Crawford Kilian - Tsunami - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

“Are you asking us to help you loot some unprotected store?” grinned the cameraman.

“No, to help us feed some unprotected people.”

“Why not?” asked the sound girl. The reporter nodded slowly.

“I can see the humanitarian angle,” he said. “Sure. We can only take three or four of you, though.”

“That’s fine.” She told the volunteers to go back and help get the cafeteria ready; then she and Sam and Einar climbed into the back of the van. The cameraman got in behind the wheel and doused the floodlights on the roof; the guardsmen were left to protect the Co-op in almost total darkness.

“Never seen anything like this,” Jason Schwartz said over his shoulder, one arm resting comfortably on the sound girl’s shoulder. “We got tape you wouldn’t believe. We came on down Interstate Eighty into Richmond, and boy, you should’ve seen those tank farms burning!”

“It was really, you know, far out,” said the sound girl. “Like almost a religious experience, you know?”

“Shut up, Michelle. Listen, if we get a chance before the chopper pickup we’ll run some of that tape for you guys. Just un-fuckin-believable. These big, big, orange flashes, you know, and the stuff pouring like lava down into the bay, sort of like the last days of Pompeii, you know? Wow, and we got really, really close; there wasn’t any police or firefighters there. I seriously think we got a chance for an award.”

They had turned south onto Sacramento and were driving past block after block of two-and three-story apartment buildings. Candles glowed dimly in many of the windows. The only stores they saw were small convenience markets and corner groceries; most had been looted, except for a few guarded by armed civilians.

Then they were in Oakland; the apartment buildings here were older, taller and grimier, interspersed with used-car lots and funeral homes and Polynesian restaurants. To the south, fires reflected pink and orange off the low overcast, silhouetting the high-rise towers of downtown Oakland. A few fires burned just ahead, but no sirens wailed and no one moved in the streets. All the apartment windows were black.

“Christ!” The cameraman jammed on the brakes, too late, and the truck bounced over two bodies in the middle of the street.

“Fred, Fred, stop!” yelled the reporter. “That’s hit-and-run, for Christ’s sake!”

“Shit, Jason, they were already dead. Look, oh God, the whole fucking street is full of ‘em.”

He slowed to a stop. In the truck’s high beams, the street and sidewalk ahead were littered with bodies. They lay in heaps and singly; their clothes looked strangely tattered and discoloured, and their skins were mottled. A black woman had fallen from the door of the taxi she’d been driving. Her face was puffy and looked scarred. Two dachshunds lay stiffly beside a boy of nine or ten. The air was sharp with the smell of chlorine.

“Like Jonestown,” Jason whispered. “Jesus. Fred, get your camera.”

“My eyes sting. I think we should get outa here.”

“The hell with your eyes. C’mon.”

Kirstie and Sam and Einar talked quietly while the others got their gear together.

“This is the chlorine spill,” Sam murmured. “God knows if it’ll get thick again. A shift in the wind and we could all be dead.”

“Oh God,” said Kirstie. “That’s why their skin is like that, and their clothes are in shreds. It was raining. Some of the chlorine must have formed hydrochloric acid.”

“It could start eating the hell out of our tires,” Sam murmured. “We’d better get out of here while we can still move.”

“There’s a supermarket on the corner,” Kirstie said. “If we’re quick and lucky, maybe we can get what we need.”

She turned and started walking quickly towards the supermarket. Behind her she heard Sam and Einar following, and Jason’s voice as he improvised a report. Fred’s floodlights threw her shadow ahead of her.

The supermarket’s entrance was piled with dead people, men, women, children, lying among spilled shopping carts and scattered groceries. Their faces were puffy, mottled and contorted in the light of her flash. The doors to the market were open, but barricaded by corpses.

Kirstie stopped. The men caught up with her.

“I can’t go in there,” she said. “I’m sorry — it’s — I’d have to—”

“We will go around,” said Einar. “In the back.”

There were all coughing: pockets of chlorine trapped between buildings were embittering the air. At the rear of the supermarket, an alley led to a loading dock. Two men in blue coveralls were curled up on the dock; their eyes glinted in the beam of the flashlight.

“Ho-ho,” Einar said.

Backed up to the loading dock was a big truck; on its aluminium sides were the words NORCAL WHOLESALERS — THE BEST FOR LESS! Einar ran up some cement steps to the dock, stepping lightly over the dead men, and shone his light into the rear of the truck. “Ho-ho,” he said again.

“What is it?” Sam called in an urgent whisper.

“This truck is almost full. Mostly canned food.”

Kirstie wanted to howl in triumph; instead she gasped and wiped her watering eyes.

“Can you drive it?” she wheezed. The alleyway lit up as a burning apartment building collapsed suddenly in a whirl of sparks. Einar leaped down, ran to the cab, and pulled out the body of the driver.

“Yes. Let us go.”

“Let us go then,” Sam echoed hoarsely, “when the city is spread out like a patient chloroformed upon a table.” He and Kirstie climbed into the cab.

“That is not an accurate quote,” Einar said, starting the engine.

“Shut up and drive.”

The headlights glared. Einar swung the truck up the alley, turned left, and left again onto Sacramento. Jason was standing before the market’s plate-glass windows, illuminated by Fred’s lights. Einar honked the horn and braked beside them.

“We have got some food now,” he called down to them. Fred had already started taping the truck; he followed Jason around to Kirstie’s side of the cab and grinned excitedly at her.

“Far out,” he coughed. “Listen, give us a fifteen-second clip and then we’ll follow you back to your people.”

“Well—” Fred’s light was an added injury to her streaming eyes. Jason asked her a few questions, and she coughed her answers. “Now we’ve got to go. The school is at Francisco and San Pablo in Berkeley. Thanks.”

“Thank you . See you there.”

The truck raced north on Sacramento, but had to detour west, just inside Berkeley, to avoid a fire in the middle of the street: an office building had exploded nearby, scattering burning fragments across several parked cars which had then caught fire. Sam fiddled with the truck’s radio, picking up bits of news bulletins through heavy static.

“ The President has declared the states of California, Oregon and Washington disaster areas , and vowed tonight to visit personally the worst - hit areas such as San Diego and San Francisco…” “… says there is no cause for panic and the National Guard is on duty in the stricken areas . General Ernest Miles , commander of Fort Ord , has declared martial law in the Salinas - Monterey area . No word as yet on whether Sixth Army Headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco plans a similar declaration for the Bay Area …” “… reports of looting in the Los Angeles area are exaggerated , the city’s mayor says . The power is still out in most of the Southland as far east as Palm Springs , and hospitals using backup generators are reported running short of fuel .”