Threatening him wasn’t even my plan in the first place. None of it was. I’m no savior or martyr or a hero in any way. Too much unnecessary attention. I was originally just going to wait out the confrontation until the three kids beating up the old guy got his keys and led me to the car and his stash of water. But the girl and her little entourage showed up, complicating things. The second I saw the geek with the gun, I knew this was not going to end well if I didn’t intercede. So now I have a car and a weapon and maybe some water. Nice work for a Tuesday morning.
If Alyssa and company had any sense, they would have run as soon as I took the spotlight off her, just as the blond kid’s “friends” had. Or at least, that’s what I expected they’d do. Then again, the Tap-Out has made people remarkably unpredictable.
There’s a reason why I won’t tell her what happened at the beach yesterday. It’s because nothing I could say would help her face the reality of it. Call my silence compassion if you want.
I was there yesterday. Not early enough to get water, but early enough to see things go south. See, I had been staying for about a week in a beach house on a cliff that overlooked one of Laguna Beach’s smaller coves. Big iron D on the chimney. I think it once belonged to Bette Davis—my favorite old-time actress, because she wasn’t beautiful, but damn was she sexy! I don’t know who owns it now, but they’re not around this summer. See, obnoxiously rich people do this obnoxiously rich thing where they buy real estate just so they can park their money somewhere. And if they’re rich enough, they can’t be bothered to rent it out, so at any given time, maybe one in five of the cliffside homes in Laguna Beach are vacant. And burglar alarm signs only about half the time mean there’s actually an alarm. Add locksmith skills and a keen ability to keep a low profile, and I trip into the lap of luxury on a regular basis. Usually I stay for a week maybe, then clean up, like it was an Airbnb, and take off without the owners ever realizing I was there. Except for the fact that they do—because I always leave a note on a Hello Kitty greeting card, thanking them for their hospitality, and telling them that I’ve stocked the fridge with Dr Pepper for their next uninvited guest. What’s the point of life if you can’t mess with people?
I cut my arm breaking into the upstairs bathroom window of my current place. The gash wasn’t really a big deal—that is, until the Tap-Out. I was caught off guard just like everyone else, which was stupid of me, because I’m usually more on the ball. Then, when they announced that they’d be making drinking water out of the seaweed swill of Southern California’s beaches—and that the nearest location was just up the road—I took about a dozen empty water bottles and shoved them into my backpack—also Hello Kitty, because, okay, I’ve got a thing for Hello Kitty. It’s a guilty pleasure, kind of like the macho biker dude who secretly wears women’s underwear.
I arrived, like, an hour before they said the operation would start, but there were already lines up and down the beach and boardwalk, past the movie theater, running down all the side streets. Hundreds, if not thousands of people. On principle, I do not wait in lines. Instead I merge. Usually toward the front of a line, and do it with the skill of David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear. I just needed to find the right opening, so I lingered on the beach and observed.
The desalination machines were smaller than I had expected. The attendants who worked them looked like FEMA personnel—but they weren’t wearing the official cobalt blue outfits. These were sky-blue. Turns out they sent the FEMA volunteer corps. Which really pissed me off. Did they misjudge this water crisis so badly that they dismissed how dire it was, and left it in the hands of volunteers? I know they were stretched thin, but you can’t leave an entire relief effort to a bunch of wannabe feds. Not only is it a recipe for disaster, it’s a recipe with half the ingredients missing.
The machines worked at first, and the volunteers seemed to know what they were doing . . . that is, until the first machine started to smoke. That’s when it became clear that the attendants’ entire skill set was limited to opening the spigots and closing them again.
“It’s the seaweed,” I heard some fat know-it-all say. “These morons didn’t take into account the seaweed.”
Apparently the machines were designed to process filtered seawater. And although they tried to create makeshift filters, the machines were fouling and overheating one after another.
