‘Dad,’ said Tyler, gripping his armrests tightly to stop himself being thrown from side to side.
‘Sorry, Tyler, I don’t mean to scare you but things are getting critical, and a whole lot sooner than anybody’s prepared to admit.’
‘Dad, I didn’t shoot Mr Alvarez and like I told you that Big Puppet made me do what I did to Maria. He would have killed her if I hadn’t, he would have shot her right in front of me. She’ll tell the judge that, I know she will. Mr Lemos said they would have let me out on bail, for definite.’
‘Listen, I know that,’ said Martin. ‘But this afternoon they’re going to cut off the water supply to West Valley Detention Center, just like they’ve cut it off to all off the poorer districts downtown. Come on, Tyler, prison is bad enough as it is. Can you imagine being locked up in a place like that without being able to take a shower or flush the john or even have a drink of water? You’re talking hell on Earth.’
‘Are you serious? They’re going to cut off the water? They can’t do that!’
‘They can and they’re going to. Not only that – I don’t think they have any intention of turning it back on again, not until this drought is over, and when that will be, God alone knows. They keep talking about rotating the water rationing from one neighborhood to the next but that’s B.S.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I have it on good authority from someone on the Governor’s special drought team. It’s survival of the wealthiest, dude. Welcome to the wonderful world of the haves and the have-nots, and the way things are going, the have-nots are never going to have it. Look up ahead of us. See all that smoke downtown? That’s a water riot. That’s people who haven’t been able to have a drink of water or wash for two days.’
‘I heard the cops talking about it in the police station. Even some of them were saying that you can’t blame people for protesting if they don’t have any water.’
‘Of course not. But as soon as people riot, the authorities can accuse them of civil disorder, and that automatically puts them in the wrong. We’re supposed to have free speech in this country, but that depends on who you are and what you say.’
‘So what are we going to do?’ said Tyler. He turned around in his seat to see if anybody was following them, but the nearest vehicle was two blocks behind them, and it was a bus. ‘The police are going to be looking for us, aren’t they?’
‘The police are kind of busy right now, so I’m taking advantage of that to get us out of town – me, you, your mom and Ella – and some other people, too. Some people who can help us to survive, with any luck.’
‘What people? Where are we going?’
‘If I knew that, exactly, I wouldn’t need anybody’s help. But right now, I do.’
‘Dad – your friend Charlie—’
‘I know,’ said Martin, glancing down at his blood-spattered shirt and pants. The blood had dried now, and turned a rusty brown color. ‘Just try not to think about it, OK? That was the way Charlie would have chosen to go, believe me. Not with a whimper, but a damn great bang.’
As they drove nearer and nearer to downtown, they could hear sirens screaming in chorus and a pattering sound that sounded like rain, except that it hadn’t rained in over a year. They also heard intermittent popping and crackling, a mixture of fireworks and gunfire.
As they crossed over 3rd Street and looked westward to North D Street they could see almost nothing but thick gray smoke and a scattering of small orange fires burning on the ground, which Martin guessed were the shattered remains of home-made gas bombs. Red and blue police lights were flashing through the gloom, and they could see scores of people running, although the smoke was so thick they looked like ghosts. It was their feet that were pattering like rain.
Windows had been broken and cracked all the way along the street, including the Bank of America, and there was debris strewn everywhere – chairs, newspaper stands, railings, bricks, even a giant fiberglass ice-cream cone, lying on its side.
Tyler said, ‘What do they expect people to do, if they cut off their water?’
‘I think they expect them to lie down obediently and die,’ said Martin. He could smell tear gas in the air, and so he shifted the Eldorado back into drive and took the next left, away from the city center. ‘In fact I think they’ve forgotten that people on welfare are as human as they are, even if they’re poor. They’re just, like, inconvenient statistics. They use up x amount of water every day, but they never pay for it. Therefore, they’re not entitled to any.’
He turned right, and then left, and then right again. The rundown suburban streets leading to the Murillo house were hot and empty, their tar melting and their concrete cracking and their parched bushes decorated with candy wrappers and torn sheets of newspaper and dented cola cans. There was nobody in sight, only a mangy brown-and-white dog trotting along the sidewalk with its tongue hanging out, rasping for breath.
