Crawford Kilian - Tsunami - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

“Was I ever wrong in the old days? You used to say I saved you a fortune just by keeping the dopers out of the company. Anyway, Sarah is not a big girl, and she’s really fucked up.”

Allison leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms and legs. “I don’t want a lecture about Sarah. She’s had a hell of time, sure. But at least she’s safe and secure.”

“You know she shits her pants? She walks around holding onto Lupe’s skirts, with her thumb in her mouth. She—”

“I said she’s had a hell of a time. She’ll be fine. Don’t say anything else about her.”

Ted rubbed his face. “Sure, Bob Tony. Hey, if I said anything out of line, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. Listen, I need you to be up front with me. Now I’ll be up front too. I’m taking you off the Leadership Committee. Like a holiday.”

“What—”

“You can stay on here at the ranch. You and Suzi and Ken can do the jobs you’re good at, but without the responsibility of being on the Committee. We’re making some heavy decisions, and it gets to us all, one way or another. So take a break. Give us advice, but let us take the heat. Be a devil’s advocate.”

“Sure.” Ted stared at the wall. “Any objection if we check out?”

“Check out? Leave?”

“Back to L.A. I don’t want to overstay our welcome, and I think I left a tap running.”

Allison stood up. “Please yourself. I just can’t give you any gas.”

Couriers began arriving at the ranch around noon; Mercer, in Monterey, relayed news as soon as it came in. The MLZ seemed to have escaped the worst of the quake, though it had been bad enough: scores of dead in Salinas and Watsonville, fires in Seaside and broken water mains everywhere, CB radio reports, through bursts of flare static, gave a far worse picture of cities in the north. The dead in Santa Cruz alone were estimated at well over three thousand. A fragmentary message from Paso Robles, to the south, seemed to indicate that the whole town had collapsed.

Allison sat in the living room, curtains drawn and lanterns burning, while the messages arrived. Bert was in now and then, offering advice or asking questions. At three in the afternoon, Mercer himself arrived.

“‘We are in some trouble,” he said when the room had been closed off. “Half the people in Monterey and Pacific Grove are out in the streets. Lots of houses just came down, bang. Lots more will come down next time somebody sneezes. Most of the MLZ has no water. Ord’s okay. Some of the old barracks are kinda creaky, but the concrete ones are good.”

“Can we move people into them?” Allison asked.

Mercer put his muddy boots up on a Barcelona chair and sighed. “Sure, Bob. But once we got ‘em there we gotta take care of them. Food. Clothes. Bedding. Some way to heat those buildings. They all got electric heat, you know. Even if we had enough generators to heat and light all those buildings, we’d use up all our gas in about two days.”

“Gas. It always ends up with gas. What about that salvage team? They come up with anything yet?”

“Not much. They say they might be able to do somethin’ if the tanker was right side up. But it turned turtle.”

“Shit. I want the leader of that team up here right away, tomorrow. He can show me how he’s going to salvage the boat, or he’s fired.”

“I’ll have him here. But listen: we better face the fact that we just might not get all that good stuff. Then what?”

“Have to go liberate some,” said Allison, rubbing his beard.

“You talkin’ more expansion?”

“No, just some quick raids.”

“Better plan on liberatin’ some food too. We’re running short already, and winter’s comin’.”

“Okay, okay. But we can’t expand any more.”

“Raids are no good. You clean out some place, and their locals will come down here and beat us to death. Come on , man.”

“Hey. We had an earthquake today. Let’s worry later about conquering the world.”

Mercer stared wearily at him. “When the food runs out, you and me don’t have any later.”

That was the trouble with opportunists, Allison reflected: they lost heart when they couldn’t see an opportunity. Somehow he would have to make sure that Mercer never saw a new opportunity arising somewhere else, or the black son-of-a-bitch would sell them all out without blinking.

“We got this far, Odell. We’ll have more later than most people… Off the subject, can you get a doctor up here, the next day or two?”

“Somebody got the sniffles? You think my doctors don’t work enough?”

“By tomorrow afternoon, Odell. You can have him back tomorrow night. Now, let’s get back to relocating all these people. How about putting them in those barracks and not worrying about heat and light?”

“Bob — I just said they’d need food, clothes, doctors. And we’d still need gas and oil.”

“Okay, okay — let ‘em sit where they are. Or come up with a better idea.”

“See what I can do.” Mercer stood up and put on his olive-drab baseball cap with the eagle on it. “Like you said, we got this far.”

At ten that evening, Allison took a tray upstairs. Shauna had taken a sleeping pill around noon, and hadn’t even stirred when Sarah had been put to bed at two-thirty. The child was still asleep; Shauna was just waking.

“Hi,” he said softly. “I brought you breakfast in bed.”

“Oh.” She sat up drowsily. “Put it on the night table. Gotta go pee.” When she returned, she took only the coffee; the bacon and scrambled eggs slowly cooled.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Tired. My head always aches.”

“I’ve been neglecting you. Too much going on.”

“Was the earthquake bad?”

“No. Listen, how’s that sore on your neck?”

“Still there. So what?”

“Can I see it?”

“What the hell for?” She was angry. “You come up here just to stare at my sore?”

“Hey.” He took her hand. In the harsh light of the Coleman lantern, she looked gaunt and haggard. “I worry about you. You’re a tough cookie, you never complain, and you let things go on too long. I should’ve had somebody look at it a long time ago. C’mon”

Grudgingly, she lifted her hair from her shoulder. Allison leaned forward and delicately pulled the band-aid from her neck.

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.” It was bigger: a dark patch the size of his thumbnail, like a big, flat mole. It made a distinct lump under her left ear, extending towards the nape of her neck well beyond the dark patch. A lesion, near the centre of the dark patch, oozed a yellowish fluid.

“Looks like God’s own boil,” Allison said. “Take the doctor about two seconds to clean it out.”

“I don’t need a doctor. I just need some peace and quiet. Peace and quiet. No doctor.”

“Okay, okay. If you don’t want to let him see you, that’s fine.”

The couriers kept arriving with more news: casualty figures, damage reports, rumours from outside the MLZ. Allison felt relieved to hear that the Bay Area had suffered the worst of the quake. Maybe it would slow them down a little. The locals were bound to move south on him eventually; it was as logically inevitable as his own move north against them.

Around dawn, Allison took a nap. At nine, the leader of the salvage team arrived. He was a nervous blond man who had somehow managed to avoid sunburn. He went through the three cups of coffee with plenty of sugar and evaporated milk, while describing in detail the problems his team was facing. Allison listened patiently.

“What would you need to do the job?” Allison asked.