“Calm down,” the clueless volunteers told the angering crowd. “Technicians are coming to take care of the problem. There’ll be enough water for everyone.” But of course no one came, and pretty soon only two of six machines were still working.
Then the guy in charge made the next in a long series of mistakes. He told the people in front of the broken machines to get in line behind the people at the machines that were still working.
If f-bombs were nukes, we’d have wiped out the planet.
Are you effing kidding me? We’ve been effing waiting in the effing hot sun for three effing hours!
As they say in the Old Testament, there was much consternation and gnashing of teeth.
People tried to defy orders and merge themselves into the functional lines, but without any of the finesse that I would have brought to the endeavor. And the people who were already there pushed back, and the mergers pushed harder.
Get lost! We’ve been waiting in this line all day!
Yeah, well we’ve been waiting in THAT line all day!
So go back there and wait till they fix your stinking machine!
And in an instant the lines were gone. It was just a single crush of people pressing forward.
I didn’t see the first fight, but I felt it—because the entire mob surged and I was nearly knocked over. The crowd now pushed so hard that one of the two working machines was knocked over on its side—and even then, people rushed it, tried to fill their containers, but all they got was black sludge.
I had enough sense at that point to break away toward the waterline, but I was trapped there, forced to watch it all play out. One fight gave way to another, and another, and suddenly everyone’s brain seemed to shut down at once.
There’s this thing that happens with a mob. It’s called “deindividuation.” It’s the kind of thing that happens when a cop puts on a uniform, or when you wear a pair of sunglasses so people can’t quite see your eyes. It’s like you slip out of your normal self—and it makes you feel different. Behave different. So what happens when you’re just another thirsty soul in sea of water-zombies? You become one.
I saw an old man get trampled to death. I saw a mother steal water from someone else’s child. I even saw a man pull out a knife and murder a stranger in cold blood. The mob stormed the machines, attacked the attendants, some of whom had guns and started firing into the crowd.
Soon riot police stormed the scene, pushing against the crowd with riot shields as if they were going to push everyone into the sea and drown them. And some people did. Some people had nowhere to go but into the waves. And the weak ones, or the ones who couldn’t swim, went under. The riot police shot rubber bullets, hurled tear gas, beat people with batons.
I was able to wade my way out of it, and climbed on a rock farther down the beach, me and my Hello Kitty backpack still full of empty bottles. At this point, I was already feeling a fever coming on, and I knew it was from that lousy infected cut. I stayed back, watching all those people give in to the Call of the Void.
After almost an hour of complete chaos, and after hundreds of arrests, the mob began to thin, which finally allowed paramedics to come in to help the wounded and haul away the dead. By sunset the beach was pretty much deserted, and the riot officers who were left behind were firing warning shots at anyone who dared to come close to the ruined machines. I think maybe one or two of those shots weren’t just warnings.
I decided not to go back to the beach house. There was nothing for me there. No water. No supplies. I realized my best chance at survival wouldn’t be hiding from people, but being among them. Because that’s where opportunity was. P
eople can be played, moved, and sacrificed. So in that way I guess you could say I’m a people person. Moral of the story here: Bad news is sometimes best not broadcast. At least not by me. Because when it comes to Alyssa and Garrett’s parents, the truth is, between all the spilled blood and all the spilled water, they could be anywhere right now. Even the morgue.
• • •
We search the surrounding streets for the BMW, all the while my fever making me feel even more miserable. We pass vacant storefronts and small parking lots, and I’m pressing the panic button on the keys, but with no luck.
Alyssa and her brother keep looking around, and I know it’s not the BMW they’re looking for.
“What kind of car were your parents in?” I ask.
“A blue Prius,” Garrett says.
I laugh. “Good luck with that. That’s, like, half the cars in Laguna.” I hold the keys in the air and press the panic button again.
“If you hold the keys to your chin you’ll get better range,” Kelton says. “The electrical current travels up the fluids in your brain, turning your head into an antenna.”