They parked and Martin stowed the two Colt Commandos in the trunk, making sure that he locked it. Then he led Tyler around the side of the house. All of the Murillo children were still there, lying in the shadow of the back verandah, except for Susan, who was inside, banging and clattering in the kitchen, although what she was able to cook without any water was anybody’s guess. Mikey was playing a game on his iPhone while Nathan was using a toy truck to run over ants and squash them. George and Mina were asleep, and their grandfather Santos Murillo was asleep, too, his Panama hat covering his face, his flaccid belly hanging over the withered elastic of his boxer shorts. From inside the living room came the overenthusiastic sound of a TV shopping program.
People are dying of thirst, thought Martin, and they’re still trying to sell them crystal bead drop earrings.
He stepped carefully over one of the sleeping children and shook Santos’ shoulder. Santos let out a sharp bark of surprise and lifted his hat, trying to focus on Martin with misted-up eyes.
‘What is it? You scared the shit out of me. I was having a dream about buzzards, trying to peck out my eyes.’
‘They still haven’t turned your water back on?’
He coughed, and sniffed, and sat up straight. ‘Another twelve hours, that’s what they said on the news. Well, ten now because that was two hours ago. But I won’t believe it until I see it pouring out of the faucet with my own eyes.’ He paused, and looked Martin up and down, and then said, ‘What the hell happened to you? You been creosoting a fence or something?’
‘Something like that. But you see all that smoke? That’s people rioting about the water, because they don’t believe it’s ever coming back on.’
‘I was right, then. They want us dead. But what we can we do?’
‘We can get the hell out of here.’
Santos stared at him, licking his lips with a tongue as gray and as dry as a lizard’s. ‘I do believe I know what you’re thinking, Mister Children-and-Family-Service man.’
‘Go on, then. Tell me. What am I thinking?’
‘You’re thinking about what I said the last time we talked. You’re thinking about Lost Girl Lake. You want me to take you there, don’t you? There’s always plenty of water at Lost Girl Lake.’
‘Very astute of you, Santos. But not just me. All of us. My family, and your family, too. Rita, and Susan, and Mikey, and all the rest of the kids. There’s plenty of room for them all in that old Suburban of yours, isn’t there?’
‘Unh-hunh. Rita won’t come. Rita won’t go anyplace where she isn’t two minutes away from a discount liquor store. Besides, it would probably kill her if she stopped drinking cold turkey. And she would never let us take the kids. She may be a drunk but she loves the kids almost as much as she loves her booze.’
‘What about Susan?’
Santos shook his head. ‘No way. Susan won’t come without her brothers and sisters. She’s like their mother.’
‘This city, Santos – this county – this entire state – maybe this whole goddamned country for all they’re telling us – it’s Arm
ageddon, Santos. People are going to start dying in their thousands.’
Santos reached across to a rusty metal ashtray and picked up his half-smoked stogie. ‘Oh, well. Maybe it’s retribution time. Maybe at last the Great Spirit has decided to take his revenge on the people who killed our women and children and took our land away from us.’
‘You don’t believe that any more than I do,’ Martin retorted. ‘Come on, Santos. I need you. How can I find Lost Girl Lake without you?’
Santos sucked thoughtfully on his stogie, although he didn’t light it. Almost half a minute went past before he said, ‘Give me one good reason why I should.’
‘Because once this drought is over I’ll make sure that Rita goes into rehab and that the kids get everything they need, and more. A private education. Health care. You name it. I’ll also make sure that you get the best palliative treatment for your prostate cancer.’
‘So why didn’t you do all this before?’
‘Because I wasn’t trying to bribe you before.’
Santos couldn’t stop himself from smiling. ‘You know something, Wasicu, for a bacon stealer, you’re very, very honest.’
For Santos to call Martin ‘Wasicu’ was a long-standing joke between them. ‘Wasicu’ was a Lakota word for ‘white man’ but it was often confused with ‘wašin icu’ which means ‘steals the bacon’ or ‘greedy,’ and even many Native Americans thought that was why the white men had been given that name.
