a tall building. He squeezed her hand and turned to her. “We made it.”
Only Anne was gone. He was holding her dismembered arm.
Marty dropped it, screaming, and looked back the way he came. And then he saw Molly, trapped in her Volvo, slowly being consumed by the hellfire, her eyes pleading with him…
The sound of the gunshot shattered the image like glass and Marty bolted upright on the couch, eyes wide open, disoriented, frightened, his heart pounding.
Marty was in the lobby of an office. A breeze, and shafts of sunlight, came in through the blown out windows on the eastern side of the floor.
Then it all came back to him.
Where he was. What had happened.
Scattered memories of the nightmare, both the real one of the day before and the imagined one of his slumber, drifted across his mind.
Marty looked at his watch. It was 6:50 Wednesday morning. His mouth was dry, his lips chapped. His skin itched under clothes as stiff as cardboard. His ankle throbbed in the same spot where it fractured in the second grade. Even so, Marty felt a lot better than he did last night.
He reached down to unzip his pack and winced in pain. It felt like he was snapping muscles instead of stretching them, as if he was waking from the dead and discovering his body frozen by rigor mortis. He found a bottle of Evian, cracked it open, and drank it hungrily, letting the extra water spill over his lips and down his cheeks. He was tipping his head back for that last, glorious drop of water when his gaze fell on the chair across from him.
Marty gasped, choking on the water, coughing and gagging as he stared in horrified disbelief at what was sitting there.
Buck was slumped in the chair, his stiff body completely caked in dried mud and flecks of broken glass. The bounty hunter had clawed his way out of the grave to haunt him.
This wasn’t possible. It had to be a mirage.
Marty picked up the empty Evian bottle and threw it at Buck. The bottle bounced off Buck’s forehead and rolled across the floor.
Buck’s eyes flashed open and Marty yelped again, startled.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Buck rasped, straightening up in the chair.
Marty stared at him. “Are you for real?”
“Did you just throw a fucking bottle at me”
“It was empty,” Marty stammered.
“Is that how you usually wake somebody up You could show a little fucking consideration, especially after what I’ve been through.”
Marty examined Buck closely. It was unbelievable. Impossible. Nobody could have survived that flood and found him.
“You’re actually here, alive.” Marty said, more as a question than a statement.
“You got a problem with that, Marv?”
“It’s Marty. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Whatever. Give me one of those frog waters. It feels like someone took a shit in my mouth.”
Marty tossed him a water.
Buck caught it, twisted off the cap, and took a big swallow, gargling the water and spitting it out on the floor. He spit a few more times, then drank the rest of the bottle.
Buck stiffened, his eyes widening. “Oh, shit.”
He abruptly leaned over and heaved a stream of vomit that would make Linda Blair proud. Marty scrambled out of the way, taking his pack with him. Buck kept heaving, his whole body spasming with each violent discharge.
When it finally stopped, Buck hunched over, exhausted, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head sag down between his legs.
“Jesus,” Buck muttered. “I must have swallowed the entire fucking stairwell.”
“You were in the stairwell?” Marty asked.
“How the hell do you think I got in here?”
“I have no idea,” Marty sat on the arm of the couch, looking at him. “It makes no sense to me. I saw you walk away. You weren’t anywhere near me or this building.”
“I doubled back and followed you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re so goddamn helpless. I wanted to make sure you at least got to Cahuenga alive,” Buck lifted his head. “I never thought you’d end up saving my ass.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Marty said. “I didn’t even see you.”
“I was just standing there, staring at that fucking wave, when you bolted right past me. Snapped me out of a fucking trance. I ran after you into the building, but the water caught me just as I got to the stairwell. I couldn’t see a fucking thing, I could barely move. It was like swimming through wet cement. Just when I thought I was gonna drown, I hit a railing, grabbed it, and started pulling myself through the shit, and I mean shit. I got out, crawled up a few steps, and fainted like a fairy. Woke up two hours later beside the fucking woman from Jaws.”
Marty didn’t want to think about the woman in the stairwell again. “Sounds to me like you saved yourself.”
“I followed you,” Buck said. “You led me into the stairwell, therefore you saved my life. Almost makes me sorry I shot you.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Fuck you. I said almost, asshole. You’re lucky I don’t have my gun or I’d be tempted to shoot you again.”
“You lost it in the water?”
Buck jerked his head toward the hall. “I loaned it to dickhead.”
Marty suddenly remembered
the gunshot that woke him up and it all came together. “Jesus Christ, Buck! The guy was suicidal.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“Why the fuck do you think I loaned him the gun?”
Marty dropped his pack on the couch, slipped his bare feet into his crusty tennis shoes, and without bothering to tie them, headed down the corridor towards the conference room.
Buck groaned, got up, and lumbered slowly after him.
The conference room was empty. All that was left was a clean table and garbage can, its rim scorched, smoke still pouring from inside it.
Marty came out of the conference room, nearly colliding with Buck, and started moving through the hall, peering into every office.
“How could you give him your gun?” Marty asked.
“He was standing in front of a window but didn’t have the guts to jump. The loser asked me to push him. There was no fucking way I was gonna do that, so I gave him my gun.”
“Which office?”
“The big one in the corner.”
Marty rushed down the hall. Buck trundled after him.
They found Sheldon Lemp sitting in the big, executive chair with the lousy lumbar support, the back of his head blown off. The mud-encrusted gun was still in his hand, his arm loosely hanging off the upholstered arm-rest.
“You could have just walked away, Buck,” Marty said. “He might still be standing at that window if you had.”
“Or not.” Buck walked over to Lemp and examined the back of the chair. “Want to hear something funny Guess what company insured my apartment?”
All the ugly ramifications hit Marty at once. This was getting worse with each second. “You’re telling me you essentially murdered the man.”
“No, I’m telling you why I essentially don’t give a shit that he’s essentially dead.” Buck pried his gun out Lemp’s hand.
“The police might have a different interpretation.”