It doesn’t work, but he smiles nonetheless, clearly proud of his ability to spout useless information. Book smarts are nice like heelies are nice: They’ll only get you so far, until you have to use your freaking feet. In fight-or-flight situations it’s street smarts that will get you out alive. I’m exceptionally lucky, because I have both. I’ve been on my own for a couple of years now and I’ve managed without a permanent address or a regular paycheck. Whether it was staying with the boyfriend of the month, or in a foreclosed home, or luxuriating in a mothballed beach house, I’ve done fine. Life on the fringe suits my personality. Even back in school it was the same. I didn’t have the melodramatic self-centeredness to be a goth, or show up to class enough to play the geek. I didn’t have an IQ low enough to tolerate the popular crowd . . . and I’m pretty sure I would have preferred impalement on the school’s flagpole than be a hipster.
My parents—who have so many of their own issues that they were determined I have issues too—kept bringing me to therapists and psychopharmacologists, who all told them that my problems stemmed more from environmental dysfunction than from chemical imbalance. Which always pissed them off. What could be dysfunctional about a mother so spiteful that she intentionally undercooks her husband’s chicken, and a father so narcissistic he gets a face-lift at forty? Eventually, however, they managed to find the one guy who would give them the diagnosis they wanted for me: Psychodissociative Disorder with Nihilistic Tendencies. Which basically means that I’m not a happy camper. And then they medicated me for it. Thank you, Dr. Quack.
It was great. For them. I didn’t have motivation enough to have opinions, or energy enough to care. The thing about medication is that it’s a true lifesaver if you actually need it. But if you don’t it’s just a pain in the ass.
When Mom finally grew a pair and announced that she wanted a divorce, I got out of there. This was one dog and pony show I did not need to witness, no matter how good the seats. I call every once in a while to make sure they haven’t eaten each other or joined a Kool-Aid cult. Other than that, we keep on our own sides of the demilitarized zone.
Being on my own over the past two years has brought me close to being a victim of human trafficking, and closer to being dead—and that was even before the Tap-Out. Great fodder for the memoir that I’ll never live to write.
So now I’m a chauffeur for three annoying kids. Which may ultimately be the most dangerous situation I’ve ever encountered.
• • •
We eventually find the BMW parked in an abandoned back lot. It’s silver, sleek, and looks incredibly expensive, which means there’s a chance this car is loaded with water, just as the blond kid said. The idea of it gets my adrenal glands pumping. But when I look inside, the car is a total mess. Mounds of useless junk. Sheaves of paper, trash, DVDs that would probably never be played again. . . . This can’t be it. What kind of second-rate hoarder brings trash rather than supplies? I search under the seats, between the seats—even the trunk is bursting with junk. It isn’t until I pop open the glove box that I find salvation—well, at least sixteen ounces of it. I start to guzzle down the water, with no intention of sharing, because I know these kids have water of their own. I have to force my lips from the bottle to breathe.
I take a deep breath and look through some of the junk. Dozens of pictures of the guy who this car belonged to—a glossy family portrait, each family member dressed in uninteresting matching turtlenecks. Hell, their photos might as well have just come with the frames. But for some reason, the more I look through the portraits the more it begins to affect me, which is weird and stupid because I never knew this guy. It’s more the items that get to me. The fact that these were the last things this man packed. These were the things he chose to keep before leaving his home, maybe forever. It’s a desperate feeling I can understand and relate to. And with all of these emotions, the gravity of our situation comes crashing back to me. I feel woozy. It’s the fever. I try to steel myself for the drive. This is no time for sentiment or sickness; it’s time to rally.
I take another swig from the water bottle and catch Alyssa staring at me.
“You should conserve,” she says. Like she’s reciting something she heard on a public service announcement while watching cartoons with her idiot brother.
I glare at her. “Kelton sits shotgun,” I declare, “because at least when he’s irritating, it’s informational.” The real reason, of course, is that whoever sits in the front with me will be my biggest threat—and right now the dorky ginger who can’t bring himself to fire a gun is the lowest risk. In fact, he seems hell-bent on being helpful.
