The Killing Fields

by Ryan Schow

  I’m grabbing on to the nearest thing for purchase, the floor beneath me tilting, rattling, jarring me about. Inside, things are crashing around in the cabinets, but the boat levels out and we find an opening in the waterway.

  I head out with Bailey and we stand vigil, Marcus following her directions going just about as slow as he can without slipping into an aimless drift.

  We make our way to what Marcus says is Balboa Island. He navigates us in between two rows of small yacht moorings where several of the boats have sunken or are pulling under. In the water, two bodies are floating. A man and a woman. Bailey turns away; I can’t stop staring. After that, as Marcus pulls to shore, we don’t see anymore bodies or bump into any more boats.

  “Everyone hang on to something!” he yells and a few minutes later we run to shore, driving the keel up into the sand.

  Turning the wheel, Marcus delicately reverses the engine and I know what’s coming next. I run to the back of the boat just in time for him to swing the stern toward the dock. When it’s close enough, I jump. Successfully making the leap, I grab the nearest cleated dock line expecting the stern to slam into the dock. When it hits, I jump back on board, wrap and secure the dock line on the boat and pull it tight. Disembarking once more, hustling up the dock, I watch as Bailey moves to the rail. I toss her the bow line, which she catches and looks at as if to say, what do I do with this?

  “Wrap it around the cleat, that metal tie down, and just hold it tight,” I tell her. “Don’t let the boat drift away from the dock and keep your hands and fingers away from the cleat.”

  “Quentin,” Marcus says, tossing the kid a strapped carrying case for what looks like field glasses, “get up top, scout out the island!”

  Quentin catches the box, opens it up to see what’s inside, then closes it and makes his way to the aft deck where he removes the binoculars and stands guard.

  Marcus scuttles to the main deck, looking for the yacht’s dock lines which he claims will be more secure. When he finds them, he secures the bow line topside, then tosses me the line, which I tie down. We do the same with the bow spring line, the stern spring line and the stern line.

  When everything is tied off properly and the boat is holding fast, Marcus grabs a few things, including the .357 and a few bottles of water, and says, “Let’s go.”

  He hands each of us a water bottle as he moves forward to take the lead. With the shotgun in hand and me taking up the rear, the four of us—led by Marcus—move at a slow jog up the dock passing a few sunken motorboats and not much else in the still harbor waters.

  When we reach the shoreline, we make our way down the boardwalk, seeing house after giant house stacked nearly side-by-side.

  “It’s so quiet here,” Bailey says.

  “Can’t imagine a whole lot of these people telecommuting,” Quentin jokes, even though it’s not funny.

  At this point, nothing is funny.

  Balboa Island is all million dollar homes on postage stamp lots. The roads are narrow and each home stands only a few feet from its neighbor. It’s hard to imagine a city planner planning this island any tighter, but with the real estate market in Newport Beach being what it is, and home prices always on the rise, it would seem unreasonable to expect anything different.

  “How much do you think these homes are worth?” Bailey asks.

  “Right now,” Marcus says, “a dollar, a life, the lives of many.”

  I get what he’s trying to say. They’re only worth what they can do to save our lives and the lives of others.

  “This place feels like a ghost town,” Bailey says as we move off the shoreline and into the neighborhood. “It’s super creepy.”

  Most of the houses along the bay aren’t damaged, which is promising on one hand and dangerous on the other hand.

  If the drones decide to hit the island while we’re on it, all we can do is hide and hope not to get blown up. Fortunately the island looks stable enough.

  “How do we know which house to rob?” Quentin says in low tones.

  “Find the one without people in it,” Marcus says back.

  “What if there are dead people in there?”

  “Why would they be dead?” Marcus hisses over his shoulder.

  Quentin stops asking questions and I follow Marcus’s lead. We head up Amethyst Avenue moving past the nicest homes. Many of them have small, clean yards, stucco and clapboard style exteriors. It’s sort of like the Hamptons, but packed much tighter.

  “Can we just squat here for a few years?” I hear myself ask, marveling at how nice the homes are.