‘So can you show us how to get there?’ Martin asked him.
‘I can. I could. But Lost Girl Lake, it’s only a daydream, these days. A place I think about when the pain gets worse.’
‘Santos, I’m seriously asking you to be our guide.’
‘Don’t you have satnav?’
‘Lost Girl Lake isn’t marked on any satellite maps. I know. I looked for it.’
‘I’m too sick, my friend. What I said to you before about relocating … that was wishful thinking, that’s all.’
Martin looked down at the children sprawled all around them. ‘Santos, if you take us to Lost Girl Lake, I will guarantee that I will have somebody from CFS come here and take all of your family someplace safe. Somewhere where the drought is not so serious and they can start all over. I have contacts in family services in Portland, in Oregon. I also have contacts in Vancouver, in Canada. I’ll pay for it myself.’
‘So why don’t you just take your own family there?’ asked Santos.
Martin looked across at Tyler, who was sitting on the steps at the end of the verandah, bouncing Nathan’s ball. Nathan himself was sleeping on one of the sunbeds, breathing harshly through his mouth and twitching from time to time as if he were having a nightmare.
‘My son Tyler here got into some trouble with the law. I’ve just sprung him from a prison bus. We couldn’t go near an airport or a major highway without risking him getting caught again.’
‘What’s he supposed to have done?’
‘The cops think he shot somebody but he didn’t.’
Santos nodded, reflectively. ‘That happened to one of my boys once. John, his name was. Only trouble is, he didn’t even get a trial. The cops shot him dead on the spot.’
Santos laid his hand on little Mina’s head. Her eyes were half-closed and her lips were swollen and cracked.
‘Granpa,’ she whispered. ‘Granpa, I’m so thirsty.’
‘It’s OK, sweet thing,’ said Santos. ‘Mikey … bring your sister some of that Mountain Dew, will you?’
Mikey got up and went into the house. Santos said, ‘Him and Nathan went out last night and came back with three big bottles of soda. We didn’t ask them where they found them. We were just glad of the drink.’
‘Santos,’ said Martin, ‘these kids are going to die unless we do something. I still think your best option is for your whole family to come with us. There’s no rain forecast and things are only going to get much, much worse.’
Santos thought for a moment longer, and then stood up, wincing as he did so. ‘OK, I’ll go talk to Rita. Don’t be surprised if you hear some yelling and cursing. But I’m the head of this family, after all, when it comes down to it, and Rita knows that, even when she’s drunk as a skunk.’
Less than forty minutes later, Rita and all the rest of the Murillo family were crowded into Santos’ faded green Chevy Suburban in the front driveway of their house, all eight of them. They had packed some changes of clothes into black plastic trash bags and cardboard boxes.
Santos started up the Suburban’s engine with a shriek of its fan belt and a cloud of black smoke. Martin walked across the scrubby, sunburned lawn and said, ‘Don’t know how you managed to persuade her, Santos, but congratulations.’
Susan was sitting in the center, and Rita gave Martin a finger-wave from the right-hand passenger seat. ‘You’re a good man, Martin!’ she crowed. ‘I always said so, didn’t I? You’re simply the best, better than all the rest!’
Santos leaned out of his window, cupped his hand over his mouth and said, very quietly, ‘I told her that you had a case of Smirnoff Blue Label at your house. I said that if she agreed to come with us, she could have it all to herself.’
‘I see,’ said Martin, grinning at Rita and giving her a wave of his hand in return. ‘What happens when she finds out that she’s been bamboozled?’
‘You were in the Marines, weren’t you? I am sure that you know all about crossing bridges when you come to them.’
Martin walked back to his car and sat down behind the wheel. As he started up the engine, Tyler said, ‘This is insane, Dad.’
‘Of course it’s insane. But life is insane. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the only way to survive is to out-insane it.’
It would have been far quicker for them to go back through the city center and join the northbound freeway by the 5th Street on-ramp. But as they reached the end of the street they could see that even more fires had broken out downtown and now they could hear repeated crackles of gunfire, as well as people screaming.