“I’ll navigate,” he says. “We may have to go off-road.”
Alyssa looks at me skeptically, and then opens her big mouth again. “Who put you in charge?”
“I did,” I tell her, as I start up the car. “If you don’t like it, you can go back to your bikes and ride home.”
Alyssa eventually gets in the car, backing down as I knew she would. Because at the end of the day she needs me more than I need her. And I don’t need her at all. The only reason she and her brother are in this car is because Kelton probably wouldn’t come without them—and Kelton’s the man with the antibiotics. That is, unless he’s lying. But I don’t think he is. He’s honest to a fault. The kind of honesty that could get him killed.
As for Alyssa, I trust her just about as much as she trusts me. Which is fine, as long as I stay in control. Survival means not leaving any factor up to anyone else’s jurisdiction. But now, catching a better look at Alyssa in the rearview mirror, I sense something I hadn’t picked up on before. When I first met her I figured that she was all bark, no bite—but now in the car as sunlight refracts across her face, illuminating what I could not see before, I realize that her eyes aren’t as dull and vapid as I had first thought. She’s shrewd. Which means she could be a problem.
13) Alyssa
I can’t help but notice the way Jacqui’s eyes constantly glance back at me in the rearview mirror. I don’t like her or trust her and she knows it. She makes me think of something I learned in biology. How pack animals that go rogue are always hungrier and nastier, because it’s harder to hunt food without a pack—and when it comes down to it, you have no idea what they did to be excluded from the pack in the first place. Jacqui is an unknown quantity in an unmarked bottle, and we are currently at her mercy. For all I know, we’ve just been kidnapped.
Up front, Kelton flips on the radio. It’s on a satellite country station, which somehow seems obscene. Luke Bryan’s singing about rain, and whiskey, and his girl gettin’ frisky.
Jacqui looks over at him and says. “If you don’t change that, I will shoot you, and then shoot myself.”
He quickly obliges. “What kind of person puts on a song about rain today?” Kelton says, switching to an AM news station.
“—as the Tap-Out continu
es to plague the Southland, the governor and local officials have assured residents that evacuation centers—”
Jacqui reaches over and turns the radio off.
“Hey! That could be important!” I remind her.
“They keep looping the same broadcast—I’ve been listening all morning,” Jacqui says. “There aren’t any ‘evacuation centers.’ At least not yet, anyway.”
“Leave it off,” says Garrett. “I don’t want to hear anything anymore.”
Neither do I, really. I just don’t want to be stuck with my own thoughts. The only thing worse than my thoughts, though, are Kelton’s.
“Things are gonna fall apart pretty quickly now,” he says. “Critical services shutting down, unreliable communication—any minute it’ll all give way to urban Darwinism. See, there’s this theory called Three Days to Animal, which says—”
“I don’t want to know what it says, Kelton,” I tell him. “So just shut up about it.”
“Fine,” he says. And then doesn’t shut up. “It’s just that we’re on day four—so I think the theory’s only one day off.”
I hate the fact that he’s probably right. Disaster is one thing, and a riot is another, but the total disintegration of society? Is that what we’re witnessing? My head spirals into visions of a post-apocalyptic reality that I never imagined could arrive quicker than the expiration date on our milk.
“You kids crack me up,” Jacqui says. “All you do is bitch, bitch, bitch at each other. Next you’ll start asking, ‘Are we there yet?’ ”
To which Garrett replies, “Are we there yet?”
I rap him a little harder than I meant to, but he doesn’t really react. He just slumps, and looks out the window, probably trying to avoid his own thoughts, too.
“You keep calling us kids,” I say to Jacqui, “but you don’t look any older than eighteen.”
“Nineteen.”
As we cross over the freeway, the same cars are still on the roadway below, and now there’s clear evidence of abandonment. I force my thoughts away from it.
Dry Page 11