  “Where do you live?” Quentin asks.

  “San Francisco.”

  “What part?”

  “My backyard overlooks Dirt Alley, which is a real dirt alley, if you catch my drift.”

  “So you live in a dump,” Bailey says without much humor.

  “Not really,” I say, because my home is nice enough. “But compared to these homes? I’m pretty sure we all live in dumps.”

  Marcus says, “We’re going door to door. Hopefully we won’t run into anyone.”

  The first door we knock on, a woman answers. She’s scared, answering though a cracked open door.

  “I have a gun,” she says.

  “You’d be a fool not to have one,” Marcus says, undeterred.

  “Are you armed?” she asks, looking Marcus over. She sees me in back with the shotgun and her eyes go wide.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Marcus says. “We’re working with Neighborhood Watch to make sure everyone is okay.”

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “Who else is on the block, ma’am?” Quentin asks, impatient, his tone rather sharp.

  She looks the four of us over with a more discriminating eye.

  “You’re not with the Neighborhood Watch, are you?” she asks. She’s a pair of big, suspicious eyes; she’s a spark of concern, that little niggle of worry just creep, creep, creeping up the hollows of her spine, the one that makes a woman like her take a pack of strangers like us serious.

  “Do you even have one here?” Quentin says, his head cocked like a jerk, like he doesn’t have time for any of this. “A Neighborhood Watch?”

  “Sanford is in charge of security…”

  “Who else is home on the block?” Bailey asks, her tone tempered, trying to sound more reassuring and harmless than her nerdy predecessor.

  She opens the door a little wider. What she does is open it just enough to show us she’s holding a pistol at her side.

  Apparently we’re not as dangerous as we feel.

  But this lady? Wow. She’s got to be sixty-five. Her body, however, looks Frankensteined back a few decades. Maybe her husband is a cosmetic surgeon and she’s a pro-bono case. But damn. To say she doesn’t match herself is the understatement of the year. Looking her over, honestly—and I’d never say something like this out loud—she’s a Botox nightmare with big fake breasts and spidery fake eyelashes and injected lips and fillers and color contacts.

  “Do you think you’re an accurate representation of the kinds of folks we’ll find here on Balboa Island?” Quentin asks. I take a step forward, give him a nudge. He turns and says, “What?”

  “Slow your roll, man.”

  He sets his jaw, drills me with his eyes. You know how when you look at someone long enough, right in the eyes, and you see beyond their physical appearance? Well I feel Quentin in that moment and the feeling is deeply unsettling.

  “What do you mean by ‘accurate representation?’” the woman asks. “Are you talking about age or the way I look?”

  “Age, ma’am,” Quentin says, his tone somewhat softer on the edges.

  “We’re not a retirement community, if that’s what you’re asking. Even though I don’t work.”

  Marcus finally speaks up. “Who around here does work?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  This is taking too long. Nudged by larger concerns that feel like hig
h anxiety in my chest, I step forward with the shotgun and say, “Because if they’re not home by now they’re probably dead, and if they’re dead, we’re going to take their stuff before it rots or you people rob them yourselves.”

  “Real subtle, Nick,” Bailey says.

  All I can think about is those things that destroyed San Diego, about our boat just hanging out there for anyone to steal, and Indigo. God, I can’t stop thinking of Indigo.

  “This is our neighborhood to rob, if we want,” the woman says. Her mouth is moving like a fish out of water, like she’s gulping for something that just isn’t there. Strangely, predictably, nothing else is moving. Not her eyebrows, her cheeks or even her ears.

  I rack the shotgun, jam it in her face. “You think you’re the only one who can rob this little slice of heaven, but my shotgun here says otherwise.”

  Rolling her eyes, shoving the gun out of the way, she says, “Annette and her husband Gary work. They’re three doors down. Two doors after that is a single guy with a Ferrari and too much hair gel. He works. That’s all I know because I’m not nosey like some of the people here.”

  “You’re too kind,” Marcus says, pulling me back.

  “Try not to threaten anyone else,” she calls out after we leave.

