Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

It’s around one-thirty by the time we reach the bike store, which is exactly where Paul said it would be. Most of it, anyway. Like just about every other building we pass, it’s collapsed in on itself – not helped by the fact that an electric pole has crashed right through the ceiling.

I snag us three bikes out of the rubble, winding my PK inside the wrecked building and pulling them out. I have to psych myself up to do it; there’s that same hitch, the same almost-physical resistance against using my powers. Not in public. Then again, the few people I do see aren’t paying attention to us anyway. At the far end of the block, a woman wanders in uneven circles, staring at the sky like it’s changed colour.

The bikes are identical black BMXs, with balding tyres and slightly rusty gears. Even after I get them onto the sidewalk, I can’t help feeling anxious – like Tanner herself is going to step out from behind a building and whisk me away to a black site lab.

“Keep an eye out,” Annie says. It’s the first words any of us have spoken since we left Paul.

“For what?” Africa asks, shrugging on his backpack. He straddles the bike – it’s way too small for him, making him look like something out of a circus.

Annie swings her leg over. “Everybody else. Bikes are gonna be hot property.”

“I can’t get Google Maps.” I cycle my phone to airplane mode and back, hoping against hope. Google Maps is an excuse. It’s Nic I want to get hold of. I keep thinking of how he yanked me under the table during the first quake, back at my apartment. That instinctive, unquestioned move to protect me.

My apartment. Gone, probably. Vaporised, sucked down into the earth, felled by a power line. The thought doesn’t make me feel anything. Maybe I’m in shock, too.

“Don’t need GPS,” Annie says. “I know the way. Let’s go.”

It hurts to leave the truck. It feels like rejecting a gift. More than that: it was warm inside the truck. Dry. Outside, the rain that started up while I was in Schmidt’s plane has gotten heavier, drops spattering my skin. But Paul was right – we’ll get nowhere on the 405 in a regular car.

I leave the keys in the truck’s ignition. Maybe someone else can make use of it. I also pull a few more bikes out of the wreckage of the shop, leaving them on the sidewalk. Somehow, I don’t think whoever runs Nuclear Cycles is going to mind.

The 405 doesn’t actually start until you get of the Valley. We have to go through the Sepulveda Pass first – a kind of chokepoint through the Santa Monica Mountains. By the time we reach it, I’m both freezing and out of breath. We’re riding right into the rain, and it soaks me to my skin, which is already drenched in sweat. I can’t find a rhythm on the bike. The constant changes in the terrain and the cracks in the road surface make for hard going.

There are more people the closer we get to the Pass. The entry ramp, at the south edge of the Sepulveda Basin, is choked with cars – many of them with their front or rear pointed skyward, half-swallowed by cracks. One or two of the cars are on fire, slowly being consumed by flames.

“Ayo,” someone shouts as we pass – an enormously fat man with a white T turned transparent from rain. “Where’d you get the bikes?”

“Up on Valerio,” Annie replies. “In Balboa.”

“Y’all got anything to eat?” he fires back. She doesn’t reply to that – just peddles harder, pushing her bike up the on-ramp, weaving between abandoned cars.

The man doesn’t follow us. Neither does anybody else. I guess we haven’t reached full-on apocalypse-looting stage yet. The thought is cynical, way too bitter. Should I share some of the water in my backpack with these people? I stop myself just in time. As much as I want to help, it’s too risky. Someone might decide to snatch our bikes, or all of our water. A confrontation right now is the last thing we need.

Thank fuck the freeway isn’t elevated, or it would have collapsed completely. Paul was a hundred per cent right about the bikes. There’s a ton of traffic, cars and trucks blocking the road in all directions, but weaving between them isn’t too tricky. Ahead of us, Annie hunches over her handlebars, and Africa looks miserable. I’m shivering now, blinking away the steady rain.

Holy fuck. In a weird way, like with the last quake, I think we got lucky. It’s all too easy to picture this happening in the fall at the height of fire season – a thousand small blazes blossoming as the quake ripped open gas mains, the fires fanned by the winds, consuming everything.

The thought gives me another jab of nausea. My parents were killed in a fire at our farm in Wyoming. The fire was set by my brother Adam. He died too, along with my sister, Chloe. The only reason I escaped was because I’d been outside, chopping wood. I’ve made it a point to avoid fires since then. It hasn’t always worked – I had to fight Jake, the only other psychokinetic I’ve ever met, in the middle of one last year. It was exactly as much fun as it sounds. The thought of a quake, followed by a city-wide firestorm, is too awful to think about.

Then again, it’s not like what we have now is much better. The crowds get thicker the further south we get, people milling in large groups at the edge of the highway. Everybody seems to have a wound of some kind: a broken arm or leg, a bloody nose, a gash in a shoulder or hip. Even the ones who escaped injury look dull, exhausted, watching us pass with slack expressions.

Some of the dead are under blankets. Most aren’t. I do my best not to look at them – just keep peddling , I tell myself, keeping my head down, making myself breathe. I’m in agony, my thigh muscles burning, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about. Well, I could stop peddling, but that would strand me on this highway, this junkyard of broken cars and broken people.

I pull out my phone again as we peddle, desperate for signal. Zip. Nada. Dick-all. And – holy fuck, it’s almost two-thirty. Have we really been peddling for an hour already? I feel like we’ve gotten nowhere.

It’s not long before we hit something even the bikes won’t help with. As we reach the southern end of Bel Air, the freeway tops an overpass. One which has collapsed in on itself, cutting off the road ahead. Annie comes to a halt, looking left and right, then abruptly peddles for the side of the freeway. She dismounts, lifting her bike and clambering over the barrier onto the hard shoulder.

“Um, Annie?” I say. “Where are you going?”

She vanishes over the other side. I take a breath, biting back against the stitch in my side, then do the same. Africa follows, mute and shivering.

Turns out, Annie knows what she’s doing. There’s a road on the other side of the embankment, a smaller one, winding up into the hills. It’s not easy to get to – we have to scoot down on our backsides, awkwardly holding the bikes. Africa manages better than we do, his long legs spidering down the slope. By the time we reach the broken tarmac, we’re all covered in freezing mud. There’s a building on the hill above us. A huge, white structure, towers and domes and angular blocks, like a hospital designed by a crazy person.

“Getty Center,” Annie mutters.

“Uh-huh.” Africa brightens for a moment, before his face drops back into its dull, sullen stupor.

I know the Getty, but I’ve never been inside. It’s an LA landmark – a massive art museum, high above the city. I get a better look at it as we bike up the road, my thighs straining against the steep gradient. It’s hard to tell from here, but it looks like it survived the quake. The thought actually cheers me up a little – until we crest a rise at the base of the Center.

Africa lets out a horrified breath. I can’t even do that. All the air has been sucked from my lungs.