Harry Turtledove: Supervolcano: Things Fall Apart

The windup alarm clock on Colin Ferguson’s nightstand ticked like a bomb. A silent digital clock sat there with it, but too often was silent when it needed to make noise. Power in San Atanasio—power in the whole L.A. basin—had got too erratic to trust since the supervolcano eruption going on five years ago now. And Colin had always been a suspenders-and-belt man: a good way for a cop to be.

When the windup clock clattered, he jerked as if it really were a bomb. He groped at it till it shut up. Wan predawn light leaked between the slats of the venetian blinds.

“Did I—” Colin didn’t finish asking his wife whether he’d bothered her too much to let her go back to sleep. Kelly wasn’t in bed with him. He chuckled under his breath. Her alarm clock had gone off, and he hadn’t even noticed. When Deborah woke up hungry, she wanted her mother’s breast. Colin could do all kinds of things, but he wasn’t built to nurse.

He got out of bed, opened the blinds, and went downstairs. He held on to the iron rail and stepped carefully. Even with the blinds open, not all that much light was getting in.

Kelly sat in a rocking chair in the front room. The baby was asleep on her lap, so she’d been there a while. She fluttered her fingers at him. “You didn’t move when she started crying,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, well…” he said vaguely, and then, “I’m gonna make coffee. Want some?”

“Oh, God, yes!” Kelly said. He felt the same way himself.

They still had natural gas. Since the power was out, the fancy electronic ignition on the stove wasn’t worth squat. When Colin turned a valve and lit a match at the burner, though, he got blue flames. He and Kelly both liked cream and sugar. He spooned in Coffee-mate instead. The refrigerator was an icebox more often than not. Sometimes the power stayed out so long, it wasn’t even much of an icebox. They steered clear of milk products most of the time.

“Thanks,” Kelly said when he brought her the cup. “Don’t know what I’d do without this stuff.”

“Tell me about it.” Colin sipped hot caffeine. He looked out through the French doors at the back yard and made a small, unhappy noise. “Starting to rain.”

His wife clucked in sympathy. “Just what you need.”

“Yeah, right,” Colin said. “I’d sooner stay in bed today anyhow. Heck, I’d sooner visit your old man than go in this morning.” Kelly’s father, Dr. Stan Birnbaum, bragged that he was the best dentist in the South Bay. He might well have been, too. That didn’t make calling on him any more fun.

“Maybe the press conference won’t be too horrible.” By the way Kelly said it, she didn’t believe it.

Neither did Colin. “And maybe—” He clamped down hard on that. Someone who tried not to swear in front of women shouldn’t come out with And maybe monkeys’ll fly out of my ass when talking with his beloved. But that was what he’d been thinking, all right.

By Kelly’s soft snort, she knew it, too. She was almost fifteen years younger than he was, and took cussing for granted whether he did or not. She cautiously rose from the rocker, holding Deborah in the crook of her left arm and levering herself up with her right. The baby didn’t stir or fuss. Kelly headed for the stairs. “I’ll get her down. Then I’ll figure out whether to go back to bed myself or just stay up.”

“Okay.” Colin finished his coffee, then cut a bagel in half and slathered Nutella on it. Nutella was great stuff when you could get it. Anything that tasted good and didn’t need refrigeration counted as great stuff these days.

He went back upstairs after he ate. Shaving with cold water wasn’t his idea of fun, either, but he methodically took care of it. A cold shower… He shook his head. Nobody bathed as often as people had before the eruption, not when hot water was one more thing that was hard to come by. A soapy washcloth here and there would have to do for now.

Somber blue suit. Blue shirt. Somber maroon tie. “Okay?” he asked Kelly. Yes, he would much rather have faced Stan Birnbaum’s drill than the gentlemen and ladies of the Fourth Estate. Stan at least gave you novocaine before he got to work. There wouldn’t be any painkillers this morning.

“Okay.” Kelly nodded. For good measure, she came over and kissed him. She felt nice in his arms. He wished he could stay. Wishing did as much good as it always did.

“Off to throw the wolves raw meat,” he said. Kelly laughed, for all the world as if he were joking.

He put on a rain slicker with a hood and slipped galoshes over his shoes. His bike sat in the foyer along with Kelly’s and Marshall’s. Deborah’s squawks hadn’t rousted his grown son from his first marriage. But then, from everything Colin had seen, Marshall was better than even money to sleep through the crack of doom.

One more sigh. Then out the door, up onto the bike, on with the helmet, and away. Hi-yo, Silver! Colin thought sourly. His bifocals sat in an inside jacket pocket. Hood or no hood, riding in the rain with them on was a losing proposition. He pedaled south to 154th, dutifully stopped at the stop sign, stuck his left arm straight out to signal a left turn, and went east on 154th to Hesperus.

Another stop sign there. A right turn this time: left arm out with forearm and hand pointing up. Hesperus was one of San Atanasio’s major north–south streets. There’d probably be a few cars on it, even if gas was hard to come by and over fifteen bucks a gallon when you could get any.

Mostly bikes, though, bikes and skateboards and the occasional grownup–sized tricycle. Quite a few people rode with iPod earbuds to shut out the world. Colin didn’t; he wanted to know what might be gaining on him. Traffic lights were out along with the rest of the power. If something came barreling down Reynoso Drive toward Hesperus, for instance, maybe he’d hear it and be able to take evasive action.

But nothing did—nothing more dangerous than other bicycles, anyhow. (Not that bike-on-bike crashes couldn’t get messy. You could rack yourself up but good. You could even kill yourself, especially if you didn’t bother with a helmet—at least as dumb as riding in a car without a seat belt.) He pedaled on. This was an old part of San Atanasio, with shops and offices dating back to not long after the war, some to before it.

The police station was near the corner of Hesperus and San Atanasio Boulevard, in the government center with the jail, the city hall, and the county library. They’d all gone up in the 1960s, when the town was flush. That was a while ago now. When San Atanasio got in the news these days, the people who didn’t call it gritty invariably did call it working-class .

San Atanasio would be in the news today. Colin wished like hell that weren’t so. One more wish he wouldn’t get.

He chained his bike to the steel rack that had gone into place by the station’s front door after the eruption. A lot of black-and-whites sat in the parking lot. They were in working order, but so expensive to put on the street that most of them sat most of the time.

Several news vans sat in the lot, too. Colin’s mouth tightened when he saw one from CNN along with the local stations’ machines. The only thing he wanted less than going on L.A. TV was going on national—to say nothing of international—TV. Well, a lot of what life was all about was the difference between what you wanted and what you got.

He walked into the cop shop. “Hello, Lieutenant,” said the sergeant at the desk.

“Morning, Neil,” Colin answered. A phone call from Neil Schneider at twenty-five past three in the bloody morning had got this nightmare rolling—or, if you looked at things a different way, the nightmare had been rolling for years and crashed to a stop with that call.