  We knock at the next two doors, both older homes that look like they’ve taken the weather for years, but haven’t yet bent to it. We expect guns and threats. More Botox ladies ready to defend their overpriced oceanfront homes and their zero lot lines. Instead the sounds of our unanswered summons ring hollow. One house, with its sloping, Spanish tile roof and its low-rent detective agency looking shingle siding, has all the look of a strip mall standout in a town ravaged by economic disintegration.

  Marcus knocks on the door, but even when the knock goes unrequited by a face, a voice, a warning, we all look at each other as if to say, is this a house you really want to rob?

  It wasn’t.

  We all shake our heads and go to the next home, which has floor-to-ceiling windows and basically looks like a modern box structure with two stories of glass windows and a stylish roof deck.

  “This is the one,” Marcus says, hopeful. “Stay here.”

  The man is all muscle, but he moves light on his feet, fast and agile. He skirts around back, presumably checking the open windows for occupants while leaving the rest of us to a wet, ominous silence.

  A second later, Marcus throws the deadbolt on the other side of the huge glass door and our “friend” ushers us into the vacant home.

  The minute I set foot inside, its spaciousness and beauty gives me pause. We’re talking beach wood hardwood floors, crisp white walls, a shale fireplace that runs floor to ceiling and an open, modern kitchen that gives it an old Hollywood feel with a Cape Cod soul.

  There isn’t a ton of square feet, but what there is has been done so perfectly, I almost wonder if some designer with a European accent, a strange name and a bowl-cut hairdo charged a veritable fortune in its creation.

  “My God,” I hear myself say.

  “Right?” Bailey says, her eyes soft with wonder, the collapse happening outside these lavish walls temporarily forgotten.

  “The ceilings,” I hear myself saying.

  Horizontal open beams of rough cut wood line the ceiling, all of it painted stark white. All around us, tons of natural lighting pours in through the open windows highlighting white walls with sea foam green accents and the kind of furniture so pristine and expensive looking you wonder if staring at it feels more appropriating than sitting on it. Heaven forbid, a single crease mar the otherwise lovely surface.

  “This place makes my home back in San Francisco look like a squatter’s box.”

  “Hey Architectural Design, we’ve got bigger things to do here,” Marcus says. “Starting with us taking inventory.”

  Marcus says this while rifling through the pantry and the cupboards. When he stands up, he turns, smiles and says, “Bingo!” He’s holding up a box of Glad black bags. Pulling out four of the flex-fit bags, he hands them to us one-by-one and says, “Fill them with essentials only, but remember whatever you pack in there, we have to walk it a few blocks and down the dock to the boat.”

  Then to Bailey, who’s still wearing filthy clothes, he says, “Check upstairs, check the wardrobe. Sensible not cute.”

  She flashes him a look and says, “What if they’re both sensible and cute?”

  “Then we’ll celebrate later.”

  She heads upstairs while the three of us gather food, paper plates, silverware and other more immediate necessities into the bags.

  Marcus doesn’t find any weapons, but we find extra blankets, a pair of winter coats and an old flashlight with new batteries. I’m not sure we’ll need all this stuff. Then again, we might need all of it. Dear God, how do you prepare for something like this?

  The reality is, you can’t.

  Whatever we don’t use we can always leave behind. Just use the world as our personal garbage can. Jeez, what a truly depressing thought. If we dropped our trash, would anyone notice? Would anyone care? What about if we were the trash? That begs the question: if we just dropped dead in the streets, would anyone even notice?

  Probably not.

  Bailey doesn’t find any clothes that fit. I’m here half worrying myself to death about Mother Earth and she’s stuck in a fashion drought. She looks depressed. Her spirits lift a bit as she helps pack up our loot, but there is still that hope that she can find something clean and cute to wear.

  We’re loaded and ready to go, but the bags are heavier than we anticipated, so it’s murder dragging everything to the boat. We do it though. We empty it all out on the boat then head back to hit one more house.

  Maybe two.

