Crawford Kilian - Tsunami - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

Allison got on his CB. “This is Escondido One. Anyone pick up something about a flood on Ventura Boulevard?”

“ Escondido Three .” That was Bert. “ Uh , yeah , it’s the Encino Reservoir .”

“Well, we’re nearly at Balboa Boulevard. We should be able to get past in time. It’s not going to reach the level of the freeway, anyhow.”

“ Uh , no ,” said Bert, “ but we could get in a real jam if people use the freeway as high ground .”

“This is true. Okay, well, as they used to say, let’s go for it.”

The lights along the freeway went out, and most of the lights on the streets below. Driving in the far right-hand lane, Allison looked down and saw chains of red taillights moving north. The truck shuddered, as if it had gone over a bump, and seconds later Allison saw the taillights in one street begin to wink out, from south to north. Down there in the darkness, a flood was rolling past. A grinding rumble overwhelmed the noise of the engine.

“Daddy, what is it?”

“Hush, love, it’s just raining really hard.”

“I can’t hear you!”

“It’s raining, it’s raining!” Allison shouted. “Now hush and let me drive!”

The headlights could scarcely penetrate the rain. Allison slowed down when he saw a cluster of taillights up ahead. They weren’t moving; in a few moments the convoy was on the eastern edge of a small traffic jam.

A sports car and a pickup had collided, blocking three lanes. The unconscious driver of the sports car was trapped inside, his head on the steering wheel. No one was trying to help. The pickup seemed to have been abandoned. A Trans Am and a Toyota tried to squeeze into the one clear lane, and sideswiped each other. The driver of the Trans Am got out with a gun in his hand, rested his arms on the roof of his car, and began firing at the other one. The shots did not sound very loud. Allison, behind several other cars but able to look over them, saw the Toyota glance into the guardrail and stop, plugging the one remaining lane. When the shooting stopped, he could hear screaming.

Bert was suddenly there, beside Allison’s door. “Gotta move that car, Bob.”

“Right. Sarah, love, you stay put, understand? We have to go give those people a push.”

“Was that man shooting? It sounded like shooting. Are they making a TV show?”

“Just stay right there till I get back.”

Bert and Allison jogged up between the stalled cars; none of the other drivers seemed willing to deal with the Trans Am and his gun.

The gunman was just getting back into his car. The screaming was coming from the Toyota. Bert walked up to the gunman’s window.

“We’re gonna push that car out of the way so you can get through. Want to give us a hand?”

“Fuck no. Not gonna give that son-of-a-bitch any more fuckin’ help, man.” He was a pale young man of twenty or so. No one else was in the car.

The driver of the Toyota was dead. Most of his head was covered with blood and splinters of glass. A woman on the seat beside him was howling, her face in her hands, and two small boys wailed in the back seat.

“Jesus, Jesus Christ,” Allison muttered. He opened the driver’s door, and saw the car was stalled in first gear. He put one foot awkwardly on the clutch pedal and reached across the corpse to shift into neutral. The dead man smelled of aftershave.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” the woman screamed.

“Helping,” Allison answered. The rain was cold on his neck, and trickled through his beard. With Bert pushing from behind, he managed to steer the Toyota a few yards past the bottleneck. The woman and her children kept screaming.

“Don’t leave us! Mister, please, don’t leave us. My God, he’s hurt, he needs help. Please, get the doctor, the police.”

“The police will be along any minute. It’ll be okay,” Allison said. Before her hysterical pleading could soften him, he turned away and followed Bert. The Trans Am was idling in the gap, waiting for them to get out of the way. Bert, in the lead, paused and rapped on the driver’s window. The young man rolled it down.

“Yeah?”

Something flashed orange in Bert’s hand; the boom of the shot was sudden. Allison saw the window on the right-hand side of the Trans Am blow out, a burst of glitter in the headlights.

Bert turned to Allison, holstering his pistol under his poncho. “Let’s get this asshole out of the way.”

“Christ, Christ, Bert. You just blew him away.”

“What’s the matter, think he didn’t deserve it? Come on, push this thing.”

“You’re making me accessory to murder, Bert,” Allison said, but he pushed.

“Weren’t you ready to shoot those schmucks in the Volvo this afternoon if tried to rip us off? This jerk had it coming.”

Bert opened the Trans Am’s door and twisted the steering wheel to the left, guiding the car past the Toyota and onto the side of the road. Almost at once, cars began to stream through, honking; people leaned out, grinning at the men and shouting “Right on!”

“Thank you!” Not far to the east, the growl and rumble of the flood was softening.

A few minutes later Allison was back in the Range Rover, driving west through heavy rain. Sarah had finally fallen asleep, despite the buzz and sputter of the CB.

He thought for a long time about what had happened. Bert, he decided, had been a very smart choice. He himself had been slow, and shocked by the second shooting, but he had swallowed his objections and cooperated. For all his talk about economic and social collapse, he was just not yet fully emotionally aware that the old rules, the old laws, were as dead as the two drivers back there.

Allison promised himself that the next time, whenever it came, would find him ready. He only hoped Sarah wouldn’t have to see it.

It was extraordinary, Kirstie thought, how quickly one adjusted to arbitrary new routines. Electricity was now on, at best, two hours a day, usually in the early morning. That meant they had pumped water, so the toilet could be flushed and the bathtub and sinks filled. Whatever needed cooking was cooked then and either eaten cold or rewarmed in the fireplace — a smoky, clumsy business she preferred to avoid. Don had managed to find two battery rechargers; they were plugged in the moment the power came on, to ensure that the radio and flashlights stayed functional.

Amid the early-morning bustle, they heated water on the stove, took hasty sponge baths, and washed the last day’s accumulation of dishes and pots in the same water. Sometimes they washed a few clothes, using cold water and a sliver of hand soap; in this cold, damp spring, in an unheated house, things took forever to dry. Kirstie sometimes found herself wishing they could move down the hill, where water was available almost all day long by gravity feed. But the municipal authorities were adamant: hill people were to stay on the hills or move out of the city. Since transportation was almost non-existent, that meant the city’s former elite were now tied to their property like serfs.

Food was the major problem, the continuing outrage. The government had patched together a rickety distribution system for the Bay Area, but had little to distribute through it: rice, beans, some canned goods. Meanwhile a flourishing black market had sprung up to supply meat, milk, fruit and fresh vegetables — all of poor quality and available only for gold, silver, or usable goods like tools and gasoline. The Kennards were perpetually hungry; they had little to trade, and their savings were worthless.

Money had disappeared from the economy within three or four days. First the banks had closed and were not expected to reopen soon. For a week, companies had gone bankrupt; after that, their owners and officers didn’t bother and just walked away. If millions of people had lost billions of dollars through damage to their homes and businesses, they had saved billions simply by not paying their creditors. The economy, built on two generations of consumer debt, had not so much crashed as evaporated.