Jackson Ford - Eye of the Sh*t Storm

“Who’s coming?” I say. Or try to. It comes out as “Whsmngz?”

There’s something on my face. Something powdery. It’s on my skin, my teeth and tongue, up my nose. Jesus, it’s in my eyes . And it burns: searing, acrid, horrible. I sneeze, and it’s like an explosion going off inside my skull.

I sit up, blinking hard against the pain. There’s a bag of meth on the dashboard in front of me, split wide open. It must have flown right out of the box and through the gap in the seats when we crashed, smacking into the windshield. Popping like a balloon.

Oh fuck. That’s what’s on me. Burning my throat and nose and tongue. White powder fills the air around me. The bag that hit the windshield can’t be the only one split open, but it looks like it’s the only one that happened to explode right in my face. Annie and Africa must gotten some on them too, but I got most of it.

I claw at my skin in horror, hacking, spitting, trying to force the drug out. There’s no way you can get high from a face full of the stuff, right? No way. It doesn’t work like that… you’re supposed to snort it or smoke it or…

The bikers are riding up, holding very big guns and looking… I’m going to go with annoyed . It’s an image caught perfectly by the bright LA sunlight, their patched leather jackets highlighted just right.

Our ride is totalled. One side bent and smashed from when the SUV hit us, the other mangled from the impact with the bridge support. It’s staggering that we’re all still alive – if we’d hit at another angle, we might not be.

Which isn’t much comfort, because we’re on fire.

The hood has popped open, and there are flames visible at the edge. Big flames. There’s smoke, too, thick and white.

“Don’t breathe!” Annie yells. “Just hold it in.”

Africa has the presence of mind to bury his mouth and nose in his elbow, but not me. I’m too busy trying to get the awful meth powder out of my face, so I get a big lungful of the smoke. I cough and splutter, twisting my head to one side. My throat closes to a pinhole, cutting off my air. My chest is on fire, my nostrils filling with the sick, acrid tang. The meth powder and the smoke tag team to shred my sinuses to pieces.

We have to get out. We have to get out of here right fucking now. Forget the guys with the guns – we can figure that out afterwards. All I have to do is open the door, get us away from the burning car.

Right then, the bridge above us gives a deep, horrifying groan.

I may have mentioned the big earthquake. You know what big earthquakes do? Besides knocking down buildings and cracking roads and bursting gas mains? They weaken bridge supports. Many of the bridges in LA are off limits to traffic right now, for just that reason.

Apparently, that includes this one.

Africa looks up, then back at me. Above the arm covering his nose and mouth, his eyes are as big as baseballs.

“Teagan,” Annie coughs out. “You gotta hold the bridge. You—”

She doesn’t get to finish her sentence. At that moment, the support cracks, the concrete splintering in a dozen places.

I throw out my PK, all concerns about revealing my ability forgotten. But I’m not fast enough, not even close.

The bridge collapses, the weakened roadway above our heads breaking up and plummeting towards us, the noise not quite loud enough to drown out our screams.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.

Hi. I’m Teagan Frost. I’m twenty-three years old. I live in Los Angeles, and I like good food, bad movies and terrible rap music. I work for a removals company called China Shop Movers, which is actually a government-run espionage operation. My favourite colour is purple. I drive an ’03 black Jeep, which I call the Batmobile.

Believe it or not, I don’t usually spend my time getting into vehicular gunfights. Take, for example, the situation I’m in right now. On our little timeline, it’s around forty-five minutes before I ingested meth in the middle of a car chase/gun battle/bridge collapse.

We’re on the thirtieth floor of a hotel just south of Downtown. The expansive penthouse balcony, a space of marble and granite, is bordered by a chest-high, two-feet-thick wall. Normally hotels don’t have balconies, but I guess this place decided it was worth the risk. When the hotel still had paying guests, the fee for one night in the room probably covered the insurance premiums and the services of a good PR firm if someone did decide to do a perfect-ten dive onto San Pedro Street.

It’s around ten in the morning, warm for January, with the sun already baking down out of a deep blue sky above the city. Despite the heat, the breeze is warm and gentle this high up, and the view is unreal. Blue skies all the way to the horizon in the north, where dark clouds are starting to build.

The balcony table holds an iced bucket of beers, and classic rock plays from a hidden set of speakers. It’s about the nicest situation I’ve been in for a long time. Well, if you ignore the cracked walls, the messy suite behind us and the many, many men standing around with guns.

I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but after the earthquake a few months ago, it’s gone derelict. Squatters and looters. Oh, and biker gangs. In particular, the Legends Motorcycle Club, who have taken advantage of LA’s upside-down real estate market to get themselves a nice little base of operations.

They insisted on meeting us at a designated location – in this case, the parking lot of a destroyed strip club in Mission Junction – so they could blindfold us and transport us here in one of their SUVs, even though we were able to figure out where we were the second they brought us onto the balcony. Honestly.

The man across the table is called Robert. He has an enormous, sculpted beard that hangs down over his sleeveless, patched vest. Tattooed arms as thick as my thighs – and I am not skinny. His body almost overwhelms the cute director’s chair he’s sitting in, one of about ten dotted across the balcony. Bikers occupy half the chairs, all holding gigantic assault rifles. It’s a shame he’s called Robert. He’s more of a Zeke or Luther or Big Jon. Life sucks sometimes.

Robert isn’t actually in charge. He’s running the show here, for this deal, but he isn’t the President of the Legends. That’s someone called Pop, who we haven’t met yet.

The only person bigger than Robert is Africa – China Shop’s driver and muscle. He’s as thin as Robert is thick, the head on his scrawny body so big that it looks like it might roll off. Africa’s real name is Idriss Kouamé, although he’ll only answer to his nickname.

Normally, Africa’s dress sense tends towards the colourful. Purple Lakers jackets, yellow Hammer pants, buttery Timbs. I’m kind of surprised at how subdued he is today: dark suit, slightly baggy on his lanky frame, and a red shirt open at the neck.

He’s not actually very good at being muscle. I’ve watched him try and fight people, and it’s like watching a drunk try to dance the macarena. But he does an excellent job of looking scary. He’s doing it now as he stands behind Annie’s chair, scowling the scowliest scowl that anyone has ever scowled.

Annie Cruz isn’t scowling, but she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t need a facial expression to look scary – it’s something she was born with. She’s in the director’s chair on the other side of the table from Robert, wearing a dark green camo jacket over a black T and jeans. Annie has a buzzcut – she used to have a huge set of dreads, but she shaved them all off recently. Her skin is the colour of brown butter, currently beaded with sweat from the hot sunshine. At least, I hope it’s from the sunshine.