  We pass Botox lady’s house, wander further up the block, start knocking on doors fairly quickly. No one answers. The island truly does have that emptied-out feel. We target a home that looks modern, but without that Cape Cod feel. We’re looking for something a little less extravagant. Something not as nice as everything else. Marcus says all the old people own the nicest things because they have the most money.

  “Isn’t that what we want?” Bailey asks. “Don’t we want to hit the nicest homes?”

  “Not if we’re going to get you out of those clothes.”

  Bailey casts the big man a questioning look, one I find rather curious. Is she intrigued? Confused? The sexual innuendo draws a prying look from Quentin.

  “Explain,” Bailey says.

  “You look like hell and you need new clothes,” Marcus explains. “You’re not going to find anything sensible or cute in an old lady’s house.”

  “Oh,” she says, chilling out. “That’s what you meant.”

  He turns and looks at her, as if he’s offended, and says, “What did you think I was referring to?” He glances at me and Quentin, gets it, then shakes his head and says, “Unbelievable.”

  The house we target, it looks pretty amazing inside, maybe as nice as the last but much younger looking. Like the designer never saw the Hampton’s but knew the exact tastes of the new moneyed crowds.

  Marcus breaks a window in back, lets us in the front door. Bailey and Quentin head to the master bedroom, find a jackpot of clothes—which they stuff into new black bags—then head out front to wait for me and Marcus.

  We’re in the back of the house, in the pantry rounding up a stockpile of food. Looking back, I wonder if that’s why didn’t hear what was happening.

  By then, it was already too late…

  A rent-a-cop in a bluish-gray SECURITY uniform drew his revolver, pointed it at Quentin and Bailey and said, “Drop the bags, get on your knees, puts your hands behind your heads.”

  Bailey and Quentin startled, stopping in their tracks.

  The white cop was wild eyes, a shooter’s stance, all business. Bailey glanced at Quentin whose eyes were shot wide and locked in on the slightly overweight, slightly balding guard—a man who seemed to have come from nowhere. Quentin let a
snide smile loose, then gave a little laugh.

  “You’re not even a real cop,” Quentin said, relaxing. “You’re just an out of shape Poindexter with a gun and a fake mall cop badge.”

  The portly “cop” blanched. Brows pulling in tight, the grip on the pistol tightening at the challenge, the errant comment either made him more insecure or more dangerous. Bailey wasn’t sure which it was.

  “You think this gun is fake?” he barked. “You think these bullets won’t cut right through you? Because this is a real gun with real bullets and if I pull this trigger and double tap either of you, there’ll be real blood and a real God’s honest death.”

  Bailey was suddenly scared. She was starting to get a better read on him. He looked like he could be clumsy, and not just because he was obviously out of shape, but because he had that awkward appearance. She got the feeling he was the kind of kid who got bullied all his life then took a job where he could carry a gun and make sure guys like Quentin never bullied him again.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” Bailey heard herself ask.

  If anything she was good at neutralizing tough situations. At least she used to think that. Now she hoped to God she could stop this situation from careening out of control.

  “Yeah,” he said, his words sharp and cutting. “I know exactly what’s going on. You’re using a bad situation as cover to rob my mom’s neighborhood.”

  Now it made sense. This was the Botox lady’s son.

  “This is worse than a bad situation, Paul Blart,” Quentin said, joking but not joking at all.

  It was clear he wasn’t mall security, but he wasn’t a real cop either and if this was a sore subject for him, then Quentin just might be poking the bear.

  “Doesn’t give you the right to rob people,” he retorted.

  “It’s survival of the fittest,” Quentin challenged, sizing him up. “And you’re about as fit as a plus size model, mall cop edition.”

  “I’m taking you in,” the fake cop said.

  “You can’t even take your waistline in,” Quentin said, picking up his bag of clothes.

  The security guard—whose badge read Clinton—stepped forward fast, jammed the gun in Quentin’s face and hissed, “Go ahead and tempt me, scumbag. I’m gonna put this smoke wagon to the test, see how big a hole I can put in that stupid looking head of yours. And who’d stop me? I’m not the real law, but right now, I’m the only law and it’s my way or the dead way.”