Thick brown smoke was pouring from the upper floors of the nine-story Vanir Tower. It was billowing in front of the sun, so that the afternoon had become prematurely gloomy.
Tyler looked at Martin wide-eyed. ‘Jeez, Dad. It’s like a war.’
‘It is a war,’ said Martin. He turned around to Santos, who had stopped close behind them, and indicated that he was going to turn right, away from the city center, and make his way north through the suburbs. He would probably take North Mountain View Drive, if it was clear. It was a divided highway for most of the way, and even though the speed limit was only forty he doubted if there would be many traffic cops around.
He was right. When they turned into it, he could see that North Mountain View Drive was wide and empty, all the way to the Foothill Freeway. He put his foot down and headed due north, with Santos’ Chevy rattling only a few feet behind him. He just hoped that Santos’ brakes weren’t as worn out as Santos was.
He turned on the radio, but all he could find was country-and-western music and AllWorship contemporary Christian rock and some Spanish-language station discussing burritos. When he tried to tune in to the news, there was nothing but a loud hissing sound.
‘Maybe the rioters have broken into the radio stations,’ Tyler suggested.
‘Either that, or the powers-that-be don’t want us to know what’s happening, and they’ve jammed them.’
He was still punching repeatedly at the buttons on the radio when his cell rang. He heard a woman say, ‘Martin?’ and then something else, but at first her voice was distorted and blurry.
‘Hallo?’ he said. ‘I can’t hear you. Who is this?’
Suddenly he could hear her very clearly, almost as if she were sitting next to him. ‘Martin? It’s Saskia – Saskia Vane. I need your help. I think I’m in serious danger. I don’t just think it … I know I am.’
‘Right now, Saskia, we’re all in serious danger.’
Saskia said, ‘I know, but this i
s something different. I’ve been specifically threatened. It’s Joseph Wrack, from Empire Security Services. He’s their director of public safety, so-called, which really means that he’s in charge of making sure that anybody who causes trouble for any of their clients suffers a very nasty accident, very often fatal.’
‘But you’re supposed to be on the same side, aren’t you? ESS works for Governor Smiley and so do you.’
‘I do. Or at least I did. But I tipped you off about them cutting off the water at the West Valley Detention Center, didn’t I? Maybe I was naïve, but I didn’t realize you were going to rescue your son in quite such a spectacular way. Joseph Wrack’s gone apeshit. One of his top security guards was crushed underneath the prison bus, and seriously injured. His back was broken and it looks like he’s going to lose one of his legs.’
‘Listen to me, Saskia. That so-called top security guard shot my old service buddy Charlie right in front of me, in cold blood. He only got what he asked for.’
‘Maybe, but Joseph Wrack doesn’t see it that way. He’s out to get me.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘One of Governor Smiley’s PR girls happens to be a friend of mine. After Wrack saw me and you together at KNBC she overheard him telling Governor Smiley that he thought we were acting “too familiar”. From then on, Wrack’s people tapped all of my cellphone calls and all of my emails. Wrack’s paranoid like that, so my friend says. So he knew at once that I gave you the heads up about them cutting off the water at the West Valley Detention Center – and according to my friend he blames me for his security guard getting hurt and his bus being wrecked. She heard him tell Governor Smiley that he’s going to nail me.’
‘And what did Governor Smiley say to that?’
‘Nothing, apparently.’
‘You told me that you owed Governor Smiley. Big time, that’s what you said. So what do you owe him?’
‘I can’t talk about that now, Martin. I just need to get out of San Bernardino before one of Wrack’s people finds me. I was hoping you could help in some way.’
They were driving over the freeway now. Below them, the eastbound lanes were solid with stationary traffic, while the westbound lanes were almost empty. It looked as if everybody was trying to escape from the city, although Redlands and Palm Springs and Palm Desert were probably just as short of water as San Bernardino. The mid-afternoon sun was so intense that the vehicles were shimmering with heat. Martin could see that scores of people had left their cars and were sitting under the flyovers to find some shade.
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