Harry Turtledove: Supervolcano: Things Fall Apart

Probably quite a bit , Colin thought. Aloud, all he said was, “Maybe you don’t want to do anything too real fast.”

“Maybe I don’t. But maybe I do, too. Gotta get on while Mike’s still hot news, right?” Caroline sounded brittle, and who could blame her? She went on, “One more thing to talk to my lawyer about. He’ll send his kids to Harvard thanks to me any which way, if it hasn’t frozen solid by the time they get there. Take care, Colin. None of this was your fault, and I am sorry I thought it was.” She hung up before he could respond.

“Jesus,” he said as he set down his own phone’s handset.

Gabe had come back from his cigarette break. “Who was that?” he asked from a couple of desks away.

“Caroline Pitcavage.”

Gabe said “Jesus!” too.

“Tell me about it,” Colin said. “Right this minute, drinking lunch looks like the best idea I’ve had in years. Wanna come along?” Gabe didn’t tell him no. Colin hadn’t thought he would.

Louise Ferguson looked nervously at the battery-powered clock on the wall in the condo’s cramped little kitchen. She had to head for the bus stop if she was going to get to the Van Slyke Pharmacy on time. Where was Marshall, dammit? If she had to drag James Henry with her when she went in, nobody would be happy with her, not her preschool son, not her grown son, and not her boss, either.

The security gate at the front of the condominium complex stood open. When the electricity was out, as it was so much these days, the gate was useless. Arrivals couldn’t buzz the people they were visiting. One of these days, the turbines on the Columbia that the dust and ash and silt from the supervolcano had killed would finally get replaced. One of these days, but who could guess which one? When the new turbines got to work at last, power up and down the West Coast would grow more reliable. So Washington claimed, anyhow.

Washington had claimed all kinds of things since the eruption. It delivered on about one in three, maybe one in four. Some disasters were too big for even the most powerful country in the history of the world. This one, for instance.

Feet on the stairs. The clank of a bicycle frame against the iron railing. A muttered “Shit!” outside the front window. A knock on the door. Marshall Ferguson, to the rescue! And just in the nick of time. The scriptwriters couldn’t have done it better… if the bus didn’t run late, anyhow.

She opened the door. In came Marshall, bike in one hand and typewriter case in the other. “You made it!” Louise said in relief.

“Yeah.” Marshall grudged a nod. If she didn’t pay him, he wouldn’t be here. He set up his bicycle next to the dinette wall. “Just starting to rain.”

“Oh, hell,” Louise said. She had an umbrella in her purse—even in the L.A. basin, you could get rain any old time now that the supervolcano had done its number on the global climate—but she’d hoped she wouldn’t need to use it today. Then she called, “James Henry! Come say bye-bye to Mommy!”

Out came her youngest son. That she should have a child not yet four still croggled her. James Henry Ferguson didn’t look like his much older half-brother. Marshall looked like Colin, though he was rangier and had Louise’s rather beaky nose. James Henry took after his father. He was much darker than any of Louise’s children by Colin, and the shape of his cheekbones told the world Teo’s ancestors came from Mexico.

He hugged Louise. “Bye-bye,” he said dutifully, and then, “Hey, Marshall.”

“Hey, kid,” Marshall answered. James Henry yawned. He would sooner have slept in. Louise couldn’t let him do it, though. She never knew for sure whether Marshall would show up on time— he would sooner have slept in, too. If he was late or didn’t come at all, James Henry had to go to the pharmacy whether he or Louise liked it or not.

He didn’t have to today, though. Louise damn well did. Out the door she went, across the courtyard—the grass greener and shaggier than anyone before the eruption would have dreamt SoCal grass could get—and out through the security entrance that wasn’t. She crossed the street. Nobody on a bicycle ran over her. The bus stop was half a block down.

She nodded to the regulars who waited there. Some of them nodded back. Others peered down the street. They cared more about the bus than they did about her. Everything was erratic these days. The bus was supposed to show up in about ten minutes. And maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn’t.

It was late, but it wasn’t very late. She fed three dollar bills into the slot, one after another. The reader didn’t want to swallow one of the bills. She pulled out a different one. Everybody behind her was loving her to pieces for gumming up the works. The slot deigned to accept the substitute bill. She sat down. After the rest of the riders paid their fares, the bus pulled out into the street.

Three bucks each way. Five days a week. That sucked, was what it did. Not for the first time, Louise thought about buying herself a bike. It would save money in the long run. But getting what she needed for the upfront wouldn’t be easy, not when she had to watch every penny as things were. And she hadn’t ridden on two wheels for a hell of a long time. It was supposed to come back in a hurry. With my luck, probably right after I fall down and break my wrist—or my neck , she thought.

The bus went up to Hesperus, then swung left onto Reynoso Drive. It rumbled past what had been a drive-in movie once upon a time. For the past umpty-ump years, the big parking lot held a swap meet on weekends. Colin had always hated the place—he swore more than half of what got sold there was either hot or counterfeit.

Louise muttered to herself. She didn’t want to think about Colin, no matter how long she’d been married to him. She was on her own. She’d wanted to be on her own, and she’d gone and got free. And, in spite of everything, she was happier without him than she had been with him. Not so secure, but happier.

By all the signs, he was happier, or at least as happy, without her, too. She hadn’t figured on that—she’d assumed he’d flop around like a fish out of water. But she didn’t want to think about that, either.

She stood up as the bus neared the corner of Reynoso Drive and Van Slyke. The bus stopped. The doors hissed open. She got out. The bus turned right onto Van Slyke and growled north.

Louise crossed Reynoso Drive. The pharmacy was in something half a step up from a strip mall on the northeast corner of the intersection. It shared the space with a liquor store, a Filipino market, and an optician’s shop. None of the businesses except the liquor store was exactly thriving, but they all kept chugging along. She couldn’t think of a disaster that would keep a liquor store from thriving.

When she walked in, Jared Watt was straightening the secondhand books on their shelves. “Good morning, Louise,” the pharmacist said, eyes enormous behind thick spectacle lenses. He wore loud polyester shirts. His hair looked as if someone who wasn’t very good with a lawnmower had mowed it. Along with the books and drugs (prescription and otherwise) and school supplies and the like, he also sold some of the ugliest tchotchkes God or the Devil ever made.

And Louise cared not a nickel for any of that. “Good morning, Jared,” she said warmly. He’d given her a job when she needed one worse than a junkie needed smack. And, even if all his taste was in his mouth, he was a nice guy. Next to Mr. Nobashi, for whom she’d worked till the Japanese ramen company closed its American headquarters, Jared Watt was a saint on earth. A dweeby saint, no doubt, but a saint neverthenonetheless.